I do not own Lionshead characters named within, and am only using them for a nonprofit tale meant for entertainment purposes only.

Fable III: The King's Pawn

By LJ58

Elise stood with all the dignity and pride she could manage in front of the most ruthless man she had ever met. That she was the daughter of a local baron meant little just now.

Not when she stood before King Logan, the most vicious tyrant ever to sit the throne of Albion. The last time she had been before him had been when she almost died. When her longtime friend, and recent lover had been forced to choose between saving her life, or a handful of alleged rebels.

Until now, she had thought it had been the worst day of her life. Now, she feared King Logan intended to top it. For now, she did not have the prince at her side to defend her.

"I think you know why you are here, little spy," the man lounging indolently on the intimidating throne said coldly as he regarded her with eyes as dark as any serpent's.

"I'm not a spy, your majesty," she rasped, trying to defend herself.

Not that it mattered.

Not to a man with a soul darker than the pit itself, or so she imagined.

Nor did it help to recall that she had already almost been sentenced to death once by this man. Ut had been an unjust charge, but she would have died had his brother not stood up for her. Still, in doing so, he condemned innocents to die in her stead. Innocents who had dared stand up to the king's tyranny.

Logan had not batted an eye that day while making his brother choose between those dreadful choices. Forcing the life and death sentence torn from him as if amused by his sibling's torment. The look in his eyes when they were dragged off in different directions had not helped her own frantic state of mind that day.

At the time, she had prayed he chose her, simply to spare those innocents that Logan already preyed upon at will. Then, she found herself genuinely grateful to be alive after she heard the wails, and the dying screams of the executed.

She had hardly slept that first night, or many since, and then woke this fateful morning only when one of the Elite Guard pounded on her door, all but kicking it in as her parents stared in horror at the full squad that stood there, coming, it seemed, just for her.

Her parents had dared not say a word.

Even nobles could die under Logan's rule, and many had.

There was recently a rumor going about that he had even helped his father along when the old champion of Albion finally grew aged, and ill.

Considering all else they said of that legendary king, she really doubted that one. She just didn't doubt anything else that was said of the man that now sat the throne, though. Not when she saw so much of his handiwork firsthand.

"No? Not a spy," the king mocked her. "You just happen to live in Industrial, the very heart of the growing rebellion? You just happen to champion those that deny my right to rule, and my power over their meager lives? What would you call it, little spy," he snarled at her, his eyes cold and unfriendly as he now straightened to glare down at her from his throne.

As she was the only one in the throne room just then, it only made her all the more frightened.

Even his Elite Guard had departed after dropping her on the floor earlier, their cold eyes masked behind inhuman helms.

"My father lived in Industrial all his life, your majesty," she said, her throat dry and raspy as she fought her fear as she stood before him on trembling legs. "He is loathe to give up his ancestral home in spite of the….."

"Yes?"

"The….growing poverty that encroaches," she concluded lamely.

"Indeed. How commendable. A man should defend what is his by right. Don't you think, girl," he demanded of her as he sat there, cold and unyielding, his intent still hidden from her.

"I…. I believe so, your majesty. So long as he does so….justly."

"Justly," he spat, leaning forward now to glower at her. "Justly," he echoed in a softer tone, slowly leaning back again as he continued to regard her.

"Your majesty?"

The man's plain, haggard visage slowly smiled. It was a chilling smile.

"Tell me, girl. Do you know where my brother is? I mean, exactly? Right as of this moment?"

"I…. No, your majesty. I have not seen him since…..that day you sent me away," she choked out.

"Indeed. So, he did not creep out to join you in your bed as beforetimes?"

She gasped.

"Oh, yes, little spy. I know all about you seducing my witless sibling. I have seen you share your secret smiles, and creep up to his bedchamber when you thought none watched. Just as I have seen you lead him into Industrial, and give him the….tour of your charms within your own chambers. I wonder if your noble sire knows his daughter plays both whore, and spy?" "I am not either, your majesty," she cried, looking flushed now, rather than pale as indignity warred with fear.

