The King's Quarry

The King’s Quarry
by Chandler Groover
There once was a king who kept a castle near an ancient forest, where he was forever hunting. The hunt was his greatest passion, second only to the feasting that followed, for this king was an inveterate gourmand. He was always seeking after new flavors, could pride himself on having tasted delectables from every animal in the royal bestiary, and his most trusted advisor was his cook. You might imagine that he was a rather fat monarch, and indeed he was, in the good old-fashioned medieval style; the court painters flattered his silhouette with ample furs in portraiture, and the dogs never wanted for bones at his table.

Now hunting, in those days, was no mere sportsman’s hobby. A hunt was an occasion like a festival or wedding, where everyone woke early in the castle, rang the bells, and bid the huntsmen farewell on their forest expedition. The king, like all serious hunters, traveled with a party, accompanied by his master-at-arms, and his master-of-hounds, and his courtiers and servants. They lived in tents for the duration, like soldiers on a campaign, but these tents were all furnished with carpets and couches, and hung with tapestries, and radiant with lanterns. It was a holiday. The king lived in the largest tent, where he scrutinized maps and moved ivory markers across them to plot the maneuvers as he would at war.

Perhaps this creates the impression that the king was no huntsman himself, but only a tactical commander; however, when the horns had blown he was in saddle, with his spear, like all the rest, and would not flinch at tracking a boar into its thicket in winter on foot. He had even, on one legendary hunt, nearly been gored to death; the people were prepared to unfurl the funerary shrouds; rival kings were eyeballing his boundaries like choice pies; but within a fortnight he was savoring the guilty hog for supper, having stalked it for vengeance with the sutures still fresh in his flank.

It will come as no surprise that, with this attitude, the king had elevated in his fancy an ideal quarry. That was why he frequented the forest, because it was the lair to a mythic beast which nobody had ever brought to ground. Many had lost their lives in its pursuit, although none could agree on what it was. Some said chimera, some perytion, while others might hypothesize griffin, but it had wiles, whatever its name.

The king had only seen it once, and that had been out hunting years ago. A bloody rout had divided the hounds, and scattered every man in the party, when a summer storm broke over the forest. Then the king had glanced upward and glimpsed, on a crag overlooking the gorge into which he had come, a shadowy form, monstrous, gazing down; and as the hounds went pouring past his horse, and a bolt momentarily fractured the sky like splintered glass, the creature’s antlers, lightning-lit, were gold. The deluge, afterward, had blocked his sight, and when he made it to the crag later, he could discover no traces left there.

This had been the tinder and flint to his sporting mania after the beast. It wasn’t an aggravating mania—he could laugh about it in good humor, and did not lose his temper on returning empty-handed from his quests—but it was persistent. He would constantly study the soil for prints and fewmets, and investigate abraded barks on trees. His maps were scrawled with dotted paths to chart the monster’s migratory habits. And whenever travelers had fresh reports, his doors stood open in welcome.

But to document each turn in the king’s ongoing hunt would consume many lines, and these lines are concerned with what befell the king and beast when the king, in the end, did catch the beast. That happened, not under any extraordinary circumstances, but during another routine expedition. A few lady hunters had cudgeled some hare earlier in the morning, and everyone was just prepared to have a picnic with hare sandwiches when a squire appeared with the hand-wringing announcement that he might have hit something with an arrow. It wasn’t a bird, because it had snarled at him. Birds don’t snarl, as a rule.

The hare sandwiches were forgotten. The dogs were set upon the trail, and weapons seized, and rides mounted, with the king riding foremost after the wounded animal. Into the forest they plunged, with the branches bending back, in a fine frolic, still half-drunk from the interrupted picnic.

The air was filled with springtime smells, the forest green and mazy with the sunlight slanting through, the dogs determined, but for some reason the king began to feel a foreboding, and his speed slackened, allowing all his party to pass by. The sensation was that this had happened before, many years ago, and that his memory held a secret that could somehow make the woodland readable. He reined his horse around, like a man in a dream who knows his direction through unknown wilds, and soon he had entered into a gorge. There were blood patterns along the rock, whose dribblings meandered toward a sun-beaten boulder, and in this boulder’s shadow was the beast.

What was the beast, at last? It had no chapter in the royal bestiary—about that, the king could be certain. Its torso was lionish; its lower anatomy snakish, yet bordered with two flukes like a dolphin; its arms simian, with clawed fingers; its neck ruffed with plumage, and its jugular beaded with glittering scales underneath. It had wings, but they were folded, with the squire’s arrow stuck through one shoulder, and its face surpassed in beauty any human. However, more beautiful still were its golden antlers forked in countless tines.

The king dismounted, angling his spear as he approached, and the creature recoiled more into the shadow below the boulder. It had put its head aside, with its eyes downcast, to anticipate the deadly blow, but then it spoke and said: “O king, spare me.”

The king did truly wonder, in that hot weather, whether he were dreaming.

“I am a piteous beast, sorely injured,” the monster continued, “and in no fighting shape to wage combat. Besides that, I confess, I am craven, and seeing my own blood there on the rocks is already enough to give my heart the palpitations.”

“A talking beast!” the king said.

“A perceptive statesman. We are miracles both, it would appear. What a pity it would be to start a feud.”

“You are my prey, and I am your hunter!”

“Is that our arrangement?”

“I have tracked you for years.”

“Not alone, although I can never tell what drives your kind to give me such mad chase. Everyone from dukes to queens to baronets must needs come knocking at my door, and bumbling in my forest, attempting to needle me through like a pincushion. What ever have I done to earn this wretched fame?”

