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“Don’t worry!” Salas called, despite not understanding the guards’ intent for him, and before he could think better of it. “I shall find a way to release you all. I—” He was hit in the same way he had been hit the other night. Obviously, the guards did not like speaking.
He was pulled up and through the maze of the palace. The halls became warmer when they approached what must have been residential wings.
Salas didn’t notice many people in the halls, save for a few freakishly tall handmaids and other servants, who stared openly at the procession. Salas wondered if the residents were all at Suscon, destroying his home, or if they had returned and were sleeping. Did the beasts plan to live in the kingdom they’d claimed?
Eventually, they stopped in front of a set of oak doors adorned with ornamental iron hinges and intricately-carved panels. By that time, the pain in Salas’ lower body from being cramped in such a small space had somewhat diminished. The doors looked as though they opened to a place of importance, so he straightened and held his head high.
The guards knocked, then opened the doors and shoved him through.
The room Salas found himself in was a bedroom of spacious expanse, its upholstery draped with pelts from a variety of beastly predators, strung out like the trophies they most likely were. Tapestries depicting crude, perhaps senseless executions hung on the walls. Moldings carved with perpetually screaming faces. It was a barbaric, garish dwelling and Salas wanted nothing more than to turn around and make his escape, a repeating instinct in this kingdom. But Salas was learning that, however distasteful the kingdom may be, these instincts must be quelled if he was to survive.
A man stood by the flame-filled hearth, his back towards Salas as he towered in front of the fire’s cage. His figure nearly halted Salas in his tracks. It was a giant of a man—taller still than even the looming guards. Black, ink waves curled over broad shoulders draped in a fur robe. He stood rod-straight, unmoving, as though he had not heard the door open.
But then he said, in solid Diagorian, “Leave us,” as though speaking to the fire. His voice was loud and stern, and the authority within it carried across the room like an arrow, stiffening Salas’ spine as it pierced the silence.
The two guards who had escorted Salas quickly left and shut the doors behind them. They were the ones to leave, which meant Salas had been included in the ‘us.’
Salas looked at the man’s towering figure, wondering who was now in his presence. A small, hopeful smile lit his face when he thought he recognized the figure from the mural that depicted the curse of this winter kingdom. It had been Eldron’s favorite mural in the Susconian Palace. The dark hair. The strong frame. This man had been a prince at the time the mural had been stitched. Thought to be dead, perhaps. This man was human, though. Something he wasn’t expecting. Perhaps the beasts took on a human form when it pleased them. That would explain the size of the men and the other residents of the castle.
Once a prince. Perhaps a beast. Now a king.
Salas, in his rambling down in the dungeon, had requested an audience with the King, and this was the acquiesce.
This man, then, could only be the King of Diagor—King Jareth.
Salas stood in front of the threshold of the door patiently, waiting to be greeted. As seconds gathered into minutes, however, he felt his impatience alight his nerves. He clenched his hands to keep from fidgeting—a habit of someone with a lesser disposition, as Eldron had once advised him (leading the man to swat at Salas’ hands when the Emperor had caught him in the past.) Yet as he waited now, he was reminded that he’d never been much one for idle waiting.
The fire helped. Salas had never seen a hearth so big. Aside from cooking fires, lamps, and the miniscule festival bonfires, lighting fires was not a common practice in the South—it was far too warm already for it to be necessary for indoor temperature moderation. This flame was large enough to the point where Salas slightly feared it. What would happen if a log were to trip and run astray over one of those horrible fur rugs? Perhaps such an accident would not be so terrible. A carpet burn couldn’t possibly add anything more to the awfulness of the ugly thing. But the fire dutifully remained in its place, snapping and cracking away at the kindling. Salas decided he enjoyed it.
“So you’re the one my soldiers will not shut up about.”
Salas nearly jumped, realizing that he’d been spoken to by the man. He spoke in Susconian. At some point while he’d been ogling the fire, the man had turned to face him.
King Jareth was younger than he would have expected. Though to be honest, he had not imagined much of the Northern King. It was pure naivety, but for some reason Salas had always imagined that kings of other nations would be quite similar to Eldron in appearance—perhaps because it was the only other ‘king’ Salas had known. But King Jareth was young, perhaps in his early years of thirty. He had a strong, square-shaped face, warm copper skin, and deep-set, hooded eyes that were glared piercingly. He was attractive, Salas was, of course, quick to realize.
Salas smile grew wider, more sure as he considered what he had to do next.So you’re the one my soldiers will not shut up about. He’d promised a display of bedroom skills. He’d been taken to a bedroom.
Finally, it seemed, his future had offered a path forward, bargaining with the only thing that Salas had to offer.
He took a step forward, the fire warming his toes and his ambition. “All complimentary gossip, I hope. I don’t like being made fun of.”
King Jareth’s eyes followed him with hawk-like precision. “Where. Is. It?” the words were grated out stiffly, as though the King were reigning in a yell.
For the first time, Salas was picking up on the dire atmosphere in the room, and he knew better than to let the man know that it unsettled him. The King was outright glaring at him, his eyes murderous in their ferocity and his jaw clenched tight.
Salas blinked, pulling himself from the revelation of the King’s foul mood and focusing on the question carefully. He picked his brain for the correct way to respond favorably when he did not understand the question nor the stiffness behind it.
“Where is what?” he decided to ask, approaching slowly, feigning ease in the face of the King’s discontent. Distance would get them nowhere.
The frosted glare watched Salas as he approached, all-predator that promised no yield should there be an attack.
For a moment, the harshness of the glare almost gave Salas pause. Then he remembered what Emperor Eldron had said to him on the occasions when he’d brooded upon scenarios in which the South fell.
“They will take you from me,”the Emperor had said,“and because you are mine, they will want to have you as their own. To spill their seed between your thighs to claim my most prized possession. You must kill yourself before you let that happen.”
Salas had nodded gravely, as though taking this proclamation deeply to heart while quite adamantly thinking,‘I will not.’ The Emperor did not know Salas at all if he truly believed that Salas would forfeit his own life so he wouldn’t have to die knowing his enemy had taken his pet. Was Salas devoted? Not that much.
There was something, however, that had been quite instructive about the conversation he and the King had shared.They will want you.
