Extonare: A Breath of Fancy - Free Copyright Registration Online

Extonare: A Breath of Fancy
By Luke Indran
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Yasib
Chapter 2 - Yasib
Chapter 3 - Yasib
Chapter 4 - Yasib
Chapter 5 - Yasib
Chapter 6 - Yasib
Chapter 7 - Yasib
Chapter 8 - Yasib
Chapter 9 - Yasib
Chapter 10 - Yasib
Chapter 11 - Yasib
Chapter 12 - Yasib
Chapter 13 - Yasib
Chapter 14 - Yasib
Chapter 15 - Yasib
Chapter 16 - Rymar
Chapter 17 - Rymar
Chapter 18 - Rymar
Chapter 19 - Rymar
Chapter 20 - Rymar
Chapter 21 - Rymar
Chapter 22 - Rymar
Chapter 23 - Rymar
Chapter 24 - Rymar
Chapter 25 - Rymar
Chapter 26 - Rymar
Chapter 27 - Rymar
Chapter 28 - Rymar
Chapter 29 - Rymar
Chapter 30 - Rymar
Chapter 1 - Yasib
Yasib was a modest farmer who led a modest life in his modest corner of
grand old Arabia. He scraped a meagre living for
himself and his two small children from the scanty allowance given him
at the close of each month by his wealthy employers
the El-Kaleefs, a powerful aristocratic family of no little renown over
the diverse, far-lying Arabian territories. Although
they were hardly of purple means, Yasib and his kindred were a contented
lot, for they had each other for felicities
priceless, and, more significantly, for they had God. As remarkable as it might
seem, material might mattered not a whit to
them, as their divine Lord, the Lord of hosts Himself, was their wealth,
with the troth thereof stoically standing in stark contrast
to the insatiable lust overflowing of the El-Kaleefs for ever more power
and prestige and riches and goods and all
appurtenant thereunto. It too must needs be said that over Arabia in
those days were made but a sprinkling of men pious who,
being habited in the manteau of holy purity, held foremost a sacred
devotion to God, an attribute arrantly absent not simply
in the vapid El-Kaleefs, but also in the teeming human masses, notwithstanding these
latter being no strangers to the impregnably depraved
dissipation of orgiastic excesses, as pertained the baser pleasures of
life, their want of noble titles and its attendant
gilt garland, that gave the lie to their strepitant professions of
disdain apropos the nobility.
The true love of Yasib had tragically passed on from complications born
of labour whiles giving birth unto her second
child, to his profound sorrow, as one can imagine. Misha had
made a fine wife unto Yasib, as well as proved herself
to be a staunch Christian goodwife, agreeably applying herself
with vigour commendable unto the dreary work of the
fair fields alongside her husband whenever she had been able, besides
diligently taking care of their little boy, Dar, with her
steadfast maternal love. She had also shown herself to be a
fount unfailing of emotional support for Yasib, whereunto he
had willingly leant on such occasions as had the El-Kaleefs been
disposed of upping his workload, with their calling forth an
acquisitive eye towards raising their crop yield. Yasib could have
wrought nought anent the loss of his most dear wife, in the
pangs of parturition, but whiles the good Lord had seen fit to bring His
child Misha home unto His Heavenly abode, which
had left Yasib very lorn, He had commensurately spilled forth a sorely
needed ray of blessed sunlight into the life of the
newly bereaved widower, a beautiful bouncing baby girl Yasib had named
Shari, after her late mother. Yasib had now to redouble
his already considerable burden of wearisome work within the extensive
fields, whereof the whole oversight had been
unceremoniously dumped onto his slender shoulders, that reclined upon the
vast stretch of land which tended from the stately
manor house of the El-Kaleefs and sailed serenely into the distance,
where loomed, in ceaseless stolidity, the gently splaying
peaks of the Mahoussi hills. Yasib never failed of thanking the
incomparable God for shewing forth His peerless
excellency in the miracle of creation, but a sliver whereof was the
lovely farmland reclining underneath the watchful
eminences of the Mahoussi range, even if the sheer span of the rolling
plain spelled a correspondingly daunting
depth to the task whereto he had been entrusted by the El-Kaleefs, in
laboriously wringing every last barleycorn of produce
from the yet fallow ground. Misha would have been proud of the unflagging
Christian faith and perseverance of her sweetheart
that heeded not the grinding strain of his austerely straitened
circumstances, particularly with his having to singlehandedly
raise their young children upon the account of her sad abiosis.
A full twain years after the untimely demise of his leman Misha, Yasib
was as firmly entrenched as ever in his work tending the crops
for the El-Kaleefs, who had had the gall of raising his work hours, in
anticipating the forthcoming harvest season, aside
from their therewith conveniently neglecting an upward revision of his pitiful pay.
Such dismal thoughts as these were hardly
astir in his mind as he trudged wearily home from his latest drab day
of draining work tilling the seemingly interminable
squares of cropland. Instead, he was continually singing praises unto
God for His having graciously granted unto him a
stable job for to keep him honest, and regular wages wherewith to feed
his hungry children, in spite of his human foibles so protrusive unto Him. Yasib
had made his familial dwellingplace an unprepossessing but solid little
hut of beaten red clay, which stood not far from the
regally rambling estate of the El-Kaleefs, and it was within that same
hut that Dar and Shari had been born. Dar was now a
big boy six years old, and his younger sister, Shari, had recently
celebrated her second birthday, with a small though
wonderfully luscious chocolate cream cake that saw adornment of a brace of slender
wax candles whereupon swayed fleeting flames; Yasib
could not help but muse, from time to time, upon the startling
evanescence of spent years, or at least the last couple
thereof. As he rounded the final bend taken by the rutted path whereon
he trod ere it helmed him home, his right shoe
abruptly caught on something jutting conspicuously up from the
packed mud of the way, and briefly did he stumble,
the impetus of the fall thrusting his head down towards the bumpy road
tending neath him. A heartbeat later, his eyes
were resting upon the article accountable for having disrupted his
homeward course, an unremarkable old lamp of faded bronze
that was evidently a stranger not to the ravages of time, but would
nonetheless be an interesting toy of a bauble for his
two babes, unto whom anything in the way of novelty was admittedly
scarce of coming by. Wrenching the curious trinket
from its concavity in the earth, Yasib bounded over the final few yards to the
crudely carved doorstep of his rather rudimentary
dwelling, freshly fired by a rare opportunity to thrill the patiently
waiting children by reason of his unexpected yet
withal welcome find.
Chapter 2 - Yasib
Yasib made a few light taps on the rufous door of rude clay stone,
whereupon it was almost immediately flung open, a
boisterous bunch of giggling children spilling out from the ingress, and out
onto the unmade track, in the careless ecstasy of
exuberant play, whence Dar leaped up into the welcoming arms of his
father. At the heels of the sportively capering children
followed, with a halting step, a wizened fey of a gammer, whose brilliant
blue eyes that captured superbly the vibrancy of
her spry spirit belied her chronic infirmity of body. Yasib could not
help but smile at the approach of his mother, Thava,
and gave her, a nice warm hug, by way of expression of his measureless
gratitude for her having had the care of the house and
the children, in yet another enforced absence of his; self-evident is it
indeed that absolutely naught could contrive
to rive their bosom propinquity.
'Shari is sleeping,' said Thava, with unconcealed affection sparkling in the light
of her mellow voice and kindly face. 'Dinner has
been made and set at the table, so go on ahead, and tuck in with Dar,
while I see that his friends here reach their safe home,'
went she on.
'Thank you, Mother,' said Yasib, kissing her on both cheeks. It was
patent as to whence the unwavering Christian faith of
Yasib had sprung, who had imparted unto him over time in her patience
practice of Christian virtue, the understanding that a
fine life could be achieved only with God for its foundation stone. 'Do
not be overlong in heading home,' continued he
fondly.
Yasib slung his arm softly around the velvety neck of his son, and led
him into their hut, thereafter shutting the door
behind him. Dinner, as his good mother had promised, had already been
fixed, and sat savagely steaming in earthen bowls. The
fare of the evening, was to be chaat, hot off the pot, superbly healthful
and daintily dighted, in its jade crown of fines
herbes. Albeit that this simple stew was no carbonnade, yet was it a far
cry from the washily deficient gruel Yasib, who was
himself a single child, and his parents, had had to accustom themselves
to, during his boyhood. Chaat alternated with
vichyssoise, in affording Yasib and his family, nourishment, not to say
sustenance, but this monotony of alimentation was
broken by the glimmer of decadence that was the ravishingly rich simnel
cakes Thava whipped up every few weeks or so,
when the cumulated pay of her son would countenance such a luxury as
that, one which ambrosian bite actuated its swift
passage from the dining table to the grateful bellies of Yasib and Dar
and even Shari.
After their repast, and when his mother had returned from her errand of
goodwill, Yasib shewed the old lamp he had earlier
found to the family. Shari was, by this time, also up, and, caught up in
her excitement at seeing a potential new plaything,
she snatched the gimcrack from the cupped hands for a closer look at
it, whereupon the aged artefact commenced forthwith
an exceedingly curious consecution of apparently inexplicable frantically
manic haviour which comported not, in the least,
with the traditional view that people took of lamps. Peradventure it were
the sanguine touch of the little girl that stirred
it into its electrifying frenzy of manic motion, but the whilom comatose
lamp erupted from its slumber with a terrific
horizontal vault from the hands of Shari, after which it proceeded to
cleave away the languor of the oppressively heavy air
within the hut in blindingly frenetic zigzags before the incredulous
faces of the ragged quartet, simultaneously shedding
ferociously scintillating sparks of carmine which sheathed it in an
ever-pulsing cocoon of electric fire.
Shari was getting dazed of the dizzying dance of the now nitid lamp,
performed in front of, over, about and even under
her, through her lank legs, and the other three were also tiring of its
pyrotechnic aerial streaking athwart the confines of
their home, when, with an abruptness as breathtaking as its opening shoot
from the grasp of Shari, it flopped limply over
onto the checked floor a little way away from her, its ruddy tracing of
igneous sparkles slowly fading with subdued hisses,
whereupon she skipped over to it, for to retrieve it and precipitate it,
from the house. Her tender age not withstanding,
she recognized a thing vexatious when she saw one, and though she had
been only disconcerted, not frighted, by the
peculiar lamp, she did not wish for her beloved father, elder brother and
grandmother to have their lives touched by the
devilish mischief that no doubt lay concealed beneath its inscrutable
housing of rusted metal.
Yasib was mindful of such conceptions of the seemingly rejuvenescent
lamp as had jolted astir the inchoate concerns
of his young daughter, and fearful for her safety, lest the crazy lamp
should launch into another of its giddy
flights, the good son of the soil stepped up to pick it from her
clenched fingers with as much haste as he could muster.
While he did the best he could to make a reasonably coherent explanation
respecting the baffling conduct of the lamp to Dar,
whose excitement positively shone in scintillas from his moist brown
eyes, and an all too bemused Thava, who quite simply
knew not what to draw of it all, notably whereas the lamp most antic had
not been oiled or even touched for an everlasting
from all appearances, the rusty old oddity breathed forth, in an uncannily
human fashion, a nubilose trickle of slaty smoke
from its twisted spout, which continued leaking the murky mist, till,
from the merest of soughs, it billowed to enshroud
the entire hut within, in a foggy atmosphere discountenancing, as if
the place had, all of a sudden, been soused
in the turbid quartz of the cairngorms so often worn of the dainty ElKaleef maidens over their waxen necks by way of
ornamentation, in their beaded chains.
Afore aught of the four, could react to this latest bizarre development
on the account of the lamp, the tenebrous fog that
had risen to grip the inside of the hut, in its mufflingly misty
veil, dissipated in waning eddies, to disclose the
ancient lamp, and, looming over it, a mightily shocking visage enclosed
in a loosely extensive frame of obsidian-flecked
aurulent flame crackling and spitting, with a cool intensity. This,
leaving in the shade, as much as the smouldering wreath of
twirling fiery linguae that termed his astonishing being, on every side,
was what seemed, to the four goggle-eyed and
open-mouthed onlookers manifestly whelmed with untethered
wonderment, to be the overpoweringly massive and
swarthily brawny upper torso, clad simply in a winceyette vest of
brooding umber, topped with a navy-blue turban that had the
glister of silk in sunshine, under which perched, upon a bullishly broad
neck, a leonine head finished off with a flowing jet
beard, and tapering away, in a gyral funnel comprising the same dense
grey smoke that had but a nonce thitherto enwrapped
the home within, into the spout of the lamp, of an enorm and thickset and
congenial, as the soothing smile that curled his
flushed blood-red lips attested, jinn. This shimmering supernatural
entity, who hovered from his erewhile dwelling,
none other, of course, than the rusty old lamp, could have been, as all who dwelled
in Arabia in those olden days, well knew from
numberless tellings and retellings of mythic tales fantastic, none else
than a genie, for Yasib and his lot could tell that
though the fulgent physique and rudimentary garb of the privy wight
held the appearance of finespun faille with its
accompanying downy touch, his identity in sooth was betrayed by the
obconic spiral of ashy vapour that rooted his stupendous
body to the unassuming lamp in slowly twisting currents.
Chapter 3 - Yasib
'Greetings, my good people,' came the sonorous rumble of the light being
of the lamp. 'My name is Pob, and I am the genie of
the lamp. There may or may not be a genie of the ring, as goes the old
tale of Aladdin, but if there is one, I very certainly
am not he. I say again, I am Pob, the genie of the lamp, and your wish is
my command,' said the genie, with a smile and a
bow to his new masters, who had still to dispel their mingled
bewilderment and awe, anent the mercurial lamp and the genie who
had issued in so spectacular a fashion
therefrom.
Agape with the uncoloured amazement that had etched itself into every
inch of his careworn, craggy face, the slack-jawed
Yasib gathered his wits about him, sufficiently to assume as much
affected nonchalance as he felt able to gather, and asked
the genie, 'Oh mischievous being, come you hither to vex us, with the
rascality of your roguery? Kindly demean yourself not,
in deeming that your real purpose here escapes me; aught man in Arabia
has failed of hearing of the irremediable knavery
of your kind, in the torturous torments, the cacodemonic genie of the
lamp, bore unto poor Aladdin, when he expected the
world of him!'
Arching his beetling brows, the genie cocked his massive, turbanned poll,
to one side, and his sharp eyes that had the shape
of incised almonds, took on a museful aspect, as though his brain were
now being cudgelled by some cryptic puzzle, just long
enough for Dar to let out a nervy titter or twain, ere the splendorous
wight threw off his practised pensiveness with a
mighty gale of genial laughter that pealed resoundingly from one wall
unto the next of the little red hut.
'Your stout spirit and hardy heart are strongly laudable, but ever since
I was brought forth into this gay ball of an old
world, I have been alone in my status as the genie of the lamp. The
creature who you just specified, is but an unworthy
imposter, a mere figment of the imagination so rich, too much so in
actual fact, of a fair princess who sought release from
the deadly attentions of one pernicious Arabian monarch, years ago. It is
indeed a pity that we sweet and loving djinns have
had our good name so thoughtlessly vitiated of degradingly erroneous
tales of our mischief, yea, obtrectation, unjustifiably
blazoned! Contrary unto the begrimed, not to say most unfairly befogged
view of jinns wilfully vulgarised among the motley mass,
of the aforementioned lamentably woesome well, the province of djins
lies, as is the sinecure appointed us of the good Lord
Himself, in fearing God and keeping His commandments,' quoth the genie
in solemn tones, once the tumultuous torrent of his
merriment had waxed weak and subsided simply.
'Peradventure is what you say veracious, and thus are you, pray, far from
the malefic daemon popular myth would have us
think you to be, even though you will pardon my yet having reservations
as for the veridicality of your words, through the
which surges the sweetness of confiture. The Lord has, in His
measureless grace, sustained us, in our misease all these
years, even more so, subsequent to the unfortunate departure, doubtless
to the realm celestial, of my dear Misha. It is, as
such, incumbent upon me to shield these my kindred here, from such
further teen as might be borne unto them, of whichsoever
scelerous badness the devils that blight the creation of God, aim of
meshing them within, on behalf of the Lord my God,
as a matter of course. I hardly think that even you can begrudge me of
such standing,' quoth Yasib as innocuously as he
could.
'A fine man you are, of a certainty,' boomed the genie, respectfully
nodding at Yasib, as his taut expression softened into
the easy contours of a benevolent smile, which seemed to bedeck his
already irradiant being with a further glory.
'Indubitably does such an individual as are you find it necessitous to
ascertain the genuineness of those who would breach
the lives so precious of his family, whether the intruders in question,
be for good or for evil, but you may rest well
assured that the substance of my claims matches the adobe of this your
dwelling, for solidity, if I may say so myself.'
continued he soothingly.
'Well then, my gigantean friend, prove it unto us, please, as accords
with your pleasure,' was the rejoinder of the other,
one he put forth with his sinewy arms firmly and reassuringly, wrapped
about his twain little children, who stood with
their frisson-charged bodies girdling his on each side, lest the genie
should sequently stir the dozing partner of life
unto them.
Chapter 4 - Yasib
Rising to the challenge with admirable aplomb, the genie cleared his
formidable throat, breathed deeply in, and rumbled, in
the brand of orotundity that was his trademark, his praise profuse to the
Lord Jehovah, 'Hear you all, this day and for all days to
come, that the Lord our God is Lord of heaven above, and Lord of earth
below, so praise you the LORD forever. Praise you the
LORD. Praise God in His sanctuary: praise Him in the firmament of His
power. Praise Him for His mighty acts: praise Him
according to His excellent greatness. Praise Him with the sound of the
trumpet: praise Him with the psaltery and harp. Praise
Him with the timbrel and dance: praise Him with stringed instruments and
organs. Praise Him upon the loud cymbals: praise Him
upon the high sounding cymbals. Let every thing that has breath praise
the LORD. Praise you the LORD. Praise you the LORD:
for it is good to sing praises unto our God, for it is pleasant and praise is
comely. the LORD by wisdom has founded the earth; by understanding has
He established the heavens. By His knowledge the depths are broken up,
and the clouds drop the dew. Sing
unto the LORD with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God:
who covers the heaven with clouds, who prepares rain
for rain for the earth, who makes grass grow upon the mountains. He gives
to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which
cry. He delights not in the strength of the horse: he takes not pleasure
in they that fear Him, in those that hope in His
mercy. He sends forth His commandments upon earth. His word runs very
swiftly. He gives snow like wool: He scatters the
hoarfrost like ashes. He casts forth His ice like morsels: who can stand
before His cold? He sends out His word and melts
them: He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow. Praise you the
LORD. Praise you the LORD. Praise you the LORD from the
heavens: praise Him in the heights. Praise you Him, sun and moon: praise
Him, all you stars of night. Praise Him, you
heavens of heavens, and you waters that be above the heavens. Let them
praise the name of the LORD: for He commanded and they
were created. He has also stablished them for ever and ever: He has made
a decree which shall not pass. Praise the LORD from
the earth, you dragons, and all deeps: fire and hail; snow, and vapours;
stormy wind fulfilling His word: mountains, and all
hills; fruitful trees and all cedars: beasts and all cattle; creeping
things and flying fowl: kings of the earth, and all
people; princes, and all judges of the earth: both young men, and
maidens; old men and children: let them praise the name of the
LORD: for His name alone is excellent; His glory is above the earth and
heaven. Wherefore you are great, O LORD God: for
there is none like you, neither is there any God beside you. O Lord God,
let your name be magnified for ever.'
