3.I

In the last days, weeks really, Tamara had been unable to sleep well. Nightmares tormented her and Flagg was worse than usual: he seemed to switch between short burst of satisfaction and long phases of frustration and those would translate for her in nights of torture. In the last three days she had slept for only a couple of hours a night and even her afternoon naps had been sacrificed to the state meetings to discuss the problems caused by the "exiles", as they like to call themselves, who preferred to brave the wildness of the kingdom forests to paying the taxes or confronting the executioner's axe.

Honestly, Tamara had had enough.

She was past tiredness and on the verge of a mental and physical break down. She wanted to sleep, a night free of nightmares and free of Flagg. Was it really too much to ask? Therefore that evening she drunk less than usual, still enough to make a grown man kneel over, and after been lead to her bedroom by the sorcerer she changed in her night clothes, put her dressing gown on and left her rooms. Using the secret passage her lover was going to use later to come to her, she went to the only place she thought she could sleep peacefully in: the secret room she used to spy her father from.

Out of habit she opened the peepholes and peeked in her late father's sitting room, smiling to herself nostalgically. Then she curled up on the floor. The wooden panels covering the room interior kept the environment warm and dry and the barking of her father's old dogs coming from downstairs was comforting, taking her back to a time of her life she once thought unhappy but that now seemed to her carefree and innocent. She told herself she was going to close her eyes for a short time, just a couple of hours and then she would go back to her bedroom long before Flagg's arrival. She fell asleep.

Tamara woke up from the first serene and resting sleep in a long time to a living nightmare and that nightmare had Flagg's face and voice.

On his right palm a sphere of light was hovering, lightening up the enraged sorcerer's expression. His lips were tightly pressed together and his eyes full of fury. His voice was trembling with a barely suppressed anger when he spoke to her.

- I came to you tonight, as every other night in the last five years and for the first time you weren't where you were supposed to be. I thought… I don't know what I thought, what I do know is that I searched the castle for you in vain. I thought about alerting the guards of your disappearance but first I tried to find you with magic and the magic brought me here.

Tamara crawled to a corner, shaking and whimpering in terror.

- What were you trying to do? Hide? Here? Did you think I wouldn't find you? You have been a good girl so far and I never punished you, perhaps I should have been sterner, perhaps this act of rebellion is my fault too.

The sphere of light floated to the ceiling where its cold light cast Flagg's shadow over the crunched form of the queen who started to shake uncontrollably while the sorcerer let his cloak fell on the floor and begun to undress, unhurriedly.

- This is a punishment Tamara and its purpose is to teach you not to hide from me ever again, not to run from me ever again. Not to refuse me ever. This part of the castle is isolated in this time of the night, only your father's dogs can hear you and they are half-deaf. Therefore feel free to scream, actually…

He kneel, naked, in front of her and seized her by her throat, drawing her near.

- Do scream, I want you to and remember to express, convincingly, your sorrow for worrying me needlessly.

Then he pushed her on the floor, grabbing her hair by the nape and pressing her face against the floor. With his free hand he piled up her nightgown and dressing gown over her back, baring her from waist down.

Flagg had never taken her from behind, it had seemed too impersonal, after all he liked watching her face and being hugged by her.

Now he positioned himself between her parted knees and, wrapping his arm around her waist, he forced her up and against his body, entering brutally her in with a violent thrust. Tamara screamed shrilly and for long and then she gave a shaking sob, speechless for the pain. He tugged hard at her hair and she had to bend her head backward, baring her throat and arching her back to mitigate the pressure on her backbone. It felt as if he was on the verge of snapping her neck. She wheezed, scrabbling with her hands and sobbing hard, trying to grasp Flagg's wrist. He allowed her to lower her head and to fall on all fours. Then he started to move, exiting completely before thrusting back inside, repeating the motion as forcibly as possible.

Tamara supported herself on trembling hands, at every thrust her knees scraped on the wood floor and only Flagg's arm around her waist was keeping her upwards. The queen shrieked at every thrust from the sorcerer and, when he reminded her with a whisper that he was still waiting for her apologies, she begun to beg.

- Please!

- I'm sorry!

- Please!

- Forgive me!