“You are yourself, and there is none other.”

“Then I have no hope at escaping myself.”

“You have no hope escaping—that is true.”

“Just one moment!” the beast said, when the king had raised his spear again. “Don’t suppose you are the first to capture me. I have survived generations, and have dealt with many noble athletes such as yourself during that time, over which I have learned that where compassion fails, bribery may prevail. That is why I am still here. I am a bargainer.”

“What bargains could you make?”

“Any and all, with this subclause: that you must never speak about my influence later. Otherwise I should be plagued by fortune-seekers. My livelihood is troublesome enough.”

“Do you mean that you grant wishes?”

“I can execute requests within my own extensive capability.”

“Such as?”

“I have helped to win wars and establish princes, and I have helped to upset nations and lay waste to lands. I have led misers down into underground mines where the gemstones sparkle in the walls. I have taught spells that would raise the dead to sorcerers. I have woven enchantments, and wrought magic rings, and made the barren fertile, and the fertile barren with a curse. I have brought lovers together. I have riven dynasties apart. I would do, my king, whatever you would ask, would you only unhand that weapon. Its proximity is very disagreeable.”

The beast looked quite submissive and pathetic, but the king did not brood long before he drove his spear into the monster’s throat, leaning against the shaft until its blade struck the boulder behind.

“I am a king, and want for naught,” he said as the creature convulsed underfoot. “You have only one thing that you can give.”

Eventually the struggle had ended, and that was when the king’s triumph began. There was no unmaking or curée, such as would have been practiced when hunting deer, which is when the animal is disassembled and select viscera fed to the hounds, because in this case there was no precedent to follow. The king only trusted one person to handle the carcass, and that was his cook. He returned with the beast slung over his steed, amidst cheers and hurrahs, just like a conquering hero, and the nighttime was merry with celebration.

His hunting party had ventured deep into the woods, but notwithstanding their distance from the castle, they were able to convert the forest glen where they had encamped into a festive hall. The trees were columns rising into leafy rafters, and the full moon was their blazing chandelier, with the stars twinkling as tapers, though the party had wax candles too, and orange rushes lighting the dark lawns. There were musicians strumming instruments and singing songs, and ladies dancing barefoot in the grass, and great casks rumbled out and their spigots knocked open, and silver coins scattered for confetti. The squire who had shot the arrow was rewarded with a diamond larger than a pommel. There was much feasting besides, which goes without saying, but the famous beast was reserved for the king, and the cook funneled every art into its preparation.

Out came the beast to the king’s royal plate—no ligament neglected, no scale left undressed, with parts brimming in many pots, and roasted joints steaming on many racks. The monster had yielded itself into a myriad fantastic recipes. There were savory quiches stuffed with morsels in red wine, and almondegas and pumpes in cominée, and fyllettes stewed in ale sauce with saffron, and shanks endored in gingery batter, with one enormous wing basted in almond milk and pellydor, and knuckles wrapped with crackled ham, with the creature’s flukes poached in fresh mint and vinegar, not to mention the flampoyntes, the honeyed doucettes, and the sausages encased by their own kindred intestines. It was all for the king, and into the king’s bottomless belly it all disappeared, course after course, hour after hour, until more than the minced tongue, the braised ribs, and the clove-darted heart had been devoured, but even the bones, whose compositions wonderfully melted like rendered fats into a sweet and bubbling beverage, lighter than champagne. When the last lid was uplifted, there was a lemon custard with gold flakings from the antlers, but the antlers were preserved intact apart from this one sacrifice. The king would have them mounted to hang above his throne at the castle.

After he had finished eating, the table was littered with crumbs, but that was all. Everything else, even the grease on his fingers, he had licked down absolutely. It was the happiest that he had ever been, and his stomach could visibly testify.

But unfortunately for the king, this perfect bliss was not sustainable, and the next morning he awoke to his advisors bending over his bedside with distressing news. Dawn had not broken, but already the camp was astir, for messengers had ridden overnight to report an invasion on multiple fronts. Some usurper was putting hamlets to the torch and had mustered armies to blockade the roads.

The hunting holiday was at an end, and war had come.

Conflict was not uncommon in that region or era, to the extent that martial interest did in some respect define the times. Debates were often settled with swordplay, there was nothing nobler than knightly contest, and the landscape was divided into many squabbling kingdoms, which would bicker over their territorial prospects with more pettiness than pinchpennies haggling for buttons at the market. Sometimes the sovereigns swarmed as thick as fleas, and only a massacre could thin them out again.

The king had dealt with this particular usurper in the past, whose claim to the throne derived from technicalities relating to a morganatic marriage decades previous. Of course the usurper had his own throne too, but it wasn’t good enough, and he would throw more soldiers at the king whenever he had strength to lob them. These assaults had always been repulsed. On this occasion, however, greater advancements had been made, and greater gambles staked, such that the king found himself confronted with something like an elaborate chess gambit, where the pieces align to hidden patterns that manifest too late to counteract. There had been battles lost and strongholds seized before the king’s advisors had even woken him that morning in his tent.

It should here also be mentioned that while some leaders sit at the rear during a war, issuing orders through subordinates but never gracing the field themselves, the king was known to take the very vanguard and chop into his foes with his own arm. When he was not in the fray, he was still marking its measure, but now this secondary role would come to utterly subscribe him. The problem was digestive, as well it might have been. His symptoms began to grumble on his ride back to the castle, and once he had returned he nearly toppled from his horse in the courtyard. He could not stand in armor, and soon he could not stand at all, despite his gritting efforts to confound his pangs. Although daily attempts were made to see him to the lines, the truth was that he never surpassed the drawbridge, and leeches were summoned to attend his chambers when in better health he might have been consulting generals.