On the summation of his magnificently copious encomium to the Lord Jehovah , as much as
the redoubtable genie saw his broad spread of
shoulders droop, if only for the slimmest of seconds ere his proud
carriage was restored. Thava, Dar and Shari gave the
genie encouraging smiles, their incipient fearfulness and perplexity on
his manifestation in their hut and in their
erstwhile humdrum lives having been eroded of his palpable strength of
Christian character, in the expressive silence that
proceeded. The mask of mistrust that he had hitherto presented to the
genie, was extant no more, and in its place, stretching
from ear to ear, now ran a broad grin which involved him in a lovely
vesture of brilliant sunshine, and bespoke the shift
dramatic in his taken perspective of the numinous genie of the lamp.
'That longsome pronouncement of wherein lies your allegiance was, I am
compelled of saying, rather unexpected. I had
half-expected you to untruss this pleasant conviviality in a
hurricane of fury, which would have illumed your true
colours, or, at least, thus went the current of my thoughts, upon the
challenge put forth unto you, but the only colours
consequent I saw were the winged ones wherewith you passed this tiny test
of mine. It would seem that most mistaken was I,
and that truly are you an issued servant of the most high God, as we four
here are. Our undying gratefulness and perpetual
praises go out to God, henceforward forever, for having inclined His
lofty ear unto our lowly cries, in this strong, and of
higher import, propitious, jinnie such as are you, Pob,' cried Yasib, in
a rapture of effervescent excitement.
Pob, the genie of the lamp, made a low obeisance unto the gawking family,
who were now so thrilled that they were positively
trembling, by way of marking his deference to them. 'Fear not, my people,
for you are all my friends and now my mortal
masters, seeing as the Lord did lead you, Yasib unto the lamp as a
recompence of sorts for your indefatigable Christian
faith and works, all these years, and appreciate you very well, the operancy of
the lamp, that whosoever retrieves it and retains
ownership of it, in effect, becomes lord of the lamp and all stemming
therefrom, under which umbrella I fall. If you were to
somehow contrive letting slip the lamp, from your grasp, so that it would
be yours no longer, but belong to someone else
rather, then would your bond of ownership over this lamp and me,
consequently so see its own rescission. Once you witness how
full a headspring of blessing, I am, however, I suspect that losing the
lamp, will be the very last thing you will be doing.
Hold and hold you well, that whatsoever you wish for, will I strive to
fulfill to the utmost bourn of my very considerable
capabilities, although you will be minded to keep within remembrance, the
all-encompassing verity that I am in no way, God,
despite my having proceeded of Him. You need not fret over my appearance
and the stupendousness thereof, with respect to the
brouhaha amongst the general all thereof might well occasion, insomuch
as I may only unfurl the strength of my presence,
before you my crowned heads, as it were, and will betake myself, de
novo, unto my cramped but cozy, quarters within the lamp
instanter, should such need arise. I am Pob, the genie of the lamp, and
your wish is my command,' told them, the anarchic
titan transnatural.
Chapter 5 - Yasib
Yasib and the others cogitated this mere welcome information, over, and
the time came, at length, for the determination of what
it was that the genie could deliver them that would optimally satisfy
their every want and need. As can be easily expected,
one of the chief considerations of the family, as they stood in their
moth-eaten habiliments, was that of the pecuniary sort.
It would have been rather foolish of them to maintain their
dependency on the fickle favour of the El-Kaleefs, with
the precariously poised commission of Yasib from his well-fixed nobleman
employers affording its measly stipend that gave
them little in the way of sustenance; a minor miracle did it make in
itself for there to have been anything at all on the
dinner-table, whether the viands in question were the regular antepast
of chaat, or a dish even less substantial. Running
counter, however, to the seductively attainting allure of easy riches or,
at the barest of minimums, having their monetary
woes and its sequacious subsistence ills, effaced at a crack of the whip
of the benignant genie, was the grand factor of
their ideal though, in a wise crudely rudimental state of affairs.
After all, God had sustained the family satisfactorily,
the verity of which led Yasib off from the heady promises that had
inevitably surfaced with his heaven-sent trouvaille of
the lamp. Still, it did seem such a pity to put aside the plentitude of
blessings from God that assumed the form of the
voluminous genie bestriding the old terracotta lodge, which Yasib could
almost sense to be cringing in the face of the
immensity of size, and brilliancy of being, of the genie. According with
the inveterate clasp of dutifulness that had been long
ago finely wound about his great old heart, in the which, thrummed the
spirit valorous of a lion and the soul sublime of a
saint commingled, his obligations, in the twin arenas of work and
family, occupied the forefront of his consciousness, in
spite of the beguiling bewitchery posed of material cares so easily
empoisoning.
'Whence comes this irksome palaver wherein is superfluous
inconsequentiality? I can think of countless millions who would
think hardly a scruple of selling their own mothers, not that I brook
such unholy reprobacy, of course, for such a comely
commodity as I am, albeit that such invidiously dishonourable labels do
violence unto my noble stature. In any case, I would
be delighted to perform your designated department, whereby I may hamper
myself, of the accursed patina of fustiness that
has wrapped its insidious arms about my once-unsullied tempers, just as
verdigris has arisen to afflict the once-noble brass
of my host lamp, with its rank virescence. Aeons whole seem to have
passed me by, since I last tasted sweet glorious relief
from so profound a monotony as that which nigh on had me sheer swamped in
that aged lamp, and to worsen matters, my erewhile
master made, fore and aft, not what you would term a gentle lord. Driven of
the improbity that was his rapacious appetency
for the carnal pleasures of this life, that letch satyr facelessly
impelled me to procure for his sickening sake, a
ludicrous measure of fine goods, obsequent servitors, honest damosels,
sumptuous mansions, royal palatinates, vasty armies,
gold wedges, cattle chattels and more, if you will believe me, flagrantly
foul diseconomy of the licentious like. Thanks will I
give God, lavishly and forever, for His having tired of that scabby
fellow with his multiplicity of iniquities, and His
therefore having smitten him with a grievous complaint whereby he was
felled, in the dead of temulency, and in the midst of but
one of the priapic rouses that were standard venery for him, upon his
bed begrimed by base bacchanalia. Thereafter was I given
charge of the Lord of repairing unto the crabbed confines of the lamp,
until such time as He saw fit to endow my expansive merits,
upon a dead meritorious soul. Upon that score, your finding the lamp
whereof I am the essence was no serendipitous accident as you,
in all likelihood, thought it to be. My favours are the requital, in
part, of the Lord unto you, for your virtually perdurable
work unto Him over the course of your seemly life, eked out in some
undeniably straitened circumstances, whereat I would be
posting to make usance of my benefactions, for myself and my loved ones,
if I were you. Howbeit, adjudge you not that you have been
accorded free rein wherewith to indulge low worldly, and, with that,
probably sensual, diversions, wherewith the denizens of
the world, the rich and the poor, in equal measure find solace, in
ungodly seclusion from the rigorously salutary
necessaries of unsullied Christian living, for if you should see your
moral rectitude and spiritual fervour, bedimmed by the
vitiating taint of lusts wanton and corrupt, the end for you would be
worse than your apportioned penalty, had you never
known Christ the Lord, in the first instance. Give good heed unto the
contents of this my speech, my friend, and it shall,
unquestionably and unwaveringly, be well with you and your good family.
By the same token, bear well in mind, the ensample of
my former master, and the frightfully ghastly fate that befell him of
the Lord, attendant upon the dire depths of darksome
depravity whither he plunged,' boomed the genie, with not inconsiderable
a parcel of unstudied, irenic affability to a
sombrely nodding Yasib.
Chapter 6 - Yasib
'I esteem these your words, my brother in the Lord, for truer words were
never spoken. You need not be stirred of solicitude
in the matter of my faithfulness, with my troth at rest in the Lord, else
I would have credulously embraced you with your
canny gifts, the instant you made your presence known from out of
the murky depths of the lamp, being devoid of the
awareness, I now have of the troth of your being. Likewise, my life have
I dedicated in full unto the Lord, without there
being any chance of the spiritual wickedness of this evil world of being
able to nim me from His blessed bosom, for the
Lord preserves His saints, while the way of the wicked is cut off. Albeit
that I am most grateful to the good Lord for you,
His bequest to me and my family and friends, I would be reprehensibly
remiss were I to, all of a sudden, disregard my yoke of
duty to the El-Kaleefs, who have invested their confidence in me of
bringing forth their harvest in the crop fields. I am
furthermore content with my immediate lot as allotted unto me by the
Lord, but for the sake of my beloved mother, Thava,
and my dear children, Dar and Shari, I wish of you, my fine jinni, that
for evermore will these my familial ones be sconced
of the Lord,' said Yasib, with substance somewhat more than twain
penn’orth of care concerning whatever it was that
was to follow on the heels of the remarkable genie.
'Is that all that you want? I am inclined to think it very much doubtful
that that the sum of your hopes, conduces merely
thereto. Perhaps a mansion like that wherein the El-Kaleefs squeeze every
last drop of jollification from the lives given
them, would be more appealing unto you? How would you like it if I
preferred you to the plushly luxurious seat of a
palatine, which would better the immediately preceding proposal of mine,
as I have not yet heard of a palatine who lacked a
grand edifice for a dwellingplace? It would be rather less troublesome
for me if you were to, at the least, put forth a wish
in the way of concreteness, so that I may produce an incontrovertibly
satisfactory result for you. You and your family, have
had to bear such an ascetic manner of life, in this coequally plain place
so spartan you deem your home for effectively all
of our lives, so wherefore should you keep up this needless austerity,
when it is within the power of your hand to extricate
yourself therefrom?' quoth the genie, his melded quizzicality and
earnestness prominent in his coal-black eyes.
'Your ears heard my words aright, my friend. I, in all honesty, have to
concede that many a twelvemonth ago, when I was young
and fervid of blood and passions, such a prospect as raising a family,
under enforced abstemiousness, such as that wherewith we
here have led our lives, did not hold too magnetic an enticement for me.
Notwithstanding, the passage of time in which God
has wrought the graving of His goodly goodness and wonderful wisdom upon
my spirit has been the panacea that has pointed my humble self, away from
the foolish folly of my quondam liquorishly worldly ways, and towards the
compassing light of Christ my Lord, by whom I have,
most indisputably, overcome the world, hence will I be of good cheer,
regardless of how poor is my stratum in this life so
fugacious. The good Lord, just as He has catered to my every material
need in this world, will provide for my manifold
necessities now and forever, and the same, I trust, holds true for these
my beloved ones. Continually do I and will I, exalt
God in the heavens, for my absolute priority of a consideration, while I
have any measure of being, is the weal of the most
High, and whereas that has been assured with an infinitude of certainty,
I, like any father and son, yearn after only the
very best for my family, just as the Lord seeks only the good for His
children, which should shed light, for you Pob on the
rationale that behind my having made that wish, in particular. I take it
you will not be meeting with anything in the way of
difficulty appertaining to the resolution of my request?' returned
Yasib, a wry smile slightly skewing his frank features.
Upon receipt of this explication of Yasib, the genie wagged his head in
understanding, and bowed gravely before the family,
only saying, 'Your wish is my command,' whereat, to their astonishment,
his irradiated form melted away into a curtain of
xanthous motes, which, in turn, faded out of existence, as did the
flaming selvedge that had enshrined him in its aurific
ardency, leaving but a dim ebony twinkle, one which swelled rapidly,
until the interior of the hut was sootily swathed
within its stellate sweep of rank jettiness. The effect of the wish made
by Yasib, and the subsequent disappearance of the
genie, was as though the hut had been submerged in some unlovely enlacing
caldron of atramentous stew wherein the family now
stood enwheeled in an atmosphere of rank pitch-blackness. Just as
confusion tinged with panic was beginning to set in, and
they were beginning to all but question the startling methodology
employed by the genie in having their solicitation come
to the fullness of fruition, Yasib, Thava, Dar and Shari, felt the floor
of the hut quiver beneath their feet before the
juddering ground gave way entirely, or so it seemed to these four, after
which they found themselves tumbling, with frightening
speed, deep into the hellish heart of an apparently bottomless abyss.
Whiles they plummeted, heels over head, into the
fathomless depths of the Cimmerian chasm which had so suddenly swallowed
them whole, an insidious ripple, stippled with the
wonderfully warming touch of summer, washed over the free-falling family,
and enlaced them, in its soporific balminess,
amidst the benumbing blackness of the aphotic void, lulling them
gradually, into the blessed lethe of dreamless sleep.
Chapter 7 - Yasib
When Yasib stirred from his slumber, he found himself reclining neath a
wonderfully warm heap of flocculent fabrics, and
with his head resting upon a superlatively soft percale-suited bolster of
fine wool, on a comfortably massive bed draped with
a snow-white counterpane of seamless swanskin that shone superbly in the
splendent sunlight freely pouring into the room
through the Perpendicular windows set flush into the walls on either side
of the bed. Given that the last he had palpably
tasted of the world was a farouche fall into what had seemed to
be the very gullet of the earth with his similarly
helpless kindreds, the initial response of Yasib to the lavish luxury
wherein he found himself now ensconced, was one of
shocked mystification approximating that that had washed over him, upon
his having witnessed the phrenetic pirouettes of the
lamp, and the manifestation of its enigmatic tenant, whereupon the
fuddled fellow bestirred himself from the kingly bed, and
went to ravel out the mystery of his new surroundings, the excellence
whereof Yasib heeded aught, for he was careful of the
state of his family. These three he found to be soundly sleeping in
rooms adjacent to the one wherein he had stirred from
consciousness, and that he induced to be the cynosure, from its
commodiousness, of the storey on which they were. Leaving
his kindred to continue their restful repose, Yasib padded down spiral
after spiral of teak stairs until this apparently
interminable sequence touched a floor markedly distinct from those
through which he had previously passed, with its
iridescent marble flooring heavily veined in argent and gold, and
splendour of light flashing from nigh numberless columns of
rose-cut brilliants embedded into the walls. There, in that elegant
environment of effortless effulgency was Yasib, as he was
gazing agog about the jewel-studded screens, in absolute wonder at their
captivating coruscation, greeted of a whole party of
men and women, in dull muslin garb, who fell unto their knees, and began
bowing before him, as if he were a resplendent royal
sent of the empyrean gods.
'Oh my lord, in your most magnificent mercy, please excuse our tardiness
so irrefutably lymphatic of having failed to
deliver your sublimely scrumptious breakfast unto your chambers, ere
your waking. Never will such foolishly and deplorably
negligent inattentiveness to the instant needs of our exalted lord be
stood for in our ranks again, for we are your devoted
servants,' cried these people to a confounded Yasib, who was under the
impression that they were addressing some eximious
eidolon in sore need of perpetual pampering, or that they had been struck
with a fit of delirium and were hence babbling burbles of
buncombe.
'Many thanks give I you, in honour of this your kind speech, but I must
confess that I know not whereof you speak, with
reference to this lordship business, seeing as I am but a poor peasant,
and naught more. Prithee be so good as to tell me
what this lovely place is, and how it is that my family and I, landed
here, when I have not recollection, in aught, of the
event thereof,' said Yasib, with a polite bow and as friendly a smile as
he knew to put on, the rank incongruity of his
threadbare vestments in the midst of the orient gems and the sparkling
marble in no way tempering the frankness of his
speech, not withstanding that the individuals prostrate at his feet, were
rooted in a manner of vernility so exceptionally
inordinate in its sheer fulsomeness, that it could not be grudged of the
good man if he were then disposed to trow them
verging on being wood, as mad as a March hare, as it were.
'Oh our divine majesty the king, we must most apologize for any
discomfort discommoding incurred on your part, on account of our
unconscionable laxness in the execution of the duties set us, as your
privileged servitors who count it an honour ineffably
high of being able to render our service unto you, but do allow us to
assure you, that unruly and perverse as we are, as
accords with the failings connatural to the kidney of man, when we were
removed from our lands of birth, and placed under your
charge, which we then deemed imperious, we have, according with your
noble majesty, long since mended our ways and cloven
unto the path most gratifyingly virtuous of royal obedience to you, oh
lord. We beseech you, your highness, not to send us
out to war with the ferine fiends of the other kingdoms, lest we should
fall in battle to their ravenous maws, and fall
apart from our families pining for us, back home, who would then be
bereaved of us, and, more pertinently, you would then be
robbed of our loving devotion besides. Tease us not with this common
dress such as are rustics normally garbed in, so that
we will receive not more torment by the remembrance of our whilom
existence slaving away in the flaxen fields, but rather
accept our unfettered gratitude for having graciously borne us away from
the drudgery of such a fate to the blessed
contentment of life here in your service, oh our king,' droned the
facelessly fawning servants, whereupon a beauteous maid
imperially slim burst from their yet bowed number, and with a dazzling
speed Yasib thought to be quite inconceivable, fetched
for him, a fat sheepskin coat, which the slight slip of a girl
delicately draped about his slight build.
'My lord, I thought you might be feeling a touch chill in those thin and
tattered garments, thus pray take not to heart, my
insolence in having festinately cloaked your regal body in more
substantial wear. In view of your not having had breakfast,
and seeing as the scullions are yet working up a king-size feast of
sausages and bacon and eggs and pancakes in the palace
cookery, why do not I have a nice plate of piping-hot sweet suet pudding
served you? It is, after all, rather a nippy morn,'
plashed the dulcet tones of the comely lass with a graceful curtsey to
Yasib, who was, by this time, starting to think that
he had, at some indiscernible point over the last couple of days, taken
temporary leave of his senses, and so could contrive
but a wan smile and as many nutations as he felt were appropriate.
Chapter 8 - Yasib
Howbeit, as the day had only just dawned, so had the considerable
surprises for Yasib only just begun. Into the obstreperous
bijou-lighted concourse of opaline marble there suddenly streamed a
bewildering array of harlequin courtiers, all sprucely
costumed, the job of whom it was to outfit the king in his best
clothes, and at the head of this sartorial swarm, preened
the swaggering, corpulent peacock of the man who was seneschal unto the
king, and steward of the royal palace, whereof Yasib
was, from every indication, now undisputed master. This flamboyant, in
both his emblazonry and his ebulliency, character, who
was gorgeously arrayed in a flowing rainbowy robe of beautiful
kaleidoscopic shantung, promptly had Yasib, suet pudding still
in hand, shewn unto a sumptuously appointed apartment apart from the main
hall, before which proceeding, the gaudy peacock of
a flouncing fellow fustian said, his absurdly beaked nose sniffing the air as a
fixed bloodhound is wont to do, 'My king, the
sovereigns of the lands antagonistic to your own fair territory, are
scheduled of holding a war council with you, sometime
after noon, with a vicious view toward consolidating their own dominions
at your expense. However you aim of resolving this
thorny tangle of a situation is clear according to your discretion wise
and judgement sapiential, though my sentiments say
these lupine lords to be strictly out to cozen you out of your royal
realms in full, and to be hence worthy of the taste of
sharp steel in lieu of the nauseating flattery raised of a snakey silver
tongue employed by way of appeasement, with my stock
of trade, predicated in the smooth running of your monarchial matters,
whether they be mundane, as is your accoutring for
the day that lies ahead, or momentous, as the forthcoming gathering of
rulers, is probable to prove. All these years have I,
in my capacity of royal steward, by appointment of the king, to the king,
ensured that every facet of your life is polished
unto a royal shine, so as to have your unrivalled prowess on the
battlefield, and renowned sagacity off it, untouched by
trivialities such as the care of your children, and the sustentation of
your estate, the likes of which can show themselves
to be irksomely diverting, upon their unchecked cumulation. The artisans
will not be remiss in their responsibilities of
having you arrayed magnifically, as befits one of the grandest crowns the
whole world over, and I will have the menials
convey unto you your morning meal, which, or so the scullery assures me,
will best that suet pudding you seem to be
relishing, so men, hasten onwards and caparison the good king here in
as much finesse as is necessary, for he has a most
outstanding engagement to keep this afternoon.'
