The tiny, shrunken body of the empress began trembling vigorously, but now it was more from fury than from fear. The man saw the change in her eyes, and smiled broadly.
“Much better! Gird your soul, Empress; I am come for it.” The man relinquished the empress’s hand and rose from the bed. From his pocket he took forth a gleaming purple oval, the scale he had found so long ago in the wreckage of the Cymrian ship. It glowed in the light of the moon, the runes shining with a light of their own.
He stared down for a long moment at his prey, then seized the silk coverlet at the bottom of the bed, wrenching it off the Dowager Empress’s feet, clothed in white linen bedshoes. He took one of them in his hand, stripping off the slipper and cupping it as the empress shuddered.
“Ah, the heel that you kept on the neck of the populace all these years—strangely small for such a crushing force,” he mused, running his fingers gently over the thick yellow calluses, the ropy purple veins, the dry skin parched white with age. He held the scale up to the empress’s eyes, his own shining as brightly as the runes.
“This, Empress, is a New Beginning, the passing away of a dynasty before your eyes. The Divine Right of Kings your ancestor claimed three centuries ago passes now, like the light from a dying torch, to a new, stronger firebrand, one with sufficient fuel to blaze before the nations.”
The gleam in his eyes turned cruel.
With a savage twist he seized the empress’s heel and squeezed with a grip of iron.
The old woman screamed silently, her mouth unable to open, her throat to issue forth any sound, locked in an agonizing rictus.
The shimmering ripples of light cascading from the scale in his hand pulsed for an instant, then glowed more brightly.
From within the empress’s heel a thin wash of light emerged, diffuse as a dusty sunbeam. It hovered in the air, formless, for a moment, then arced with a sudden force into the scale.
The translucent man’s head arched back, his shoulders convulsed as well, as an expression of joy crept over his filmy features.
After a moment he righted himself again and looked back down at the quivering old woman. He released her foot; it fell to the bed with a graceless thump, the heel desiccated and hollow, powdery skin hanging loosely over a skeletal bone.
His eyes twinkled as he ran his fingers up the dowager’s leg, smirking as she groaned wordlessly. His hand came to rest on her knee, fingering the wrinkled skin which only a few hours before had been anointed with a balm of precious oils and ambergris.
“This knee, which never bent in supplication, even to the All-God—how much strength much reside there. Give it to me, for it is mine now.”
With a sickening pop, the kneecap crumbled beneath his hand, sending forth a burst of light, denser this time, flooding into the scale and the hand of the man who held it. His body rocked again as a jolt of power shot through him, making his muscles contract, his heart pound, as blood raced through him, leaving him flushed, tumescent, more solid than a moment before; it was a sensation of bliss so deep that he barely needed to witness the agony that racked the dowager to make his pleasure complete.
He closed his eyes, allowing his head to swim in the new sea of power that was engulfing him; it was a sensation almost painful in its sweetness. In distant thoughts he could hear his weaknesses, his lowborn failings, melting in the rushing sound of Divine Right as it entered him, filled him, made him whole.
He was jolted back to consciousness by sickening blow of a small, hard foot to his genitals.
The glory vanished, replaced instantly by a rush of cold that shocked him to the neck, nauseating him. His vision blurred for a moment; when it returned he looked down to see the wizened old crone glaring at him, the rigid muscles of her face struggling to contain the triumphant smirk that shone clearly and without fetter in her eyes, fighting with the agony that gripped her, and emerging victorious.
A primal rage reared forth from the depth of him, to be suddenly quashed by a newer, higher-minded emotion, a sense of amused pity that tasted gloriously rich in the back of his mouth. Nobility, newly won. After his breath returned, the man smiled without more than a hint of a wince.
“Well struck, Your Serenity; I see I was correct when I predicted this would be a delightful struggle.”
He grasped the empress’s nightgown and jerked it up to her neck, laying her body bare. Without a hint of revulsion he fondled her sagging flesh, watching intently the look of horror and humiliation in her eyes, drinking it in, smiling broadly.
“These breasts never suckled, never gave life, nor joy, of any kind; there is no power to be harvested here, alas. You probably can’t feel much of this anyway, can you, Empress? You have been dead below the neck your entire life.”
Finally, when he was finished playing with her, his hand slid up her arm to her hand, the arthritic joints swollen and distended with age. He bent over her and raised the hand to his lips, brushing the palm with a kiss.
“This is the hand that has gripped the arm of the Sun Throne, has held the Scepter of the Sword in its grasp for far too long,” he intoned. “The Scales have weighed in my favor now, Serenity. Time to loose your grip.”
He turned her hand over and caressed the ring that adorned her middle finger, a large oval of shiny black hematite surrounded by a ring of blood-red-rubies from Sorbold’s eastern mountain mines, the Ring of State her father wore, and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him. Carefully he slid it over the distended knuckles and onto his own hand; he held it up to the light of the moon, causing the hematite to gleam brighter, the rubies to sparkle like dark fire.
He turned and held his hand up before her eyes, ignoring the blistering rage in them.
“Do you like the way it looks on my hand?” He admired the ring a moment longer, then sighed and removed it from his finger. “Alas, I shall have to wait until my investiture as emperor to keep it.” He leaned over to return the ring to her finger and choked, then laughed aloud. The empress’s rigid hand was frozen in an obscene gesture.
“Bravo, again, Serenity. This has proven quite enjoyable.” He slid the ring back in place, roughly this time, then seized the elderly hand, dragging forth the power it held into the scale as before, leaving the flesh withered to the bone.
A look of solemnity settled over his swarthy features. He knelt down and leaned against the bed, his eyes locked with hers; the defiance in the empress’s gaze dimmed in the face of what she saw in those eyes.
The man ran his finger delicately around the perimeter of her head, tracing a circular path through the wisps of thin white hair at her temples.
“This head bore upon its brow the Crown of Sorbold, the golden acknowledgment of sovereignty, of dominion,” he said softly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Ingrained in this skull are many of its secrets, whispered to it from monarchs past, wisdom handed down through the ages, ruler to ruler, in one, unbroken line.” The gleam in his eyes softened as tears came into the old woman’s eyes, and his voice became even more gentle. “Those secrets, that wisdom, belongs to me now, Empress,” he said, nodding slowly, as if to soothe her.
With great difficulty the dowager wrenched her head away.
The man rose, leaving his hand in place. The soft look in his eyes hardened as his fingers gripped the fragile skull at the temples.
He held up the scale once more.