The Living Throne

A cool breeze swept through the great hall; it reminded the woman of that familiar smell from her childhood, one of fresh-ground cinnamon bark and contempt. Two men walked toward her, each bowing their head in deference as they approached the throne. Pleading to save the people, Paxin constructed his arguments of life and death, of how if they didn’t act soon, then they wouldn’t have a people to protect anymore. Petitioning that they couldn’t damage the Living Throne, Bellum argued that if they destroyed the very thing that had served to safeguard their existence all these millennia, then any people who they might save wouldn’t have a place to call home after. Two people, a shared race, yet bickering and bleating their supporting arguments to the emperor like the gap separating them was a sea, not a few mere paces.

Corona del Deyja, the fifty-fourth emperor to the people of Tahtre, listened passively to the squabbling before her, seemingly not leaning towards either side of the aisle. With a bored expression resting on her face, she gazed out with the window, lost in her own thoughts. Finger brushing against the ageless wood, spindling and twining up from the ground, she sat atop the ash-colored tree that was the Living Throne.

The throne acted to serve as both a symbol and literal protection for their people. All knew it, the Living Throne wasn’t simply the seat of the current emperor, it was a vast underground network of roots, spurting up into thickly trunked trees that warded off the evil spirits threatening push into their world and kill it’s people.

After some time had passed, punctuated only by the occasional outburst from one man or the other as their emotions flared, Corona finally had had enough of their bickering. “The death toll,” she raised a hand to silence the men, her imperious voice stilling the room, “tell me plainly, how bad is it?”

A nervous expression crossed Paxin’s face, realizing his debate had gotten a bit heated as to not be decorous before the emperor. “For—ehm,” he cleared his throat sheepishly, “Forty-six lost this week,” remembering himself, he added, “your grace.”

“I see,” a pause of some time as Corona stared at the interwoven branches making up the throne’s armrest, “but this is within expected bounds, yes? I believe that the death toll hasn’t spiked in some years, so I’m failing to see where the cause for concern is.”

“Well, it’s, uhm, you see…” Paxin began, only to be cut off by Corona.

“Out with it, man!”

Squeamishly, Paxin said, “The plague, it’s getting worse, we are at capacity in the infirmary. Those we didn’t have space for lay in the street outside, hoping for salvation, but the numbers…” He looked down, twiddling his thumbs, “We count roughly two hundred and thirty-seven people with fully-fledged symptoms, which makes the projected death toll in the coming days to be just under three hundred.”

Hearing this Corona’s eldest daughter, Juvare, stiffened in her seat next to her mother. The emperor sensed the shift in posture from her daughter. Fire lit the rage in Corona’s eyes as she leaned over to her, “Is what he says true?”

“Yes,” the soft spoken words fell from Juvare’s lips in solemn desperation, “and more people each day are starting to show early signs of the disease.”

Corona usually shrugged off the various quarrels and complaints brought before her. She knew the plague would take a few dozen lives on any given week; it had always been like that. It was like that when her mother ruled, and it had been like that when her grandmother ruled; it had always been an acceptable loss. Yet, she must have seen something in her daughter’s face, the grim seriousness in her daughter’s furrowed brow, something that told her this was more serious than a trifling complaint from the people.

“Something might be done then. Bellum,” The elderly man stood firm against Corona’s imperial voice, “you say we can stop this without having to make more medicine out of the Living Throne?”

Bellum lowered his head, “Yes, your grace. Typically we would only take branches or shavings from the Living Throne to treat those who were deemed vital to the empire: generals, diplomats, members of the royal family,” he motioned his hand at Corona and Juvare. “What Paxin is asking of you, to produce enough to not just treat, but actually cure all the people currently inflicted, well it would certainly destroy all of the throne we have left.” Paxin glared with rage and disbelief at Bellum, but the man seemed to let the glowering go by unacknowledged. “If we were to lose the Living Throne, we would have no place left that was safe, think of the chaos the spirits would wreak on us, they would take over our lands, we would be forced back into the dark ages! Hell, we don’t even remember how to fight against them.” Bellum threw his hands up in the air, an unnecessary gesture to drive his point home, “Not in all the years your family has ruled have we even once considered sacrificing the throne to save the people. The death count is an acceptable loss, it was then, and it is now!”

Corona looked at the pompous little man, then at her daughter, whose face was pleading, and in that moment it seemed she found the resolve to possibly take action, a thing she had always avoided until now.