With that, Yasib was ushered, in company of his array of artificers, and
withal the wheedling blandishments stemming
therefrom, into the palatial suite, his florid chamberlain had had
specified for him, where were all manner of rich cloths,
fine apparel, animal skins, knitting tools, weaving equipment, crystal
mirrors, soft cushions and ravels of oddments. There
did the cunning workmasters of the clothing craft set to work on a
gauping Yasib, who made himself comfortable upon a pebble-leather
upholstered settee that was furnished with fleecy pillows, whiles the
tailors took his measurements, the milliners cut his
chevrette cap, the hatters fitted his horsehide hat, the furriers trimmed
his capeskin cloak, the fitters set the satin
flounces, the cloakmasters metered the moleskin of his burnous, the
glovers snipped the suede, the costumiers knitted his
investiture, the seamsters sewed his breechclout, the exorbitant modistes
de trop observed his rapid tiring facile, the
booters hammered out the soles, the cutters carved out his gaiters, and
the sartors inlaid his hacqueton. At the end of it
all, when the dress tradesmen were done with their work of outfitting
Yasib in habit every bit worthy of a king, the sometime
yeoman looked every last inch his new part of a royal. There he stood in his garmeson
before a body-length looking glass, scant believing
his eyes, for the nigh on unbridled wealth of fancy finery wherein, he
was now arrayed after the gaudy design of his
equivalently gaudy royal steward, and whereof he was afforded no mean
magnitude of pleasure purring. The plenary investment that the
callid costumiers had cannily contrived for Yasib their king, primarily
comprised a light tunic of brilliant baldachin embossed at the
breast, with the cambric device of a lion couchant set at its heart
with a single large sunstone, and sturdy sea-green
breeches of dungaree interwoven with golden-yellow silk, and supple boots
of levant-morocco. The airy aura of stately
nobility of this dress, decked as it was with subtle silver embellishment,
was superbly enhanced by a magnificent mantle of luxuriant wolfskin
trimmed with soft swansdown. Slung cleanly over his torso, and
running obliquely athwart his chest, from his
right shoulder to his left hip, was a glittering leathern baldric, gilded
in gold leaf finely overlaid that flopped faintly
about his sides as he walked, as if it were clamouring for a broad bill
wherewith it might find occupancy.
Chapter 9 - Yasib
Reclining upon his bed, once again, this time, with his hands locked
behind his head, which was propped up against the
shagreen padding of the bed board, and with one lanky leg swung over the
other, Yasib was doing his level best to crack the cipher
that was bedevilling him of his current circumstances wherein he was in
clear clover. Although the noontide was rapidly
approaching, he had found his mother and his children to be still
sound asleep as they had been a few hours
thitherto, thence, not desiring that they should have been roused in the
midst of their well-earned repose, he had padded
softly back to his sun-drenched quarters for a serious bout of earnest
excogitation. He had, upon his return from the
dress-fitting suite, prescinded an orison unto the Lord His God for
some sort of coherent clarification concerning the singularly
bizarre occurrences of the last two days, for he still retained
remembrance tenacious, in every astounding detail, of the fey
lamp and its likewise impenetrably unworldly occupant, whose descent
Yasib now suspected to be, if not phantom, then
diabolic, forasmuch as he, as a self-proclaimed genie, had worked
unaccountable mischief in the erewhile sedate lives of him
and his beloved kindred, that had bemired them, in some inexplicably
foreign though admittedly lustily lavish swamp of an
existence. The stalwart husbandman had his mundane duties, which, he
thought he was being unpardonably neglectful of discharging,
whereas he was there reposing in idle luxury, in the stead of grinding
away at his work in the demesne of the El-Kaleefs, held up as
having paramount importance within the lives of the divers parties who
were dependent on him in aught, whether it were his
aged mother or his exuberant children or peremptory taskmasters. He knew,
all too well, the unbreakable verity that
whatsoever action he selected of undertaking in life would see
impingement upon the very individuals the good Lord had
seen fit of placing in his life.
As things transpired, however, Yasib had need not of solicitude with
regard to his newest predicament, for the Lord had both
heard and answered his prayer. He was arising from the plump pillow
whereon he had seated himself when a tonitruant clap of
thunder tickled his tympanum, and a fulgurant flash of fork lightning
scalded his oculus, whereupon the chamber was rudely
obscured dead in a muffling mist enshrouding. As Yasib had somewhat
managed of hazarding, the sounding oddments of the
fuliginous fog that met his eyes at the dying of the brumous veil was
the selfsame one who had had him and his kindred
mesmerised in his russet dwelling. This otherworldly original had, on
his fuscous face, a massive mow which gaged the
streaming shafts of sunlight swimming from the windows, and into the
room, for its blaring blaze of resplendent refulgence.
'How do you do, my dear man? You look somewhat vexed of the iron fist of
inquietude, notwithstanding all that has here
been wrought for your sake, on my part. By the sempiternal splendour of
God, whence springs this state of events, Yasib?
You, and your family, and the felicity thereof, have been amply looked
after, on account of my manoeuvring within the plane
aethereal, and forsooth are you now royal ruler of all Arabia, complete
with the perquisites as is entailed of that exalted
office, such as the alpine alcazar I have contrived for you that trumps
tremendously as much as the fine folly of the
El-Kaleefs for splendrousness most excellent! Whereas you now stand as
undisputed king over the territories of Arabia, your
mother and offspring are also royals, thus wherefrom does this
disturbing disquiet of yours, I spy from the frown that so
creases your face, proceed? Are they not now taken care of, of the Lord,
just as you elicited, by way of request of me? Do you
have yourself familiar with the fact of the goodness of the Lord, that He
is able to make all grace abound toward you; that
you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every
good work, being enriched in every thing to all
bountifulness, which causes through us thanksgiving to God, for the
administration of this service not only supplies the want
of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God. The
wherefore straddling the rear of my prolonged absence
from your presence, revolves round the taxing drain upon so much as
redoubted resources called for of the downright amplitude of
the wish you made of me, and the fulfillment thereof,' expatiated the
genie of the lamp, in the rippling reboation engendered of
the royal rumble raised of his sounding speaking.
Chapter 10 - Yasib
The edge of the discontent that had been chafing Yasib ever since his
waking in the lavish surrounds of his royal
chambers had been actively assuaged by the lenitive touch of the sweetly
sound Scripture that had sprouted from the carnation
lips of the genie. Once again have your words touched the depths of this
my soul, albeit that I was most highly-pressed of
bearing peradventure anent the soothfast nature of your being by your
theretofore baffling disappearance, which, I must say,
fairly confounded this middling mind of mine but I now see to have been
unavoidably enforced. The mind, after all, does tend
of playing troubling tricks, when umbrageous uncertainty obtruncating obumbrates
thought and the lucidity thereof that are so fundamental
to sound living, but indeed is it wonderful, how the great God, the God
of heaven Himself, gives gratifying answer most
timely to the prayer of His saints, if haply He does impute such lofty
label as that unto me. It presses me to say, though,
that this monumental manner of being king, not to say the sheer scale of
territoriality over which my crown rests, is no
trifling thing wherewith to be toyed, or at least no more than is mighty
Arabia, I have not the nebular wisdom of sapient
Solomon wherewithal to judiciously govern any extent of terrain, to say
nothing of so vast a sweep of the Arabian ambit in
full, therefore is it hard unto me to conceive just how it is that the
Lord could have chosen to lade such mighty
responsibility unto my weary bosom. That is not to provide that my
thankfulness for my lot, does not abound at present,
particularly in taken view of your having nobly run to such lengths, just
for the beggarly behoof of me and my humble family,
for no words exist that suffice in conveying in full measure the flush
gratitude that throbs within my heart unto God and unto
you, of having seen fit to bathe us in so plenteous a harvest of
blessing. God, in His incommensurable grace, has, of
course, proved Himself a perpetual fountainhead of all things for us, in
His deathlessly liberal provision of our daily
bread and the roof over our heads, albeit that, at the present moment, He
has opted to make manifest His unchangeably
deathless love for us, in a parcel altered fashion, after which the
nations of this world, and the peoples that populate
them singlemindedly seek unto their own abominable calamitous undoing.
Speaking on the subject of ponderable ruin, I am
reminded of my courting the specious sentiment of the care of your
very being being predicated upon diablerie most
devilish, with the diabolical deviltry thereof dissembled beneath a
meretricious carapace of calm Christian cheer and
charity, assumed to seduce the unwary on to their destruction in the
abysmal depths of covetousness, having been regrettably
neglectful in holding fast to the sooth that though demons of
darkness do sometimes appear as do angels of light, he
who confesses Christ, that He is come in the flesh, is come of God, and
most sincerely did you exalt the Lord, when the
opportunity of your so doing, fell unto you. Returning to considerations
of greater practicality, wherewithal will my
masters, the El-Kaleefs, have their outlying tracts of farmland, tilled,
and crop harvest, raised, whereas I am no longer in aught
position to be managing their matters agronomic for them? While I am
theoretically able to have a lavender-liveried court
attendant of mine assigned thereunto, it pricks my conscience to be
maneuvering living beings, my fellow human beings,
about like pawn pieces upon a common chessboard, and yet am I impelled to
remain here at the palace to discharge my duties of
king, though naught is my mastery of kingcraft, and familiar am I most
definitely not in matters military, the hard realities
whereof surely auguring ill for Arabia, notably in light of its being
locked onto such a track as will inevitably steer it
unto other, belligerent, empires, or so does my worthy major-domo
appraise me of such heady affairs as relate thereto. Why
do not we let our Lord the LORD, have the last word on this knotty
business of kingship? As the Almighty has provided, a wise
king scatters the wicked and brings the wheel over them, and mercy and
truth preserve the king: and his throne is upheld by
mercy; albeit that I can clearly comprehend the eternal verities of
punishment to the iniquitous, and the sounding
significancy of such holy virtues as are mercy and truth, whence am I to lay
hold on such power in the way of strength and
sagacity, as may enable me of deporting myself with at least a modicum
of decency in the rarefied role of king? It would
behove you to bear in remembrance, my original and, I trow, true status
as a simple swain from the opening of the matrix
unto my return to my long home, and thus my sore constrained aptitude
concerning the high office for which, you surely mistook
me, for some other, perchance more illustrious and well-girded,
individual, and, with that, the wish I made at the outset, which
was somewhat more modest than all this lofty luxury wherein I find
myself to be now ensconced. The sum of my hopes for myself
and my familial ones, is simply for us to be looked after of the Lord
for evermore, and therewithal will my heart have
grounding in blissful contentment, henceforward forever, even away far
from every trace of this wracking bravery I see to be ringing
me,' went the commendations of Yasib to the genie, who thereupon clapped
his meaty hands, that were about as large as
pregnant puncheons, and emitted a few hoots of good-natured laughter, all
in just the latest of umpty bursts of such mirthful
merriness as mere made his happy hallmark.
'It would be sore remiss, risible even, of me, were I to skip over
reminding you that you rest in ownership of a habit
rather charming of giving God the glory, albeit you should not be
carrying this propensity on overmuch. While you should be
continually abounding in high praise unto the Lord God, you would also be
well-advised of procuring obtention of a grander appreciation of
the Protean gifts goodly wherewith He has plentitudinously rained
blessings beauteous unto you. Wherefore should you harbour
in your heart peradventure with regard to your fitness unto your
celestially ordained office of sovereign, whereas God has
already endued you, with every good thing? Fear not, my friend, for the
heart of the king, is in the hand of the LORD, as the
rivers of water, He turns it whithersoever He will. Has the touchstone
that was David the king slipped from your memory? Can
you bring to bear, the wise wise wherein the Lord plucked this David,
from the obscurity of the sheepfold, and thereafter
raised him to his high places reigning over Israel? When all is said and
done, there is nothing that is impossible with God,
though the substance of His strength will utterly flummox mere mortal
men, thus let your faith rest in Him, at all times.
Whereas God has chosen to endue you with so lofty label as that which
you now see yoked unto you, it presses incumbent upon
your shoulders, just as it was with David, to live up to your commanding
calling, and greaten the goodly grasp of the good
Lord, over the sin-soaked lands of Arabia. You are, I trow, certainly
cognizant of the rationale behind the elevation of
David unto the kingship of Israel, of the Lord, which He executed in
refusal of the ostensibly more eligible candidates for
the throne, his very elder brothers, all seven of them, and
this wherefore is simply that the LORD sees not as man
sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the
heart. Hearken you unto the manner wherein the
LORD so rejected Eliab, in spite of his countenance or the height of his
stature, in favour of David, the youth of the latter,
notwithstanding, and you will spy nigh eerie echoes thereof in how God my
Lord has passed over the good-time libertines that
are the El-Kaleefs, and sought succour, in the rule of Arabia, in none
other than you. Should you diligently seek Him, He
will, most assuredly, be found of you, but should you have Him forsaken,
in egregious contravention of His holy statute,
indeed will He betake Himself from you, therefore take you the path
former and not latter. As according to the prayer of
Hannah, mother to the prophet Samuel, my heart rejoices in the LORD, mine
horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged
over my enemies; because I rejoice in your salvation. There is none
beside you: neither is there any rock like our God. Talk
no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth:
for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by Him
actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that
stumbled are girded with strength. They
that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were
hungry ceased: so that the barren has born seven; and
she that has many children is waxed feeble. The LORD kills, and makes
alive: He brings down to the grave, and brings up. The
LORD makes poor, and make rich: He brings low and lifts high. He raises
the poor out of the dust, and lifts
the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them
inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the
earth are of the LORD, and He has set the world upon them. He will keep
the feet of the saints, and the wicked shall be
silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail. The adversaries
of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; out of
heaven shall He thunder upon them: the LORD shall judge the ends of the
earth; and He shall give strength unto His king, and
exalt the horn of His anointed. Is this convincing enow for you, Yasib?
Albeit that it is sooth that not every man can be a
king, not in this time, at least, every man in God and Christ can lead a
kingly life in His noble dedication to fearing the
LORD, and keeping His commandments, to love Him with all the heart, and
with all the understanding, and with all the soul,
and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, for this
is the whole duty of man, and by such should the
lives of men be ordered, with alacrity of spirit, whether they be kings
or knaves,' held Pob forth, in his pervasive paean
plangent to the Lord, by way of emblazonment of the latter.
Chapter 11 - Yasib
Yasib, upon receipt of the resounding return of the genie wherein were
adduced of the latter salient Scriptural references
that had already been inscribed into the plate of his consciousness for
so long a time, drew in a deep breath, and expelled
it in an equally deep sigh, though his countenance was well-graced with
a modest mow as he did so, and he kept soberly
nodding to himself, 'My friend the genie, certes are you in the right,
and am I in the wrong. Thereof much am I aware, as
pellucidly have you debunked the fallacy of my notions. What matters it
if I am enwheeled within trumpery or shabbiness, so long
as I maintain my ways before the Lord my God? The solitary goal in life
we have it upon us to be fixed upon is service
in perfection to the undeviatingly impassible Lord who excels all, and if
He has, in His saving grace, decreed that I may
render such strength as I have, in His grand machinery that outstands all
other considerations, by means of this imperial
throne that He has most marvellously gifted me with, so be it then, the
seeming slenderness of my parts, not withstanding. I,
like the departed David of Israel overriding all the heathen, will be
doughtily strong on the plains of war, to win high
honour unto the forcible and immane Lord, and I, like the sepulchred
Solomon of Israel, will be astutely wise on my throne,
to deliver sound judgment to my people, that they might know the ways
wondrous of the just and sapiential God, to whom
power plenary belongs. Another overarching necessitude that begs mine
notice is the shocking amplitude of the seamy scum
that is sin, with its insidious insinuations, preponderant in every
stratum and station of our proud Arab society wherein
should freely flow the bonny brooks of goodness and love, and not the
cesspools of wretched wickedness and bitter hatred we
see today to be the devilish distempers straddling every conceivable
facet of the human existence, in the infectious taint of
its infernal touch. To simplify things, land barons, rapacious and high
off the hog, live off the fat of the land, in their
corybantic revellings with demoiselles and striplings and wine and meat,
whilst their abject menials are left with the labour
of the land, and as to the poor, wot you not that the chief portion
thereof last, channel what substance, their lascivious
lords see fit of casting as scraps to them, from their banqueting
tables, into the sating of their own unholy lusts? Be not
touched of aught pangs of dismay at this evil epidemic, for the LORD
shall reward the doer of evil according to his
wickedness. As such, irrespective of how fricasseed the well-fixed
masters are, in their greed and selfishness and foulness
and wantonness, all whereof they drink in measure copious, in hoarding
their commodious coffers for their own selves, and
cozening their gaunt grooms of their fair share, and regardless of how
immoderately the less well-off indulge their
profusion of vile deviltry in callous disregard for the nibbling need of
the truly downtrodden that have nary a coin to
their names, taking their maidens for savoury strumpets, dehorting
dissolutely in the streets, against the supposed abuses of the
powers-that-be, whiles they themselves stand as the epitome of
whorishness, whereas they offer tribute to all manner of
false gods instead of the Highest, we in the Lord God most High, have it
irremissibly upon us to stay steadfast in Him,
unwaveringly executing His inerrant will on His behalf, in despite of the darksome
depravity raging, as does a brimming pot of ointment
boiling about us, for we wot that in His own good time, and in
accordance with His unfathomably divine will that overpasses
the polar bournes of heaven and earth, He will bring about the full
measure of His excellent working in this iniquity-laden
world, and wholly gratify the sinners thereof for their most unchristian
misdeeds, which, He, without the dimmest doubt,
shrives not. In this is it true that the robbery of the wicked shall
destroy them; because they refuse to do judgment; for
there shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle of the wicked shall
be put out. We would fare fine to remember too that
albeit that the rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to
the lender, he that has a bountiful eye shall be
blessed; for he gives of his bread to the poor. After all, the righteous
give and spare not, and he that follows after
righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness, and honour, while the
great God that formed all things both rewards the
fool, and rewards transgressors. As king over all Arabia, I will order my
kingship according to the touchstone that the way
of the LORD is strength to the upright: but destruction shall be the
workers of iniquity. There is gold, and a multitude of
rubies: but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel, and I know this
day that a king that sits in the throne of judgment
scatters away all evil with his eyes; a wise king scatters the wicked,
and brings the wheel over them. Mercy and truth
preserve the king: and his throne is upheld by mercy, and surely shall
goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Let the LORD be
magnified, which has pleasure in the prosperity of His
servant, and my tongue shall speak of His righteousness and of His praise
all the day long, oh Lord, for verily has God heard
me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, which has
not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me,' '
rhapsodized the orotund oratory, in reply to the gentle gauntlet cast
him of the cosmic genie, of Yasib, who was now
readying himself, for the rapidly imminent assembly of rulers, to the
intent that he might not be unstuck therein. Howbeit,
he had only just found himself to be one of their heady number!
