The Invisible Chains - Part 3: Bonds of Blood (19 page)

“
What have I become? My prince. My prince?”

He let his forehead sink down upon his knees and closed his eyes. There was that little place, deep, deep inside him, and he went there now. There he was who he used to be. Who he really was. Not this naked, powerless, kept pet. There he was what Gorth had called him. He wore clothes there, beautiful, rich, soft clothes and he had a name there. Not this one, not the one his little brother called him by. His real one. His real name. On the wall hung his standard. The eagle falling down on its prey. That, that was who he really was. Deep down.

His lord sat again at the long table. He had barely finished his evening meal and told Tarno to clear the table, or he had begun working at his maps. His eternal, damned maps. It was as if he hadn't any interest in anything else.

A few evenings before, his lord had caught him staring at him while he was working at them, and he had sensed Tarno's annoyance.

“They're very important, Tarno. More important than you realize,” he had said. And he had worked on, the whole evening long.

Of course he had taken his lord's word for it. Then. But now he thought he could have explained. He could have told him what was so important about them. He was not a little child that was too stupid to understand such things. He was the older brother. Whatever he had become, he had at least been what Gorth had called him.

His lord took a sip from his watered down wine and put the cup back upon the table.

“Tarno, this has become tepid. Make a new batch, please, and see to it that the water is cold. Two measures wine for eight of water, I think.”

Anaxantis looked back at his maps. Tarno came to the table, and took a swig from the cup.

“This is perfectly all right,” he said, putting the cup back down. He held his hand against the jug. “It feels cool.”

“Well, it isn't. Change it,” Anaxantis said absentmindedly, without looking up.

“No. It's perfectly all right. I don't mind doing things for you, but this doesn't make sense.”

Anaxantis put his quill down and looked up.

“
Ah, finally. There he is.”

He took a long look at Tarno.

“If you're going to behave like a five year old, Tarno,” he said very slowly, “then maybe you should look like one. Go to the bathroom and shave off your pubic hair, from your navel down till under your ballsack.”

“
This should make you show yourself.”

Tarno stood as if struck by lightning.

“What?” he exclaimed.

“You heard me,” his lord said calmly. “Shave it off, all of it and then show it to me for inspection. I want you to look like the little, spoiled brat you are.”

“
Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. He wanted things to relax gradually and instead his little brother was making more and more ludicrous, whimsical demands. For his perverted pleasure, no doubt.

“No.” he said, a little bit hesitant. “No...”

Anaxantis looked="8pt"is >�� at him as if he was some fascinating marking on one of his maps.

“No,” he repeated more firmly. “No, I won't do it. I won't.”

For some time his lord said nothing. Then he stood up.

“Very well.”

Anaxantis walked without particular haste to the door. Tarno didn't know how to react, but suddenly he was afraid. Very afraid.

“Where are you going to?” he stammered. “My lord.” he added as an afterthought.

His lord turned slowly around.

“Since you won't execute my orders, I'm going to call my guard to execute them in your place. Two to keep you immobilized by your arms on the table, two to hold your legs and two to shave you. That should work. I don't know which unit is on duty. You might recognize them. They most likely will recognize you.”

It was if the ceiling had come crashing down on him.

“Since you seem to dislike my company so much, Tarno, I thought that afterwards they should take you to the dungeons. You can spend the night there. Tomorrow I'll have you caned for disobedience on the new square between the soldier's barracks, and then off you go to the Royal Farms. Maybe working on the fields from sunrise to sunset will agree more with you than having to mix my wine for me, now and again.”

The Royal Farms. The Royal Farms. The words kept ringing in his head. It was inconceivable and even so it would only be the last, albeit permanent stage in a long, long line of crushing humiliations.

His own guard maybe would come into the room and see him naked and trembling. They would grab him and lay him on his back on the table. Two of them would keep him by his arms, while two others would spread his legs and keep them that way, so the remaining two could shave his pubic hair off. He didn't doubt they would be professional about it. The only laugh would be inaudible. He would only see it in their eyes, the laugh they wouldn't be able to dissimulate. But afterwards, when they were with their colleagues, their friends, in the tavern, then, then they would laugh and tell the story how they had turned the erstwhile prince into a little boy. How they had touched his private parts and shaven off his bush.

Then they would drag him naked to the dungeons. The dungeons with only steel bars for doors. He would be in full view for everybody who passed or who wanted to come take a look at the naked, trembling shaven boy. He would not be able to sleep, thinking how the next day they would drag him out of the castle, through the roads between the barracks, still naked, with his bald member swinging between his legs. They would bind him to a wooden contraption and cane him. On his naked butt. They would draw blood from the second or third blow. And he would yell and scream and wriggle, undignified, forgetting all composure, while all around him, the soldiers, the citizens of Lorseth Market, random passers by, pages even, would laugh and laugh and laugh... Bleeding they would throw him upon a cart and already in the late afternoon he would be chained to the Gods knew how many others, some in rags, some as naked as himself, to work the lands until sunset... then... he was young... maybe the youngest...

It was intolerable. It was unthinkable. This couldn't be happening. He had to stop this from happening. But how? How? How?

He ran to the door, just in time before his lord had reached it and fell down on his knees. He wrapped his arms around his lord's legs as if to physicall his aphyfory prevent him from opening the door.

“Please, my lord,” he begged. “Please... no... I'll do it. I'll do it myself. Please, don't send me away, don't send me away, don't send me away.”

Mindlessly he kept repeating the same words over and over.

