One Beast That Cannot Be Tamed

by Rachel Parsons

Table of Contents
Part 3 appears
in this issue.

Conclusion

Hundreds of them, swooping down, attacked the crowds, causing chaos. Pecking, clawing, gouging. The men who were carrying me were knocked over by the mob, and I found myself lying surrounded by trampling feet. I scuttled across the ground, enduring an occasional stomp or kick, scraping my belly and my bosoms until I got to a door. I crawled inside it.

It was a public house, with dark open beams stuffed with daub and waddle, and low windows with brown unpainted wood. The proprietress, a red-headed, middle-aged woman in a flamboyant mauve gown, bordering almost treasonously on purple, helped me off the floor. Her hair looked like a gigantic, sanguinary puff ball had landed on her scalp, and her dress looked like its folds had been expanded with hoops. It was as if a curtain had been touched by a wizard and transformed from its rude beginnings to a garment of royalty.

“You look like you could use some whisky, your highness.”

She handed me a flagon before I could even nod. I drank it down in one gulp, feeling the burn all the way down. This resulted in an urgent need to pee, which I did on a potted plant in the corner. Feeling slightly mortified, I begged her forgiveness.

“Sorry, um —”

“Felicity,” she supplied. “And I am honored to have the mistress of all she surveys water my potted plants.”

I blushed. A wagon wheel came crashing through a window. Felicity went behind the bar and grabbed a cross bow and quiver, the latter of which she quickly donned.

“I have to make it back to Caer Rhiannon,” I said. “There is a rogue beast tamer awaiting trial. This has to be his doing.”

“I have a horse tethered in the back. Come this way.”

I followed her through the overturned tables and chairs, side stepping the broken bottles.

“Everyone left in a hurry when the birds attacked,” she explained.

“Yes, I imagine they would.”

She sucked in her breath, as I stepped on broken glass. I trailed blood through the back portion of the saloon.

We came to a back door; she opened it; hitched to a post was a yearling.

“Not what you are used to, your highness —”

“But it will do.”

The horse was already saddled; she untied a strap, looped the quiver through it, and handed me the crossbow. “Good luck, your highness.”

I nodded. I galloped out unto side streets, trying to avoid panicking men and women. I failed a couple of times and trampled two poor saps. I dared not even pause to see that their souls would leave well to the Otherworld.

I soon steered the horse using only my legs as I had to use the crossbow to ward off the birds, which would dive bomb me, trying to take some of my flesh as a grisly souvenir or get at my eyeballs in order to blind me. Ioseff’s disparaging remarks about my marksmanship to the contrary, I killed many and scared off more.

Guided only by the light of the moons and the stars I made my way to Caer Rhiannon. I was barely aware of the log frame of Wynne’s Inn, of the Matera trees whose branches look like hanged men, or of the thick foliage that has as its only lights, the red glow of lycanthropic eyes. I rushed down to the jail in the dungeon. Startling the jailor, I demanded to see Ogworht.

I grabbed him by the shoulders, stretched my right leg into a hard bow, and toppled him over it. I straddled him. I looked like I could either kill him or make love to him. I was not in a loving mood.

“Your highness, please, what is it you want of me?”

“Your birds. They are attacking the town. I want them to stop.”

“My birds? Attacking the town? I know of no such attack.”

“You lie,” I said, pounding his head unto the stone floor, bloodying it.

“It is true, mistress,” the guard said. “He has been here the whole time.”

“You fool! With his hands, he can talk to beasts on the wind and control them at a distance.”

“I know that, your highness,” the guard said with irritation. “His hands have been sedately by his side on my watch.”

“Then if you are not responsible for the bird attack, who is?”

“I do not know, your highness, but I may be of service.”

“You say that to earn a pardon.”

“I say that to help the kingdom and so that its people can enjoy their Jubilee. But you will have to release me into your custody.”

I thought about it for a moment. “All right, varlet, but should you try anything —”

“I know; I know; legions of dead animals will hunt me down and make me miserable. Do not worry, mistress, I can think of nothing more distressful.”

We scrambled to the stables; I threw Nightshade’s saddle on, ordering a servant to do the same for a steed for Ogworht. My heart was pounding in my throat, and I knew Nightshade’s heart was in his throat as well.

We stopped at the edge of town, should the rogue beast tamer turn my own horse against me and we ran the rest of the way. The stone and iron gates were open and we headed in, down to the town square. There Ogworht began madly gesticulating.

The birds stopped in mid swoop, and as they swirled upward, creating a black, living avian cyclone, the crowd began to cease panicking. Men stopped trampling on men; stopped wildly swinging in the air to ward off blows. The screams stopped and soon I heard the sound of hoof beats. Ioseff had arrived with his troops.

He began barking commands; the soldiers, on horseback, moved amongst the crowd, staffs swinging. I winced at the ‘clock,’ ‘clock,’ ‘clock,’ of busted shoulders and craniums.

Ioseff’s soldiers were able to restore order. I got up on the raised platform where I appear to preside over the festivities.

“Order has been restored,” I yelled. “Because of this dastardly attack, we will celebrate again tomorrow, and for another week.”

The crowd, not wishing to pass up another week of beer at the expense of the crown, began to cheer.

