Nielo and the Queen

Craig Alexander

Issue #2 (April 2008)

Swinging from a gibbet in Eastern Carador was not his idea of a good time, exactly.  There were numerous places he would rather have been, more specifically, tucked nicely in the royal bed at Carandia with the king’s wife, Marantha.  It was precisely his initial desire for and inability to be away from her that his head was caught in the hangman’s noose at present.  He watched the small crowd beginning to grow, becoming more and more audible as one of his companion’s necks gave way to the pressure of the rope and sight was forever lost to his eyes.  Tongue lolling and neck bent backwards, he stared up at the unforgiving blue heavens.  No slip shams were used for concealing the heads of those sentenced to hang in Carador, for the authorities wanted those kindling any thoughts of malice or murder, to know just how they would appear to those same crowds which now looked intently upon him. 

To the men swinging to each side of him, he was of no significance, and their stories were, he thought, probably not nearly as tragic as his, or, most certainly, as romantic.  As the air to his brain became scarce, he focused on the image of Marantha—her smooth, fair skin, round green eyes that twinkled with an indescribable brilliance, and soft laugh—and resisted the idea that his death was imminent.  There was still a chance she could persuade the king, Octavius Van III, her husband, to cut down that rope even at this late hour, his frazzled air-deprived brain told him.  To cut him down before that air all but disappeared.  Little did he know, however, that Marantha lay in a crimson pool of her own blood in the royal baths and the only other person who could have helped him was hundreds of miles away, probably facing his own problems with the authorities, a friend whom he had not seen in several months anyway.  As his eyes began to lose focus, and the swelling noise of the crowd roared more loudly in his ears, he could not help but think that it was not supposed to end like this.  Not like this at all.

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