Key to the Dark Heart

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The night the queen died, she passed me the heavy old key that had been worn around her neck for as long as I could remember.
As she closed my fingers around the warm metal, shining from having been polished by her bosom for all these years, I looked into her cloudy eyes. Her gaze met my own for the first time in months.
“My… beautifully innocent child…,” she rasped, breath rattling in her chest.
I leaned closer, eyes and nose tingling as my body begged for me to release the sorrow I was holding back.
Her withered hand gripped mine one last time.
“Throw it… in the sea.”
And then she died. My mother… died.
Chants for “long live the king” rang in my ears as I walked out of the musty bedchambers. The smell of death clung to me, but still I took one echoing step after another down the long stone corridor. My grip on the key grew tighter and tighter, until my hand started to drip the red liquid of life along those stones.
Time had stopped… but somehow flew by. Before I realized, mother’s throne was suddenly before my eyes—my throne now.
Slowly, I turned and sat… my feet dangled as I viewed the train of people bowing before me.

Ten years later

I had watched the heaving gray sea swallow it up with my own eyes all those years ago, yet here it was before me once again. The haunting black metal glistened with the slime of algae, but otherwise had no signs of degradation.
My body remained frozen for a long moment, my eyes fixated on the seat of the throne where the object had been left for me to find.
No human could have retrieved it…
Whispers from the shadows urged my hand to the sword hilt at my waist. Metal scraped as I quickly drew the blade halfway from my scabbard while spinning around, ready to slice the head of whatever was whispering such heinous ideas in my ears.
The pike wielding guards started at the flurry of motion, but settled themselves quickly. Hinsthet, my advisor, peeked his eyes up from where he was kneeling a few stairsteps from my sword’s edge. No other entities were visible.
“Might I ask what troubles you, your Highness?” Hinsthet asked silkily.
Giggling joined the whispers as my eyes ravaged the great hall—but they could not perceive what my ears were telling me were there.
Mother… what evil did I inherit?
They grew louder and louder. My hand slowly sheathed my weapon as I listened.
“Hinsthet,” I barked. “Grab that and follow me.”
As he scrambled for the key, I quickly swept past the guards and out the ornate grand doors.
The sound of Hinsthet’s uneven pace contrasted my long steady stride as we walked the cold stone halls that my blood had stained the night I received that cursed key.
Down, down we went. The corridors grew darker and colder the further we walked. Just as it was getting a bit too dim to see, we turned a corner into a smaller hall. Torches flickered in their sconces on either side of a heavy iron door. The two guards stationed bowed and quickly unlocked the door at my word. The ominous clang and click sounded behind me as we entered the dungeon.
“Yer Majesty!” A fat older man came scurrying up to me from a table in the corner. I glimpsed cards and coins before two men—one half dressed and the other hurriedly munching a chunk of bread he had just stuffed in his mouth—stood and clumsily blocked it from view.
“Take me to the cell this key unlocks,” I ordered without pleasantries.
Hinsthet quickly handed the key to the fat and balding dungeon master, wiping his hand on a hidden kerchief after the slimy thing left his fingers.
The master handled the antique with experienced hands, turning it over and over while seeming unbothered by its moist state.
Suddenly he bowed again. “Yer Majesty, this key belongs ‘ere according to the burrowed badger crest on the bow, but I’m not familiar with the teeth pattern.”
I raised a brow. “You have the keys memorized?”
A hint of pride tinged his voice as he bowed and answered, “Yes, yer Majesty.”
I bit my cheek, considering the implications. “It would be a cell that hasn’t been opened in years. One that has been missing the key for at least ten years.”
He wrung his hands and kept his gaze low as he mumbled, “Sadly, there’re many that fit that. It’s an old dungeon…”
I hesitated, mulling over the implications. “It would be one that my mother had an interest in.”
The man visibly blanched in the torchlight after the words left my mouth.
“I… I never was allowed to accompany her,” his eyes and feet shifted continuously as he nervously continued, “Wasn’t often. Maybe three times after the king’s death? But she went alone. Never for long. Never needed a key asides from the walkway locks.”
“Which cell?” I was growing impatient with the rambling man.
Eyes wide, he met my gaze for the first time. “If you go down too deep… you won’t find any humans in those cells.”
I stopped Hinsthet from reprimanding the master with a wave of my hand.
“I’m aware, dungeon master. Take me.”
With a twitch of hesitation, he finally steeled himself enough to grab his long cloak and the heavy master-key ring.
The keys jangled as four sets of footsteps echoed eerily against the damp walls. The miserable souls of the upper cells stirred as their never ending incarceration was disturbed.
The guard that had eaten the bread was hurriedly walking ahead of us as he brandished a bright lantern to illuminate the way.
