Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

CXVI. The Second Conversation With Death: Hellʼs Giethoorn

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Her knives danced as the candles would.

    A red tomb, rotten with death, was what represented the Red Riderʼs throne room – and as the candles flickered, the fire gnawing at its waxy lover – she danced over a viking womanʼs corpse. Pale as the palest horseman, the woman lay, gasping, her neck twisted and exploding with fiery waves of hot blood.

    The womanʼs body formed a holy cross, mouth gaping with broken shards of teeth, eyes bulging in desperate panic, all gazing upon the Persian flame, the Red Rider, as she danced with her knives.

Atop a bleeding chair of human bone, she moved, she swayed, she moaned, and gasped – as a cat would – until her blind, silvery eyes followed his. The blemmyae stood, tall as a desert's dunes, grunting in violent rage.

    The Red Rider giggled as a little girl would. Angus shuddered.

    "Greetings, Beowulf," she smiled, baring her teeth. "Welcome to Thorfinn – your lord Banquoʼs – isles. I am Ingibiorg."

    The pale woman below gasped, body paralyzed, yet still rattling as a snake would.

    "ʼM pretty sure thatʼs the real Ingibiorg down there," Angus said, guarded, hand clutching his scian dagger.

    The Red Rider – Ingibiorg – smiled, slicing one of her knives into the pale womanʼs back, watching with delight as the blood bubbled out of her.

    "Is she, now?"

    "Whatever helps you sleep at night, mʼlady."

    The Red Riderʼs expression darkened as she rose like a viper in the sands, hungry. Her silver eyes felt like they were devouring him whole.

    "What brings you here, Beowulf? And where is your kingmaker, Ross?"

    "The swordsmaker," Angus corrected.

    "I know what I said, Beowulf. The sword is the key to becoming king, is it not?"

    "No, a king is ordained by God, and is elected by the strongest candidates, the seed of the strongest families, ye see, with a bloodthirstiness thatʼs–"

    "You bore me," the Red Rider decided. "You are insufferably boring. I am Persian. What stake do I have in Scottish politics?"

    "Mʼlady, if youʼd let me, please–"

    The Red Rider plucked another one of her knives from the pale womanʼs back, growing more impatient, a red-hot rage bubbling just as thickly as the blood.

    "And so, the legend goes, when the world was born of fire, when Death walked among man, a Scotsman and a Dane cast aside the greatest weapon known to man and forged it anew. For when the siege came, and the storm with it, the world would fall. A sword that would enter Chaosʼ tomb, pierce Darknessʼ womb, wielded by a soul purged from Hellʼs fires would meet Heaven's breath. For when the Scotsmanʼs hunger reigned supreme, so would Death, the hailed, hallowed Death, and all his glories.

   "You Scots drink in Berchánʼs words as if it were liquor, and every-time I hear this stupid prophecy, I wonder if you all are a puppet to Berchánʼs words."

    "Mʼlady–"

    "Listen, you bloody Scot," the Red Rider snarled. "My bones grow tired, dusted like the sand from which I was born. I am a daughter of the desert. Sand fills my veins just as thickly as a taste for blood, and where others find peril, I find the eye of the storm.

   "You instead ire me with your Western perspective on morality, on right and wrong, on my ascension, on the fate that hangs in the balance, on my womanhood. You wrote to Thorfinn speaking of Death. So speak of Death."

    "You insufferable witch, if youʼd let me finish," Angus spat, heated. "Youʼd know that Suenoʼs Stone has been cut in half."

    The Red Rider stood, smiling creepily.

    "Come, Beowulf," she said simply. "I have something to show you."

    "Did you not hear me?"

    The Red Rider carved her mark on her pale Norse plaything and stared back at Angus with eyes of blood, eyes of fire. Around him, there was a sudden anger that pulsed around him, in heat waves, as if the room were alive in a way. It burned white hot, hotter than any flame, and furiously spread – from bone-to-bone, muscle-to-muscle within. What could originally be controlled and contained within Angus was more angry as a wildfire, and when he flared his eyes at the Red Rider, the room began to exhibit those signs as well, melting at the seams.

    "Suenoʼs Stone has been broken, and with Suenoʼs Stone being broken, Death has been released into the world," the Red Rider said simply. "An accurate summary as to why your master, Macbeth, allowed you to be the one to receive Thorfinnʼs summons, am I correct?"

    The white hot rage melted away at the ground beneath them, revealing a nightmarish hells cape of forlorn beauty and haunting bloom. A pathway opened its sharp jaws to a cobblestone village with crumbling, winding waterways, withered gardens, and eerie shadows stagnant across the waters below. Lifeless canals, steered by lifeless gondoliers, with a lifeless statues staring back at the two of them, and lifeless, teeth-like bridges, beckoning them forward.

    Dubnos, Angus recognized. The Black World.

    "What is your design, witch?" Angus threatened.

    The centuries-old farmhouses were bloodied with the corpses of undead crows, whose bright eyes were filled with the horrors of nature, the dread and anguish of human despair, coexisting in malevolent harmony. That bright, white rage, creating an angry glow in their eyes. The Red Rider pulled the Norse girl, Ingibiorg, to the cliff – this inverted pathway that was hungry to eat the earth, and swallow everyone in this world and the one below.

    "I am a daughter of the desert, Angus, and in times past, when the desert was all there was, the world was born of Deathʼs fire, who wanted to claim that world for himself. Death sought out two brothers – Caïn and Abel – to cheat Life, Godʼs most prized possession, of its vitality and youth.

    "And so, Religion was born to balance the two, to govern the world, and cleanse it of all that threaten it. Humanity and its violence being heralded. All religions and all faiths have invested in an...order of sorts. It seems, Death has marked your brother-in-arms, to return him to the dust, to the desert."

    The Red Rider slyly moved as a snake would, stroking the golden helm of Angus and Rossʼ sword – the dragonʼs snakehead.

    "He does have Biblical blood in him, yes," Angus told her. "Blood oʼ christ he says, pumpinʼ in his veins."

    "Not Biblical blood, no, Angus. Hellʼs blood," the Red Rider said. "And Hell has claimed its heir."

    Give me the sword, Beowulf, she commanded, not moving her sanguine lips. So we may protect your king – the one, true king.

    The smoke summoned its revenge and Angus summoned his. When Dubnosʼ smoky tongue claimed Excalibur, a sword born of bone and fire, and Angus watched as it descended into the depths of the black world, Angus knew:

    Now that Death had his heir, he would claim Scotland.