'Time out of mind, have the eyes of the LORD been in every place,
beholding the evil and the good, and the LORD is far from
the wicked: but He hears the prayer of the righteous, which easily
explicates your prime place in the conclave of chiefs
about to be convened, whereto you will presently betake yourself. Believe
you this, that the fear of the LORD tends to life:
and he that has it shall abide satisfied; he shall not be visited with
evil? To echo the sentiments that you have just
sounded unto me, blessings are upon the head of the just: but violence
covers the mouth of the wicked; the memory of the just
is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot; the LORD will not
suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but He casts
away the substance of the wicked; evil pursues sinners: but to the
righteous shall good be repaid; the wicked is driven away
in his wickedness: but the righteous has hope in his death; righteousness
keeps he that is upright in the way: but wickedness
overthrows the sinner; the light of the righteous rejoices: but the lamp
of the wicked shall be put out; the fear of the LORD
prolongs days: but the years of the wicked shall be shortened; the hope
of the righteous shall be gladness: but the
expectation of the wicked shall perish, lest the shining path of the
LORD, and the fear thereof, be yet not glorious enow for
you, and the caliginous calamity of the wicked, be yet not odious enow to
you. Attend your heart and mind unto the verity
that the good Lord has lifted you unto your lofty seat, on account of
your faith and works and obedience and spirit and
longsuffering and charity and love and patience and heart and humility,
and verily does the righteous eat to the satisfying
of his soul: but the belly of the wicked want, and whoso walks uprightly
be saved: but he that is perverse in his ways fall
at once. Blessings are the preserve of the righteous man but the evil man
shall have curses for his heritage, for the path of
the just is as the shining light, that shines more and more unto the
perfect day but the way of the wicked is as darkness:
they know not at what they stumble. Hark you well, as you prepare the
office of your reign, to the irrefragable words of the
LORD, as regards the abstruse art of kingcraft, now that you have been
kinged. The king by judgment establishes the land: but
he that receives gifts overthrows it, for as a roaring lion, and a
ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over the poor people;
the prince that wants understanding is also a great oppressor: but he
that hates covetousness shall prolong his days. If a
ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked, but fear you not, for
the king that faithfully judges the poor, his
throne shall be established for ever, and withal the rod and reproof give
wisdom, as does the Lord by His perfect judgement.
Surely you can see, of the prevenient illustrations I have here
furnished, that in store with the throne comes profound
capacity to work no small degree of both good and evil, benevolence and
malevolence alike, in the lives of the ordinary
people, which is wherefore the Lord has trusted this seat of king unto
you. Arabia has, for so long, been ruthlessly riven
of internecion intermeddling with the welfare of the denizens thereof,
and thereby is it crystal-clear that the petty
palatines who have thus far had the run of the discrete Arabian realms
are in no way fit of knitting these lands, into the
neat tissue of seamless unity that the proud tradition of grand Arabia,
urges it of being. Apropos, just to clear away some
of your lingering confusion over your current circumstances as respects
your previous situation, whiles you and your kindreds
are yet able to cling unto your prevenient remembrances of your past
lives, the rest of the world, to all intents and
purposes, see you as being Yasib the Benevolent, absolute sovereign of
all Arabia and the vessels that depend therefrom, who
achieved his present stranglehold over the Arabian peninsula in its
entirety in the Great Arabian Wars some twenty years
prior wherein he rode the crest of his wave of strength supreme and
wisdom wonderful to quench the combined challenge posed
of the thitherto feverishly feuding warlords then bestriding the divers
palatinates. As such, you have nought to do but to
continue in the rule of Arabia whereto the people, now your people, have
accustomed themselves, for the Lord has already
laid the fear of you, and the subservience stemming therefrom, in all
regions hereabout, or, at least, where treads the Arab,
therefore make you sure to praise the LORD, hereafter forevermore. Praise
you the LORD. Blessed is the man that fears the
LORD, that delights greatly in His commandments; his seed shall be mighty
upon the earth: the generation of the upright shall
be blessed; wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his
righteousness endures for ever. Praise you the LORD. Praise, oh
you servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD. Blessed be the
name of the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.
From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same is the name of
the LORD to be praised. The LORD is high above all
nations, and His glory above the heaven. Who is like unto the LORD our
God, who dwells on high, who humbles himself to behold
the things that are in the heaven, and in the earth! He raises the poor
out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the
dunghill; that He may set them with princes, even with the princes of His
people. He makes the barren woman to keep house,
and to be a joyful mother of children. You are blessed of the LORD which
made heaven and earth. You that fear the LORD, trust
in the LORD; he is their help and their shield, and we will bless the
LORD from this time forth and for evermore. Praise the
LORD,' rolled the thunder terrific of the speech doxological of the
genie, whereat his ambient wreath of slate-streaked
xanthous fire bourgeoned in a whirling dance until it, fanning steadily
inwards, seemed to touch coalescence with the
simultaneously dissolving visage of the genie, and the resultant sheet of
incandescence indescribable was suddenly sucked
with a wicked whoosh, into the verdigris-crusted bronze lamp of Yasib,
that seemed to him to have, unbeknownst to him,
materialised at his feet, almost as though it had been worked of some
show discovered of prosaic prestidigitation.
Chapter 12 - Yasib
The good genie had taken his leave, perhaps for a snatch of repose in his
boxy quarters in the lamp, because of the sapping
strain of his having filled the wish made of Yasib, but not without
having left the new king some salient sagely advice that
would stand him in good stead for the upcoming royal conference that
was likely to prove pivotal to continued security of
his people, anent not but rulership but also life. Springing from the
bed, with a sudden surge of dancing determination,
Yasib tugged on his glossy leather boots, and made his swift way down to
the fulgid hall of opaline marble and relucent
jewels wherein he had been met of the blandiloquous varlets and his
snooty chamberlain only a few hours prior, and where
he was now addressed by an impressive party of distinguished warriors
gorgeously arrayed all in cloth of gold, who bore
grave expressions upon their time-worn faces. In stoical tones that
accorded with the gravity written into their countenances,
they apprised Yasib of the potentially precarious imbroglio that awaited
them in the assembly of monarchs whereof, as they
had appraised their sole threat pertinent, as things stood, was king
Rymar of the wintry lands lying to the north of the
austral Arabian peninsula. For an interminable number of years, and
sequence of hostile campaigns, had that infamous marauder
of a conquistador, spoiled the lands that had had the misfortune of
having had their compass overlap with the absolute
ambition of that Ramboesque king. This Rymar was anticipated to make his
appearance at the palace of Yasib, at the head of
the procession of northern rulers whom he had dethroned but in name, and
had permitted to keep their crowns
superficially, though he had had the mastery of them, since they had
pledged him their eternal devotion, as his deferential
lieges so long as he held to life upon the earth.
Of all the lands which punctuated the otherwise seamless sheet of sea
that engirdled the globe, as such, the upper sphere was
the playground of the infamous king Rymar, and the after sphere, whereof
Arabia lay as crown chersonese, was the preserve of
king Yasib, with the intervening and ancillary realms and isles, if not
desolate of habitant then under the thumb of
insignificant kingpins after the sort of tribal chiefs or waspish
warlords, and within this light, ineluctable was it,
notably on account of the notoriously ensanguined leanings of Rymar
towards ever greater dominion, that the king of the
north, and the king of the south, would one day join battle, to resolve
wherein side lay tilted the balance of power, which
was now finely poised in the aforementioned manner, of the nations. Haply
the sole element of storing surprise in all of
this, was the apparent tardiness of Rymar, in attempting of actualising
his acquisitive ambitions apropos the domains of
Yasib, his diametric reverse in disposition, both of temper and tendency,
but the shrewd old warrior-king had been
assiduously cementing his frosty grip on his vanquished lands, not having
been content to rest on his laurels, irrespective of
how impressive they might have seemed, to quash all plausible
perils unto his hegemony that lurked therein, and also
had he been hard at work preparatory to launch the most potent
attack possible, upon the Arabian principalities, over
which Yasib was unchallenged potentate, though he had nought of the
seven rebarbative rapscallions of giants that Yasib had
for a consolidatory force.
It was the louring threat presented of these mastodonic mammoths, and not
the soldiery in armature under the command of the
crafty capuchin that was Rymar that compelled the stirred solicitude of
the generals now briefing Yasib of the weighty
embroilment the relentless machinations of Rymar had engendered unto
all of Arabia, for these rascally rogues were entirely
capable of traversing the great main which severed the empire of their
pernicious paymaster from the rugged bowl of land
wherein bosom, lay the dusty desert domains of Yasib, in a few great
swimming strokes, whereupon they would, of a certain,
sheer annihilate not simply the batteries of pygmaean, or at least thus
was the appearance of all humans in their hugeous
perception, fighters that formed the guard of Arabia but also everything
that was indwelled with the spirit of life, from the
people tumultuously trooping the cities, to the brute beasts weltering
about in the fields, and rase all constructions withal,
to the very grit of the ground. Wherewithal would Yasib find success in
countering his Pentagonian foes, and winning the weal
of not only his beloved Arabia but furthermore every last creature
entoiled in the thraldom exercised of Rymar, with nary a ripple
of rue, to trouble his terrible tyranny? The solution manifestly lay
within none other than Pob the benevolent genie, and the
blessed boon of his blithesome beneficence, but before he could retire
from their presence to seek canny counsel of that
tremendous personage, his grim generals hurried him, away to the Chamber
of War, for meeting in conference with the massed kings,
for the hour had already arrived for the convocation thereof.
Chapter 13 - Yasib
The Chamber of War, as did every compartment of the palace whereof Yasib
was lord, proved to be an exemplification of easy
elegance and overwhelming opulence, with its tremendous table of polished
mahogany pleasingly inlaid in intricate ivory work,
solid yet cozy chairs of fair maple, crystal chandeliers wherefrom
clusters of fire opals and hazy hyalites bathed the
cavernous confines of the vaulted chamber in their mellow glow, and
milky marmoreal floor of pristine pearl that captured the
carnelian luminance of the glinting gemstones, ere returning the lurid
light, in gossamery crowns of rutilous splendour,
which transfixed the attentions of the cupidinous king Rymar, who stood
to immediate attention, and snapped off a brisk
salute to Yasib, upon the entry of the latter into the lavish hall, as
did his attendant army of lesser lords. These
individuals, as it seemed to a nigh disbelieving Yasib, encapsulated
every hue of humanity, as, from the grossly
gorbellied unto the brawnily beefy unto the grimly gaunt, were all
conceivable bodily frames represented at the assemblage of
highborn royals who stood before him, in craftily counterfeited courtesy.
In truth, as his military men had gone to great pains
of having forewarned him, these reptant reptilians, for such did their
ferally anguine natures proclaim them to be, had but
only fell murder in their hellish hearts, notwithstanding, and this
cunning congress of bloodthirsty baboons were, but of
course, merely dissembling the silky-sleek show of heartiness affected wherein
they made their manners unto their caparisoned host.
Rymar and his attendant body of grandees, had made the royal abode of
Yasib, after a gruelling voyage across the briny deep,
and a similarly punishing trek on horseback over the parched plains that
stretched out the sunkissed Arabian deserts, and had
hence been treated to a superbly sumptuous smorgasbord of soft spiced
meats, tenderly tasty greens, creamy chocolates,
sinfully rich poundcakes, sweetly savorous brewed ale, crisp croissants,
fragrant fried fish, succulent smoked salmon,
soothingly saccharine sorbet, fatteningly filling eggnog, stewed cherry
blossoms, gloriously creamy cheesecakes, decadent
fruitcakes, oven-hot pumpernickel bread, punchy pitted prunes, redolent
raisins, glazed lemon-meringue pies topped with
whipped cream, steamed sweet potatoes splashed with generous gouts of
mayonnaise mingled with horseradish piquant, baked
potatoes wherein nestled diced cubes of cured ham, laminar flake
pastries, perfumy puff pastries, delightful custard-cream
puffs, buckwheat pancakes slathered with liberal dollops of maple syrup,
buttered barley bannocks, sugar-dredged scones,
chunkily zesty Lancashire hotpot, flavorous borscht wherein sank
submerged chopped crescents of sanguine tomatoes,
exhilaratingly rich raw yoghourt milky of strawberry and raspberry and
blueberry filling, sweet steaming peeled bananas
crowned of riffled balls of chocolate-mint ice-cream, ice-cream sundaes
adorned with peppery choice nuts, frosted jelly and
chocolate, doughnuts, satisfying crusted crullers, breathtakingly massive
boiled fresh flounder smeared in hollandaise sauce,
smackingly salt variety meats, caramel-perfused hot chocolate, cooling
alpine glacier mints, caramel and chocolate-coated
almond and walnut and peanut and hazelnut sweetmeats, fruity gum drops,
scrambled omelets bemingled with sliced onions and
ham and capsicums, organic goat milk that had the faint relish of
vanilla, sizzlingly succulent squid wheels enclosed in fried
flour batter, musky dusky truffles, exotic caviare bedaubed in exotic
harissa, club sandwiches of sourdough bread and coddled eggs
and crispy bacon and leavy lettuce, strawberry bonbons, boiled finnan
hadie, saporous cream soup wherein swam onions and
leeks, dainty dumplings Levantine wherein rested crunchy sweet chestnuts,
and gustable sweet pork which melted in the mouth,
manna-like wafers between which, sat sandwiched alternate laminae of
vanilla and chocolate, braised beancurd blocks with
swarth mushrooms, the works whereof draped in top soybean gravy, corneous
horehound candy, juicily nectareous hawflake rolls,
smooth square rice noodles in spicily sapid soup inspired by that of the
Orient, codfish and potato wedges, and, trow it
true or not, an absolutely marvellous myriad of many other delightful
delicacies, all of which, were catered unto the
famished blue bloods, upon sunnily sheenful silverware salvers, which
forsooth, to the skies even, beamily became the
screamingly surpassing spread of culinary craft signal, served atop their
sleek sheet surfaces, by the army of servitial
waiters whose charge it was, of the hand of the flush fat fellow who
stood as steward to Yasib, to regale the patrician visitants
to the palace, with sating services of eminently esculent festal board.
Stuffed, nay, overgorged with the nigh on innumerable
servings of fancy food that had cataracted as much as his travel-whetted
appetency, the royally replete Rymar came capering forth
to enfold his imperial similitude Yasib in a smothering though sham
hug, ere personally escorting him, to the plush giant
armchair holding court, at the head of the buffed wood table running
along the middle of the palatial chamber of state
whereat he took his own seat, directly below that whereon Yasib now sat
in enviable coziness, and his adjunct pantheon of
princes were left to seat their own serene selves.
Chapter 14 - Yasib
'Oh my royal lord, Yasib, prithee allow me of conveying the collective
gratitude of me and the noble friends of mine you sight
here, at this your most pretty prevenancy in plying us with so
wonderfully filling and ambrosial a feast, one
unequivocally fit for the gentlest of kings, by way of regalement
wherewith to slake the ravenously gnawing worm of our hunger
so sore of abiding, after our arduous quest perforce to hold council with you,
in regard to certain matters which you would find
it hard of gainsaying, compel our instant attention, so that we might,
perchance of our sum force of arms, remedy the present
state of affairs, anon. Now as known regal ruler of an empire vast over
which you stand as the quintessence of puissance, as I
am, it makes your divine devoir, to make fast the satisfactory
wellbeing of the cherished citizens in your care, by any
means necessary, inclusive of exterminating any menace as may arise to
imperil the precious lives of the dear denizens peopling
your fair domains. As might have been borne unto your ears, the
preeminence I now enjoy over the nations in my orb of the
globe was won almost totally on the peerless might of the mountainous
dinotheres whom I listed into my service, and the assistance
of whom I have been undeniably and unbelievably fortunate to have obtained,
but of late, these very gigantic giants who gave unto
me such ascendancy as you now see, have got to be intolerably restive,
they being of naturally lickerish dispositions, and
in their wickedly wanton wants have they brazenly intimated unto me,
that unless I peacefully handed over my territories
into their grasping grip, they would wrestle my dominions away from me,
by hook or by crook, which, it would be safe to
assume, means that they have been plotting to ascend my throne and unseat
me therefrom, by dint of their monumental mightiness
whereto no mere man can stand up. What may be unsettling for you is that
these execrably egregious elephantine egocentrics
also have their greedy eyes firmly fastened upon your worthy lands of
noble Arabia, for it seems that the offered aspect of but a
moiety of the offerings exhibited of the world has served simply to
strop their insatiable wantonness, in the stead of appeasing
it, and I ween that not only would these covetous colossuses cast us off
our royal seats, and assume our kingly mantles, but
they would too take care especial in saving all of our treasures, and
eradicating every last tinct of humanity from the globe,
by reason of we humans having superseded their gigantean grandsires, as
masters of the earth and, if I have my way, our
neighbouring planets, in the fog of futurity. As such, preemptive
measures demand of being put in place, so as to utterly
undermine, in aught, whatsoever flagitious felony as may be presently
astir within the raven hearts of the fell ogres whom I
am so very ashamed to have in my pay, and there is where you make ingress
into the equation, as I fancy you to be in hold of
such resources as I would, most surely, find of being profitable within
aught impending conflict withal these seven jaundiced
juggernauts of mine, who will have rest not until their revoltingly
bitter jealousy of our admittedly enviable plenipotence,
is assuaged by the very destruction of us and all that we hold dear. My
master, have you been blessed of the treasure that is
family? I, for one, do, and I say unto you, that never will I abide the
shadow of death to veil my loved ones in its
umbrageous pall, no matter whence the root thereof stems, be it from
treasonous trollops or crooked courtiers or burly burgraves or measly mongrels
or grasping generals or pernicious princekins or dastardly dukes or
contentious counts or pulchritudinous princesses or bloodstained
blackguards or narcistic nobles or tremulentive tyrants or mincing
major-domos or brassy barons or abominable archdukes or lascivious
landgraves or jocose jesters or miserly magnificoes or envenomed
earls or antipathous aristocrats or braggart bodyguards or morbid
margraves or gruesome gorgons or grotesque gryphons, or gross giants,
this last in particular!' oozed the unctuous opening address of king
Rymar.
Yasib, who had been thoughtfully listening to his caducous counterpart
all this time, now sucked on a sugared sweetmeat, for
all of a few minutes, clearly heedless of the piercing pairs of gimleteyes ferine fixed upon his feeble frame in addle
antipathy as he deliberated his return, which, at the stated length,
went, 'My lord, king Rymar, let me express how unqualified
a pleasure it is for me to have so gentle and so grand a sovereign as
you are, here in my humble hall, for never have I had the
honour of being able to entertain you and your lordly consorts, within
the confines of my home. It warms my spirit too to
hark unto your avowed appreciation of the brave banquet, my good grooms
had prepared for you, for my crown charge is to pander
unto the necessitude of you, my esteemed guests, as best as I can. As
respects the more cumbrous issues that you put forth to
me, anent the grabby giants who you say are on the brink of terminating
all in the way of mortal life, if there were forsooth
a threat pregnant posed of these tremendous fellows, then would there be
punitive steps impelled of us of taking to prevene their onslaught,
but nonetheless are we bound to ascertain the soothfast beast of this
threat thus-called, ere we act in punishing precipitancy,
when aught shade of trouble, looms imminent. To cut to the core of the
matter, how exactly may I render assistance behooveful unto you?
It is not as if I have levied, in my charge, powerful Pyrenean
protectors, as you do, and whatsoever conventional forces as
safeguard my Arabia from the incursions of would-be invaders, even so do
you have in kind. If you, with as much as your
summed might, lack the wherewithal wherewithal to repulse such formidable
foes as these gingery giants, then wherefore trow
you, that my puny power can avail in aught, in impedance additory, of
their jarring juice?'