- Stop!

- Pleasepleaseplease…..!

Tamara could see her tears drift along her nose and then drip on the floor, alongside the saliva she couldn't swallow anymore. Unable to think, drowning in a river of pain she would have said anything, done anything he asked her, just to make him stop. Then he bent over her, covering her with his bulk, pushed aside her hair from her neck, opened wide his mouth and bit her hard as he came, hard enough to break the skin with his front teeth, filling his mouth with her blood.

Finally the tension gripping him since he went to her rooms finding them empty, melted away. He relaxed, letting her go and falling on her who crumbled to the floor, unable to sustain the added weight of his body. He lapped at the wound made by his teeth, to collect all drops of blood. She wasn't moving nor whimpering: she had fainted. Feeling satisfied he brushed his nose against her sweaty hair to chase after the scent of her fear and pain. He didn't retreated from her body: it wasn't over, as soon as she came back to consciousness he would start all over again.

When Tamara opened her eyes again, she found herself crushed on the wood floor, her hands trapped beneath her own body, her legs spread and Flagg's weight that prevented her from drawing breath. She gasped, trying ineffectively to breath and the little air she manage to fill her lugs with escaped her in whimpers of pain. She often thought he was hurting her before, but now these embraces seemed almost tender in comparison.

- Welcome back, Tamara.

His whisper in her ear made her shudder in horror at the realization he was still inside her and that he was hard again.

- Don't! It hurts too much!

- Are you ordering me around?

The sorcerer's pale fingers tightened around her throat, his palm at her nape. He jerked her upwards and backwards, getting back on his knees and forcing her to follow him. Tamara begin anew to sob and cry: when was it going to end?

- Please…

He started again to move, the only places their bodies were touching were his hand gripping her nape and there where he was pushing into her.

- Not like this… I'm sorry, I'll never do it again… have mercy!

He picked up his pace but he was less brutal than before. However Tamara didn't noticed the difference: the pain had made her numb. In a last effort to stop her punishment, she tried to gain his favour.

- Don't do this to me…I love you…

He stopped for a moment before resuming with a wild growl. He tightened his grip on her throat, rearranging his fingertips and pressing down on two specific points next to the windpipe. Tamara wished she could loosen his grip on her throat but she was terrified by the possibility of him ending up chocking her if she lifted her hands from the floor. Her heart was beating frenetically and she could feel it pounding quicker and quicker in her chest like a drum until, all at once, her sight became blurry and she fainted again.

Flagg saw her crumble under him; he followed her unconscious body to the ground but careful not to crush her this time, instead he supported his weight with an arm whilst maintaining the pressure on Tamara's carotids.

He learned that little trick centuries before: blocking the blood afflux to the brain, the victim would faint and if one didn't released the grip then the person would die. The beautiful thing was that afterwards there were no signs of suffocation because the victim could breathe but ironically would die for lack of oxygen to the brain. Flagg liked to strangulate the women he raped, he got a rush when they lost the strength to fight back and would give up struggling, becoming still and unresponsive beneath him. At the beginning he had had the habit to close off the trachea but sometimes he would grip it too tightly and crush it, then he discovered that trick and started to use it to "kill" his victims over and over. He loved the way they would wiggle hopelessly and the terror seizing them as they asked themselves if it was going to be the time he wouldn't release his grip.

This time too he came quickly but, contrary to all other times, it wasn't as satisfying. He found difficult to believe the chit's nerve. Love him! What madness, what stupid, foolish idea she got in her thick head. He released the grip on her throat, checking to make sure the blood was flowing again and then he got up, leaving her on the ground with her naked legs spread out and the white nightgown trapped under her collapsed form. He was putting on his boots when she gave signs of regaining consciousness, moving weakly and then turning on her side, groaning and hugging her sides with her arms, curling up in a fetal position.

Once he was dressed again, with his hood lowered on his face, he kneeled beside Tamara, covered her up and picked her, carrying her in his arms effortlessly. This time she didn't wrap her arms around his neck looking for comfort, instead she curled up more, trying to touch him as little as possible. He took her back to her bedroom, divested her of her dressing gown and put her in bed. Then he sat at her bedside, seized her face and forced her to meet his eyes, something she had purposely avoided doing up to that point.