"I am not a fool. Nor am I easily deceived. If I say you are a whore, and a spy, are you going to stand there before your rightful king, and call me liar," he hissed in a voice so soft, and so bland that it could not help but sound overly ominous to her ears.

"I would never do so, my king," she choked out, dropping her gaze.

"Good. Then you are intelligent after all. Very good."

She swallowed hard, but said nothing.

"Now, answer me. Where is my brother," he all but barked abruptly, one hand pounding on the arm of his throne, making her start.

She looked up uneasily at him, confusion filling her eyes as she tried to understand his question.

"Where," he stormed, and banged a hard fist on his throne's arm.

"My king, I swear, I do not know. I last saw him that day we were parted. Not since. I swear, on my mother's life!"

"Very good," he smiled that chilling smile. "Because if you don't give me truth, girl, it is your mother's life. Yes, and your father's. This time, they will die if you do not cooperate here."

"Your majesty, I swear, I have not seen him! I don't where…. Are you saying….. He's left?"

"Run away," Logan growled, sinking back into a slouch on his throne, glaring at nothing. "Like the willful child he's ever been. Still, I am somewhat more than surprised he did not run to you."

"He did not, your majesty," she said, looking heartbroken now. "He….said nothing of his intent," she said quietly. "Never….."

"Ah, did the little spy fall in love with the prince? Quite the cliché," Logan mocked.

She said nothing to that. What could she say?

The prince she thought she had known, and loved with all her young heart, had fled. Leaving her behind. All their talk. All their dreams. Her dreams. Shattered.

"So, it seems the little whore needs a new patron," he smiled coldly as he regarded her.

"Your majesty," she shuddered at his tone.

"Kneel," he commanded, making a casual, but demanding gesture.

Still fearful of his intent, she dropped to her knees, and looked at the floor. She had always envied the castle's fine, thick carpets. Nothing like the worn, threadbare rugs left to her father's home as poverty, and the failing economy began to nip at even the nobility's coffers. Just now, she feared this once grand palace more than any of the lowest shacks that served as makeshift brothels back in her own home in Industrial.

Those, she feared, because too many of the men running them were bold enough to try recruiting her when they saw her on the street. Even old Finnegan, who knew her father, and her status, still suggested she could make a better future for herself in his employ than wedding some fat nobleman with empty coffers.

"I want you to crawl over here. Like the whore you are," Logan told her.

She looked up at him again, staring in misery and confusion.

"Recall, your parent's lives are still hostage here, girl," he growled.

Elise dropped to all fours, her as yet unbound hair falling over her face as she began to crawl, her face in flames though he was the sole witness to her shame.

"You look quite natural so," Logan murmured, his voice a low rasp as she stopped just inches from his boots. "Yes. Most natural. Likely why they recruited you to seduce, and manipulate my foolish brother."

She didn't look up him this time.

This man did not care for the truth. He had his own truth, and he forced it on the world, like it or not.

"You likely think I'm going to demand you service me," he mocked her again.

She cringed, but kept her gaze down, her face hidden by the curtain of her thick hair. Just as well, since she didn't want him to see her thoughts on her face just then.

"I do intend to use you, whore. Just not as you expect. I am going to make a bargain with you. Just as I gave my idiot brother a choice, I shall give you one. Bear in mind, your life is not the only one involved here," he added pointedly again.

She wisely said nothing.

"I am sending you back to Industrial. Not to your father. Not…technically," he said with a curt snort of laughter. "I am sending you to another man. One whom you will seduce, and entice with your whore's arts."

At that point she didn't even try to defend herself.

Logan, she realized, was obviously not the kind of man that listened to others.

"What would you have me do, your majesty," she asked, her grief and fear wedding as one as she tried to conjure a way out of this madness.