“Egger,” the master said in a hushed voice. “It’s this way.”
The lad paused, looking from the passageway he had just stepped down to the smaller hall the master had branched off towards. His brows knit in the faint light, but he hesitantly followed and resumed his lead.
After what seemed like eternity in a twisting maze of misery, we finally made it to an iron trapdoor set into the floor.
Egger moved the light over the intricately carved metal, revealing faces of demons frozen in torment. Words that I could not understand were etched along the edges.
“This is where Her Majesty went each time,” the master murmured. “Dunno which cell she visited… I stayed out here on Her Majesty’s orders.”
I stared at the carvings. They were seemingly random—no pattern, no story. Nothing that explained why my mother would visit this damned place and then ask me to throw away the key.
“Your Highness… are you sure you want to go down there?”
My eyes rose solemnly to Hinsthet. “No,” I thought about the whispering giggles from above. “But I must.”
The hinges screeched as Egger and the master lifted the door. It clanged loudly against the ground despite their care to lower it slowly. The sound echoed off the walls, bouncing painfully through my head. Then the horrendous smell of mold and rotten fruit assailed my nostrils.
I want to go back to bed…
We filed down the old stairway revealed underneath one after another—Egger once again holding the lantern aloft, revealing a short hallway with six iron doors lining either side. A seventh door, much more elaborate with its demonic etchings, gazed at us from the opposite wall at the far end of the line.
Whispers, unlike those from the throne room or anything I had ever heard, could be heard from the first cell on the right… but the other cells were eerily silent.
Icy fingers clawed at my stomach.
Not wanting to speak, I poked at Hinsthet, who nudged the dungeon master, who then gave the key to Egger.
The younger man looked from the key to us, obviously unnerved by the evil in the air. We all stared at the lad until he finally started checking the key compared to the doors, starting at the nearest.
The whispers grew louder—closer—as the cell’s occupant heard the key jangling in the lock.
It wasn’t a match. Egger breathed a sigh of relief.
Crossing the hall, he went to the next closest cell. Once the key started dancing in the metal, a groan of misery sounded from within. The door didn’t budge. I shuffled my feet anxiously.
Continuing along the left wall, he tried again. No sounds issued forth from the prisoner, but the key in Egger’s trembling hand slid in the lock like warm lard.
He glanced at us, eyes wide with fear. The lantern fell from his limp fingers, the flame flickering as it licked the side of the glass, and he backed away shaking his head.
Clenching my jaw, I pushed past the others and grabbed the cursed key, turning it before I lost my nerve. I pushed the door open.
As dim light creeped in through the open door, my eyes fell on the figure curled up in the far corner of the cell. Shadows concealed the features of it, but I could see it slowly pushing itself up. A heavy chain clinked and scraped across the floor.
A voice soft as silk floated to my ears. “Queen Taliyah… is that you?”
My breath hitched at the sound of my mother’s name. I sensed one of the others come to stand behind me.
The figure sat fully upright now. “Oh… no. You are not her. The beautiful child, maybe?”
Light flooded into the cell as Hinsthet held the lantern up once again.
The grimy cell’s inhabitant starkly contrasted the surroundings… and all that I was expecting. Hinsthet let out a gasp, and the other two men crowded behind us to see.
White teeth flashed into a bright smile. Shining eyes darted over the new faces.
“My, my… it has been a long time since I have had the pleasure of mens’ company…”
She rose to her feet slowly and weakly, long, graceful legs lifting her higher and higher until she stood a head taller than most men. “Would one of you mind helping me out of this dreary cell? I have been so lonely…”
My eyes tasted her body, naked except for the chains around her wrists, ankles, and throat. Her long, black hair fell around her silky skin, curving around her breasts, dancing around her thighs.
Her thick, red lips turned in a playful smile. Her breasts bounced as she swayed her hips.
“You’ve grown so much,” she crooned.
Finding my voice, I finally tried to muster all the authority I could and asked, “Why did my mother lock you here?”
She glanced at me coyly. “Hmm? Oh, she was just jealous.”
Her finger traced up her hairless body to tap her delicate chin.
Jealous?
“What is this key? I tossed it in the ocean and it came back.”
And what about the whispers?
“Oh, my children must have had hands in that,” she flashed her teeth in a sweet smile, “they miss me dearly.”
Children?
Suddenly, I felt hands tugging at my arms and back. I jumped before I realized it was just the master pulling me away from the woman—I had somehow edged so far into the cell that I could almost touch her.
The master forcibly shut the door to block our view of the beautiful woman. He leaned in close to whisper in my ear.
“Forgive me, please, yer Majesty. I had to. That lady… terrified me more than anything I’ve ever seen.”