The Tattooed Princess

A Turning of the Tide

         For the next several weeks, Sharvur stayed in his room and recuperated. Though when he was lucid, he continued to shout out for Zaria, Branka and the young Amazon, Tomyris. The guards and workers around the palace had adjusted somewhat to his consistent bellowing requests, though they never had gotten used to his frighteneng and hysterical voice. On five occasions the king had sent out soldiers to try again to find the youthful Amazon and the missing Branka, but each time they returned fearfully empty-handed and had to face the king's passionate ire. It was even suggested finally that the young girl, along with Branka, instead of committing suicide, as Aella and Bremusa had done to avoid Sharvur's tortuous ways, simply had run out into the elements and possibly expired somewhere from the cold.

            The truth, in fact, was that both females were still in the company of Branka's lover Moshtok, and they had somehow eluded the soldiers' searches for almost a month. Zaria herself stayed confined to her quarters in the citadel during this lengthy period, avoiding Sharvur's shouts and knew painfully her whereabouts would be closely followed, should she leave the palace for any reason. 

        And for this she missed both her own lover Tsudros and her dearest friend, and fellow captive, Branka. Zaria was afraid to even venture out to see her other sister of captivitiy, Svetlana, now heavier with child and absconsed safely from Sharvur. She did not worry for this beautiful friend, as her life was still insulated within the hero Murka's grand home.

        Outside, the winter storms seemed to be abating, as it was by then late in the season. The days were seen noticeably longer and the nights shorter. As the snows began to thaw the gruesome business of burying the dead became the chief industry of the whole kingdom. Less and less cases of the fever were seen throughout the villages and the Pazyryk people looked to the nearing spring with anticipation and further hopes of blissful survival of their difficulties. 

            To many in and around the palace, they had seen the lessening of their hardships as a result of Sharvur's restricted freedoms due to his illneess. And specifically they put as a cause his limited contact with the innocent females whom he had frequently molested for his entertainment. Zaria, through her more noticeable liberty while Sharvur was sick, had become a symbol of her value to the greater society and of its eventual triumph over the king's cursed evil. Little songs could be heard sung on the streets those days as the people emerged from their winter seclusion joyously including Zaria's name, or alluding to the "good and fair princess" who had brought to pass the worst of their days. 

            There was at this time even a rumor that a group of generals had been planning a coup to take over the palace and permanently isolate the king. Even the hushed words of his imminent murder was whispered furtively on the more active and anonymous streets of the Scythian realm. 

            By this time, Zaria's tattoos had healed, and while she bathed and looked into the mirror, she could see how her presence had significantly changed under the painful but sensual scrapes and etchings of Tsudros' many tools and instruments of his trade. She had now associated her sexual fantasies of him with the act of laying still and allowing him to perform for hours the tedious industry of changing her outer appearance irreversibly and for ever. 

            As Zaria spent the many long nights and days alone in the safety and warmth of her chamber, her loneliness was unbearable. She thought often of one reoccurring question: What would her people back in the Western lands think of her now, were she ever to escape the Pazyryk culture and rejoin them? For it was a promise she had pledged to do with Tsudros. Branka and Moshtok, too, had dreamed of making this clandestine trekk in the heart of spring. Her question was consistent--would her Slavic homeland people honor her for the survival she and Branka had endured? Or would they look disparagingly upon her ornate skin now--a stigma of the influences put upon her by the savages of the Eastern territories?