Chapter 15 - Yasib
'In your quality of king, of a truth, must it be indeed that you are
fervidly jealous of your crown and its attendant
advantages, and thus do I harbour not any in the way of peradventure
pertaining your fine faculties of wisdom and war, and
your aptitude of exercising all thereof if need be, and, my lord, you may
rest assured that such need as that, blooming be!
Patently were my giants not about to seize my dominions, right there and
then, for the notion thereof had been but inchoate,
but surely you cannot be asking me and these my loyal lieges to return
unto our kingdoms, with the sinister spectre of
dawning doom, hanging pendant over us and our kindreds and our peoples
like the sword of Damocles! No, never will it be
quoth of Rymar that he permitted the vile villainy of certain
forthputing fiends, their Atlantean proportions notwithstanding, to
wreak their ignoble designs, upon this glorious God-given globe, or, at
the merest minimum, not without a hardy battle or
twain, for I am, after all, only human, and can but do my utmost,
woefully wanting as that may be. Albeit that you speak but truth
in that your fighters are mere men, as are my own troops, it would behove
me to no inconsiderable an extent to have them
on my side, as I endeavour of extinguishing the flickering flame of their
loathsomely lethiferous lives, with the unparalleled,
saving your own nonpareil facility of judgement, perspicacity whereof I
have made an art unto itself. You understand, I am intimately
acquainted with the quotidian ways as adopted of the giants, such as
where they live, when they sleep, how to penetrate their
holds, and so on and so forth, and insomuch as these
leviathans are not ever-living, be it as it is that the spans
of their lives far outstrip those of normal humans, it is incumbent on
me to undertake what will plausibly be the most
parlous undertaking of my long and eventful existence to wit, to, by
sheer strength of numbers, slay the brutish bruisers,
whilst they are yet lost in sweet slumber! While I can boast no shortage
of troops wherewith to drown the monstrous megatheres,
in the agglomerated arms of my armies, the grievous lessons imparted of
painful past experiences, perpetually remind me of the
very concernment of not leaving matters to be stirred of the blowy
caprice of caustic chance, and the massy moment of girding
oneself, with every possible succouring sconce, under every circumstance,
not to mention such a jeopardous endeavour as is
butchering, if it so comes, a bloat of ferociously slaughterous
behemoths, which lays bare, wherefore I rest discontented to
have but a moiety of the warriors of the world, with me, when I lead the
gallant charge to expunge the blain that is the
perennial presence of the great big blocks of trundling murder who are
these noisome giants. Were you, my lordship, to behold
for yourself, the unscreened spectacle that their terrible dimensions
make, you would understand, with nary the slightest
second in the way of an impairing delay, just why is it that it would
have made ineffable insipience indeed to have hurled
an offensive against these dinotherian mastodons, in the midst of their
hours waking. In the assurance afforded of my
knowledge that, at the very least, your men of mettle and might, are
firmly behind me, for me to put out the light of their
lives withal, may I rest easy, as I spearhead the decisively incisive
thrust of troops that, I ween, will rid the world of
their miasmal being, once and for all,' thundered the domineering royal
Rymar, his coarse cheeks momently mantling with the
sanguine bloom wickedly wrought of the feverous fervidity of his parboiled
passions, whereof his notorious Vulcanian humour was
the prime progeny.
Yasib gave a mild mow to the stirred sovereign saturnine, ere he
decorously replied, 'My lordship king Rymar, as much as I am
most honoured this day, by the portliness of your noble presence in this
my palace, which, of a certainty, is devastatingly
dwarfed by your own palatial edifice of state that serves you for a
dwellingplace gallant, I am impelled, my disinclination
to do so, not with standing, to turn down this your petition, at least
for the time being. Think you not that your
solicitation, oh dear king, has fallen upon deaf ears, for I, Yasib of
Arabia, am anything but marble-hearted, but natheless
do I have to courteously rebuff your thoughtful obtestation for such a
compact as you have patiently proffered, for until I
receive report of forthcoming giants, I cannot, in good conscience,
dispatch my myriads of military men thereto, unto a faraway
continent, to war with a conceivably notional peril, when my commonalty
are looking to me, for a bulwark against the nephilim
you direfully depicted. Should I bear imprimatur unto festinately sending
away the entirety of my valiant men therewith, by
way of deployment in the front lawn of the giants, then wherewith would I
shield Arabia from such a myriad of antagonistic
parties as share the selfsame sanguinary appetency of these gargantuan
giants as you delineated, of the nations of the
earth so snared in the troublous toil of fermenting strife? I would be
rankly remiss in my averred duties of having the care
of my people, in propriety, were I to jettison all reck for their simple
welfare, in so injudiciously careless a manner of
rankly hazarding their lifeblood, when I should be vigorously, with the
utmost staunchness, working to consolidate the
defences currently circumvallating my chain of Arabian territories. My
lord and friend, Rymar, I commend your righteous
regard for your comely citizens, in the face of the direst of dangers, in
despite of my woeful inability to leap to your aid,
in your period of want, especially in view of your having expended such
lucubration, for the express purpose of coming in
confabulation with me. Whereas the menace posed unto you of these
minatorial mammoths, does seem to lour as densely as I had
felt it would, given that you are suitably versed within their diurnal
and nocturnal tendencies, it seems not inapt for me to
deem it premature to have my armies relayed unto your empire, at the
time present, with your already marshalling a sizeable
bulk of paladins wherewithal to fell your nemesis, the puissant pack of
man-mountains, but may the God of heaven, prosper and
keep, you eternally, and not just as you go forth unto battle. If the
giants should show themselves overmuch strong for your
legions, then forsooth, in the beauty of amity, will I succour you my
friend.'
'May God bless you and be with you, as well, my lord, for soon will you
be requiring His benisons,' quoth the now noxiously
baleful king Rymar sourly ere he stalked from the palace of his host,
his royal retinue trailing behind him.
Chapter 16 - Rymar
A long time ago, in a faraway land, and in a splendid palace of
glittering gold, which head nestled in the very clouds,
there lived a mighty king. This most eminent of monarchs, was especially
well-beloved of himself, forasmuch as he had
conquered all the neighbouring lands and had constituted them, ostensibly immutably,
under his steely sway, having subjugated the various
peoples thereof, and plundered their worldly wealth withal without let.
So sweeping and so sure now was the crossing span
of his mustered dominions that at the merest remembrance of his royal
being, not only did estimable nobles and humble
peasants alike quake in their boots, but one might fancy the tiny
birds girding the rustlingly restless boughs to
skip a note in their twittering ballads, and the springily sinewy
beasts gracing the lush meadows with their joyous
gambols to leave about on the demure grass absurdly exaggerated
spoors where tremors had their carefree curvets
momentarily frozen stiff. As to the odd fellow who, by way of either
genuine courage or vulgar foolhardiness, had had the
temerity of having lifted his vilipending voice of dissent, or so much as his
sheenful stylet of steel, against the king and his
invincible rule, a fine thing would it have been indeed for the fire of
the wrath of the king to have been quelled by the
summary execution of the execrant offender, typically through means of
deft decollation, for had the king been in less
munificent a mood, the offender in question would have found himself
adjudged to be suffocatingly steeped in the
attenuating toil and moil, as had been entailed by the endless high-flown
vistas of construction of the king, so long as he had drawn
breath.
The king, however, had not attained to his lofty perch, on account of
aught potency inherent in him, however much this
dyed-in-the-wool narcissist might have yearned for reality to
find conformance unto so gratifying an ideal, and preened himself
pridefully on account of the nigh all-encompassing throne he had
assumed. Rather, it had been the fast anchor of the moving muscle
unconstrained of the earthshakingly epical giants who took residence in
his tendance that had secured him such signal savour
and magistral masterdom; one would not be overly hard-pressed to picture
the diverse armies of the naked nations scurrying vainly
about at the unshakeably massy feet of the giants rigorously harnessed
of the king, much as ants abase themselves at the feet
of common men, in their irrevocable minuteness. These seven redoubted
titans were all which were remanent of the race of
giants which had crowded the earth, with their nigh empyreal statures, in
times primaeval, save for a somewhat less enormous
and consequently less imposing, giant who had frontingly repudiated the
extravagant overtures of the king of having enlisted him
into his imperial service, due to his disinclination of having dived into the
gratuitously self-aggrandizing conquests of the king, and
thus had the king and this contumaciously rebellious giant, been
subsequently set at acrimonious concurrency, even unto very
daggers drawn.
Therefore had the other giants banded, at the behest of the king, to
expel their errant giant of a cousin, from his royal
realms, and would have so much as killed him to have the king wellrid of his disagreeable presence, if Zyenar, this giant who
had stood alone amongst his kind in his aversion unto participation in
dastardliness of whatever wise had not wisely, as he had made no prize
for his more mighty brothers, fled from before them unto the farmost
reaches of the globe itself, inadvertently trampling to matchwood underfoot clustered congeries of
human settlements along the way, in his race festinate to shun
going the way of the illaqueating earth, as had betode his
long-departed Cyclopean fathers. The Antaean rogues after the life of
their beleaguered brother, to wrest it from him,
had howled their disgust at the fleetness of his getaway, and
throwing down their sturdy clubs of adamite, which height
and girth easily put to shame lesser trees, they had stomped their
homeward way, in a trajectory arcuate, to the great
castles which had been given them as rewards by the king, and which now
served them for homes, later feeding the king the
misbegotten excuse that they had simply failed of finding Zyenar, and
that nothing could have been done about the matter
thence. One can thereby see that despite their Homeric measurements,
these disgracefully disingenuous sluggards were anything
but heroic in their odious humour, though the hearts that beat brazenly
strong within their breasts would have dwarfed even the
mightiest of bull tuskers.
One fine summer’s day, when the brave myrtle blossoms had emerged to
tempt the coy coquettes with their intoxicating perfume,
and the fiercely golden sun was showering its candent radiance upon the
eager earth to thereby stir its virgin fruit, the old
king, with his customary troop of panoplied bodyguards in tow, left his
fabulous abode that seemed an utterly natural
extension of the flamingly glaring yellow orb straddling the mild-blue
canopy of heaven. Unlike the days that had immediately
preceded this especial one, the king had taken an excursion not just for
a tantalizingly pleasant stroll whereby he could
have basked in the glorious warmth of summer, and haply have plucked off
a coriaceous crabapple or two for his wry
delectation, but also to scour the country, incidentally his very
own homeland, for a fitting successor to whom he
could have cheerfully relinquished his bejewelled crown of state and
emerald-studded sceptre of power, afore the sounding of
his death knell, which he knew from his relentlessly advancing years
to be well-nigh.
In his auspicious reign had the king revelled in his fair share of
defiling debaucheries with innumerous fair young maidens,
almost always in blatant defiance of their tear-laden pleas after the
exercise of his mercy, on account of their hymeneal
maidenhead, yet never had a child sprung of his lusty loins, the fact of
which was nothing short of stupefying, inasmuch as the career in
concupiscence of the king, all salacious manner thereof, had aroused him
to thousands upon thousands of torrid trysts, over
the rushing rapids of time. Had the king but cared, in even a fashion
desultory, to attune his leathery old ears to the
peremptorily huddled whispers, for fear mortal of being sent to
cross the proverbial bar, of many a bitter subject of his,
he would have known them to internally pronounce, whether it had
been wrong or right, his unrelievedly shearing barrenness
of seed as a curse pullulatingly paring, right out of no less than the
temple of heaven.
At all events, there had to be found an heir to the throne, forsomuch as
the king needed to have his imperial affairs
shipshape, and in his eyes, there naturally was none better suited to the
weighty task than he himself, a resistless
sovereign of gravity supreme. He would, howbeit, have sought recourse in
this regard, within the pooled sagacity of his
eclectic witenagemot wherein throbbed the keenest cerebra of the
assorted nations, had his own presbyopic howbeit appercipient
eye not first thrust aside from his favour priceless the parlous
intelligences and edacious appetites of his solons and
their young men, with their furiously fervid ambition. What the king
wholeheartedly desired was not a sordid princeling after his own ilk
who should ruthlessly ravage his lands the instant he shuffled off his
mortal coil, but a complaisant marionette who would
perpetually perpetuate his legacy, in his multiplicious grandiose visions
for the tending of his imperium. Were the mightiest dominion ever to be
witnessed upon the planet to be rent asunder on account of so
impertinent a trifle as made his mortality, he would most
assuredly have restless agitation instead of peaceful repose in the acre
of God as his portion eternal.
To broadcast his inward sentiments over his empire, and to
summon the ablest youths therefrom of engaging themselves
in an epic, multifaceted joust for his mantle of king, was, for the
exquisitely chary monarch, or so went his cerebrations thereupon, to
undermine his airy standing in the impressionable eyes of his
sheeplike subjects, whom he had gone to great lengths to cow into
submission deferentially cringing. With the more comfortable choices open
to him being thus been eliminated from the equation, the crusty
old king had had to settle himself upon conducting a veiled personal
expedition for the man who was to claim his crown and
take his throne, so he had donned his coronet fixed along the front,
with a single soft yellow sapphire, and off he had gone,
his trusty curtal-axe fidgeting at his side in its strong, handsome
scabbard of case-hardened copper.
Chapter 17 - Rymar
It made jolly good fun for the king to play the acescent verjuice of the
crabapples off the sharp honeyedness of the rosy
tayberries which had been freshly picked in the palace orchard that very
morning, and which were now fed him by the
handful by a toadying varlet at his side, who made a point of bussing
his sere, liver-freckled hand. The youths who had met
his acidly appraising eye thus far had been distinctly underwhelming,
in the woeful ineptitude that told the whole story of
their ineffectually insipid beings; if one had been lazy and indisposed
to even a bout of honest labour, then another had
been overly fervent in his gamut of lusts for his own sake, but the king
thought it unfathomable for his land of birth, his
crown domain to be devoid in entirety of princely young men, men
wherein he could beguile his twilight years simply soothed by
the understanding that his domains were resting in a safe pair of hands,
a safe haven, as it were. Apart from his straight
successor, his witan had to be yielded wholesale unto a younger, less
snaky, enclave of advisors who were untarnished by the
vulpine craft infesting many of his court, whom the king regarded as
being mere expedients in the proper governance of his
collection of lands. This cadre of new bloods who were to breathe new
life into every province and district of his
territories, were to be brought forth of his assumptive heir, but first
uncovering a suitable succedaneum for his throne to
whom he could jocularly demise his dominions was showing itself to be
more inextricable an ask than he had originally
envisaged. He would, by the same sign, have looked unto the chapels and
friaries, which had most ironically opposed, with
cast-iron vehemence, the intractable despotism of his pugnacious reign,
for the fittingly fine youth that he had had within
his sights, but his incertitude over the efficacy of the church of
yielding an acquiescent dewy-eyed servant, in the barest of
terms, who would be green enough to pass over the troth
that he was to be the docile appendage
of the king, whereby he might yet exercise his crown from beyond
the grave had steered him from that course. It went
without saying too that the prospective king had to be of sufficiently
solid a mettle to boldly bridle the fearsome giants
in his charge, with their volatile dispositions, and sufficiently shrewd
yet natheless not sly, to harness their enormous
strength and almost impossible altitude, for the furtherance of his
already considerable spread of empire.
Following several mundane weeks of peregrination through the grand cities
and rustic villages, which composed his country, over
which the king cast from his crabbish consideration of anointing as monarch-inwaiting uncounted scores of callow youths, and
consumed a well-nigh equally substantial burthen of tart crabapples and
nectareous tayberries, with the odd praline that
surmounted as much as the ivorywood for luscious softness, he happened
by a fair farmhold which bussed the fringes of an
obscure hamlet, as the edge of night was creeping over the land. The
quotidian routine of the king, during his travels, was
to ride upon his sprightly steed by day, in company of his extensive
escort, and take lodging by night, in whichever abode
most appealed to him; as can be anticipated, nary a soul was temerarious
enough to do the forbidden of raising objection to
this arrangement whereon their autarch had settled himself, for fear of a
fatal date with the royal headsman, the mighty
twin-bladed axe of whom had long been stained an Acherontal shade of
black with the dried blood of the ill-starred wretches
who had fallen foul of the king, and had thereafter incurred the
finically fine edge of his ebulliently heady rages. On this
particular even, the king saw no resource but to directly expropriate,
for the night at least, the farmstead, for prosaic
though it was, there was scarcely any alternative for his picking in the
tiny thorp whereat the hand of destiny had, as
things looked to be, seen fit of constituting him.
As night was unfurling its many-starred splendour, the king bade his
fancily armoured guard appropriate the quaint farmery,
and turn out the dwellers thereof, as was his warped wont, ere retiring
unto the solitary bunk in the homecroft, with his retinue
of waiters and warriors finding quarterage in the open fields, if not in
the barns, stables and stalls, in company of the
domesticated beasts, and the freerange fowl, and with a handful of yet
wakeful cavalrymen posted to stand vigilant guard at the door
of the bedroom wherein the king slumbered, in the event of any impending
menace arising to threaten the person of the king. While he
tucked himself snugly under the bedspread and blankets that the cot had
for bedclothes, making himself as comfortable beneath the
linen bedding as was possible, the intrigued king leisurely ruminated
within that hoar head of his, bethinking himself, of apropos
of why it was that his troops, in the ouster thereof, had found the
croft empty howbeit he had unmistakably descried the soft lambency
of dancing candlelight that had lowed from candelabra atop rickety treens
in the focal residence of the dwelling, even at the distance of
its outer selvage. The sighted lights had, unto some degree of mystery,
perished without a beacon of warning, in the few moments it had
compelled the elite guard party of the king across the farm and on
towards the plain, squab house of whitewashed stone
which sat silently in the stilly moonlight at the heart of its ambient
farmplace. He thrust the fancy from his mind, as he
drew the bedsheets about his withered old body. As ran the current of
his sleep-dulled reasoning, the modest group of
flickering flames he had seen were hardly able to bespeak aught threat
unto his being, with his band of nervy sentinels
having confirmed the dereliction of the place, and with such emollient
thoughts as these, did the soporific king slip into
the arms of sleep most sweet.
Chapter 18 - Rymar
Barely an hour after the king had fallen asleep, was he most rudely
jolted from his slumber, by the ear-splitting stridor stirred of
the crash of swords and axes and clubs and spears withal, upon the
old larch door embellished with inlay of
rhinestone ribbings to his chamber, which was undoubtedly the highlight
of the austere abode, and with nary a suspicion of
hesitancy that would have proved pardonable due to his senectitude, the
huffing whitebeard of a wight warrior, whipped away his
coverlets and sprang from the now dished bed, grabbing his serrate
cutlass by its grooved hilt from the low lectern whereon
he had laid it shortly theretofore. With blade firmly in hand, the
admittedly lionhearted king strode with a steady though
wary step to a point but a handful of paces from the tormented door, and
bellowed, in a swelling, yelling gut of somewhat
warranted rage, 'Belay there, you filthy animals! Whether babiroussa has
the licentiousness so foul of wishing hurt upon the
most august and thereby most sacred, person of the king? Answer me
therewith, or your hateful heads shall roll for this
unwarrantably gross outrage of my kingly honour!'
'The sole head that will be doing its rolling dance on the floor, is that
of yours, you petty tyrant! For an untold measure
of years macerating have you been straddling our homelands, with your
boots pressed firm upon the necks of our poor peoples,
thus will you, in like manner, see your feckless withered body, sundered
neath the fresh force of our keen arms, once we have this
vilely stymieing impediment of a dully drab door reduced to heaps of
rubble. You have sprung our crafty springe! Perchance
you would be so kind as to unbar the door, and to spare us the bother of
having to break it down?' swooped the swift reply of an
inveighing tenor that the king had no trouble whatsoever in recognizing.
