The Beauty and the Beast, Chapter 1, Part 2

Written 2006

Revised May 11, 2021

 
 

THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, CHAPTER 1, Part 2

A story of Necromantra

By Aladdin

Edited by Christopher Leeson

“Do you wish to die?” the Tradesman asked. I wondered why they never betrayed a hint of emotion. Did they consider it a disgrace to show emotion to an “inferior” race? Did they have no emotion to show?

I had been brought before three Tradesmen. All were of the same build and dressed alike. Was their whole race radically conformist, or were these Tradesmen of similar rank and wearing the uniform of that rank?

These outfits looked utilitarian, canvas-colored and provided with many pockets. The creatures’ legs were strangely jointed – reminiscent of bovine beasts. Though bipedal and upright, they only superficially resembled men in general outline. Their helmets had large glass eye-slots that concealed their faces. Was it more than a mask, I wondered; was it also a kind of breathing device? If this were so, their problem with the atmosphere of this part of the Godwheel could represent a possibly exploitable weakness. That was something to think about.

As their name suggests, Trade was their business. Though they showed no emotion, was their overriding drive greed and acquisitiveness? I knew that they exchanged precious commodities, and that these commodities were not always material. At this time and this place, I was one such commodity. By reputation, the Tradesmen were scrupulous in fulfilling their contract. Similarly, they demanded that all those that they dealt with should honor their commitments in scrupulous detail. Also by reputation, what the Tradesmen demanded, they usually got.

It was also said that they were either telepathically linked to those around them, that each individual was an element in a hive mind. If an outsider met one Tradesman, he was, in a sense, meeting with many Tradesmen at the same time – possibly with every other Tradesman in existence. Pretty clearly, that would rule out playing one Tradesman against another.

I couldn’t help looking about, though there was very little to see in the nearly featureless room. One chair for each Tradesman and little more. Ill at east, I didn’t want to be here, but I hadn’t been given any choice. I could expect no sympathy from them, for I had killed a Tradesman. This was an almost unprecedented offense and they had every right to kill me in retaliation. Oddly, though, I didn’t feel like cringing. Instead, I felt strangely detached. Why should I worry? After all, being executed would spare me the tedium of working myself up into a suicidal mindset.

To make any sense of this situation, I had to see it through the mindset of the Tradesmen themselves. Under their contractual law, I had been born their slave. My mother had promised to give them her next child in exchange for a desperate favor that she had needed to receive immediately. Yes, my mother is very strange, but that is a long story to tell. They had asked in exchange her next-born child. That was me. But how did they know that she would ever have a child? She absolutely had not wanted one. Did their race have prophetic powers? Or had they manipulated my mother after their meeting to see to it that my conception occurred? I had to stay on guard. Whenever these aliens wanted something, it didn’t take them long to get it. Bully for them. But the rules I was subjected to didn’t leave me in a very good situation.

I couldn’t help but smile. I knew that if my mother had known the circumstances she had put me in, she would have been amused. She would probably be hoping for my death. I didn’t think that anyone in the universe hated me than my mother did. I couldn’t blame her.

“You do not answer me,” said the Tradesman.

I blinked myself alert, having been lost in thought. The voices of these aliens, by the way, had a filtered quality, as if the sounds they projected were digitally created. “I have forgotten the question,” I murmured.

He repeated his interrogative. “Do you wish to die?”

“Yes, sir, I do wish to die,” I told him – her – it.

That reply didn’t seem to faze him. “So often human beings appear to value their lives casually,” he said. “Why is this so?”

I didn’t mind telling him. “Not every human likes living. I, for one, am not very good at it.”

“Understood. We know that you are afflicted by an evil spirit that has been possessing you. Our analysis tells us that you would rather die than have it again usurp the guidance of your life. Still, you will not have to face that eventuality, so long as you maintain an attitude of strict obedience. We have a purpose for you, but realizing that purpose calls for your fealty to the agreement we are about to offer you.”

“The demon you mention has kept me its slave for two years. What do you offer me, except a change of masters?” I asked him.

“Under our law, you are property – a slave, as your people would say. Despite your race’s zeal for enslaving one another, your majority considers slavery debasing. But humans also say that anything has its price. So, consider, what do you desire so much that you would willingly yield up your body and soul?”

He could have hardly been more blunt about the nature of the Satanic bargain he had in mind. “Nothing,” I said. “I would not choose to be another’s property for any price.”

“We believe that statement to be fallacious,” the Tradesman replied. “We have calculated that we are able to make an offer with a very high probability of being acceptable by you.”

“You are miscalculating,” I said.

“We shall see. Come.”