From his window, he could distinguish smoke against the horizon. There was a pandemonium throughout the kingdom that had practically encroached to his doorstep, with villages abandoned, crimson rivers choking with corpses, and belligerent voices rising from the castle galleries, where his councilors fought like rats for the command that his withdrawal had dropped into their nest. What he would have given then to boom decrees, but in his roiling torment he could barely pronounce a dictation without the bile climbing to his teeth. Nothing could settle his disordered humors, nor void the compacted load gripping his gut, whose evil seemed to seep out from his glands and ooze into the linens on the bed. The king knew with firsthand insight that being stabbed would have engendered less malignant agony than the radial barbs knotting roots through his flesh. He was delirious, insensible to his attendants in their dwindling numbers, unable to articulate more than a moan. It was at this lowest moment that, disaster having overwhelmed the realm, the enemy lay siege to his castle.

As weeks elapsed and no signal came from within, doubts mounted outside as to whether the castle had not become a tomb, but then one night the drawbridge slowly descended. There was no fanfare, and no resistance to prevent the enemy from entering. The corridors were empty, with bodies sprawled occasionally here and there, not starved but slaughtered. These were the royal councilors, and from their dispositions one could interpret betrayals and betrayals. A stillness suitable to ruined abbeys hung over the sumptuous apartments, reechoing footfalls as the usurper led his sergeants-at-mace deeper into the darkness, toward the inner hall, where long tables stood spread for banquets that would never be, arrayed with plates and goblets and silver, and where the king, sitting upon his throne on a dais, seemed like a grotesque tumor masquerading as a man clad in samite. Gaunt servants, his last loyal retainers, clung to the shadowed walls, yet even in that chamber’s meager candlelight the golden antlers gleamed above the throne.

It took a mighty effort for the king to speak. Each sentence had to be assembled by the syllable, and the words stuck together like phlegm in his mouth.

“You have undone me,” said the king. “My court is in a shambles…”

“Gluttony and sport have undone you,” replied the usurper. “I have studied your predilections and here is the outcome. While you were hunting, I was hunting you. I am a hunter too, you know. We have that in common.”

“A hunter does not besiege his quarry…”

“A hunter’s quarry rarely wears a crown. Under whose order was the drawbridge lowered?”

“Mine.”

“Then you acknowledge that the chase is at an end. My claim will be legitimized before this night is through, with your own blessing sealed into the parchment.”

What followed could not have been labeled negotiation, but it did involve quills and inkpots, and it did produce a treaty, for the usurper had a fanatical concern regarding letters patent, which could be traced back to his own legal slightings. He called forward his scriveners, and in the gloomy hall the king scrawled his kingship away with a trembling hand. He was a king no more, but in his crippled misery he had no disillusion that another outcome might have been obtained. Even sitting upright on the throne had been a trial when his body seemed eager to burst at any stimulus. But it did no such thing; bursting would imply a more definitive eruption than what subsequently occurred.

To begin with, there was a protuberance beneath the samite, near the navel, which suddenly arose and fell again to make the fabric ripple outward from that spot. Evidently this had punched some little rift through unseen crevices, because a bloody trickle struck the floor below the throne, and the samite was saturated with a spreading scarlet moistness. Then there were more and more bulges poking hither and thither, although the fabric no longer rippled after them, having wetly adhered to the flesh underneath, until these diverse lumps were concentrated like fingertips pressing against a barrier. The fingertips began to scratch, and the watchers in the hall began to scream, although the screaming might have begun earlier, with only the usurper managing his composure. A cat struggling inside a sack would have demonstrated the same violence as these scratching fingertips, but they were equipped with sharper claws than any cat ever possessed, and soon muscle and fat were shredding freely, the sternum cracking, the ribcage breaking into halves, sludges cascading onto the dais. The entrails slipped for antimacassars over the throne’s two arms, and where the king had been, there coiled the reconstituted beast in his exploded bowels.

The onlookers quaked, and the sergeants-at-mace were prepared to attack, but the usurper extended his hand to bid them pause while the beast lifted its dripping head to survey the assemblage. Its expression was not beautiful anymore, but terrible, with a true monster’s authority over the mortals in the room. The only thing it lacked were its antlers above the throne.

“In all my prior centuries,” it said, “I have never been tasked with a more reeking errand than this. Who would have imagined that someone might willfully decline my bargain in order to eat me for dinner instead?”

“I would have,” the usurper said.

“Indeed you did, and it has come to pass. I trust that you have now taken the kingdom?”

“I have taken it.”

“And satisfied yourself with the paperwork you put such stock into?”

“Above all else.”

“Then I have discharged my duty.”

“You have done that.”

“In which case I may say,” the beast continued, “that though you might have captured me before he did, and with much less complacence on my part, you are no hunter next to this dead king beneath my claws—the only hunter I have ever met to drive the weapon home, and place the hunt above my promised temptations. Here was a real sportsman! You are unfit to wear his crown.”

“It is mine by right!”

“Perhaps, and perhaps not, but your laws make no difference to me. I follow only one tenet, and you are a violator. I warned you not to speak about my influence.”

Well, if you have ever seen a serpent lunge, and a lion pounce, and a falcon drop upon its prey, and if you can envision these assaults combined together, then you may be able to appreciate what happened to the usurper next. It did not take very long, and when it was over, there was not very much left. The sergeants-at-mace did not attempt to interfere this time, having fled the hall with everybody else, and the beast was left alone to contemplate its new predicament.