'Kalmar?' cried the king, the incredulity smacking him almost like a
physical dint. 'Does my loyal liege who fought
alongside me, in many a glorious campaign of yore, now seek my scalp, and
probably my throne withal, notwithstanding my having
graciously given unto his bosom, such good things as he had besought
me? Is this any way of showing forth your gratitude
unto me, by meting recompence unto my bosom with the sword? I will have
you and your kindreds dashed and bowstrung and
drawn and quartered for this singularly stenchful knavery whereby you
hope to bereave me of everything I hold dear, and to
pilfer it for your loathsome cold-blooded selves! Pray tell me, who are
those your blackguardly confederates in this most
unhallowed subversive enterprise?' gushed the king, his predominant
emotions like a whirling dervish, in their alternating
shock and rue and wrath.
'Indeed it is I, Kalmar, and it is precisely because I stand in command
of a mighty moiety of your troops, and have, on that
account, borne the besmirching displeasure of being in harness with you,
that I am eminently qualified to reave your ignoble
soul of its earthly shell, and mayhap trepan your monarchal trappings,
into the bargain, should the gods smile down upon me.
You, oh ill-famed king, are in scant position of denouncing my actions at
present as being foul play, when you have yourself
undertaken a nigh on uncounted pyre of nefast doings, through the years,
in your chambers, upon the battlefields of the
world, inside your dungeons, under your guillotines, on your scaffolds,
and so does the list go on. The truth is that not one
creature within the compass of your empire holds as much as a modicum of
goodwill toward you, and all wights for leagues
around will indubitably rejoice at your encountering your much overdue,
though thankfully highly imminent, meed of a demise,
the fact whereof meaning it proved a relatively straightforward matter to
draft the members of your personal bodyguard, to
say nought of the other, all maltreated, members of your imperial
cavalcade, into my impeccable design of your assassination.
As the isolated island as you are from all sources of succor, how can
it be that you will escape meeting your direful fate
this night? All things being considered, there is but you to repel all
of us here, and this rude rub of a dour door stands as your
sole exit from this room of yours. Now if you were to kindly have the
door opened for our benefit, I just might be amenable
unto bearing allowance of a death quick and easy unto you. After all,
let it not be said that Kalmar is a stranger to the
working of mercy, a quality which is about as far removed as is possible,
from the malign misdoing you brutally wielded upon
the necks of the tragic souls who were hardy enough to plant themselves,
in your path of pillage. So what will it be, my
king?' sounded the gloatingly acerbic riposte from behind the door.
'You misbegotten cur, cross the threshold, and I will ladle unto you, an
exquisite taste of my brave brand of tempered steel!
I am ashamed to have labelled such a scoundrel, as your obnoxious perfidy
this night tide, shows you to be, as you, my liege
man and, dare I say, comrade. Howbeit, my considerable chagrin
notwithstanding, I will stand my ground here, in the cozily
well-appointed furnishings of this chamber, and peradventure even have
unto myself a nap or twain, while you and the other
whoresons execute your sloe designs in ignobly striving to flush me out, as
a fox is apprehended by its brush! I wish unto you
the very best of luck with your demolishing deviltry, as befits peccant
varmints, on the door, as this last bastion
thankfully seems not to be moved of so much as your ceaseless
belabouring,' roared the king in a blaze of defiance, with
rage indignant his overmastering emotion once more, in the direction of
the contumely that had been precipitated unto him.
The fuming king was pacing the room, fore and aft, in his latest fit of
fulmination, when the frenzied fall of brazen weaponry
upon the wood door, ended its infernal dinning in his ears, whereat the
battered spirits of the king, surged withal a much
welcome jet of relief. Understandably, he, his vigorous bluster
notwithstanding, was beginning to harbour hopes of his
would-be assassins surrendering their sanguinary purport, for whatsoever
cause, as things seemed at first blush, but
presently this lull in the avalanche of attacks vented of his besiegers was
bared as being a mere reprieve, for the mordantly
acrid reek of what the king instantly identified as being fire smoke, was
wafted by the stale air, under the door and on to
his sensitively delicate nostrils, just as he had settled upon the bed
to take a little rest. 'What latest mischief
have you contrived in that felinely sly brain of yours,' quoth he to the
impassive ornate chisel-hewn panelling of the door
impassible, whereat he was met with an odious outburst of derisive
currish chortles tending thence.
'Respecting our inability to clear away the baulking door, and since you
most mulishly refuse of opening it, to render
fullness to our skilful shift, we face no option but to burn you out, as
befits the skunk you are. If the greedy flames and
the effluvious smoke do not succeed in executing the extinguishment of
the fluttering flame of your libidinous life, then
will our waiting sabres have the job done, when you attempt an escape of the
leechingly asphyxiating grip of the conflagration.
In effect, you have been given of us, the privilege of picking your
poison, as it is high time you go over to the great
majority; it could be that suffocation suffered in the midst of the
clammy smoke is more palatable an alternative to
evisceration of our needle-nebbed swords than is a live roasting in the
blaze. In any case, the choice lies with you, and
that apropos is a luxury you extended not unto your armies of murthered
victims, whom you recreantly regarded as
being cattle fit for slaughter,' said Kalmar, in somewhat more sober
tones, as accorded with the gravitas of his speech.
Chapter 19 - Rymar
The chapfallen king astonied resumed his agitated pacing about the
room, in a fast rising flood of multiplicitous despair
unbounded, insofar as he saw no way out of his critical predicament. At
all events, there was no arguing his having to flee
the chamber quickly, and yet he could not so much as budge the door, for
fear of his prevenient nemesis, nor did there appear
to exist an alternative egress from the room, which was already in the
incipient stages of being enshrouded in the haze obtunding.
Howbeit, the embattled king had naught whereof to feel fearful, for while
his carking consciousness was yet mired in its
saturninely steaming slough of intermingled passions stormy and fears
swelling, there presently surfaced a sweet spring of
salvation unto him, in the form of a mop-haired, swart head belonging to
the cheerfully grinning young man who, all of a
sudden, popped up into the room, from the bedside lectern, the thrust of
his body sending the lacquered wood top of the
squat table, toppling to the granite floor with a stridulant crash. The
tanned youth, who looked to be two-and-twenty
summers, bounded boldly towards the king, in absolute abatement of the
terrible countenance of the inly stupefied sovereign,
and the similarly terrible gleam of his damascened broad sword, and knelt
before him with all reverence, abandoning presumably
the lot of the head resting upon his slim shoulders to the Fates, of
appointing, or, at least, to the humour of one amongst
their throngs of adherent devotees, who was none else than the very
envenomed king looming minatorily over him.
'Who are you, you insolent sprig, and whence comes your audacious
brazenness in presumptuously approaching me, the most
prestigious monarch ever the world witnessed, in so precipitant a
manner?' shouted the king, choosing to err on the side of
caution, while venting his spleen, though he was fairly certain that the
youth posed him null harm, owing to the air of
simple honesty that radiated from his features like an uncommon glory,
and laid to rest the disquietude of the grizzled old
king, even ere a word put to the royal, had left his finely formed mouth.
'Oh dear king most noble and celebrated of monarchs mighty, who has
mastered lands far and near alike, with his force of arms
and lightsome wit, fear not you, on account of your lowly theow here
before you. I come hither harbouring nil fell thoughts
of malice unto your venerable person, oh king, but contrariwise to
succour you, in this your cataclysmal coil. My father and
I, who have the deed to this toft, and eke out a little living thereon,
had espied the approach of your royal of your royal
procession, even whilst you had been yet far off, and had made immediate
proceedings, with a view toward effecting a
clearly clean getaway, for fear of being summarily slain under the
inexorable scythe of their sheeny blades, had they
been of too savage an impulse to harken unto your counsel wise,
and perchance to spare these our lives. Thank
the Lord for having granted us the blessed behoof of our foresight
forelooking, for us to have hollowed out thus, a trim underground
passage running from the ground whereon the lectern you see over there,
stands, to one of the shacks in the vicinage of this
grange wherein is sweet sanctuary of whatsoever menace as might
elect to lour round us and, so it now seems, you. We
two beat a hasty retreat, by way of the aforementioned hypogeal conduit
to that hut, and thence chanced to sight puffs of
smoke spilling from the bay windows of this very house, whereat we smelt
something putrescent, and thereupon did my fine
father have me return here, to investigate what manner of mischief it was
that was afoot. Setting aside your having unduly
appropriated aught of our property for your personal weal this night, we
ascribe not even a shade of merit unto the
desertment of aught individual, regardless of whatsoever standing as he
might be of, in his day of distress, hence what more
the honourable lordly person of the king? Come, my king, with me, and let
us flee this wretched wreck on the instant, lest
we should, the twain of us, be devoured by the voracious flames, or the
insidious smother thereof!' piped the earnest entreaty
of the youth, who seemed not to be regardful of the scalding invective
that had been tipped his way, at the crow's-feet of
the moribund monarch.
The harriedly palpitant king was, in no small measure, as one may very
well imagine, agreeable unto the proposal as had been
put forth, by the youth, and so, with the king at his royal wits' end,
and his life hanging in the scales, did this
incongruous twosome, effect a swift escape, stealthily stealing from the
doomed residence. Right down they went, through the
hollowed lectern, and into the subterranean corridor, which had been
padded all around within, with straw and hay, and hence
was quite a way more assuasive a transition than the king had anticipated
it of having been, and subsequent to a full ten
minutes of fleet scrambling upon their contused knees through the slim
slype they debouched into the shanty whereof the
youth had made mention in his imploration to the king, and where they
were profusely greeted by a fatherly old man, the sear
visage of whom seemed to radiate antiquity in its every deeply furrowed
line and wrinkle.
Chapter 20 - Rymar
'I hope my little passage through the tunnel, was not too trying on you,
my lord?' quoth the vetust fellow, with lively
twinkles bedecking his aged though yet keenly able, eyes, the mottled
orbs of which were cast a lustrous amber that bespoke
a sincerity of heart, not unlike that which had imposed itself upon the
king, of the young man who had led his precipitate
flight from the fiery fate he had then felt to be ineluctable. 'My
boy is suitably equipped for all manner of
labour, begirded as he is, with the lush lustihood that shapes the common
preserve of youth, the springtide of life, but you,
oh my king, are getting to be rather long in the tooth, should the manner
of speaking thereof pose no offence unto your royal
ears, of course. and ergo are in hardly aught condition of being battling
foes and flames and nobody knows what else besides.
My suggestion simple is that you lie abed here with us, for the remnants
of the night, and when the small hours of the
morrow die, and those that quest for your life, are long gone, and are,
of stronger significance still, in the dark, with
regard to your retrieval from out of the maw of their intent inimical
toward your all, you may mount your palfrey, with us
for an escort, as feeble a spring of succor as we probably are, and make
full speed ahead for your mighty abode, where
surely are legions and colossi withal, whereby you may effect subdual of
these ravening recreants, for such does their
roguery proclaim them to be,' went he on.
'I am forever in your debt, my good men, for your wonderfully timely and
congenially fortuitous interposition, by way of
intervention, in my affairs, even in spite of my deeply deplorable
conduct in having thus unworthily divested you of your
lodge, with nary a penny by way of recompence. Most surely, if there is
aught boon that you seek of me, as far as it lies
within my power of granting, will I give it unto your braw breasts. Pray
tell me, sweet sirs, what are your appellations?'
asked the king, who was now so widely beaming in joy untrammelled and
relief bold, at his triumph undeniably unforeseen
over the well-laid plans on the seizure of his life, that the seedy shack
was hard-pressed of leashing the unadulterated
elation of life restored that positively sang from every fibre of his
blue being.
'My name is Thor, and that is my son Romar. We came to your aid, not for
want of your riches, and no more for your favour,
as mountainously considerable as these may be, but because we are
Christians of the God-fearing wise, and are, on such
account, obliged to honour all men, and in particular, the king, whereas
the ruler of the land, wears the weighty onus of
being the chosen representative of God, in having the care of the people
bound up in his fists. In a perfect world, at
least, would kings discharge their God-given duties, with such zeal as
befits their elevated office, and yet, their lofty
label not withstanding, we see precious few monarchs rule with the rod of
integrity. Whiles you, oh my king, have, it calls of
admitting, regrettably taken a lot, nay, unto a fardel, of liberties, in
the forceful intrenchment of your rutted
bootprints, in the necks of the nations, it too compels notice that
overt vice such as that as wantonly practised by they
who count it sport to riot and fornicate, in the clear light of day, has
been summarily effaced, and that aught trifling
degree of order, has seen enactment over the sundry provinces that make
your empire up, with the dissipated dogs who had
hitherto blighted the good earth in their unspeakably foul filthiness
and robbery and desecration, having fled the face of
all perception, that is if they had not already been put to the sharp
sword of your majesty the king. As you might discerned
by now, my lord, my way of speaking may be rather forward, but do content
yourself in the certainty that I and my boy here
have pledged ourselves as your humble vassals,' answered the grey-bearded
old fellow, with such a ready grin as freely
bewrayed the wellspring bountiful of goodwill wherein his big old heart lay
cozily couched.
The king was, in truth, a fair bit ruffled, in the Plutonian depths of
his darksome soul, of the subtly pointed words he had
heard flow forth from the gregarious greybeard, notwithstanding that he,
more than anyone else, wist them to be tenaciously
true, but even his overweening pride could not offuscate, at least not
upon this occasion joyful, its repression by the
cascade of imparadising sunshine that had suffused his bleak existence
with charitableness of comity. The old farmer could
thus utter as much as lay within the his zealous heart of hearts, as
pertained the sable swathe of sin of the king,
perpetrated in the perpetuation of his masterful imperium wherein he now
found mickle contentment, without incurring the
shackles of his royal wrath, especially since the guards who had been
trusted with the care of the life of the king, but who
had sought this last instead, were, as Thor and Romar and the king,
descried from the crudely hewn orifices that passed for
windows in the ramshackle lodge, briskly mounting their chargers and
smartly wheeling them about, in preparation for
departure.
Thor, the garrulously jocund old man, fetched a silvered platter whereon
lay savoury chunks of roasted duck and steamed
chicken, and liberal sprinkles of broiled butter beans and raw olives,
for the enjoyment of the king in quaffing, and, in
his inordinately high spirits, the king took it amiss to have himself
revelling in the satisfyingly delightsome vittles, with his
bighearted hosts merely looking on, not least whereas they had plainly
fed him with their finest fare, though they were but
indigent yeomen, whereas he was their emperor. As such, the gladsome
king, who then was as happy as a lark, since the cockles
of his weathered old heart had been thoroughly toasted of the gentle
goodness of his benevolent benefactors, bade them
partake of the simple but filling fare with him, and there did the three
of them, sit, basking in bread and circuses
under the starry sky, around the tired trivet that formed the polestar of
the mean dwelling, eating and drinking and
laughing and chatting cozily of the hidden humour in life that
transcended their gaping gulf in estate, like unto boon
companions even, till the pinpoints that made the stars, were beginning
to flee the fast closing dayspring, and their gorged
bellies were about as tight as drums fit for bursting.
Chapter 21 - Rymar
As the sweet light of morning twilight was slowly but surely stripping
away the sable vest of night, Thor gently nudged his
king awake, having himself woken betimes, on the force of metronomically
unswerving adherence to stirring on the peep of day,
born of the burden of many years of back-breakingly hard labour spent in
raising the corn increase from the bumpy brash of his
farmland. Romar was also up early, on account of his work in the
husbandry of the grange, he having been cast in the very similitude
of his father, and he set to work preparing a dish of steaming-hot
dhansak wherein thick gravy rested silky-smooth chunks of tender
macerated lamb, which had lentils and mace and chervil leaves for
accompaniment for the morning repast of the tired old king,
who had still to divest himself of his remanent fatigue.
'Your highness, a new day balmy is come, and so is it time for you to
arise and be on your way, ere the cabal which showed
themselves deleterious to your royal weal reach your imperial
habitation of setting your servants there against you, or
sift through the ruins of our grange-house, and resolve upon rootling
through the remainder of this thorp where we now are,
once they fail of finding your corse. No matter which craven course
these fiendish dastards determine themselves upon by
way of interpunction upon your health, I think it best if we left anon at
all adventures, once your belly has been filled,
and you have been sated of this bowl of broth and herbs and greens and
meat, the foremost food we aught, but of course,
for the longsome ride ahead,' said the greybeard debonair.
'Yes, you speak but sense, albeit I would fain have several hours more of
sleep sweet, though I am involved in this dingy
dilapidation. The full fragrance of the flavourful fare moreover does
smack me, fair in the face, and I am on such an abundant
account as that, compelled of rising. The grating cockcrow does meet us,
and I pray that the imminent haps will be
well amenable of my, I intend our, fortunes this day,' replied the king,
as he rubbed away his final vestiges of sleep with
his heavily-creased, brown-flecked hands, that then, if one will believe
it, strayed to the whorled bronze hilt of his
slashing sword, for a twinkling or twain, as he dwelled momentarily on
the service it would avail him of running his
kindhearted hosts through therewith, but at the last, flopped back by his
age-creased thigh.
As can be well-surmised from the massed heinousness of the past
nefariousness of this Machiavellian monarch, he had, as a
matter of fact, the very night preceding, flirted with weltering notions
of forthwith executing these the very angels who had,
in his hour of need, delivered his hoar head from the incinerating snare
as had been laid unto him, one that would doubtless
have robbed him of his life, had it not been for the timeous coverture
they had freely furnished unto him, heedless of his
having callously established himself in their hard-earned abode by force
of arms, though the rank exhilaration that had
accompanied his circumvention of the well-laid scheme of his slaying had
prevailed upon him to stay his hand.
Now that his sleep was expired, and sunup was come, the foxy
dissimulating old devil of a king had taken to contemplation
demonic compulsions anew of doing away with his openhearted saviours,
but yet had forsaken that pinprick of fancy, for
expedient as it might have seemed to have no witness left surviving
to this potentially humiliating episode wherein had
his moral vulnerability been laid starkly bare for all cognizant thereof
to see, such a primrose path most manifestly did
not accord with the pearly providence punctilious for which the fame of
his name had been bruited through the divers
principalities, alongside the uncompromisingly implacable inhumanity
that, together with the former, made the syzygial
sceptre that exemplified the essence of his rule. Forsomuch hence as he
might well have had need of company by way of this
pair of farmers, for the warding off of such footpads or mounted bandits
as might have weighed him easy prey ripe for the
picking, and in despite of their palpable prospect of their discommoding
the lubricity of his reign in time to come, to say
nought of the bogus bonhomie he had mostly dissembled in his honeyed
speech that had been made unto them, even as he had
meditated over the soundness of their swift slaying, the less-thanknightly king had discarded all thought pertaining their
demise, as tempting as was the possibility thereof for the immediate
future, and had set his sinful sights on making a safe
road to the capital, where reared his shining stronghold, and not on
account of their having jumped to his aid, and their
subsequent succour of him, by way of their willing watch over him, and
their most comely comestibles, and the safe haven
which they had so chivalrously afforded unto him from the foraging
fiends who were his would-be undoers.
