The Diadem Daise-Chapter I

CHAPTER I
One Last Breath

The cheval glass quivered, the clapper of the bell hit, the reflection shivered.
"He died."
She whisked a dozen tears from her cheek with a kerchief.
"And he died."
The clapper hit again, the glass shook, and she trembled.
"Damn all." she whispered, then backed away from the glass and rumped herself into a chair.
The Kings funeral would begin within the hour, and she would be demanded to attend.
She was the princess of Dragon Domain, the heir to the kingdom.
"I will bare this with all thee strength and supremacy I contain." quoth she, when the words hit her head.
She stood on her heels again and ran to her own golden bell that stood on a narrow desk.
The bell was the width of her left ear to her right, and the length of her scalp to her chin.
Her now, scraggy fingers twanged the thing from the table and sounded it loudly.
The old bell released a few noises that sounded like a squawk, then, as if the rust and webs had died, it rang a dragonish screech.
The sound of her maid dragging her body immediately ruled the realm of clamor, the door opened and in the maid flounced.
"Me lady, may needs me?" she lobbed with an eye sealed with cobbler filling and a mouth with three tongues, two being of a cooked cow.
"I'd cut out your tongue if I knew which one was yours! They all be so ugly and alike, I'd not want to have to investigate them by any rate." the princess ended her words with a spittle full roar.
The maid tapped her large toe and fisted a hand.
"I do behold tha�f me princess is becoming so elegant and queenly." she scoffed and licked a finger, the taste whipped a smile to her expression and she beatified a drop.
The princess was burnt with rage, passed was the red face, there, was the dark ashes and shadows.
"This idiocy will end here, forever!!" she leaned forward, that words would be greater in the maid�fs ears.
The maid nodded, but for the only intention of getting a pinch of grist from her head to add to her mouth storage.
"The Princess Kalyphthra will go to the funeral?" the three-tongued mouth asked.
"Damn all, yes. Thou swine lout!!" Kalyphthra growled and bounded off to her garderobe.
"Dress me when I have selected one!" she yelled above her thin shoulder, her eyes glowed with annoyance.
Her hands ripped through the hundreds of dresses.
"Not the moss wrapped one...Nay, not the winter wear, fur dresses...fleeced in fleas!!"
She flung that one into her maids face and dug her head back into the garderobe.
"Not the ten year old one, not the grey one, not the revealing ONE!!"
Her hands at minutes end, hit a dress that made her heart pound liken to an earth tremble.
"Damn meself, The Dress of Death."
Her heart told her to rip the woeful cloth to strings, but she, long ago, had decided that her heart was a lying piece of flesh she could not confide.
It was the hue of old rose with long tippets on the sleeves that would brush her toes. A supernal artwork of a seamstress unknown it was, a dress that mortified all other garments, and the wearer even more.
But of that she was not certain, or wished not to believe.
Indeed, Kalyphthra was beautiful, not near beyond a goddess but she may have doubled a foul fairy, or what the fairies dubbed foul.
"I will wear it."

Moonscale observed the eight thousand men convoying the body of the king.
Eight thousand, eight thousand swords�c
The arbour was a thick adamant one that matched the breadth of a human limb; it fixed leagues and leagues to the north into the mountains of Sleatsylph
She coughed at the snow packed air and embraced her sword as if it would warm her.
It only made her shiver, but, she took comfort in it, for if she could so valiantly brave the cold then she could brave anything or so was her thinking.
The line of advancing men were roughly departed, a few hundred further would pass, then it would be ended, the kings body would be taken to its grave in the mountains.
Though the whole journey would take longer, it would be away from here, from her.
The alleyway below the arbour was granite and cold; snaked with ice and crowned with a few white eagles, her feet began to feel naught.
Her hefty armour slowed her, yet she sauntered the steps from her post to the other side of the path where the Princess Kalyphthra remained, a tear was in one eye, a hating glare in the other. Perhaps the vice of shadows made it such.
�gMy queen,�h Moonscale bowed shortly and stole a pace closer.
�gI am not queen until two nites after tomorrow.�h Kalyphthra stated wryly.
�gSee not that I have no diadem, sceptor?�h she ruefully snorted and walked away, her red dress mopping the floor and the tippets likewise.
The procession at that point, for them, ended. The line of men was passed.
�gI hold a note by Sir Gadun, it was found after his death.�h Moonscale uttered after her.
She should have been cold in the weather yet she was not, she should have turned about and received the letter but she did not.
The scarlet dress swabbed its way through the path and after the flank of the marching men.
Her heart felt icy and the dress warm, she suddenly stopped.
She must allow her father to enter his grave, he was dead.
She wished she could follow the line of the bearers of the body, be there when her father reached the mountain grave...
All was desperate for her, all deadly, living as a queen without her father, she could not survive.
She was too weak-willed and irresolute.
Then, when the snow fell to her nose for the thousandth time, and the wind stung her ears to a level where they felt like they would crack, the last man in the rear of the line turned his neck and looked her way.
It was strange.
He was afar, so much that if he had words on his mouth she wouldn�ft hear them, but she saw him.
His eyes were dark as prison doors, and as if staring through a strangling noose, a strong and odd contrast to the white snow around him; he saw the black arbour and the white snow, the dress that resembled a withered rose with long arms, another odd contrast.
A vile air coated his face, a look she had seen in some expressive rat.
She stared at him for no less then a crumb, then took her eyes to the left, a crow had perched on one of the bars.
The crow squawked and flickered its wings, spreading vermin.
She threw her face to the north for a second time, the mans face was still in a stare, she would have clobbered him with her maids switch if she had it.
At last, distance put the evil face at its rightful place, away from her.
And with her father...
She was lured to fret, but the notion of her father previously dead gave her the option of deciding that the man could do no harm.
Her hand curled about the air, she so wished again she had the switch.

She crooned:

"Bloodrain falls,
Then lightning flashes,
Black wind calls,
A white wave crashes,

Yet, the scream of the dying,
is heard still, most...
Their feint, then vivid,
as a murdering ghost..."

"Princess Kalyphthra." Moonscale interjected, civilly and in a near pleading voice.
"The note." Kalyphthra accepted it, and ripped it ajar.
Moonscale left.
"You died, why?" she whispered half-mutedly, her grey eyes were reviving back into flooded terrain.

"To the second high and beautiful princess, Kalyphthra, ruler of Dragon Domain, Terrogheth and Sleatsylph, the eight thousandth of her name.
You are in deaths road, you wilt die."

-Your servant, Gadun Magehand  

She leered furtively and folded the paper.
Her thin, sharp fingers scraped the note and she knew what to say.
"He was killed and this was written by none other then any other but him...and me...and father..." a couple thousand other people it would not be, she could think of, yet, she did not take that thought further.
"I wilt die after I kill this flatter-filled, eye lash-short, letter's author."
She stepped away from her floor of ice and walked down the opposite side of the road, her coronation would be in two days and she needed to arrange certain things she did not want anyone else to.
She had no tangible reason to fear the note, she wore the Dress of Death.


Why Nhera Moonscale was yet in life he could not know in a thousand hint-blessed guesses. The money was paid, the assasin released, the departure seen, the murder not done.
"I have trusted thee ancient, throat cutters more then I ought have."
But, this assasination will succeed, he decided as he flattened himself under the roof and watched the whole square below, the four walls of the four abandoned houses and the four roads that few passed.
Yekar Magehand would pass soon, she was of the same kin as Gadun, and this was the same road Nhera was to be killed.