High Elve of Red Hallow

CHAPTER 5: Seseh

A fiery furnace blazed untamed. Within the fire, animated lumps of bubbling streams started forming, which tore themselves away from the walls with horrendous wrenching sounds. They trundled together brightly raging. The kiln door was now an obscenely flapping mouth opening and closing. The blaze rolled, licked, and coalesced.

The sounds of shrieking blasted from the grate, and the heat became unbearable. A form resembling a woman tumbled out into a puddle from the inferno, tearing free from her clay umbilical. She flailed her naked limbs. She flipped over onto her breast and crawled towards a tall woman in black. She moved with erratic jerks trying to stand as clay and mud dripped from her naked form.

Waves of nausea rushed through her from all sides. Everything felt open and scary. She screamed a frightful ear-splitting wail, gagging as she fought to control her body. The clay monstrosity tried to stand like a newborn deer. She drug herself closer and reached out for the tall woman's feet crying with great, horrible intensity--

Queen Seseh Diddymous awoke sweating, the familiar noise of flames still echoing in her ears. Warm fire crackled from a nearby fireplace. She squinted. It was dark. A soft bed encompassed her. Looming so high was the overhanging canopy of her beautiful, lavish four-poster bed. The bed was covered with the finest white silk quilts and pillows. A tangy scent of perspiration drifted in the air. Seseh laid still fear-stricken, worried for her husband and son.

Her chest ached.

"Do you feel that?" A voice asked Seseh. She couldn't figure where it came from. At first, she thought it was beneath the floorboards under her bed.

A pain ran through every muscle as she tried to wipe the crust from her eyes. It was at this point that she realized the voice was coming from her own ears. Her breathing was very shallow. Seseh moaned deeply with a voice that was not her own.

"That's the pain you'll feel if you don't do everything your Goddess commands!"

Seseh grabbed the pillow from her husband's side of the bed, smelling his scent. Her skin turned pale.

"He isn't coming to save you, thrall. Don't you remember that I made you, dear for him and for this very purpose."

Then she felt herself being forced to sit up, dropping the pillow. Seseh could feel an uncontrollable energy push her to jump from the bed.

Seseh was in her and Tullious's bedchambers.

Her eyes darkened with an overlay of someone's eyes, blue eyes. A painting of the Westerian couple hung over a fireplace.

She felt different, thought different. Seseh started to remember. She was mud, she was clay, she was created as a golem, a thrall for the Queen of the North to use. She would allow the witch to control her, for to Seseh, she was Goddess. It was all a lie. The nymph of the North never wanted anything less than the status of a deity. She'd pose as one, real or not to indulge her vices but the form of queen would have to do. Seseh saw that King Tullious Diddymous was not there and what the voice had said, now dawned on her. A feeling of ilk passed over her. She knew they were gone and Seseh wept.

Light filtered through two large, colourful windows. They both had white curtains. Beyond them, slowly blackening the glass, from the North they flocked. The creatures passed the mountain village of Chestme. They swam through the shimmering moonlight, past Seaside Alchov, and settled on Cardamon Castle, where they painted the protective walls with their plume.

Seseh saw flocks of blackbirds and ravens buzzing about, climbing the parapet walkways and the curtain wall outside her window.

Some were settling on the turrets of the barbican and cackled shamelessly. She witnessed a guardsman slap a feathered fowl away only to have more fly in overhead.