The three Tradesmen rose as a group. I guessed that they expected me to follow them. I was led into a chamber that resembled the magic room where I had been kept in since my abduction to the Godwheel. While there, human wizards had worked on me. I didn’t know why the Tradesmen employed humans for sorcery, unless their kind were unable to work magic themselves, or else regarded sorcery to be demeaning work. After all, any medieval prince would have bridled at the thought of supporting himself by selling turnips.

This particular chamber seemed to be centered around what looked like a glass coffin. The Tradesmen pointed at this artifact, directing me to peer through its transparent lid. I did, and what I saw therein made my limbs quake. I turned away.

“You bastards!” I shouted.

“This is the one you killed,” said one of the Tradesmen. “Has it occurred to you that she could be brought back to life?”

“Back to life?” I muttered.

“The young female may be revived if we strike a bargain. If not, death will become her permanent condition.”

I looked at him accusingly. “Revived? She’s dead because I sucked the life-force from her body. How can she be revived?”

“You already know that such things are possible. Did not your foe Boneyard know the art of resurrecting his own slain minions and did so many times. He did this by use of a rare spell. Have you never wondered where the necromancer acquired a spell so mighty?”

Yes, all of us knights had wondered. Now that I was being asked a leading question, I made a guess. “From – the Tradesmen?”

“He paid a very high price,” the being informed me, “but he never regretted the bargain. Your master, Archimage, on the contrary, refused our price. Now he and all his works have perished.”

“Yes, but Boneyard survived his brother by only a few months,” I reminded him.

The Tradesman made no reply. Instead, he said,

“We have preserved her in a preservation capsule,” said the Tradesman. “We brought her body to this place because it so clearly gave us a negotiation advantage. We know that some humans will unselfishly surrender what is most precious to them in order to save a loved one. Are you a human of that stamp?”

No, I was not.

I was, in fact, the worse of humans! Even before I had been demon-possessed, I had lived – existed – only because I was absolutely selfish.

“I am the wrong person to be offered such a proposition,” I told the alien. “

“Our analysis disagrees. We shall ask again. Will you accept bondage in body and spirit in exchange for the restoration of Princess Arielle to life? We restored, she will be permitted to return in safety to her own people.”

I shook my head, not in negation but in amazement. I had not believed that these aliens had anything in their bag of tricks to move me. But now, and with apparent ease, they had backed me into a corner. I searched my mind for a reason to refuse.

First, I asked myself, would it not be kinder to leave Arielle where she was? All her pains and troubles had been met and left behind. If she were to return to life, would she not have to resume a life of trouble and sorrow? Would she not have to undergo the trauma of death all over again?

But, in all the universe, if there was only one mistake that I would do almost anything to reverse, it would have been this mistake.

“What must I surrender?” I heard myself asking.

“Swear fealty. Submit to total obedience. And swear, too, to become the dedicated servant of any other party who becomes your purchaser. You will pledge to live your life to doing as you are told, and will do nothing else. Do so and no doubt Arielle’s people will rejoice at having their heiress restored. She will not be stigmatized. No one needs to know that she had ever died at all. After all, there was no witness to that death except yourself.”

“The monster called Lord Pumpkin seized power in Ulik,” I protested. “He will simply kill her again, and with pleasure.”

“This is inaccurate,” said the negotiator. “The pitiless one has vanished. Other ambitious men are now contesting for control of Ulik. Blood flows freely.”

I could see my reflection in the goggles of the alien’s mask when I asked, “Why would you trust me to keep such a bargain?”

“We knew that the Soul-Rider who was guiding you would never keep its bargains,” the Tradesman replied. “We enhanced your value a thousand-fold by removing it. We are now addressing the knight Thanasi. Documentation tells us that he was ever a man of his word.”

I might have laughed at such a complement, if I felt like laughing at all. I had let a thousand men die to keep myself alive. Before this moment, I would have considered myself utterly shameless.

But if my debasement was so complete, why was it that I could not take my eyes away from Arielle’s face, the teenage girl who was still sleeping the sleep of death.

For me, this was a Poesque moment. I was being offered the chance to reduce the check list of my crimes. The temptation was almost irresistible. I had loved Arielle, but she was so much more than my legal step-daughter. If she had never lived, I would not be alive at this moment. She had chanced upon me in the wild, a stranger in need of help, and she had given me that help.

That I had paid her back so badly made the debt owed to her a thousand times heavier to bear.

Her mistake had allowed me to continue my life of crime. Except for the error she made in rescuing me, I could not have murdered her father, could not have thrown away the lives of so many of her countrymen. Looked at in that way, it was her compassion that had brought on every evil thing that had happened since then.

“Will you make the trade?” the masked being again asked.

Outwardly, it would seem as though I was being given a choice.

But it was no choice at all.

The Tradesmen knew the game of life so much better than I did. The aliens had won the match even before the first piece on the board had been moved.

It had never been a contest that involved my winning or losing. My challenge had always been to deal with my eventual loss.

 

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2, PART 1