- Do you know why I've hurt you, Tamara?

His voice was again kind, as kind were his fingers holding her chin.

- Because I've been disobedient.

Tamara's voice trembled, her whole body was trembling under the covers.

- Exactly. Right answer, good girl. Don't force me to punish you again, all right?

He got up to leave but she seized his sleeve.

- Please… could you give me something for the pain, please?

He sat back on the bad and absently he caressed her hair as one would do with a scared child, or a dog.

- No, Tammy. The pain is part of the punishment but since you seemed to understand the lesson you have the permission to stay in bed today, to rest. I don't think you'll have the strength to get up, in less than one hour is going to dawn. Rest, sleep and tonight, when I'll be back I'll give you the unguent I gave you the day of your coronation. Is that good?

He kissed her brow and then he left her.

Tamara spent the day abed and alone because she didn't wish to see anybody. She didn't sleep because every time her body would relax on the brick of sleep, her mind would take her back to the secret passage, her face pressed against the floor and the sorcerer's grip tight around her throat. She didn't drink any alcohol because she was afraid of falling asleep. When he finally came back it was a relief, even if it hurt terrible when he took her and he had to silence her scream and hiccups with a hand covering her mouth. But afterwards he gave her the unguent and the pain went away and Tamara, relived the punishment was over, laid against his side, put her head on his shoulder and when later on he took her again she hugged him tight and it didn't hurt anymore.

The bruises on her knees and throat were going to take weeks to fade.

§§§

Dennis had been prince Peter's attendant, his own father instructed him all his life preparing him to became the butler of a king. Everything changed the day he found the smoking mouse in prince Peter's room, putting into motion the chain of events that led his prince to his cell on the top of the Needle. Since that day he stopped being the attendant of the future king. The princess had had a small army of maids to care for her and Dennis found himself going down on the castle servant hierarchy. However no maid could deliver the royal decrees nor carry mails or military dispatches to the queen and young Dennis took back some of the duties that would have been his had Peter became king.

Therefore he had a privileged post from which observe helplessly the progressive work of self-destruction the queen threw herself into with wild abandon. The weight of the crown is crushing her, he often thought and sometimes he had said it aloud as he tried to defend her at the tavern where he stopped by to drink a pint at the end of a stressful day. He saw the expression of abject desperation on the queen's face long before recognizing it on the face of the beggars who had begun to crowd the capitol streets. However it was impossible to explain it to the desperate population that whatever ailment was plaguing them was just the reflection of the one ailing the queen. Dennis didn't know the cause but he knew, viscerally, that whatever evil, or Evil, tormenting queen Tamara was the same that was dragging the whole kingdom to the point of no return and to the brink of the precipice. His instinct, the same one that pushed him so many years previously to extinguish the fire in the prince's room and then to run to his father, was screaming at him that only helping the queen to heal the kingdom could be saved and be made whole again.

During these days, the last ones of Tamara the Light-bringer's rule, Dennis' job consisted in carrying missives, ushering in guests and officials and even filling in for the cupbearer. The queen would drink, a lot and at any time, long after the end of the cupbearer's service.

Since the day Flagg left the castle to lead the army in the hunt of the noble exiles, the young queen had picked up the habit of dulling her senses enough to fall asleep and therefore she ordered Dennis to stay at her side to fill her cup and to go and fetch more wine. Dennis spent those nights curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace while the queen slumbered on an armchair and consequently he found out that no maid stayed with her at night and that the tiny bedroom for her personal maids was unused. The spacious royal quarters were silent at night and totally isolated, the two soldiers guarding its entrance were five closed doors afar and therefore unable to hear the queen shouting in her sleep, gripped by horrible nightmares, or to run to the her aid in the time of need if it came. Dennis would blush every time for the impropriety of the situation and lamented with his mother the lacking of female servants who could and should take his place in serving their queen inside her bedroom.

