"Where is the King?"

If only the Elven leader could know how recently those words had been repeated by others.  In Areta, when even the royal bedchamber was discovered empty.  In the Captain's quarters, whispered with an edge of bitter futility as their quest had pressed on.  How they echoed, accused, demanded beneath the inscrutable blank helm of the rider now hunched atop its steed, mounted in silence as the young monarch himself gave his speech.  Like the ghosts of his fallen brothers, flanking him loyally, even in death.  One hand kept a firm grip on the reins as the traumatized mount twisted its head, whinnying plaintively with fear and adrenaline, starting back and forth and pawing at the sand with shaking legs.  Thin breaths hissed in and out of the perforated helm in a low, metallic wheeze.  [i]Where is the king?[/i]

The act reached its conclusion, but there was no applause. No apology  No protest or clearing of throats.  Only when it seemed the desert could hold its breath no longer did that dry, broken voice shudder from beneath its iron shell.

"You think this a game?" it rasped.  

The figure dismounted heavily, advanced.  The standard of Areta, dusty and ill-used, that had not left Linus Kolbe's hand since the previous night, was thrown down to the glittering desert sand.  

"An Elfish pantomime?  You think yourself a hero, to sing upon a stage, beyond which lies nothing?"

The inscrutable helm was torn off, thrown to the baking sand as the standard had been, the abhorrent visage of death exposed to the blinding sun.  Kolbe's hands took the front of the King's tunic in a hard, merciless grip, neither of the other two men immediately able to believe what was happening.

"Gerald of Antour--" Alonso's feet left the ground.  The world heaved to one side as the caked earth of the canyon slope thumped hard against his back.  "--[i]Konrad Falkenberg[/i].  Good brothers!  Loyal to the crown!  Husbands!  [i]Fathers![/i]  GONE!  Do you understand?" Kolbe screamed it up at him, voice ragged, "THESE MEN ARE DEAD FOR YOU!" 

It was even more horrifying up close.  Barely human.  Tortured flesh and incurable lacerations, glistening with desert sweat.  One white eye staring from a ragged, red pit, the other burning with a hot, unspeakable fire that was not sanity, that was not madness.  The knight's shoulders heaved with raw, labored breaths as the words were torn from his throat, almost as if unbidden.  

"Areta [i]rots[/i] while you dally with harlots," Alonso was pitched backward, the hot earth thumping against his back once more a moment later. "Frolic with Elfen scum!  Crows circle the empty throne.  Barons and foreign sorcerers sharpen their knives.  Your people are fatherless 'neath the shadow of carrion birds!  Forgotten!  Abandoned to chaos, to dogs like Harking!  On a whim!" He rasped, "[i]A boy's whim![/i]"

"Kolbe, that's enough!" The Captain barked sharply, snapping out of the nightmare, "Stand down, that's an order!  Kolbe!  LINUS!  You swore an oath!  This is your KING, damn it!"

"Where?" Kolbe turned, pointing an accusing finger, leaving the apostate monarch to slide to the baking sand.  Mister Hooves stamped, nostrils flaring, still turning tight circles behind him. "Where is my king?" he croaked, "Where the sapphire and the gold?  Where the jackal, and the scale?"

He bent, snatching up the beaten standard.  Red-tinged sand hissed from the dusty blue fabric as he held it palm-up in shaking mailed hands, horizontal to the earth.  

"Duty, is a heavy burden.  All my brothers knew this.  Knew fear.  Pain.  Stared into darkness.  But we gave no ground!" he turned back to Alanso, "Do you understand?  Did as we must!  Paid a price, greater than a golden ring, and a woman's bed!

"You seek traitors?  Look to a mirror, and search thine own heart!  And if still you would run, trade the crown for a vagabond's cloak and the kingdom for a ditch, then go!  But this--" He paced closer, pointed; the grim visage with its canvas of unspeakable wounds as horrible now as ever. "THIS is the face you're spitting in!

"Thus I ask you.  Because I must know."  Kolbe's voice was strangled, now, winded, as though the flood of words had worn red what was left of his throat. 

[i]"Are you my king?"[/i]