Its abilities had been exposed to the public, after all, and it could no longer return to the forest and expect that everything should remain unchanged. The only sensible decision was to strike for another shore entirely. But first it ascended the throne, clambering to perch atop the crested back, and then it pried its antlers from the wall. It could not reattach the antlers but it refused to leave them behind for some flimflammer to collect when the castle was inevitably pillaged. Having done that, it went upstairs and emerged onto a tower balcony, where it could view the armed forces swept with panic beyond the moat, and beyond them the desolated kingdom stretching onward, now kingless, into midnight.

Because it was too dark, nobody noticed the beast when it took to the sky, although a few observers might have seen the stars blink out and then blink back briefly, concealed by an unlikely airborne shape. But owls or other unimaginative possibilities were probably suspected, and in any case, there were no further accounts about the beast from that day forward in the land—or at least, no one was willing to give them.

* * *

Chandler Groover was born in Atlanta and now lives in NYC. His novel Finnian's Fiddle is available as an ebook through Amazon. Another hunting tale he's written, HUNTING UNICORN, is playable as a free online hypertext game.

Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

This story was inspired by the great hunting scenes in The Once and Future King by T. H. White, and by the monster in "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" by Frank Stockton.

The Heartless Knight

The Heartless Knight

By Chandler Groover

It was once upon a time a poor serving girl’s misfortune to be smitten by the countess in whose employ she labored. This countess was a beautiful woman, and for that reason she was permitted a certain savage leeway in her comportment. It was not uncommon, for example, for the countess to have animals slaughtered before her at the table, and then top her goblet with freshly spilled blood. More heinous whispers circulated regarding her nocturnal activities, but these were legendary feudal days, and a criminal aristocracy was not unusual—nor is it, truth be told, today.

It may be asked why the serving girl was attracted to the countess, and the answer is power, which always exerts a classically seductive influence. Besides, if the countess was cruel to others, she had never behaved cruelly towards the girl. This was because she considered the girl as she would have a comb or candlestick—as an object, a tool, not a person. The girl, in short, was beneath even her cruelty.

However, one day it came to her attention that the girl loved her. Never mind how that happened—perhaps she caught the girl glancing at her in a mirror;—the important thing is what resulted from the countess’s new comprehension.

The countess was sitting in her boudoir one night, braiding her hair, and she summoned the serving girl to an audience. The two were alone. The other servants had been dismissed. A log was crackling in the fireplace, its glow outlining the countess’s silhouette with a flickering caress in the darkness.

“Who are you?” inquired the countess.

This question was answered bashfully, with the girl stating her name and explaining her situation in the household.

“That isn’t what I mean,” replied the countess. “Who are you to presume that you can love someone like me? Isn’t it clear that I’m superior, as angels are superior to vermin? What impudence for a rat to admire a seraph.”

Although her words were barbed, the countess was smiling, and she spoke very gently and sweetly.

The serving girl did not know what to say. Indeed, she had been paralyzed with shame, and could only stand there, staring at her feet, wringing her hands, while the countess observed her like a choice cut hanging in a butcher’s shop.

“Tell me, would you do anything that I demanded to prove your devotion?” the countess asked nonchalantly. “Anything at all?”

The girl seized this rare chance.

“Then cut off your finger,” the countess ordered, and she nodded at a knife upon a dressing table.

Now perhaps it may seem foolish that, although with some anxiety, the serving girl approached the dressing table, took the knife, and proceeded to remove one finger at the knuckle. But the serving girl was smitten, remember, and love can be a fatal motivator.

The countess, though, only inclined her eyebrows after having been presented with the severed digit.

“It seems a little thing to spare,” she said. “After all, brides are known to offer their hands in marriage, and how can a single finger compare with that? If you truly adore me, then cut off your hand.”

It was done, but the countess grumbled.

“A hand… well, a mere hand… for love? When people are willing to give their arms and legs for less? I think you owe me more than just a hand.”

The serving girl commenced further dismemberment.

“And yet,” said the countess, “people throw themselves bodily into their greatest passions, don’t they? Arms and legs cannot compete with whole bodies…”

Over the next hour, coaxing her along in this manner, the countess encouraged the girl to carve herself apart piecemeal until only her heart was left, which was precisely what the countess had desired from the beginning. She then plucked up the heart and locked it, still beating, inside a gilded birdcage that had once enclosed a parrot (the parrot having been roasted for supper years ago). She had no usage for this heart; it was only a curiosity; but that was more valuable to her than the serving girl had been.

As for the other body parts, which were scattered along the floor, the countess dumped these through an open window and thought no more about them.

* * *
In the forest not far from the countess’s castle, there lived a witch in a cabin. Nobody disturbed this witch. She dabbled in the dark arts, and could sometimes be glimpsed in the local graveyard lugging a shovel. It took her by surprise, therefore, when she heard somebody knocking at her door around midnight—not a normal knock, but various little thuds knocking in tandem. When she answered the door, she discovered bones, organs, and entrails heaped there on the stoop.

“Forgive us,” said these bones, organs, and entrails. “We don’t mean to annoy you at such a late hour, but we desperately need your assistance.”

Thankfully, because the witch was a witch, she didn’t bat an eyelash at her visitors, but instead invited them inside, whereupon they collectively piled across the threshold. She even offered to brew tea, but they demurred.

“We’ve come here on a mission,” they explained. “You may not be able to tell by looking at us, but we’ve got all the parts to make a person, except one. The countess has our only missing part locked in a birdcage, and she dumped us outside through a window. That’s why we’ve tumbled over here, hoping you might be able to join us back together like a jigsaw puzzle.”