"Look at me," he demanded, and she rose slowly to her knees, all too aware of her posture before him as he sat with legs spread, looking down at her with the coldest glower she had ever seen. There was nothing of love, or compassion in those eyes. This, she began to suspect, was a true madman.

She swallowed hard, but said nothing as he reached out, and took one lock of her golden hair, and lifted it to rub between his fingers.

"There is a man in Industrial who is trying to keep a certain shelter open. His name is Lazlo. I believe you know him?"

"Yes, your majesty. He is a good man. He is only trying to help….."

"Help? Sending me petitions demanding what my actions should, or should not be? Or even dictating policy to me is now called helping," Logan spat, his hand clenching into a fist, still holding her hair in it as he jerked her forward.

She blushed scarlet when her cheek landed against one thigh, very close to his groin, but he only sneered at her.

"If you so admire him, your charge should be made all the simpler. I want you to go to him. Assist him. Seduce him. Bed him, if necessary. But you will learn the rebels' secrets from this vermin, since we both know he is likely deeply involved. Hear me out, too, girl. If you do not play my whore, and my spy, I will punish you. For every week I hear nothing of value, I will remove a finger from your mother's hands. Then your father's. Then…. Well, I'll just have to get creative," he smiled. "I trust you understand me?"

"Yes, your majesty," she groaned, feeling trapped in a nightmare.

"Good."

"But…. Lazlo is not that trusting. He will wonder why I left the palace, and the prince to go to him so swiftly. I….. I will need time to…..arrange a suitable excuse. Perhaps…. I could work in the shelter, and….approach him in that regard? But, all the same…. It will take time. Time to….."

He glared at her, his dark eyes far from patient.

"I give you six months. The first day past the sixth month you do not bring me what I demand, then your family suffers. I trust you will not think you can so easily flee me as did my brother," he added as he released her hair only then. "Because I will have my men watching you. And your family. Make any attempt to leave, and you all die on the spot. That, little spy, is a promise."

Elise nodded, and dropped her head.

"I will….do as you command," she choked, trying to think of some way to escape, and not finding one.

The prince had fled his brother, and left her behind.

Now she was doomed, and damned. And likely an innocent man with her.

God help her, so was poor Lazlo. Because she could not think of a way to save him without betraying her own family.

If she ever needed a friend, or a champion, it was now.

Only there was no one around.

No one at all.

She was on her own.

~F~

Five months.

Sitting in the dank, reeking sewer, she looked around the dimly lit tunnel, and shuddered.

She was used to worse by now, ironically, but that was not frightened her.

Well, not completely.

She kept hearing strange sounds, and she feared what might be making them.

Five months, and she was finally getting close to Lazlo. So close he had daringly proposed to her just last week. She asked him for time. He told her he would wait forever. He, the bastard son of a nobleman that would not claim him, did not care about class. He cared about her. He proved that his heart was genuine, and truly caring in every single day she had worked alongside him in his shelter he struggled to keep open against all odds.

Her father was appalled by her new 'pastime.' Her mother was delighted she chose to help the needy.

To her chagrin, she found herself starting to genuinely care for Lazlo.

Could she truly love him, though? She had loved once before, and thought herself truly loved in turn.

Could she take that chance again?

And what of the king, and his threat looming over all of them just a few weeks away?

Because from all she had seen, no rebels conferred with Lazlo, who was far more concerned with social ills, than politics.

Only their true bane Nigel Ferret cared for neither. He only cared about gold.

When he heard the rumors of the betrothal, he didn't wait for confirmation. He kidnapped her on her way home three days ago, and then dropped her down an open hatch, telling her to stay put if she wanted food or water. Or to stay alive.

The sounds that echoed out of those dank, dark tunnels only added to the ominous nature of his threat.

Unfortunately, she didn't think she was ever leaving these tunnels anyway. Not alive.

She knew Lazlo had no gold. Whatever anyone thought, he worked very hard just to keep the shelter open, and provide the few scraps of bread he managed to feed the poor, or homeless. She knew there would be no ransom, and in time, Nigel would give up, and simply kill them both.

