Changeling

Changeling part 3

Riding fiercely, like an eddying gust, Sembele went forth with her armies galloping across the valley and through rushing water to battle her sister. Ten thousand horsemen and fifty-thousand foot soldiers followed in her wake, their ebony bodies gleaming in the sunrise. Black clouds covered the sky, and although the midday sun beat down upon sparse desert plains, trees shivered in fear. 

Meanwhile her sister Queen Iyoke, like a tender bird, trembled atop a hillside near the ocean shore. Although the desert wind blew hot, Iyoke’s finger’s were numb and her hands clammy and moist. Like the trees, and quite unlike a princess, she too shivered. But not from fear of herself. Behind her, an army of soldiers with features unlike her own. Jaejoong’s great army. By eastern ship they had come, in fleets past counting, as numerous as the bees of the forest. 

Iyoke had never seen a battle before. And the thought that she was the root and cause of such bloodshed was hard for her to endure. When the imperial ships had returned to the eastern kingdom with its ruined men and decaying corpses, she had walked onto the blood-stained ship and grieved for her husband’s countrymen – her adopted people. But this, this cutting and ripping of flesh before her eyes – her heart could not bear it.  Nor could she bear to see the dead bodies of those of her native land. So, she felt a changeling’s guilt rather than a Queen’s anger.

A soldier blew the war trumpet. Alerted, King Jaejoong’s mare raised its head. The king firmly held its reins. With the other, he thrust a lance in his wife’s hand. “My wife, command my captains – for they are yours.  Mount your horse. For it smells anger. Yes, even the wind rouses itself at your sister’s wrath. Yet you stand here, trembling.”

Iyoke’s turned from her husband, looked toward her sister’s army in the distance and threw the lance to the ground. “Sembele will relent,” she said. 

King Jaejoong dismounted, retrieved the scorned lance. From the dirt he raised it, and thrust it toward her. “Sisters have murdered sisters ages long! And will long after. If not to gain or keep kingdoms, at least to preserve their own lives.”

Again, she pushed the lance into Jaejoong’s impatient hands. Sembele’s army was a league and a half away. Soon, sister would look on sister at the foot of the mountain. “Why can I not murder as other sisters have?”

“Indeed!” Her husband didn’t hide his anger. “Indeed!” Prince Jaejoong, not often angry, the lover of her soul loved his people and his country as well. When roused, his temper was unmatched, his actions unpredictable. He mounted his horse, but left the lance rooted in the ground. “With this you will thrust your sister through, as she thrust through your seamen as they journeyed peacefully across the ocean.”

“I cannot, I will not.”

“Murder is in her heart. Have you not seen it?” He shouted. “Do you think she will spare you should she lose this battle? She will not! Look and see. A fifth of our imperial army has sailed the seas to battle. Let them not see you retreat from bloodshed. No one bends to obey a passionless queen?”

“If she must die, you must do it,” she answered her husband, and the wind blew her braid – woven in the fashion of the women of the southern kingdoms—across her face.

“Our daughter’s future depends on your actions this day. Who will respect the daughter if he does not respect the mother?”

Heart-beating, she climbed to her horse. She understood well her husband’s thoughts. Her honor would reflect on her daughter. To destroy Sembele would secure Iyoke’s daughter as chief wife, no matter how many concubines the future king took.  

Prince Jaejoong stirred his horse, kept it steady between his legs. He edged it closer to his wife. “Sonless, I have been. Plagued with the death of children, I have been. Plagued with a wife who, like a thirsty reed, soaks up love and yet cannot receive it. Plagued with a wife who treats the handmaids as her equals! And yet I have loved you. If I die before you, how will you survive in our kingdom? My love” –his words pleaded—“a queen’s opportunity is here. At last, you will receive honor in the sight of the imperial court. Only but kill this false empress and receive honor as a queen worthy of our people.”

Again she didn’t answer. 

“What is blood?”

Again, she remained silent.

“She is no sister to you!” He turned aside and left her there atop the mountain. 

The Queen remained there, beaten by her thoughts. Am I in truth a queen? she asked herself. Perhaps I am a changeling, a cuckoo’s egg. 

The day wore on, and broken bodies were continually crushed, like fallen leaves ground to powder. Bones seemed to melt into the riverbed, indistinguishable in the bloodmeal of mud, sand, leaves, stench, ravens, and flies. Piled high along the riverbed, corpses were trampled by fierce horses, even fiercer men. 

Soon it became evident that Sembele’s troops were being routed, and Iyoke began to dread what she knew would soon take place: Soon Sembele would be brought before her, and Jaejoong would demand. . . 

No, I cannot do it, Iyoke told herself. All about her, blood mingled with blood. The blood of both her peoples. And am I the cause of all this? She asked herself. Had I been beautiful, such a war would not have happened!

Then as the sun began to set, it happened. A trumpet call came: Sembele was captured, her captains killed and her army dispersed, defeated. The Empress, her husband, and her lover Prince Biodun were dragged by King Jaejoong’s captains to Jaejoong and  his wife.

Jaejoong dismounted and walked toward the defeated Semebele. He called his wife to his side and once again handed her the lance. She took it. He waited, and as Jaejoong watched, she lifted the lance high and plunged it deep into her own breast. Nunu, standing by, was not so full of self-loathing. She retrieved the lance from her sister’s bloody hands and with one swift blow, thrust Sembele and Biodun clean through. 

It is said by the old ones that Nunu married Prince Hans. But this she would not do. It is said by the modern scholars that King Jaejoong took Nunu to wife. This also, I do not believe.  

THE END