The witch considered their request. Finally she asked what part they were missing, since a few were essential to make a person, and the surgery couldn’t be done without those.

“We haven’t got a heart.”

Well, the witch announced that there was no problem in that case, and she went to fetch needle and thread from her sewing basket.

* * *
A fortnight later, a grand tournament was convened on the countess’s estate, with all the noble houses from the surrounding countryside in attendance. Numerous colorful tents were erected across the lawn, and knights and squires were parading, their standards flying, their armor shining, for the spectating crowd’s entertainment.

Some knights had gathered beside a pavilion to discuss the vespers, during which individual competitors had demonstrated their jousting proficiencies earlier that morning. A favorite had emerged fast from their ranks—a mystery knight self-styled the Chevalier Sans Cœur.

“Is this mystery knight French, do you suppose?”

“It’s a mystery.”

“They say the Chevalier unhorsed twenty knights and broke as many lances.”

“Never mind what they say—I was there and the Chevalier unhorsed me!”

“There’s a rumor that he’s nothing more than empty armor brought to life.”

“Empty armor never drove a lance like that.”

“With a witch serving for his squire, anything’s possible.”

“A witch?”

“Some sorcery must be involved. You feel as though a battering ram’s riding down the lists, not a human.”

The knights might have continued their gossip, but at that moment the Chevalier in question appeared from around the pavilion—not to upbraid them for their frivolous dialogue, but simply en-route to another contest. Indeed, the Chevalier had no interest in their gossip, and hadn’t heard it.

The Chevalier was wearing blood-red armor that, rather than glinting in the sunlight, seemed to absorb it, making the metal plates bake. His steed was caparisoned in black leather, and on his shield the Chevalier bore a device depicting a human heart scientifically pictured with veins, valves, and ventricles. Beside the Chevalier rode the witch upon a donkey, and over her shoulder she was carrying a pole streaming with pennoncells, their fabric stitched with blood drops in red thread.

Around the Chevalier a malaise lingered. It was difficult to describe, and seemed to emanate from the mystery knight himself, like a killing intent. The other knights cowered, their horses grew skittish, but the countess watched the Chevalier with an indolent interest from her viewing box while she nibbled strawberries.

When the time came for the mêlée and the knights were ranged in lines for this mock war, the Chevalier Sans Cœur was given a wide berth. There was a great anticipation, as usual preceding a mêlée, but it wasn’t for the general combat; it was centered around the Chevalier, who remained stoic, seemingly oblivious to the attention. At last, the bugle sounded—the knights leveled their lances—and the two lines charged each other with a crash that rang over the forest.

Immediately lances cracked, knights toppled, and this first charge’s survivors turned with a splendid pivot to reengage what foes had ridden past them; but none turned, after that opening salvo, with more ferocity than the Chevalier back on his fellow knights. He smashed through the other combatants, wielding his splintered lance as a bludgeon, targeting not one man for a duel, but any man that dared come close enough. They could never outrun him, and never repel his attacks. Again and again he broke into their fighting clusters and left them groaning, unhorsed, on the ground.

There had never been such a mêlée in anyone’s memory. It was not a competition, but a deathless carnage, and had the tourney been a true battle, there was no doubt that death would have been involved, for the Chevalier could not be resisted.

The mêlée ended when the lawn was littered with twitching bodies. All the spectators were silent, as if they were holding their breaths, and perhaps they were—but then they began to applaud. The Chevalier Sans Cœur knelt before the countess’s viewing box to receive these ovations.

“That was a gallant triumph,” said the countess. “Who are you?”

“I am called the Heartless Knight,” replied the Chevalier.

“It’s not a proper name.”

“I’m not a proper knight.”

“You are still the best knight today, and as such it falls to you to choose the Queen of the Tournament.”

“Can there be any other but yourself?”

This was just what the countess wanted to hear, because she had grown rather enamored with this mystery knight as she watched him rampage during the mêlée, and she had designs for him later that evening. She bent down to give him a rose, the bugle sounded again to mark the combat’s end, and then the feasting started.

* * *
It was dark when the countess invited the Chevalier Sans Cœur to her boudoir. From lower levels in the castle, merriment carried, filtering through the stone walls into the chamber like strange music as the tourney banquet continued below. But the countess and the Chevalier paid it no heed. All the servants had been dismissed, and the two were alone.

The countess was sitting on an ottoman, unbraiding her hair, and eyeing the mystery knight in an effort to penetrate his mystery. The Chevalier only stood there, however, unreadable in his armor. Eventually the countess asked how he had managed to compete with such valor.

“I did not,” said the Chevalier. “One cannot have valor without first knowing fear. I have no fear because I have no heart, and no emotions. The world is just action and reaction from my perspective.”

Rather than discouraging the countess, this detached philosophy only made her pulse quicken. She felt that she had found a kindred spirit, and she asked the knight to open his visor.

What she saw took her aback.

The Chevalier Sans Cœur was not the serving girl, of course—when a person is deconstructed, they can never be repaired to their original condition—but the Chevalier had been the serving girl, and now that girl unsheathed her sword and put its tip to the countess’s throat.

“I must confess something,” she said. “It was my intention to kill you after I had won the tournament today. But in my new existence, I can sympathize—because now I know what it means to be heartless like you. I only have one objective remaining: to reclaim what is rightfully mine. Where is it?”

The countess indicated the birdcage in the corner, where the Chevalier’s heart was sitting perched behind the bars. It was preening itself, and had grown wings with tropical plumage, which made it resemble the parrot that it had replaced. When the Chevalier whistled, the heart flew from the birdcage to alight on her shoulder.