As the king, with the ampleness of arrogance unreined that was the
driving force behind his free-living exuberance of
character, deemed it but a proper matter of course for his subjects to
have yielded unto him the utmost in fealty faithful
by way of such kingly devotion to the crown as he demanded of those that
took refuge under the overtopping aegis of his
compass of command, it is no surprise that he did not impute himself
beholden unto his big-hearted benefactors for the
veritable world of good they had unstintingly rendered unto his weary
bosom, in spite of the blackhearted knavery he had
liberally meted unto them, by way of remuneration. In keeping with his
exceeding egotism, he made the most vociferous
denunciator of whosoever presumed to undertake aught evil endeavour against
his body, his salient sense of morality, on such
occasions as these, lying long leagues asunder from the mysterious
vanishing act of prestidigitation it unfailingly
performed with such dexterity as was mere meritorious of plaudits plenty,
when it booted him to enact his diverse ungodly
lusts, and to have his meretricious righteousness lapse into the dust of
desuetude.
In any case, the old simple and his son spoke but sense as regarded the
threat posed unto the interests of the king, in all
ambits, of permitting the plotters who had sought his scalp to press
home their plans nefast of toppling him from his
throne, and seating their champion thereon, in his stead. The
superlatively shrewd king had been swift to recognise all
thereof as being sound calculation, and this was the mere moiety of his
otherwise glib delivery that had not found feigning
upon his silver tongue oft employed for the distracting diversion of
whatsoever adversary as chose to surface, while he
felled him by way of a fatally stabbing dagger lodged in the back.
Accordingly did these three make a lead-off along the dirt road that
slithered from the humble hamlet and away into the
distance, in the arrow of the spiring palace tower they easily beheld
bestraddling the horizon yet hazy with the blue brume
of the readily ebbing foredawn. Kalmar and the remaining conspirators
had long since left the farmhouse wherefrom Romar had
led the king, and which was, by now, a compleat skeleton, where it had
but the night prior, been solid and vaulted and
substantial. From that gutted edifice did still ravenously crepitant
tongues of vivid crimson flame, all implicated in some
fiery ravel, thrust their deadly igneous crowns into the firmament
slowly flushing with the cathartically pure candence of the
mounting morning sun, gorging greedily upon the brisk morning air for
fuel by way of oxygen vitalizing, as they reared their
thread-tipped rich orange heads in a strangely mesmeric twirling dance,
inscrutably watched of the team of kestrels hovering
overhead on the bracing breeze.
Chapter 22 - Rymar
Afore the disquiparant, in rung of standing, and shade of character, trio
made much distance along the beaten track, they dead drew rein,
catching sight of a desultory spread of armoured men sprawling about the
approach to the metropolis that loomed as the seat of the
stately strength of the king, in the middle distance. They too could
perceive that lying littered at their crunching
ironshod boots, were charred flags that bore what looked to be the alltoo-familiar curlicued coat of arms as had been chosen
for to garland the king, or, at the least, his projection of power. To
adjudge by all presented appearances, the sinister
scheme which had for an end the devastation of the rule of the king, and
the destruction of the eximious old ruler himself,
owned a compass even wider than the equipage of his, which had reneged on
their various vows unto him, in their putrid
perfidy carried out the night previous, and hence, for the overlord,
necessitated the immediate implementation of corrective
measures which would have the skewed situation well-remedied, by
preserving his all and impoverishing his baneful foes of
theirs.
The king quoth something vaguely along those lines to his duet of
trapesing copesmates from up upon his pied saddle
horse that was as spritely as a charger, whereat they tactfully
proposed, with a fair amount of honeyed blandishments as
befitted the tempestuous temperament of the king, that forsomuch as the
soldiers splaying to their fore, were probably
ill-disposed to clearing unto them, a file of safe passage onward to the
royal palace, it lay within their best interests, to
seek access thereto by means of an alternative route, one that was beset
not with the redoubted remora of foursquare forces
which presently stoppered their path, but one that would go some way, if
not the full measure, toward accomplishing sound
security for them. As things stood, these three were, in no small degree,
blessed for the squadron of soldiers lying in wait for
the king, should he have somehow survived the conflagrant toil that had
been set for him, back at the farmhouse, not having
yet spotted the treble of muzzy dots that the minute figures of the
former made about the dim periphery of their gin-clouded
vistas, as had things diverged therefrom, it would have been highly
dubious for the king and his two perambulating peers, to
effect a prevalent flight from those sanguineous swordsmen, what with
their swift steeds and scintillating sabres.
On the score of the king having been closeted of his own promiscuous
proclivities in his cloistering palatial abode, in
this the twilight of his years, he was not the most acquainted with the
terrain of even this his ancestral land. In this
respect did Thor and Romar come in handy for the king, for, as sons of
the soil, and as men of the country, they possessed
pathmanship potent that guided him, in successful circumvention of the
terrible threat that, there and then, confronted him
so rudely. Casting from the primary path whereon they had been thus far
wending their way, Thor and Romar guided their royal
consort, and his mount, through the packed grove that perched verdantly
upon the left lip of the way, over a grassy veldt that
stretched thereout, between a chine of heath-grown hummocks, athwart the
bosky body of wildwood that lay dead beyond, across a
friendly freshet oxbow of tranquilly purling water, within a willow
copse, and on through the resultant forest of cool copper
beeches, whereupon they, to the frank mingled astonishment and delight,
of the travel-weary king, saw themselves break forth
from the vivid viridity of the wooded space, and out onto the very same
path of packed earth wherefrom they had hastily
veered in retreat of the couching cavalrymen, only that this time, they
were directly in the hinder lee of his palace, as
opposed to their ability to but behold its silhouette against the
skyline at the outset of their circuitous journey on the
rise of dawn.
Chapter 23 - Rymar
'Fond friends of mine, cast your eyes, yonder unto that sweet sight to
soothe sore eyes; my shining palace have we finally
touched! Behold its sublime splendrousness, gilded as it is by the rich
rays of the setting sun. Now Thor and Romar, the eventide
is come, and the clouds that cumber the azure empyrean of day are far
spent, otherwise you would not be drawn to so much as sight its
needle-sharp spire of a tip-top as you spy it now scraping the
vespertine violet screen of sky above. Come, let us hasten
onward to my aurous abode bearing so temptingly fast by, while we are yet
able to spy a sliver of the waning sun, though this
last be subsiding like a fast foundering ship, and there, in my feasting
hall, will we have ourselves a fit feast for kings to slake
the pangs of my rumbling old belly, famished as it is of this whole day
of riding sans rest,' hollered the king raucously,
who was, by this point, nigh unto the pale of delirium at the
unanticipated vision, right before his eyes, of his home, and
who hence bounded familiarly forward thereunto.
'My king, haply it would behove you to halt here on the hem of the
royal framework, in a manner of speaking, lest you
should walk blithely on and in to a foxy snare much like the very one
those rapacious reynards set for you, back at my toft,
and be promptly apportioned an exquisite dose of frigid iron. The allure
of an easy transition to the palace, may, most
understandably, beguile you onward into a headlong end, for we know not who
lurks therein, nay, within your stronghold itself.
Would you, in the folly of prematurity, be like unto a colt that canters
in the nirvana of naivety, straight on into the
jagged jaws of the couching lion? A safer and better option would it be
for you, to simply spy, from such a vantage point as
is afforded of the wild weald at our backs, and by the stream of gayly
habited men pouring from and into the palace portals,
how your situation bears to the swathing deathly danger hereabouts, if
your archrival, Kalmar, has, in your absence, got the
rule of the place,' said Thor, urgently tugging on the tessellated silken
sleeve of the excited king, and with his son bobbing his
occiput, in concurrence behind him, as the voleries of wrens warbled in
a tuneful manner desultory high around them.
'Moonshine! What are these naughty knaves that they should trouble me
so! Let us go hence,' roared the king, in raw thundery
tones that had the previously puing willow warblers fleeing their
arboreal perches, and, with that, he bounded forth toward the palace,
wrenching the braided loop of coarse cord that was at rest upon his neck
and chest, and that was strung through a small shiny
silver locket, towards his mouth.
The argent artefact, as Thor and Romar perceived, as the king pressed
its silvery spout to his age-shrivelled lips, was in
fact a whistle, albeit one that seemed not to hold anything in the way of
operancy, for no sound met their eager ears, when
the king huffed and puffed upon it with every peck of force that had
dwelling in his withered old body. Howbeit, there
forthwith rose such an avalanche of stentorian sound as could have been
likened unto the crashing cascade of a colossal
cataract clamant, and with breathtaking speed and strides that rocked the
very ground, there appeared seven man-mountains
from out of the deepening darkness, against the racks of which the
palace statuesque stood framed, thereupon did these titans,
in clean unison, bow deeply unto the Lilliputian figure of the king, nigh
their cavernous clogs. The twain churls could but gape,
quite incapable of ascribing reality unto the evidence of their eyes, as
the colossus at the vanguard of the towering fence of
unsightly monsters, rumbled, 'Your excellency, we caught your call, and
came anon to render our aid unto you. How may we now have
the pleasure of succouring you, oh our king most majestic?'
'Of a sooth is that an easy one. Why do not I bring you of clearing my
sanctified palace of the pismires therein, that I might
behold unto myself the bald complexion of such fellows as dare of
peopling my own abode?' said the king, a smugly sinister grin
spreading across his face, as a puddle of water swelling over
cobblestones lubricious, and as beseemed his predilection for blood.
'Indeed is that an ask easy, be that as it is that that is but our
skilled stock in trade, and forsooth will it be an
unmitigated joy to work these our languid limbs thereon, even unto
their fine bearing unto the earth,' quoth the chief
giant, scarcely able to suppress an ominously gurgling chuckle or twain,
whereat he and the other giants swivelled slickly upon
their ham-balled heels, and stepped over to the palace, which trumped
them for stature only by the measure of mews. Sticking their
sausagelike fingers, into every single fenestra of every single tier of
that palatial edifice, these crabfaced titans extricated, by
means of pulling out, with a gentleness amazingly tender, every single
person inside, positioning these now trepidant individuals
on the great green lawn to the rear of the palace, whilst the febrile
king marched intently to and fro, upon the field, meticulously
measuring their merit for his good graces and his grisly guillotine
alike. Over this last proceeding, were a brace of grunting giants
set to preside, lest any of the displaced people should hold aught
intention inimical unto the king, the unfettered fawning
and glozing the whey-facedly affrighted palace varlets and ancillas
were spending on him notwithstanding. At length, the
relentlessly treading king caught such a sight as wasted no time in
arresting his frenzied treading on the mellow sod, and
lifting a fine flush of fury to his already florid features.
Chapter 24 - Rymar
'Kalmar? Is that you, I spy, in my royal robe and purple pall, and is
that my royal crown on your costard, and is that my
sceptre of state, in your hand? Tell me, I pray of you, it is not so,'
cried the king, all atremble with the egress of emotion, upon
sighting his mortal enemy.
'Oh my great and mighty king, whose depths physicking of mercy and
goodness and grace and lovingkindness and compassion and
wisdom and judgment and might and splendour and bravery and glory and
valour know no bounds, I beg of your forgiveness for my
transgressions so obnoxiously perpetrated against you. I have a young
family for whom I am sole breadwinner, and I
acknowledge the gravity, in full, of the blackly heinous crimes which, I
so lamentably raised unto your sweet mazard,
therefore please accede your contrite servant here priceless pardon
wherewith I may, if your wondrous will be so, gladden the
hearts of my dear ones, by my unforeshortened existence on this excellent
earth we have for a home,' gushed the now abjectly
fallen Kalmar, at the pitchy boots of the king, the guttering tears of
the former rapidly pearling on the tender grass
before him.
'What wise of fatuitous folderol is this you would have me inhale? Oh
wicked wretch of snaky shift, trow you that clemency
will be your recompence for the vile villainy whereon you so lustily
strove, in all viciousness, of impaling me? Nay,
I will repay your diabolic deviltry unto your own breast, so that all
for leagues around, will savvy therewith the cup that
awaits those who trespass against me. Spare yourself this the inglorious
indignity of docile grovelling before me, as does a craven cur,
which you most surely are, for my mind is undeviatingly made regarding
your present execution, the manner whereof will become
the profundity of your demonian deeds. As for your kindreds, you should
have peradventure given heed to their lot without you
for a stay in the way of sustentation, but nevertheless will I, in my
magnanimity magnifical, freely flow with their upkeep,
for as long as they should hold to life upon this earth, though I sure am
wont to snuff them out forthwith, on account of the
consanguinity they share with you. Whereas you noised most piercingly
your rankling resolution to court your chthonian doom, with
your damnable drive on my life, and since I have never been a one to balk
from saying unto anybody, nay, you shall now have your day in
the court of destiny. May the good Lord take mercy upon your scurrilely
scurvy soul,' said the king, in sageness sepulchral,
before he snapped a swift signal to the lead giant, by way of sounding
the final summons of Kalmar, whereupon the dinosaurian
devil swung his entire elephantine mass onto the tremulous greensward,
twirled his hefty trunk of a behoovable club aloft, and fleetly
advancing upon the dead terrified traitor Kalmar, bloodily brayed the
spuriously repentant renegade to pure powder, with aplomb
horrifying to behold, underneath the whopping weight of his immense bulk
ponderous.
The clogged king inhaled the swimming pulverisation of his deadly enemy,
with frank glee ere another terrible thought directly struck him.
"If that conniving coistrel of a canny caitiff had the run of the palace, as
lord unchallenged, or so did he proclaim himself to be,
does not that then mean that all that were then therein abetted his
unfounded accession that withstood not my portly and
puissant person, and that all upon this afflicted grassplot, are hence
his currish confederates, no more than treasonous
turncoats plainly begging, in want of punishment condign of my hand?
Giants, methinks, this contemptible congregation of
Chthonic culprits, want their part of the quintessence of dust, just as
that craven cad Kalmar, did! Have it their way, I ask
of you,' said he, with a minacious moue of mounting malice in his aged
aspect alabastrine , whereupon the monstrous medley of
murderous mastodons, full-bloodedly set to wasting work upon the entire
shambles of engrailed sward now painted in deathly
pastel shades, levigating all thereon to fine dust, as they leapt and
swung and pranced and stamped and ground and
cavorted, in an orgasmic whirlwind of sanguinary slaughter, till the only
ones left living within the vicinity of the
palace, were the bloodstained giants, the equally bloody king, and the
incongruously innocent duo of Thor and Romar. The final
muster had come for so many, whether they had been nocuous or no, at the
crack of doom that had been given forth in full rein of the whip
of the fell will of the rabidly redhanded king, for whom, aught force
could have quashed the wheels of vengeance.
With all in the way of threat to his nice person, having been thus
excised from the face of the earth, the gratulant gerent nodded to
himself in sweet satisfaction, and, with a studied wave, dismissed the
his armipotent band of Brobdingnagian brutes from
his presence, correspondingly bidding Thor and Romar come forth with
him to the newly emptied palace, which stood like a
stolid spectator to the horrific savagery that was the stock of trade of
the king. 'My friends, both of you look as pale as
affrighted ghosts! Mayhap you are a touch unaccustomed to this my familiar
art in handling the business of disposal whereto I am
amenable of caring, or haply you are averse to my use of those
ghoulish giants, in this murderous, not to put too fine a
point on things, manner, but know you this, that if I had not made the
opening move to lethally undermine those knaves,
even in the very midst of their assumptive, for they had cared not to
uncover if or not rumours of my demise had been
greatly exaggerated, ease, most assuredly would they have had my blood,
instead of things thankfully having been the other
way round, what with my having done them to death, withal the besom of
destruction. It might be dirty, this cold deal of being king
glacial over so sweeping an ambit, but this is the portion appointed
unto me, in this loveless life. What would you have done
had you been constituted in my stead? Would you, perchance, have permitted those mean
miscreants, of having shamelessly slain you, when it
had lain in your power to consign them unto the sulphureous die
that had been cast for them, of the gods? It aggrieves me,
in no small wise and in leaden vapours to give thought to how horrible
was my treatment at the hands of the traitors who conceded
countenance unto the shabby schemes of Kalmar, especially when I had
been having the upkeep of their families, by way of the sinful
stipends I had dispensed unto them every month without an iota of
relief. Most mystifying to me, is their bald brassiness in having
taken my precious palace, and having gone about their base business, but,
at all events, they are safely dead, and we are yet here
alive, thus let us get ourselves up to the fine feast that steams for us
in my dining quarters, where we will have
ourselves, a ripping great time, as befits such gentle men as we doubtlessly
are. Tell me, what hat is it that takes your fancy?
How would you feel anent roasted porkers, dipped in a delectable sweetand-sour sauce, just as the Chinese have their fatted
piglings, dished? If fine fatlings strike not your palate aright, then
perchance a fat juicy slab of nice speckledy fish
like flounder, which pale white flesh simply deliquesces in the mouth,
garnished with generous lashings creamy mayonnaise, as we
Occidentals like it served, would do the trick. Drinks and pudding and
ice-cream and red meat and whatever other savoury
provender such as you can think up, have I aplenty, hence let us hasten
to the regal repast that feveredly awaits us. You
two hardly have to abide an appetite-whetting wait for the food to be
cooked up, for I trow the backstabbing bezonians, for
such are quicksilver thieves in the night, had a fine old dinner royally
heaped up for themselves, ere their just deserts were
served them, in clemently quick though venom-laced a manner,' said he
cheerfully to his nonplussed escorts, who could only
mumble their assent, and thereafter did they follow their sovereign host
through the great glimmering gates that stood
like sentinels dominant over the anterior area of the facade of the
palace, and on into the resplendent residence royal itself.
Chapter 25 - Rymar
Thor and Romar had self-evidently never been privy to the breathtaking
brand of luxuriant lavishness that epitomised the
familiar confines wherein common royals, not to say this greatest of
terrestrial kings that was currently conducting them
through opulent passageway after opulent passageway, and luxurious
chamber after luxurious chamber, all whereof were lucidly
lighted by richly blazing ruby brilliants, and festooned with vibrantly
variegated tapestries that shimmered strongly in the
light of the jewels like bold burnishes wrought of a cunning whitesmith,
and they were left utterly dumfounded at the
peregrine wonders through which they were being guided crabwise. After a
dizzyingly dazzling passage athwart the dashing dreamland
that made the collective constitution of the flaxen palace, the travelweary trio finally attained a spacious dining hall
illumined not by the brassy blare of brilliants but by the bickering
incandescence of flaming flambeaux fixed in sconces set
out in a neat circle high up on the walls, and more prominently by the
ardent flames rearing and roaring, with an intensity
fearsome, in the mighty bluestone fireplace commanding the whole lower aspect of
the north partition facing the room in full.
There did the king lead his twain rustic guests to the great table of
streaked marble running down the centrum of the hall,
and sit them in the tall armchairs which were posh upholstered in
stiff horsehair padding, standing nigh unto the head of
the table. They then waited patiently, delightfully reclining in their
snug seats, as their august host crossed over to the
hearthside, and fetched for them, the round deep receptacles of faded
steel that sat atop the glossed mahogany mantle that
overlooked the fervidly crackly flames so engrossing.