That was his style.

Sitting on the bank of a fetid pond, she shuddered, and waited to die.

She leapt up, crying out in alarm as something heavy hit the water not too far from her.

Another body?

She hoped not. They were dreadful to look at, and smelled even worse as they began to rot! Then there were the rats that invariably came to the feast.

Only as she stared, she realized it was indeed a body. A head breached the surface, and then a body appeared. Only it wasn't floating.

It was rising.

Taller and taller, and she gasped as she realized she knew that rugged, now well tanned body that wore what looked like common garments rather than regal ones. Behind him came the familiar Collie he called simply Dog. Only this Dog was a leaner, more feral beast that eyed the dark with a true predator's eyes.

"You," she cried. "You're alive," she asked inanely, having heard all manner of rumors of late.

Logan had killed him. Imprisoned him. Exiled him.

Then other rumors began.

Of impossible battles.

Bizarre, and daring adventures.

And she dared not bring one word of it to the king.

Not when she knew Logan was still actively seeking his missing brother, and growing more and more furious with each passing day. And every new rumor even the king had to have been hearing from his own network.

"Elise," the handsome visage blurted, looking confused and relieved at once.

"I thought you dead," they both said as one.

She almost wept when he reached the shore, and heedless of his sodden garments, he simply embraced her within powerful arms.

"I thought I would never see you again," she told him, her throat tight, her tears very real.

"Nor I you," he admitted.

Then they both heard the eerie echo that came up the tunnel behind her.

"Let's get you out of here," he told her somberly, his eyes staring somberly into the darkness, and she sensed the difference in him in the same instant.

"That day in the castle," she began as he took her hand, leading her up into the tunnel itself.

"Don't think about it. It's done. But this day won't be much better if we don't get you out of here."

"Did you….see Lazlo?"

"I saw him. He sent me," he told her.

"He….sent you? He….knows you?"

"We're acquainted," he told her. "We have…mutual friends."

"The rebels," she realized instantly.

Lazlo really was aligned with them?

"Mutual friends," he told her, leading her through the dark until they noted there was flickering torches just ahead.

"Is….someone else down here?"

"Don't think about that," he told her, and she noted he was still studying the tunnels around them more than her.

"Are you….? Bats," she cried as a swarm of them descended on them, wings flapping, and talons tearing at her hair.

Just before a blinding flash of fire and lightning combined filled the dimly lit tunnel, and every single bat around them vanished into bits of ash that rained about her.

"That was….. That was….."

She stared at him with rounded eyes.

"Like one of Walter's stories…..about your…..father? You're a hero," she exclaimed, her heart leaping as she suddenly saw reason for his flight.

Like his father, he had gone out to find himself! His own path! Only it was not one she could have ever expected. Suddenly, those tales of the 'hero' in the kingdom doing incredible feats were not just gossip.

"You're a hero," she beamed up at him in awe as he led her toward a tunnel that sloped up and out of the dank dark.

"Trust me," he grimaced, sparing her a glance. "It's not all it's cracked up to be."

"But…. A hero? Why haven't you gone after your brother. Ended his tyranny? His….?"

"It's going to take more than a hero to unseat Logan," he told her somberly. "It's going to take a true revolution."

"So….?"

"I'm trying to build one. One with a chance at stopping him once and for all, rather than wasting more lives. That's why I'm in Industrial now."

"You're recruiting rebels?"

"Among others," he told her, and then a shrill, coarse cry filled the murky gloom, and she cried out as a stocky, misshapen thing leapt out at her.

Just before a sword flashed with a burst of lightning, and her hero simultaneously pulled a huge pistol from his side, firing into the gloom with eerie accuracy as his sword still flashed, and steel clanged on steel, before cutting down the horrid dwarve-like things leaping out of the shadows at them.