Then there was something he never said to anybody: the pitiful scene he was witness to during his sober vigil. The queen would drift inevitably into a state of stupor because of the alcohol abuse and then, under the powerless watch of the young butler who didn't dare to touch her not even to wake her up, she suffered from unspeakable nightmares. The poor girl would start crying and moaning rising the volume of her wails until she was screaming and fighting against the invisible enemy who was tormenting her in her dreams. Her screams would became words and pleas to stop, that he was hurting her, appeals to her brother Peter to help her and then her weeping would be smothered by her own two hands gripping her throat. And a name, repeated sometime in fear, sometime in a begging tone, a name that would make shiver of fear run down Dennis' back as if saying it aloud could summon its owner. Flagg. Flagg please. Flagg stop. Flagg don't.

There was another thing that Dennis had never disclosed to anybody, something that made him tremble in fear, something that, the first time he saw it, made him tremble in anger and indignation in addition to cry like a powerless baby.

Queen Tamara was known as an incorrigible drunk who was bringing the kingdom on the brink of collapse but she was also renowned for her chastity. It was said that nobody had ever saw her naked, not even her maids, that she insisted in changing her underclothes and bath by herself. Her white maidenly gowns were long-sleeved and the necklines were so high as to cover her throat entirely. They were the epitome of modesty and the diamonds adorning them were the purest. It was like she wanted to maintain, at least with her looks, that image of hope that on the day of her coronation made her earn her nickname. But during those terrible nights Dennis was forced to be her cupbearer, the low neckline of the nightgown and the dressing gown opened on the front with its wide sleeves let him see another more appalling truth. The stupor caused by the wine coupled with the state of agitation she got during her nightmares, would allow Dennis to see parts of the queen's body nobody had seen in years. The dressing gown would open and the nightgown would bare to his astonished eyes the black and blue bruises, bite-marks and handprints on the base of her pallid throat. The same he could see on the forearms and wrists left uncovered by her dressing gown wide sleeves. Dennis' father had been a good man and a good husband and only twice in his life he raised his hands on his wife in a fit of rage and in both occasion there was no comparison with the marks marring the young queen's skin. Somebody was beating the queen and Dennis realized at once that in the kingdom there was only one person so powerful as to physically attack the queen, only one person so scary that even she would be too terrified to denounce. The same dark person she tried to flee from in her nightmares and that she begged with a broken voice to stop hurting her: Flagg. But poor Dennis who had never ever kissed a girl, couldn't imagine the extent of that abuse. He didn't realize that the black fingerprints on her neck have been made by hands pinning Tamara to the bed while their owner was brutally abusing her and that the bite-marks had been made to spill her blood and brand her like cattle.

That night, as all the previous ones, Dennis had been summoned to the queen's bedroom and poured her a river of wine. That night, unlike the previous ones, over the capital was raging a storm the like people had not seen in years, since the last days of the previous king Roland's reign. The queen drunk as usual, maybe even more than usual, but instead of losing consciousness she slipped in a kind of day-dreaming. She watched the fire with unblinking eyes and muttered to herself unintelligibly. As the hours passed by his eyelids became heavy and Dennis dozed off only to be suddenly startled by the scraping of the armchair on the floor. The queen had jumped to her feet. Her eyes were wide open but unseeing and her pastry face was contorted by an unreadable grimace.

- Follow me.

She growled with a gravelly tone and then she slipped inside a secret passage that opened on the fireplace side, lightening her way with a candle. The bewildered attendant followed her, unable to disobey a direct order nor to abandon his mistress. The light from the fireplace grew dim at his back as he followed the white spectre of the queen's dressing gown through the darkness to the secret passage exit in a servant corridor behind an age stained mirror. Worried and getting colder and colder in that frosty winter night, he followed on the heels of the queen through half the castle, managing somehow to avoid all the night patrols. She led him to a narrow and rarely used corridor, turned to him and, still suing that gravelly and frightening voice that seemed to imitate a male tone, she snarled.

- Fourth stone from the bottom after the chipped one. Quickly: press it!

Poor Dennis moved to do as she said but she was quicker and pressed on the indicated stone, activating the hidden mechanism that made the wall open like a door.

- Inside, you foolish girl!