Rosalyn, her vestments torn, climbed unto the platform; her bosoms were heaving. “Are you all right, Rhiannon?” she said breathlessly.

Her eyes were all over my body searching for the hideous gashes and deep wounds that I knew she thought had to be present.

“Yes, I am fine.”

“And you let the varlet behind this out?”

“I let the man who stopped it out,” I said.

Ogworht shuffled his feet and looked pleased with himself. But Rosalyn was not through with him.

“He did this, Rhiannon. And then he undid it so you would pardon him.”

“Not according to the guards. He showed no sign of wizardry while confined.”

“Well, who did this, then?”

“I am going to find out,” I said, and thudded down the platform’s stairs.

“Where are you going?”

But I was not going far. Only far enough to pick up one of the dead birds by its neck.

“And what are you going to do with that?” Rosalyn asked.

“I am going to put it into the Crucible of Pain.”

“And do what? You cannot speak to animals, unless they are of Zusanna’s pack.”

As if commanded to appear, Zusanna came up and sniffed my butt, her way of finding out where I had been. Then she presented her neck for scratching. I absently scratched her head as I told of my plan.

We came to him in his rooms. Rosalyn, Ioseff, and Ogworht. Zusanna was still afraid of him, but she stalked by my side.

“Your highness. What a pleasant surprise.”

Emissary Franklin in his black and tan bathrobe and slippers opened the door and let us in.

“May I get you refreshment?” He nodded to one of his undersecretaries, a young woman also in a bathrobe and slippers. She went to the bar I furnish guests, and started to pour whisky from a bottle.

I put my right hand up to halt her. “This is not a social call, Emissary Franklin.”

“Oh? This is hardly the time to discuss our worlds’ interests.”

“I am not here to discuss that either.”

“Oh, then I do not understand the nature of your business.”

“I am here to sever your head from your body.”

I unsheathed Eligor from its position on Rosalyn’s side, pulled it downward and back, stepped off to the emissary’s left side, pivoted, and sliced his head off. Rosalyn quickly produced a basket from a nearby table, emptied its contents and caught the head before it touched the wood paneling. The undersecretary fainted.

This would not make for good interplanetary relations, but it did solve the problem of the rogue beast tamer.

“So I still do not understand, Rhiannon,” Ioseff said, sitting on one of the leather chairs I have for visitors by the fireplace, blessedly empty, in the reception area of my chambers.

He crossed his legs and was almost as modest as a lady. He looked flat. Ogworht was sitting across from me, and Rosalyn was by my side. Zusanna was lying by the fireplace, her paws out, looking like a sphinx.

“Do not understand what, Ioseff?”

“How you discovered Franklin was the culprit.”

“It was easy, once I realized that through Zusanna here I could interrogate one of the dead birds.”

He looked bewildered.

“Well, it is easiness itself,” I said, opening my arms widely, as if it indeed were. “I can communicate with Zusanna. Ogworht can communicate with her by his wizardry and with the bird. And I can communicate with him by my tongue. This combination allowed me to talk with the bird. So I placed the bird in the Crucible of Pain and brought it back to the living. It told me who its master was.”

“But Terrans do not believe in sorcery, Rhiannon,” Rosalyn said, looking at me perplexedly.

“Ah, that was a problem, Rosalyn,” I returned, wagging my finger. “But when I put Franklin in the Crucible of Pain, his spirit told me that when he was here during the occupation, he had relations with Melana Oswyn. She was not just an animal hoarder, she was a beast tamer. He brought himself to believe, after she demonstrated her mastery of the beasts. He had her train him in this mastery; then he used that mastery to turn her animals against her so she could not tell of his wizardry. It is all in his journals,” I said to the still puzzled looks.

“But what was his motive?”

“Ioseff, I can only speculate, as the head ceased its animation before I got the answer. But by disrupting our celebration, by showing me to be a helpless woman, and not a queen, he may have been hoping to undermine my sovereignty, make the five kingdoms weak again, and pave the way for a new takeover. We may never know.”

“What are you going to say to the offworlders?” Ioseff asked.

“I am going to say, ‘Excuse me, but I had to behead your emissary; no time for niceties, as he was such a pest’.”

“Rhiannon, you are not!”

He was aghast. The veins on his neck were throbbing, and he gripped his whisky glass so tightly at the stem that I thought he might break it.

I looked at him with pity. “No, I am not going to do that, Ioseff; I was being sarcastic. I have talked to the undersecretary, a Miss Bernadette Rivers. He was using her as a whore, and she is proving most cooperative. She says that she will support whatever I choose to tell her government.”

“All because he treated her as a whore?” Rosalyn was incredulous.

“Well,” I said, dropping my eyelashes, “it may also have had to do with my request that she be the next emissary.”

“Well, all I know is that he got what he deserved for killing the fair-haired Sybrina,” Ogworht said.

“But what if the Terrans decide to use your beheading of their emissary as an excuse to try another occupation?” Ioseff asked.

“I must go naked as a beast; they will find out that there is one beast they will not be able to tame,” I said, this time looking out through the roots of my eyes.

I sipped my whisky and looked up as if I could see right through the roof of the castle and into the void between the worlds, where the portal lay and through which my enemies would come for me.