There’s a faint image there, superimposed over the blasphemous horror, of him, of a young, bonny face flashing in my mind’s eye. It’s there a moment and gone. Our eyes finally meet.
“Where…?” he rasps in a whisper.
“Where you were. We call it Devil’s Hill now, but you would have called it Castle Orna.”
“The king!” he cried, his head twisting back toward the mossened stones. “The king,” he said again as realization dawned. “Then I…” He looked down at his boney hands, his skull shaking back and forth as he turned them over. He gazed at me. “Why?”
Tale Told 