“Let go of me,” Anaxantis said, not loud, but without feeling.

He let go and crumbled to the ground, still repeating the same words.

“Stand up,” his lord commanded curtly.

With difficulty he stood up, taking care to keep his position between his lord and the door. His only, flimsy possibility to prevent disaster.

His lord looked him over from head to toe and he became fiery red under his stare.

“Please, my lord, I'm sorry, I will—”

“You said
no
to me,” his lord thundered, unexpectedly hard, and he flinched as if physically struck.

“I know,” he said trembling, “I didn't mean to. It was a mistake. I—”

“It always is a mistake with you, isn't it, Tarno? You never mean to do these things, yet again and again you keep doing them. I don't know, I really don't know anymore. I'm so disappointed in you.”

“It will never happen again, my lord,” he pleaded, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“But it will, Tarno. It will. I know it. You know it.” His lord sounded tired.

“Please, please, please, my lord, I beg you. Reconsider. All... Everything... I...”

Anaxantis seemed to hesitate.

“Very well,” he said eventually, “I can't promise anything, but I will think about it. Meanwhile, go stand in the corner. There.”

He sighed with relief.

“Now, Tarno,” his lord shouted. “In the corner. Quickly. Run.”

Coming to his senses, he ran to the nearest corner.

“Not that one. There. Where I can keep an eye on you from my chair.”

He indicated the corner formed by the massive hearth and the wall. He ran to it and stood watching, trembling, while his lord slowly walked up to the big chair by the fire.

“Face to the wall.”

He turned.

“Toes against the plinth.”

He shoved a few inches closer.

“Put your hands on your head.”

Tears rolling down, he did as he was ordered.

“And think, Tarno, think hard. Think about what you have done.”

And he did.

Hope. Hope. She was the guilty one. The false trickster. It was she who had whispered into Gorth's ear to call him... to call him what he wasn't. It was she who had made that corner in his mind in which she lured him so often, to give him that false sense he was something he wasn't and never had been. Not really, he hadn't.

His shoulders, painful with having to keep his hands on his heads, shook while he cried silently.

His lord had been right, so right.
This
was what he was.
All
he was. He had been so right to teach him that lesson from the very beginning. And he had done it because he was a good lord. Because he knew Tarno needed to be reminded constantly that in and of himself he was nothing but a naked beast with nothing to his name, with no name even, except the one his good, kind lord had chosen to bestow upon him.

He had been so ungrateful. So preposterously pretentious. And deliberately hurtful. He had hurt his lord. It made him so ashamed now, thinking back on how he had repaid all his kindness with brutality, rebelliousness. It was a wonder his lord had tolerated him as long as he had done. Tolerated his laziness, his slovenliness and his rudeness. He felt so, so ashamed.

Biting his lips, he kept crying.

He deserved to be sent away. He was not worth living with his lord. As if his lord hadn't troubles enough. If he was sent away, he had nobody else to blame but himself. How many, many times his lord had warned him? Tried to teach him what his true nature was? Always, always confronted with his unreasonable stubbornness, his staggering ingratitude.

More than an hour later his lord called.

“Come here Tarno...”

He obeyed immediately. Gratefully.

“I didn't say you could take your hands from your head.”

He put his hands back on his head while he approached the chair. Trembling, he stood before his lord.

Waiting.

“I really don't know, Tarno. I don't seem to be able to come to a decision about you. I want to believe you, you know, really, I do. Only, experience has taught me otherwise.”

“I know.”

Anaxantis sighed.

“We'll take this one step at a time. For now I'll give you permission to shave yourself, while I think about the rest.”

“Thank you, thank you, my lord, I'll do it immediately.”

“I would think so,” Anaxantis said, arching his brows. “Oh, and do it here, not in the bathroom.”

He bowed his head and went to fetch his razor knife and a basin for water.

When he returned, his lord was sitting back in his chair, after apparently having fetched some documents he was now rifling through. He payed no attention to Tarno, who filled his basin with warm water out of the kettle over the fire and started scraping off the hairs beneath his belly button.

“Don't face the fire, Tarno. Turn around this way,” his lord commanded, without looking up from his parchments. “I want to be able to see you at work.”

He turned around and continued, meticulously shaving of every hair that offended his lord. Once, ever so often, he felt his eyes rest upon him.

The first part went relatively easy. Shaving under his ballsack proved more difficult. The skin was thinner there, and he couldn't see what he was doing. He had to adopt awkward positions.

When he thought he was almost finished, his lord looked up.

“Continue. Shave the hairs between your buttocks as well.”

Without protest he did as he was told. Now he had to squat down, and delicately feeling his way, so as squaty, lignot to cut himself, he shaved himself in those most intimate of places. Because his lord had ordered him to.

At last he was done. He stood up and waited, his now bald member in full view. As hairless as a five year old. It was how he felt, stupid and silly, ridiculous, and he wanted to cry, but he didn't dare. His lord had as yet to take an important decision.

Finally Anaxantis let the parchments fall down beside the chair and stood up. He walked up to Tarno and looked him over, lingering his gaze slightly longer on his groin.

“Turn around, Tarno.”

He did.

“Stand with your feet wide apart.”

Again, he did.

“Bend over.”

He obeyed.

“Deeper.”

He must have stood like that for more than a full minute. His lord took his time. Then he felt the tops of four fingers slowly wandering over the inside of his butt cheeks. Then one finger very, very slowly followed the groove between his buttocks, slowly moving over his entrance and still going lower.