There was a burst of light flung through the darkness toward her, but a sudden wind from nowhere drove it back even as a ball of fire traced that light back to its source, and the Hobbe that summoned it died screeching.

Then, the silence fell thick and heavy around them, and she turned to see him holding both blade and pistol, eyeing the darkness, before he finally relaxed as Dog came loping back with blooded fangs.

"We should be safe enough now," he told her.

"I had heard of Hobbes," she shivered, hugging him after he put his weapons away. "But to see them…."

"I've seen worse," he admitted, and slowly released her. "Come on, it shouldn't be far now."

"I have to tell you…."

"I know about Lazlo."

She said nothing to that. At first.

"You have to understand…."

"I do. It was a bad time. We both were victims, though, Elise. No one is at fault here. No one but Logan," he added with a cold murmur.

"About Lazlo," she said quietly. "I have….. I have to confess…"

They stopped just a few yards from the hatch that would take them back to the surface.

"I love him. He's the second man I've ever truly loved. He's a good man, and…. And I thought you were gone. But there's more. Your brother. The king sent for me not long after you….left….."

"He didn't hurt you," he asked, looking alarmed as he studied her.

"He did worse than hurt me," she said, and confessed everything to him. About Logan, Lazlo, and her own tumultuous feelings.

The prince stood there, staring quietly, but with a face as somber and grave as Logan's, though not quite so harsh. And, admittedly, still far more handsome. Despite the hardness now evident in him, she could still see his heart. His compassion.

That, she realized, had not changed.

It was, she realized, what drove him.

"Well? Aren't you going to say something? I just poured out my heart, and….."

He scooped her into his arms, and simply held her.

"I heard every word, my darling," he called her. "And I understand your pain. I've seen it in far too many faces of late. But I swear, I'm back now, and I'll do everything in my power to help you, and your family. But most of all….. I want you back. At my side." He paused and smiled down into her glowing face, adding, "Where you belong."

She felt tears brim as she hugged him back, and felt his familiar lips on hers again as if they had never left.

Then groaned.

"Lazlo," she realized. "I'll have to tell him….."

"If you want me to….."

"Give me a few days. Please. Let me….explain things to him. I don't want to hurt him."

"I do understand. Don't worry. While you work things out, I'll get your parents out of the city. I know someplace safe they can go until this is over. Then….."

"I'll meet you at the shelter in a few days," she smiled. "Be careful. The king…."

"I know all about Logan's Elite," she was reminded. "However, I have my own secrets," he winked, and smiled at her.

"I'll bet," she laughed now, and watched as his muscles strained as he turned to open the rusty hatch.

He had, she realized, done more than find his way. He had matured in ways that made her smile all the more.

"Lazlo," she cried, seeing him slumped on the floor before them.

"He's all right," her prince told her somberly as he quickly checked him. "Just out cold."

"Lazlo," she murmured, pushing his shaggy bangs back to stare into his pale face as he slowly came around.

"Ohhhhhhh," he groaned. "Elise? Oh, that blood Ferret. He must have hit me when my back was turned."

"You should have known better than to take your eyes off him," the prince murmured. "Still, I have the feeling we'll be seeing him again. Sooner, or later," he added.

"I don't care," Lazlo said, rising to his feet, and ignoring his fallen pistol. "So long as you are all right, my love," he told Elise as he turned back to her.

She smiled ruefully as her prince and hero just stared as the pair embraced.

"I'd better go," he told them. "I can't stay in one place too long."

"Well, I can't thank you enough," Lazlo told him. "She means everything to me, and I'm just glad she's safe."

"Of course. Later," he said quietly, eyeing Elise as he nodded before turning away.

She gave him a sad smile, and let Lazlo kiss her.

For once, of late, she felt nothing in the embrace. It was as if, side-by-side, her heart knew the truth. Just as she knew the difference.

She loved Lazlo, who was a good man. But only as a friend. Only that.

He could, and never would be…..a hero.

Just A Beginning…..