Tamara shoved inside the dark threshold the butler who realized she had, all that time, given orders to herself using someone else voice. Dennis finally recognize in the angry inflection used by the queen the sorcerer's cruel voice and stuttered in fear as she pushed him inside, picturing in his mind horrifying scenarios in which Flagg himself was waiting for him in that narrow space, to kill him horribly, so great Dennis was afraid of him and in awe of his magical powers. But it wasn't so. Fortunately for the young man the secret room was empty: it was a narrow space covered by wood panels and the feeble candle carried by the queen was enough to lighten it completely.

Tamara's mind had been transported back to the night she spied on her father for the last time and her imagination, fuelled by the storm, was making her re-experience it. Dennis's presence mislead her memory already addled by the wine into confusing that terrible night with the first time the sorcerer showed her the secret room.

The girl put a hand on the young man's back and guided him to the end of the room where there was a metal bar covering two peepholes.

- This is going to be our secret, Tammy.

She whispered in his ear and Dennis felt unsettled by her proximity. Tamara pressed him with his back against the wall using her body whilst she moved the bar and watched over his shoulder from the peepholes. Dennis was still, his anxious breathing moving the queen's light hair. He didn't dare to speak, afraid the unexpected sound of his voice would wake her up. For the same reason he didn't move even if it would have been easy to escape her grasp. It took Dennis some time to realize that the sound of distress he was hearing weren't his but the queen's. She was crying and then she said words that nearly made Dennis faint for their severity and for what they implied.

§§§

- Well boy, what did she said?

The now retired High Judge watched Dennis with a relentless gaze and the young man asked himself if he was able to read the whole story in his own scared eyes.

After the night of the storm, Dennis spent days just to decide what to do with the knowledge acquired and afterwards he lost more time just to find the courage to act on his resolve and go to the retired High Judge Peyna, the one who presided over the fatal trial that condemned prince Peter for parricide and regicide, and the only one whom Dennis believed had never shown any fear of the royal sorcerer.

- The queen called out for her father and begged him not to drink the wine brought by Flagg because it was poisoned.

The judge felt the weight of the years oppress his shoulders and making him lower his head until his chin touched his chest. All that time, all these years, lost forever, stolen from an innocent man he condemned based on circumstantial evidences and boyish tears.

- Are you sure you heard correctly, my boy?

Peyna's voice sounded tired and he seemed aged ten years at once.

- Yes sir. From the peepholes, I could see clearly the old trophy room of king Roland, the fireplace and the armchair where the old king used to rest. From that point of view the queen could easily see both prince Peter and him bring the wine to the king.

There was no need to ask who him was. The old man stared fixedly at the young man who started to fidget and looked away and a spark lightened in Peyna's dulled eyes. He hadn't been a successful judge for nothing: he had always been able to recognize a witness who's eager to spill it all but is too afraid, or too embarrassed to do it.

- What else? Speak boy!

Dennis has always been a steadfast servant and therefore he found impossible to disobey the judge.

- She, the queen… after closing the peepholes and before passing out on the floor crying, she…

Peyna saw the boy gather his wit to find the strength to finish his tale. Honestly he didn't believed possible for him to reveal something worse than what he already disclosed, but Dennis would soon prove him wrong.

- She kissed me, sir.

A heavy silence fell, broken only by the logs crackling in the fireplace.

- Explain.

- The queen, she kissed me on the mouth and… and I don't think she… I don't think that she was kissing me, in her mind.

Silence fell again and this time Dennis cracked and reduced to tears, he ended up telling what he believed he would never say.

- He beats her, sir. Under her clothes, not that I ever saw her without sir, only that… at night, when she wears only the dressing gown over her nightgown… it leaves her neck and forearms bare you see, and … and… oh sir! She's covered in bruises: handprints and bite-marks. How could he do something like that to the queen?

He confessed faintly and the stone crushing Peyna's chest became impossibly heavier.

- And so… this is how he dominate her. For a long time I've asked myself the nature of his hold over her. I did knew she feared him but, after all, everybody fear him. I would have never believed…! Gods help us and help that poor girl no matter her wrongdoings and guilty silences.

AN:

Once I was watching a movie, I don't remember which one, and a character said "children are like dogs: if you beat them, they would think the fault is theirs". Tamara isn't a child nor a dog but the idea is the same.