1.2 The Archivist: Queen Dreda

For many years I have roamed this land as a passive observer, scribbling down and archiving the stories told in taverns and moonlit fields, as well as the great tales recounted in dining halls and at the feet of lords. They are magnificent in their own right, many of them, but what fascinates me is the truth behind them. As time presses on, each story grows into a different beast entirely. Names are changed, or forgotten, the valiant become the oppressors, the dangerous become the heroic, and the inspiration of one region becomes the fear of another. With these journals, I plan to end our reckless treatment of history and illuminate the ways in which we have altered the stories we think we know by heart. I cannot think of a better place to start than with the queen who boiled rats, but before I present the truth, it's important to examine the lies. 

Dreda was a queen both loved and feared. She ruled Karzoc, a city at the head of the River Osis, in the southeastern region of Illusia. Before she was queen, while her mother still ruled, she fell into the river and struck her head on a stone. Before the river water could fill her lungs, an old woman wearing a silver dress pulled her out and tied a bright red ribbon around her wrist. She told Dreda that if she ever cut the ribbon off, the woman would find her, and cast her back into the river to be properly punished for her stupidity. Dreda was a child and knew she could outrun the woman if she had to, but she promised to keep the ribbon, and without a word, the old woman disappeared just as quickly as she had appeared. When Dreda grew into a young woman, many boys of Karzoc inquired of her, but she turned them all away. One day, a young man grabbed her arm, just above the red ribbon on her wrist. She spit in his eye, and pulled free, shouting ‘For every arm you grab, may a dozen more hands wring your skin!’ Before he could react, the dirt beneath his feet shook, and twelve earthen hands burst from it, grabbing his arms and his legs and his neck, squeezing the skin tight. He howled out in pain and ran from Dreda. She was astonished to discover such a power and assumed it was a gift of the red ribbon. She praised the old woman in silver and spent many days sitting by the river speaking to her as if she were there.

At the riverside, she met a fisherman named Olem. He was stout, brave, and kind, all the things Dreda’s family had told her she should search out in another, but he was not appealing. Olem seemed to think the same of Dreda, and so they would meet and talk, then go their separate ways. One afternoon, when Dreda came to visit, he was abuzz with excitement. He had fished up something quite odd. It was an iron wheel the color of clay, small enough to fit in his pocket. Along the edge of the wheel were heavy indentations, and in the center of the wheel was an empty socket surrounded by deep burn marks. Olem spoke excitedly, and loudly of the discovery, and when Dreda went to the river to visit him the next day, he was gone. She never saw him again.

When her mother died, Dreda became queen at only nineteen. She was rash and impatient, but she governed the city well. Being a city at the head of a river, Karzoc was home to thousands of rats, scurrying through the crowded streets. One of her first decrees as queen was to boil the rats, as many as could be caught in three days. A massive cauldron was placed in the center of town, and beneath it roared a fire that had to be stoked by no less than fifteen servants. Hundreds of rats were thrown into the pot, and the air was blanketed by the smell of cooked rodents for days. The meat was deemed unfit for most, but the healthiest, or the most desperate, were allowed to indulge themselves if they wished. Most of it was fed to the pigs or boiled away to nothing. The townsfolk were unsure of the plan, but when the three days were up, and the cauldron was dismantled and taken away, the city was no longer infested. A population of rats remained, but not enough to ruin the food stores, and sicken the children. For many years after, Dreda boiled rats for herself, having developed a taste for them.

During a harsh winter, a group of performers arrived at Karzoc and asked for shelter in exchange for their work. They had no coin and were afraid of freezing to death outside the city. Dreda provided them with rooms asking for only one performance in exchange. Shocked by her generosity, they accepted. As the group was performing, the queen watched one of them sneak off to the side of her grand hall and begin to pilfer the gold goblets and silver plates left out from their supper. Enraged, she stopped the performance and grabbed the thief by the hair. ‘For every ounce you steal from another, may your bones weigh twice as much!’ she shouted, and as she did, the thief crumpled to the floor, struggling to lift himself up. The troupe begged the queen to lift the curse, but she refused. ‘He will learn to live with his mistakes and become stronger for it, or he will die in the dirt. It is his choice now.’ They stayed in the city long enough for the winter to grow tame, and then, with their still crippled friend in tow, braved the wilderness to escape the witch queen whose wrath they had incurred.

Not long after the performers left, Dreda was approached by her advisor, a gentle old man named Izriah. He brought with him word of a society forming in the back alleys of Karzoc. They felt threatened by Dreda’s powers and wished to champion a new leader in a fair, open election governed by the people. Angered by what she saw as an act of treason, Dreda disguised herself as a young man and attended one of the society’s gatherings. She waited patiently until their leader appeared. Finally, he revealed himself to speak to the hundreds of peasants and the poor forgotten folk of the city. He stood tall and proud, dressed in white robes. He was a Divine of the Revenant Berhanu, a holy man of the people. She cast aside her disguise and spit in his eye just as she had with the young man so long ago, cursing him as she did. ‘Fearful betrayer! For all of your days, your wicked tongue will bleed through your teeth!’ The crowd watched in terror as blood flowed from his mouth and stained his robes. The society disbanded, and crowds never again gathered in secret, for fear of the witch queen who could wear men’s faces. The Divine lived a long life, the blood slowing to a drip but never ceasing until he breathed his last breath through bloodstained teeth.