“I loved you once,” the knight told the countess, “but that seems like a dim memory from another life, as intangible as a dream or a nightmare. I cannot say who I am now—perhaps nobody anymore—but if this is love’s natural conclusion, then I intend to keep my heart myself.”

Sheathing her sword, she bowed to the countess, and then she departed without further conversation, walking back downstairs into the celebrating crowd—passing unnoticed—until she had entered the courtyard where the witch was waiting for her on the donkey. The two rode out together from the castle, across the moonlit landscape towards the forest, until they disappeared among the trees. What subsequent adventures the duo may have encountered, the current chronicle does not relate.

Only the countess saw them leave. She was watching through her window, and when she lost them in the dark, she felt that she had lost her own heart with the Chevalier. The festival sounds drifting into her room now seemed to have a melancholic quality, and the countess sighed deeply. It may not always be the case, but in this situation it applies: we want most what is inaccessible.

* * *

Chandler Groover was born in Atlanta and now lives in NYC. His new fantasy novel, Finnian's Fiddle, is currently available as an ebook through Amazon.

Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

This particular story was inspired by Elizabeth Báthory, history's archetypal evil countess. I also wanted to give my knight a French pseudonym such as Lancelot had when he was styled Le Chevalier Mal Fet.

THE TWISTED TREE

THE TWISTED TREE

by Chandler Groover

On a hill,
on a plain
(more a vast stretch of waste),
grew a singular tree
that had fallen from grace;
although space is from where its seed actually fell,
from a star, from a sun, to this landscape in hell,
where it took root amongst bones and cinders and ash,
growing taller and taller remarkably fast,
sprouting thorns and black briars,
red petals like flesh,
long dark tendrils with demonsbane pistils that thrash,
and that bite, scratch, attack
any unwary hands,
any curious fingers with bud-picking plans
that would dare to intrude on its ivied precincts
only to be chomped, thereby becoming plant-food;
for this tree, in its bowers of poisonous leaves,
nestled amidst carnivorous flowers that breathe
toxic fumes and exhale toxins triply diseased,
boasted one precious blossom—
dew-speckled, sublime—
whose nutrients, consumed,
could eradicate time,
could dissolve hours, minutes, reshape existence,
and whose powers, as such,
drew from far and away cultivators to visit the bone-glutted plain,
cultivators whose bones were now all that remained
like a rock garden scattered about the tree’s base
as it fed from their bodies,
growing back towards space.

* * *

There was a King who ruled a court and knew that he would die. He knew that everyone would die, but he did not care about them; he only possessed the capacity to care about himself. His mortality preoccupied his every waking hour. He would sit on his throne and he would think about death; he would wander through his palace halls and death would follow him; he would eat death and he would drink death when he ate food, when he drank wine; and at night, death would visit him in dreams, too, and he would start awake in cold sweats and stare through his window and see death reflected in the full moon’s face. He employed an alchemist, and his alchemist, after prescribing many ineffectual concoctions and decoctions, finally prescribed him a potion. But what was it made from? inquired the King. From a flower, a rare flower, said the alchemist. From the rarest flower in the world, a flower that grows beyond the land, beyond the sea, beyond any kingdom’s boundary; beyond minutes, beyond hours, even beyond time itself. The King was doubtful, but he drank the potion. His fears, his worries all dissolved. It was a miracle, but for one day, the first day in his life, he was happy. It was to be the day that he would die.

* * *

DEATH: Are you ready?

KING: There must be some mistake. You must have the wrong monarch.

DEATH: There are no mistakes. It’s a pity people can’t grasp that.

KING: But there must be a mistake, you see, because I can’t die. I’ve taken a potion.

DEATH: Oh, is that a fact?

KING: Yes, I drank it just this afternoon. It was guaranteed to work.

DEATH: Who guaranteed it?

KING: My alchemist.

DEATH: And what did your alchemist say that it was made from?

KING: From a flower, the rarest flower in the world, that grows beyond the land and beyond the sea, and beyond any kingdom, and beyond even time itself. That’s how I know it’s guaranteed.

DEATH: Well, that explains things. The only place that such a flower grows is in a poem. And it’s a rather bad poem, at that. Hasn’t got a metrical structure or a consistent rhyme scheme or anything. I suppose that your alchemist must have read about it and then just lied to you.

KING: But that’s impossible!

DEATH: Nothing is impossible. Some things are just more probable than others. Now get your coat. It’s chilly where you’re headed.

* * *

The eons passed, and the landscape changed. Snows fell and snows melted. Frosts encroached and frosts receded. Flowers bloomed and flowers died. More trees grew across the plain, beginning as mere saplings and maturing into monolithic specimens. And then two beavers with impressive work ethic came along and gnawed down all the trees to dam a nearby river.

The beavers weren’t picky. They didn’t care that one particular tree might be cursed, or sentient, or whatever. It was timber and that was enough.

The tree didn’t care, either, because although it might have been cursed, or sentient, or whatever, it was still just a tree. Besides, it wasn’t averse to a change after all those centuries.

Mr. and Mrs. Beaver were decent plainspoken folk, and their lives were uneventful but not unpleasant. Once their dam was built, they had a family, and once the children had gone to school and moved away and joined the workforce, they retired. Their days were spent drinking tea and reading newspapers and reminiscing about the past, especially about their youthful courtship, when Mrs. Beaver had been so charming and Mr. Beaver so gallant. Not that she was less charming and he less gallant now.

When surveyors were mapping the area for a hydroelectric plant, decades later, it was determined that no better spot could be found than that old beaver dam. Those beavers had certainly known how to scout a location. But the dam would have to go, of course. Luckily there was an interested logging company.