“They say the Living Throne was created by the founding matriarch of Tahtre, Justinia the First. That she was cursed by some long-forgotten evil spirit, and that the only way she could protect her people was to take her own life. So it was, the story goes, that she fell, throwing herself onto the sharp stake of the last Living Tree, and there she died. And from her sacrifice, when Justinia joined with the Last Living Tree, when she gave it her essence in exchange for protection, we came to have the Living Throne.” Corona rubbed her hand on the ashen wood that made up the chair she was ensconced by, her eyes looked longingly at the unmoving timber, as though she was searching its grain for an answer to her problems. Juvare leaned towards her mother and opened her mouth to speak.

“Yes, Juvare, I know,” Corona del Deyja weakly waved off her daughter, seeming to know the young girl’s urgings before she could voice them. “Paxin, I wish to see the stricken.”

Breathing in deeply, as though to prepare for the gravity of what must now be done, Corona gave her decree. Then standing up from the Living Throne, she spoke,“If their number is as great as you say, I will rule in your favor. If our situation is this dire, we must take action.”

The smell of the dead and dying was too much to bear for Corona del Deyja, a handkerchief appeared in her hand, which she then used to cover her nose in an effort to keep the stench at bay. Hundreds of people, all with black pustules oozing foul-smelling pus from pock-marked skin, lay about the streets leading up to the infirmary. White cloaked healers hurried about between the sick, trying to do what they could for those that might survive, and giving strong painkillers to soften the passing of those that wouldn’t make it.

A sweat broke out on Corona’s brow, not from the day, for it was cool, but from the panic at seeing her people die en masse. “I’ve never seen so many afflicted by the plague at one time,” she whispered more to herself than to her three companions.

Paxin, agreeing, “Your grace, I lie not, things truly are—”

“An anomaly! Nothing but a blink in time, your grace, I assure you, this is nothing to be concerned with,” Bellum’s obnoxious intrusion came unsolicited, “what matter the lives of a few peasants? We cannot sacrifice the throne to treat them, your lineage would—”

He didn’t get to finish. Corona, now brimming with clear rage, spun on the man, and in a very un-regal way, grabbed him by the shirt collar and began to shout.

“Peasants, what matter the lives of a few peasants? You forget your place, Bellum, you only sit on my council by the graces of your father’s patronage. All people in my kingdom are to be valued, and for far too long I,” she let her hands drop from the terrified man’s collar, casting her eyes downward. “I have let this death of our people go by, unconcerned and unnoticed.” She glanced back up to the grand keep ofTahtre, “…for far too long a time.”

“Today, I stand before you, not as Corona del Deyja, not as your grand emperor, but as one of you. It is, as one of the people and not an emperor, that I made this decision. You may disagree, you may be filled with anger, some of you may even want to see me abdicate the throne. I knew this going in, but I have failed you all too long.” Corona watched the mass of people gathered before her in the capital, all her subjects gazing up at her as she gave her regal address.

“I have stood by, unmoved and unmoving, as your friends, family members, and loved ones fall to the plague. No more will I sit idly, and given the nature of this decision, and what it will cost us, I understand if you don’t want to be led by my weak hand anymore. Decades of inaction cannot be erased by a single act of decisiveness. I understand that. So hear me when I tell you, The Living Throne is no more. I have ordered it dismantled and processed into the medication that those affected by the plague need. And if this is my last act as sovereign, so be it.” With that, Corona took her crown off, placing it gingerly on the rail of her keep, high up as she looked out onto the thousands of people gathered before her, and knelt in forgiveness to a misled people.

Many years later, Corona would sometimes stand before her new throne and think back on her folly. As she brushed her fingers along the grain of the new throne—simple wood, not arcane magic—it felt warmer than the Living Throne ever had. Grateful for the gift of a second chance, regretful of the fact it had to be given in the first place, Corona thought deeply on her life up til now. She had heard the rumors, of course. Of how people had taken to calling her Corona del Savare, or Corona of Salvation. She thought it funny, how a single moment of action hadn’t overshadowed her half century of passivity, but it had done a great deal to set her on the right path. The spirits her lineage had so feared never came to bear on them, she thought that maybe there had never been anything to fear at all. Yet still, on the quietest of nights, Corona’s dreams were sometimes visited by the faces of all those who had died before she had found the courage to act.