Many years later, a great beast emerged from the mountains to the North and began to devour the local livestock. The beast was two-headed and rotten, leaking death from its joints and vomiting decay upon the fields. Pale orange tendrils grew from its spine like ropes of flayed skin. With its human-like hands it would rip horses in half and throw one half into each toothless, slack-jawed mouth, gumming the meat down to a paste before swallowing it. Even the sky above it grew dark as the clouds guarded the sun from its abominable visage. Hundreds of farmers threw themselves at the feet of the queen, begging for her to save them from the creature. She was growing old and remained childless due to her disinterest in the men of Karzoc, but the great northern beast intrigued her. Alone, she ventured out into the farmlands in search of the creature. After days, she found it, nestled in a cave, resting. After she lay with the beast, it retreated to the mountains and left the queen with a child. Born from the witch queen and the two-headed mountain beast was a woman more terrible than any Illusia had seen before. She used her own umbilical cord to choke Dreda to death and stole the red ribbon from her wrist, tying it around her waist. She then crawled off into the woods, leaving a trail of water behind that ate through the ground and formed a great chasm from which all manner of evil slithered forth, plunging the East into a long dark that would last as long as the child lived. 

When a body is cold, all that is left to destroy is the memory. Queen Dreda was subject to this. So delicately and thoroughly did they mutilate her memory, that even I was convinced for many years. Not of the specifics, of course, they were clearly embellished, but of her corrupt morals. The truths left in helped to strengthen the lies. Her childhood, for the most part, remains intact. She was the daughter of the queen of Karzoc, and nothing I’ve found has disproven the story of the river. She lived her entire life with a red ribbon around her wrist, and the story of the boy who grabbed her is most certainly true. There is a story to be told of Olem and the object he discovered, but I have yet to understand it. I am closer than I once was, but it is still beyond me. Built upon the truths of her childhood is a tower of lies, beginning when her mother died.

She was a young queen, and susceptible to immature feelings, but she was not rash or impatient. She was quick thinking, which the elders interpreted as rash, and she was relentlessly honest, which they interpreted as impatient. Even so, she was loved by all and respected far more than someone her age had any right to be. As for her proclivity for boiled rats...I cannot disprove it. She was not perfect. Perhaps it was more acceptable at the time. Two years after becoming queen, a group of performers visited Karzoc during the winter. They pleaded for a place to sleep and meals to eat during the harsh season, and Dreda provided for them in exchange for as many performances as there were performers. During their third performance, one of them tripped over his own pant leg and tumbled to the ground before the queen. His jacket split open and silver cutlery spilled out across the throne room floor. She cursed him as the story says, but when the troupe implored her to lift it, she was merciful. She told them to leave Karzoc as soon as they were able and warned the thief that should he return, he would be locked away in the dockside dungeons. They thanked her for her mercy and left the city as soon as the blade of winter had dulled. Years later, Izriah brought the queen word of a society in the back alleys of Karzoc, but it was no free gathering of concerned citizens, and there was no Divine of Berhanu at its head. It was a congregation of snakes, worshipping Casimir and Cecile, elven twins from the Northern stronghold of Anlyth. They preached with poison and filled the ears of the mindless horde with empty promises. They preyed upon the lonely, the confused, and the desperate, demanding blood and sacrifices in the name of their twisted ideology. Dreda put an end to it all. She cursed the twins, causing their tongues to burn like a forge’s fire with every lie that slipped from them. Their following died away, and the twins returned to Anlyth, leaving Karzoc forever. The greatest lie told about Dreda is that of the beast and the child. The queen never bore children, and never shared her bed with a beast of any kind. There was a child that laid waste to the East born of a two-headed beast, but it was of no relation to Dreda. Casimir and Cecile, after retreating to Anlyth, were rejected by the people they once knew. A life built on lies crumbles when the tongue can tell only truths. The two were left alone, and from them, a child was born. The child was named Inga, a name the East would never forget. But that story is for another day. The Queen Who Boiled Rats is a tale born out of distrust, and resentment. The sick and the cruel will do everything they can to ruin the memory of those strong enough to resist them. Queen Dreda was everything that they were not, and so they waited. Their children waited, and their children’s children waited, and slowly, they distorted her life into a vile reflection of itself, with just enough pieces that fit to convince the masses. I hope to shatter that reflection and restore the image of the queen as she truly was, with your help of course.