* * *

One Final Miscellaneous Item:

Mikio, a very punctual student at the university, was watching cherry blossoms on a park bench before work, and eating his bento with wooden chopsticks, when the time managed to slip away from him somehow.

Moriko, another very punctual student at the university, was walking to class wearing her new geta (like the chopsticks, also wooden), when the time managed to slip away from her somehow, and she decided to take the scenic route.

So Moriko met Mikio at a place she shouldn’t have been, at a time she shouldn’t have been there; and Mikio met Moriko at a place he shouldn’t have been, at a time he shouldn’t have been there.

          A bench in the park.
          Two strangers blossom-watching.
          Ah, how fleeting – time!

Needless to say, they were married.

* * *

Chandler Groover was born in Atlanta, received a BA in English from the University of Georgia, and now lives in NYC.  He works as a freelance copyeditor.  His first novel, What Happened at Heath-Cliff Hall, was published in 2011.

Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

Ideas can come from anywhere.  What makes an idea worth converting into a story for me, though, is how much potential that idea has to be stretched and reformed through a fictional treatment.  Some subjects are more malleable than others.  When you find one that can really withstand a lot of twisting, that's when you've got a story.  You've imagined it re-twisted into something else, and you have to write it down.

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia
by Chandler Groover

This miscellaneous legend was extracted from a kernel of forgotten lore, discovered by the author in a footnote in an outdated Russian architectural volume, printed over one century ago, which had itself been forgotten on a dusty library bookshelf. Whether the legend exists in any other source outside that single footnote remains to be determined.

* * *
If you have never seen Hagia Sophia, you should find a picture of it, or else visit it in person if you ever have the chance to. It is (or was) a church turned into a mosque turned into a museum, and it is (indeed, it is) one of this world’s greatest architectural marvels. It is expansive – it is beyond expansive – in the interior. On the exterior, it is not so much expansive as gigantic, or enormous. A spectacular dome sits atop it, like the rising circle of the sun half-risen on the line of the horizon, and four minarets tower spindling into the sky at each of the building’s four corners. The whole edifice suggests, somehow, greenness: it is filled with green speckles and gold light, and countless shards of mosaic tile decorate great portions of its wall-space. It is currently located in Istanbul, but it was originally built in Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine Empire.

A peculiar tale is connected with the events of its erection.

When the dust of construction was still in the air, and the scaffolding still standing, and parts of the ceiling still open to the sky, and long before the minarets had even been conceived of (they were added to the building much later), Hagia Sophia did not, it is said, have a proper name. The structure, as it now stands, is actually the third of its kind to be built upon the spot it occupies, but all of those other religious edifices were simply called the Great Church, each in their turn. How, then, did the name “Hagia Sophia” come about? In this way:

One late afternoon, a youth named Michael, not twelve years old, was charged with standing guard at the half-finished narthex of the church while the builders went off for their dinners. You might imagine how the dusk must have been settling over the landscape, and how the clouds might have been turning purple, when a stranger began to approach the church from some way down the road. A more lackadaisical or irresponsible child might have let this person through, into the construction site, without a thought about it, but Michael stopped the oncoming stranger – politely enough – to ask him what his business was.

“My business,” said the stranger, “is with you.”

This, you might also imagine, might have been unnerving in its own way. The stranger, however, was kindly. He appeared to be a young man, no older than twenty, although he did not have a beard – which is not to say that he had trimmed, clipped, or otherwise shaved it, but that he did not have the slightest hint of facial hair: his complexion absolutely beamed. He did, however, have a head of hair, which was golden and fell to his shoulders, and he was dressed entirely in white, a simple white, such as peasants without dye would wear. All of this – the stranger’s appearance, as well as his attitude – when combined, served to produce a single effect upon Michael, whose next question followed the line his thoughts had taken.

“Are you, my lord,” he asked (always polite), “a eunuch?”

At this the stranger smiled.

“Not at all,” he said.

“Then, my lord, you are a man?”

“I cannot claim that distinction, either.”

By this point, Michael had become very confused.

“Then may I, at least, ask for your name, my lord?”

“It is your own name,” said the stranger. “I am Michael. I think you have heard of me by that appellation before.”

“Michael?” asked the youth. “I only know one other by that name, and he is an archangel.”

“Then,” replied the stranger, “you do know me.”

Here, you may not be surprised to learn that Michael – the youth, not the stranger – fell not only into doubt, but also into something like a mood of jocularity. He could not bring himself to believe that this man, so seemingly ordinary, could possibly be one of those heavenly creatures whose days are spent lounging on clouds, and bathing in sunbeams, in the service of God Almighty. It seemed, furthermore, ridiculous to imagine that the man – if, in fact, he was an angel – was that angel, charged with commanding the ranks of the divine army, the archangel Michael, whose sword had clashed with, and triumphed over, Satan himself.

“My lord,” said the youth, after a little, silent laugh, “it cannot be!”

“Oh, no?” the stranger asked.

And then, as the sun at last dipped to its lowest point on the horizon, it cast a blinding light across the countryside – the death-glow of the day – and blazed at the back of the stranger’s uplifted head like the form of a phosphorescent halo. All at once, the youth knew the magnitude of his folly: before him was no mortal man, but really and truly an agent of the Lord. The stranger’s white dress was transmogrified, its fabric folding as if it were alive, as if it were electrified, and two great glowing wings, with spans to shame all birds, expanded in a canopy of feathers from behind the archangel’s shoulders. Now, his skin not only beamed, but radiated light, and lifting his hand he unsheathed from thin air a blade of living fire, the hilt of which was gold, as if in demonstration of the power that he wielded.

