Garthia: The Forgotten King

Chapter Ten

~Chapter Ten

"Are you sure that is exactly what it said?" Salem asks for about the fifth time.

"For the last time, yes," Eve answers impatiently.

Salem paces back and forth, muttering inaudible things to himself. Suddenly, the door of the throne room bursts open and a young maid rushes up to stand in front of the king. She curtsies hastily.

"Your Highness," she says. "The ones responsible for the wall message we're identified. What should we do with them?"

"Execute them!" Salem snaps, suddenly enraged. He realizes his mistake and smiles at all of us apologetically. "Anyone who would do anything to terrify our citizens should not roam free." He turns back to the servant. "Go and make the arrangements." She curtsies again and exits as hurriedly as she came in.

Once she's gone, everyone is silent. I guess we're all just shocked that Salem, who is usually so kind and considerate, could be so angry and cruel. Eve looks just as surprised as the rest of us.

Salem suddenly gets down on his hands and knees and pleads, "I am sorry for my behavior. I hope you will forgive me."

I'm the first to speak. "Of course."

"Absolutely." Cam chimes.

"I guess so." Eve grumbles.

Salem stands up again and his radiant smile returns. "But I do have one question," I say. "Who is the Forgotten King?"

His smile falters. He laughs, probably to make it seem like nothing, which obviously isn't true. "Oh. Just an old tale. You need not bother with the details."

"Well, if you don't mind, I think all of us would like to hear it." The other two agree.

Salem waves his hand dismissively. "It's really not important. And besides, it is a gruesome tale. I really don't think it will be appropriate. Besides, you should enjoy Garthia why you're here. We'll get this dilemma-sorted." He ushers us out the door without another word.

"We are obviously not going to forget about this," Eve says. Cam and I agree. Something this puzzling and mysterious should not be overlooked. I'm filled suddenly with the sense that we're in one of those black-and-white crime shows.

"So what do we do?" Cam inquires.

"Easy. We find out just who the Forgotten King is and what it is about him that makes my dad so fired up," She makes her way down the stairs, but instead of exiting, she walks through one of the ground-level doors. Cam and I follow her, trusting that she knows where she's going.

The door lead into a dim hallway with wooden planks instead of wallpaper. Surprisingly, no maids or butlers are in sight, although I doubt we would all fit. The hallway is so narrow that we have to walk in a single-file line.

I get the sensation that we are descending. The floor starts to slant downwards, and the wood planking gets replaced by slick cut stone. The air gets denser and hotter as we descend. At one point, it's so muggy it's like being wrapped in a thick blanket.

We keep making turns until I loose track of what direction we came from. Finally, the floor evens out, the hallway widens, and we stand in front of a wooden door with a long plank held up horizontally, keeping the door shut. Stationed at either side of the door are guards. One of them pulls up the plank for us and Eve pushes through.

The suffocating perfume coming from the other side of the door hits me immediately. It smells of body odor and mildew, like someone hasn't showered in a very long time. The heat and moistness is even worse, almost enough to choke a person and give them serious sunburn. Cam must notice it too because starts waving his hand in front of his face. Whether for the smell or the heat, I don't know.

The room beyond the door isn't really much of a room. It's more like a hallway, ten times wider than the one we just went on, with barred walls on both sides. Cells.

The hallway seems to go on forever with thousands upon thousands of cells lining it.

As we continue on I notice that the cells are strangely silent, except for the occasional whisper between cell mates or the shuffle of feet moving along the floor. I glance in some of the cells as we walk pass them. Quite a few of them are empty. In others, the prisoners are sulking in the corner or lying on their boards that pass for beds and staring up at the ceiling blankly.

I don't see what anything here has to do with the Forgotten King. Still, I trust Eve. She must have some idea where she's going.

We walk on for what seems like forever, passing dozens of cells. Finally, we reach the end where there's another door-I don't understand how all of the servants don't loose their way in this labyrinth.

Finally, we reach a door. It's a sheet of metal with no windows or knob. The only indication that it can be opened is a small box handing on the wall beside it with a hand scanner and a tiny camera that I'm guessing scans your eye.

Eve places her hand on the scanner and looks into the camera. It takes a few moments before it scans. Something clicks and the door slides open.

The next room has a shorter hallway with fewer cells-no, not cells. These seem more like separate rooms. The doors that lead into the rooms have another scanner and still no knob, but these have small circular windows unlike the other one.

Each room has a number starting at one, and continuing on to thirty at the end of the corridor. When we begin to walk again, I glance into the first one on my left.

The room is like the ones that they have in insane asylums: there is yellow padding covering every square inch of the room, and the patient is kneeling in the center of the room with his head down, dressed in a straight jacket.

The person appears to be a teenage boy and has tangled blond hair. Not only is he in a straight jacket, but he has chains tightly wrapped around him, anchored to the corners of the room.

As I watch, he looks up at me. He returns my gaze with his fiery red eyes, and he winks at me and grins malevolently. I'm so taken aback by his strange eyes that I just stand there like an idiot, staring. Then Eve calls my name. I haven't even realized I'd stopped walking. Her and Cam are stopped a few feet ahead of me, waiting for me to get a move on.

Out of the corner of my eye, I look back at the boy. He jerks his head to the side as if telling me to keep walking. I give him the I'm watching you sign, which he just laughs at-I can't really tell because the walls are soundproof-and I jog to catch up to Eve and Cam.