“My lord!” exclaimed the youth, deflating to one knee; but even as he did so, the sun at last set, and the light of the day was gone, and so, too, was the physical majesty of the angel. He looked like a mortal man again.

“Rise up, Michael,” he said. “You have no need to kneel before me.”

The youth obeyed, unquestioning.

“I have come here for one simple reason.”

“What would that be, my lord?” the boy asked.

“To name your church,” replied the archangel. “It should be named Sophia, to commemorate our Savior’s holy wisdom. Go, now, and tell the master builders of my visitation, and propose this name for them to call their building by.”

“Of course, my lord,” the youth replied.

He was not, now, in any way willing to doubt, or ignore, what the archangel said.

But then, he had also been charged with guarding the church. He could not, he reasoned, even on divine business, simply abandon his post and leave the half-constructed edifice unprotected. He told the archangel that he would speak to the master builders as soon as they returned from their dinner, but that he could not, just like that, walk away from his duty as watchman.

“A fine consideration,” said the archangel, “and one with which I sympathize. Therefore, let me act in your stead, and guard this holy structure until you can return. Now, however, you must run – run straightaway to those master builders, and tell them straightaway what you have seen, and what I have said. I will station myself here as protector until you might reclaim your post, and promise that no harm will come to the church in your absence.”

The youth had no power to oppose this suggestion, and so, at the archangel’s bidding, he ran off through the city to the palace of the Emperor Justinian, where the master builders always had their meals in the company of that royal head of state.

On any other day, the Emperor might not have bothered with receiving this youth: his imperial obligations typically restricted him, and consumed all of his spare time, leaving him with little willpower or want to deal with the petty trifles of the common men under his rule after a taxing daily schedule had already drained him. But it so happened that, on this particular evening, the dinner served had been more than pleasant, the company and conversation of his retinue more than diverting, and his sensibilities stimulated enough for him to welcome Michael’s arrival as just one of the many entertainments of that night. The boy was taken in, therefore, to the imperial dining room, where the Emperor sat, along with his court, and the master builders of the church beside him, at a high table, with plenty of delicacies spread out before them on a variety of fancy plates.

“Speak!” said Justinian. “And let your business here be known.”

Whereupon the youth informed them of the archangel’s appearance, and of his divine suggestion for the church to be titled Sophia.

“And where is this archangel now?” asked one of the court.

“At my post,” said the youth. “He has offered to guard the building in my stead until I should return there.”

The diners murmured at their table, and a great many shaggy heads were put together over the point (shaggy, because many of Justinian’s advisors were of an elderly constitution). At length, some agreement appeared to have been reached amongst them, and whispers were sent from man to man down the table until they had traveled into Justinian’s waiting ear. But before he had a chance to digest his advisors’ opinions and afterwards speak, his royal consort, the Empress Theodora, interjected with her own interpretation of the matter.

“My lord,” she said, touching Justinian’s arm, “I have a proposal.”

Theodora, having been raised amidst the splendors and vices of the hippodrome, was certain to have a viewpoint distinctive from any other person in the court, many of whom had distilled their wisdom from tomes and focused it only through means of hypothetical application. She, on the other hand, had grown up in the squalor of actual poverty, and watched her father train bears as a young girl, and employed herself, at times, rather lowly in order to survive, before ensnaring the heart of the emperor who would eventually become her husband. Now, she was weighed down with countless pearls, diamonds, amethysts and ambers, so that the glitter of her wardrobe might have been perceived as mirroring the glitter of her wit; for she was witty, her intelligence keen, and her powers of observation sharp.

“It seems to me,” she said, “that we must name the church Sophia. To do anything else might be a sacrilege.”

Justinian consented to this with a nod of his crown.

“And it also seems to me,” the Empress went on, “that we must never send this child back to guard the church again.”

At this, there was a tussle at the table, but the Empress went on nevertheless:

“For, you see, it seems to me,” she said, “that as long as the boy remains absent, the angel is compelled to remain present. He has promised to protect the church until this youth, here, should return. Let him, then, never return, and Constantinople will have a guardian archangel until the commencement of the apocalypse.”

This logic was irrefutable, and young Michael was subsequently sent to Rome, never again to set foot on the grounds of what came to be known as Hagia Sophia, or the Church of Holy Wisdom.

Afterwards, you might imagine how young Michael – as an adolescent, and then as an adult, and finally as an old man – must have thought back on that late afternoon, when the sun was setting, and when the angel appeared before him. He must have thought back on it frequently, perhaps even longingly, perhaps wondrously, but the legend, you must understand, does not record with what eyes the youth came to look back on his life. Neither, for that matter, does it record what became of the archangel. And how could it? – unless someone else witnessed that supernatural presence at the church, which no one ever did. Perhaps the divine figure still lingers around the narthex, passing in and out of the light, and so in and out of reality. Or perhaps he has been called away to another place, in another time, by another promise, and forced to serve under the cunning machinations of another queen.

Whichever, or whatever, the case may be, Hagia Sophia is beautiful: about that there is no doubt.

* * *

Chandler Groover was born in Atlanta, received a BA in English from the University of Georgia, and now lives in NYC.  He works as a freelance copyeditor.  His first novel, What Happened at Heath-Cliff Hall, was published in 2011.

Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

Ideas can come from anywhere.  What makes an idea worth converting into a story for me, though, is how much potential that idea has to be stretched and reformed through a fictional treatment.  Some subjects are more malleable than others.  When you find one that can really withstand a lot of twisting, that's when you've got a story.  You've imagined it re-twisted into something else, and you have to write it down.