In these time-touched pots and pipkins, were, as Thor and Romar and even
the king, who had brave banquets as his entrenched
habituation, beheld to muckle delight, stout sausages sprinkled with
sweet cicely and basil, smoked herring served with sliced
capsicums and chopped chillies, hamburgers with melted cheese and
piquant ground beef, fresh soft-boiled eggs immersed in savorous
soy sauce, a whopper of a roast turkey stuffed with crunchy chestnut
paste, sizzling bacon rashers, rich mutton chops and
chints, spicy meat stew relished of caraway seeds, milky muffins English, tomato-tinged lasagna,
floury steamed potatoes tastefully topped with
brown sauce, baked lobster dipped in fragrant curry, crispy breaded
chicken cutlets, steamed wild rice flavoured with cumin
seeds and a hint of spearmint, luscious noisettes drizzled with vanilla,
and set at their hearts with healthsome hazelnuts,
fishballs soft and boneless, crab-sticks newly kneaded, fish and chips
drenched in mayonnaise and lemon juice, grilled duck
drumsticks attended of sweet sauce, dished dinner rolls wherein cradled,
snugly nestled, soft slices of buttered egg,
chilli-spiced chicken chafed and interspersed with slices of esculent eggplant,
blaringly blissful cream horns, loudly besotting tiramisu,
crumbly raspberry tarts, deliciously sweet bread pudding, custard-imbued
blancmange, odoriferous baguettes bracing, baked
beef Wellington, inly tender, exquisite baked Alaska, monstrous king
prawns floating in buff bouillabaisse, mighty
chateaubriand roast coated with bearnaise sauce, sweetened oatcakes, and
to cap things off, a massive moist Black Forest
cake. All these delicious delights dainty did the three travel-worn
partake of like starving wolves, perfectly oblivious as
to how it was that so few pots could contain so copious a bottomless lode
of entrancing edibles, reducing the mounds of fine
food which sprawlingly typified the maxim of variety being the spice of
life to crass crumbs, in what seemed like lightning
speed even.
Chapter 26 - Rymar
Once their stomachs were finally filled, and they were leaning back
leisurely in their ample armchairs, and they could but
shovel spoonsful of food, down their throats, the king found will enough,
amidst the stifling languidness that attended unto
his crapulous repletion to toast his guests and say, 'My friends, I see
you enjoyed this fine feast, which must be uncommon to
you, on account of your rather unprepossessing station in life. Nothing,
I must say, pleasures this old heat of mine, more than
to witness my dinner companions eat and make merry, all
at my hand, or, at least, almost nothing bears such a
calefacient effect on my sere substance. I am also actuated of saying
that all through our dangerous and distasteful, journey
from your old farmcroft unto this my kingly abode, have I been holding
this eagle-eye of mine trained upon both you and your
son, and also your dainty deportment conducted whiles staring straight
into the esurient eyes of hungry death, and I am
mightily impressed of the depth of noble chivalry you have displayed in
your selfless consideration of my needs above your
own, and in despite of the wrong I so badly did you, in my flagrant
transgression, when I had your property wrongfully
seized. What do you say, on that score, to my elevation of you both to the
royal rank of Prince Regent over all my lofty lands,
with immediate effect? I understand that things might be moving in a
whirl about you now, but grasp you this, that I have
scoured my kingdom, down to its uttermost corner, in the search that I
took to bear me some strong, in both mettle
and morality, men wherewith I may populate my court and council, for, as
you can well perceive by the men of mine who tried
to have me done away with, I am in sore want of competent new bloods for
the grave governance of my dominions. These men have
to have the astuteness, the sagacity, the temperance, the forbearance,
the sageness, the perspicacity, the ingenuity, the
kingcraft, the resourcefulness, the moral courage, the spiritual
sobriety, the stoutness of heart, the worldly wisdom, the
brainy brilliance, the intestinal fortitude, the staying stability,
lavish lovingkindness, the humility of a bulrush, the
godly grace, the magnanimous mercy, the majestic munificence, the
slowness to anger, the thankfulness to God, the princely
charity, the steadfast faithfulness, the saintly goodness, the
unquenchable joy of life, the placid peacefulness of Lethe,
the carefree gentleness of a grazing ram, the comely chastity, the purity
of heart, and force of arms of the most courageous
chevalier, that behoove in a soothfast sovereign. Plainly is it
discernible that the listed qualities have you in full,
indeed, saving for perhaps the final one, and the martial arts that are
requisite for aught warrior-king worth his salt, can
easily be imparted unto you, of my valiant men of war, many of whom
remain, in spite of the catty contrivances of Kalmar,
unwaveringly faithful unto me. In the joy undimmed engendered of this
your regalement, I weened that proffering unto you,
the run of the nation, that are my pride and joy, would be a course most
sound, for I know aught wight more aptly suited to
the high posts I have in mind for you than you, of course. Take you up
my offer of preferment? I pray that you do, for
otherwise all this talk would have been inconsequent, and the last thing
I like or am accustomed unto, is to tackle things
vainly, thence what say you to my proposal, my stalworth lieges?'
The sprightly Thor and his comely son Romar were warrantably taken
aback by the effusive praise of the now insouciantly
congenial king and, of course, by the offer so tempting he was dangling
like a fat juicy carrot right under their noses. In
keeping with their modest makeups, they were disinclined of taking
acceptance of the divine drills made of the king,
despite the fact that if they were to have consented unto his diverting
design, swiftly would their ill impecuniousness have
vanished like an icy snowflake sandwiched in the maw of an oven
candescent. Following some deep discussion with Romar, Thor
made answer unto the king, 'My lord, forsooth are we flattered by your
marvellous kindness in your having extended unto us
your humble liege men, so abounding a measure of happy hospitality, for
which we are forever in your debt, but do graciously
allow us of saying a polite nay, for wherewithal shall we wield the
sceptre of your empire to a breadth of excellency
extensive enow of justifying your gratifying trust in us? Fighters and
monarchs are we most assuredly not, with our preserve
being the raising of the crop, and not the governing of the empire, and
the kindred arts thereof, and in vain is it, to pretend
otherwise. As grateful as we are to you, oh king, we are of the
sentiment that it would behove you to appoint individuals more
apt to the royal roles that you have appointed in the eye of your mind. We will
repair unto our home hamlet, on the morrow, and haply, if
the Lord be so fain, rebuild our farmhouse, while you soak in your duties
of tending to your kingly affairs here in this your golden
palace. Once again do we thank you for this sprawling spread of
delectable dainties, for a finer meal have we never had, oh our
king.'
As things turned out, this crafty sovereign, white of head, who counted
choler as being amongst his chattels, had, all the
while, been expecting such a response from the two good farmers, for thus
did he impatiently snap, upon receipt of their
demurral, 'Hang your croft, as well as that mouldering old thorp of
yours, both whereof you call your home, for are not the twain
of you, with noble manners that attest the strength of your characters
and pavonian parts, and that transcend your commonness of
station, finely fitted to the grandeur of the throne, as opposed to
the gravel of the grange, or the loam of the
cornfields? I, of a surety, have found the men in possession of pudicity
refreshing to wear my crown, and to sit on my throne, and
all else, namely this gobbledygook of yours, trotted out to the contrary,
will I not suffer. The king has spoken, and the
lion has roared, and who will make bold to defy these my wishes? Be very
ware that aught man having the naughty presumption
of so doing will meet his gibbet betimes!'
The twain auditors were yet reticent of bidding the king yea, but as
they saw that their pious protestations against their
impressment, could avail naught in the face of his ironclad resolve, they
saw no alternative but that of accepting his good
graces, the truth of its having been foisted upon them notwithstanding,
whereat the buoyant king bounced up from his fauteuil,
and, rubbing together his crinkled old hands in prodigious glee, he
capered about the commodious confines of the homely
hall, and hollered to the twain seated, as he gambolled, 'A sage choice
have you made indeed, my friends, for had you yet
rebuffed my earnest entreaties of succedaneous succour in the
aforementioned adjuratory manner, you would have had my royal
hangman instead of your corn rows, for a monkish messmate, in a manner of
speaking, at twilight tomorrow, irrespective of the
saving shelter that you afforded unto me, when my fardel of fray,
wore sore on my rounded old shoulders, at the hellish
hand of the deservedly departed devil of a scoundrel Kalmar yesterday.
Now instead of mournfully making arrangements
after your judicial, for a just king am I, murder, I can place in order
proceedings for your investiture into my royal order,
whereof we three are, as yet, the solitary members, on the morrow, when I
am fully rested from the enervating exertions,
fate, it seems, saw fit to pile upon my weary old pate, this day
thankfully nigh on departed. Well, let us not have vacuous
palaver keep us from our soft couches; come, I will show you unto your
sleeping chambers, where you shall have restful
repose this night in the muscly arms of Morpheus, and for many a
blissful night to come, I hope.'
Therewith did the king gently lift his drowsy, food-stuffed guests, from
their comfortable chairs, and show them, just as he
had promised, to their beautiful bedrooms, which were outfitted with all
cuts of warmly lucent carnelian gemstones imbedded
into the cream-white walls, and a great bed which would easily have
accommodated Heracles himself, and an elegant escritoire
standing up against the posterior partition, and a tremendous washroom
attached, with a shining toilet of unvarnished ivory,
a gleaming basin with a gold-plated tap, fluffy fresh navy-blue towels
and bathrobes, scented smelling salts,
lavender-imbued shampoo, soft sandalwood soaps and an unbounded supply of
any attributable amount of clear clean water hot
and cold. The attentions of Thor and Romar were, however, firmly fixated
upon so mighty beds as easily constituted the centrepieces of
their suites, and that were draped with lily-white counterpanes that
smelt as fragrantly as did their immaculate spotlessness
yield, on account of the punitive drain born of the rigours of the day,
as the travels therein had depleted the hoar king.
Ere the king departed unto his own quarters, and for the enfoldment of
the beckoning embrace of balmy sleep about him, he, by
way of confirmation of his royal bestowal upon them, of his stately
sceptre, ceremoniously intoned unto them, 'Hear me and
hear me well, and let the beatific sweetness of your oncoming slumber,
brand into the bed of your consciousness, the
commanding charge wherein is the way whereunto you must hold, I now lay
unto you. I sieved all of the following, from a most
mighty ancient head, the name whereof eludes me at this slumbrous trice,
but here goes. You are my battleaxe and weapons of
war; for with you will I break in pieces the nations, and with you will I
destroy the kingdoms; and with you will I break in
pieces the horse and the rider; and with you will I break in pieces the
chariot and the rider; with you also will I break in
pieces man and woman, and with you will I break in pieces old and young,
and with you will I break in pieces the young man
and the maid; I will also break in pieces with you the shepherd and his
flock; and with you will I break in pieces the
husbandman and his yoke of oxen, and with you will I break in pieces
captains and rulers, for verily do I have further
conquests yet, in mind, and with your muscle will I yet prevail.'
Chapter 27 - Rymar
The very next day, the king formally inducted Thor and Romar into his
court of state as his Prince Regents anointed in a
lavish ceremony that was witnessed of literally millions of common
citizens who had trekked arduously from miles around
just to have caught a glimpse of the chosen successors of the mightiest
mortal king ever the world had seen, and that was
attended of even the seven engrossing elephants. Fresh menservants and
maidservants to replace those the stomping colossi had
comminuted into but atomies had almost miraculously sprouted of some
springhead nearby, and the royal palace was a buzzing
beehive of bustling activity, just as it had been in days prevenient, as
the grooms and wenches alike grappled with the taken
strain of catering to such a large rabble as was the environing grassplot
of the palace, awash in, though the ornate archway of
metal inlay, to this last, was sternly guarded by the forbidding spectre
of the giants, to considerable success, as one can
imagine. After their investiture into his royal court, the king summoned
Thor and Romar into his magnificent throne room,
one that was wrought of platinum and gold, and that was honeycombed all
around with finely cut crystals, whereat he rose from
his throne of pure emerald, and stepped lightly forth to greet them.
'My princes, for from henceforth, so shall your stature be blazoned unto
the world, welcome to this my personal lair and my
private sanctum. You shall, I trow, be keenly acquainted with this very
royal chamber wherein I execute all of my imperial
decisions, and handle all my affairs of state, for I shall be taking leave
of my palace, to embark upon a lengthy trip over
both sea and land, with my intended station being the fabulous city of
Rabu-Mertrah ruled over by king Yasib of Arabia. You
see, the terminus of my quest of conquest of every conceivable station of
note, happens also to be the fantastic empire of
Arabia, which rivals even my own unparalleled empire whereof you now find
yourselves having a significant slice, for scope
and strength and splendor and savour. For twain decades now has this pretender that
is Yasib enjoyed rigorous rule unchallenged over
the length and breadth, and as such nonesuch as I am, I deem it to be my
very devoir to prize so magical and so exotic, a
kingdom, from that impertinent cockalorum of a humbug, so that the world
will at last, be unified as one indiscrete entity,
instead of being bemired in the present plight of being partitioned into
two mighty moieties, although the flowing flood that
encinctures this great globe of ours, and conveniently dissevers my
domains from his, makes a cogent argument for their
continued separation. In any case, what I plan of doing whilst I am yet
at the hold of king Yasib is to persuade him to shift
his redoubtable legions of Arab warriors, over to this archipelago
whereon we are, whereupon, should my intrigue reap
dividends, I will despatch my mighty, heavy-handed giants to his
dominions, and destroy all that are therein, excepting
anything of fiscal value that might swell my stored troves of
precious treasures. While I am aware that these lofty
leviathans make more than a match for so much as the myriad armies of
Yasib, even were these dominions to be multiplied a
hundredfold, indeed would it be a colossal waste, were I to leave
unperturbed the possibility of undertaking such a massive
expansion of my current military might as I have in my high sights. My
giants, after all, will hardly be enjoying life for
ever, and then would my strength in arms, be rudely reduced unto a measly
magnitude at most approximating the martial might of
Yasib. How then would my grandiose plans fare in future, if such
eventualities as I have broached, come to pass? Nay,
action has to be forthwith taken, and I leave the care of my dominions,
to you, in my enforced absence to wheedle that Arab
mollycoddle Yasib. I have already my giants to augment your charge of
mine territories, and ere my departure on the
morrow, will I hand unto you two laniards one unto each of you, whereon
are affixed silver lockets like the one you saw me
blow upon last night. These whistles are no mere tokens, for they will
enable you to call forth the giants apace. You wot, be
it as nature has seen fit to denude human ears of the auditive
perception to catch the rarefied blast emitted of the whistles,
the giants, in compleat contradistinction, can catch the sonance thereof, as
pellucidly as if a parade of elephants were trumpeting in
to their tympanums, just in case you were wondering. Be positive to keep
these periapts, with you, at all times, for otherwise
will you not have any way of summoning them to your buttressing succour,
should danger arise from any unforeseen quarter,
as it did unto me, these last couple of days. By the way, if aught
individual whose merit I have still to commend charge unto
the giants to honour, should dare to raise a whistle from these precious
lockets, the likes of which, can be found not of any
else place in the world, that cheeky fellow shall soon find himself
brayed, even unto roaring fine dust, betwixt the fleshy,
club-like fingers of a giant, but worry you not, for upon my stern
orders, are my dinosaurian sentinels set to jump to your
aid, at aught time. Though they be fierce and wicked and lazy and
merciless, in their ogreish natures, they be also giants,
and never has there been a giant who failed of keeping his word, or, at
least, not one whereof I know. Long syne, you see,
whiles I was in the incanubulum of my adulthood but a commoner, like
the riffraff you see milling about outside, I was
assailed of the misfortune, or should I say fortune, of having run into
these vicious titans, whilst wandering about the
dusty deserts to the austral tilt of Arabia even, in quest of the elixir
of life, having lamentably come up woefully short in
my thitherto quests for the poll of a fire-drake, and the maidenhead of a
princess, and the ostensibly unattainable flower,
I believe it to have been a white rose, abloom inside of the garden of
the marmoreal moon, and just as the great lubberly
brutes were about to have me for an antepast, for I was then a strong
young man hale and hearty, I set up a cry of protest,
wherein was a Promethean proposition for them, that mere intrigued as
much as their ringingly hollow cephala. If they
cracked my riddle successfully, they would be welcome to have my body for
a tidbit, but if they fell short of the mark, they
would be fain to me, for as long as we should remain on this earth. The
dull-witted mastodons agreed with nary a further
thought as to whereto it was that they were assenting, and with their
bovine brains, needless to say, I won the little game,
and the giants were my bondsmen obtemperating for life, though what was the elegant
poser in question, I will not here divulge. Perhaps I
shall do so, on my deathbed, should the stars dovetailing, align
themselves, in your favour. At all events, instead of ending up
as a bonne bouche in the bellies of the behemoths, I found myself to be
the master of a knot of nations, the very
principalities whereunto I now entrust you in all good faith, hence
kindly discharge your duties well, and, at all costs,
let me down not, for if you should so do, you would hardly necessitate
any in the way of reminder as to the fiery fate that
should await you,' quoth he, ere he graciously bade them sit upon his
tremendous throne ornately inlaid with copper carvings of
sinuous serpents and doughty dragons, the scabrous torsos whereof
illimitably intertwined in bizarre ravels, as they smoothly
swam about the wrought beryl of the throne stead.
Chapter 28 - Rymar
The old king was true to his word, and he left the very next morn, with a
belief-defying, in its sheer scale, train of
blanding henchboys and grim-faced warriors, for his carriage. The newly
throned prince regents set themselves to their set
tasks, with admirable alacrity, their inward objections to the professed
rapaciousness unquenchable, of the atrabilious old
king, and their vert verdancy, in particular, with respect to the loftily
labyrinthian windings and twistings that
encapsulated the daedal workings of their exalted office, of parts and
grain, notwithstanding. The hard-cased curmudgeon of a
crotchety monarch had an acquired name for brusqueness, if not rank
indecorum, in his cursory considerations and urgent
dismissals, of his citizenry, all of whom, he had promised to grant free
audience to, in his avowed amenability of avuncular
amenity to the people, but this avouchment was, alas, but another humbug
of the demonstrably deceivable king, who
unrelentingly sought the best of his fellow man, but would concurrently
apply aught cross upon his own dismally dry soul, in
the way of God-fearing goodness and the self-sacrifice that this
entailed. The weather eye of Thor, was swift to recognize
this, and the same gumption that had brought him and his son to a
acceptance of the solicitation of the king anent
their present positions, as well as his protrusive personal flaws, did
they also put to good effect, in the resolution of nigh
unto uncounted ills plaguing the low lives of the disenchanted masses,
who now flocked in ever greater droves unto the
palace, so as to have their very royals attend unto their grumbling
multiplicity of bitter bales and wretched woes.
Be it as it was that the preponderant demand of the poor people, was
unquestionably of gold coinage for their want thereof,
Thor and Romar simply acquiesced in giving unto the motley masses,
whatsoever it was that they desired, as far as it lay
within their wherewithal to do eleemosynarily so, in zealous keeping with
the dominical dictums that one has to give to every
man that asks of him; and of he that takes away the goods of one ask them
not again; and as one would that men should do unto
one, do one also to them likewise. As such, not merely did they
greatheartedly give of gold, in coins and nuggets and wedges
and bars and ingots and ornaments and chalices and gems and plates and
rings and handcuffs and bracelets and anklets and
pendants and chains and earrings and necklaces and pavisses and circlets
and leaves and rods and bricks and vestments and
fittings to their trucklingly adoring subjects, but moreover because
they were wise, they still taught the people knowledge;
yea, they gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs.
To the thankful commonage hence, unadulteratedly
wonderful a storehouse of boons was the beamy benevolence that radiated
from the tinselled thrones of these twain freshly
installed princes, the gracious generosity of whom was like the lily
among the thorns of the close penury that but partially
characterised the niggardly ways of the meanly illiberal king. If the
child of even the lowest and the poorest and the
raggediest and the dirtiest mendicant, were struck with sickness, the good
princes would, with nil in the mould-spotted way of
hesitation, send their most expert physician to tend upon the
tatterdemalion in question, with his nigh magical medicative
ministrations, such was the largess that attended on their Christian
nobility of spirit which outshone even the gallant gaiety
of the scarlet samite of their royal robes resplendent.
Days then weeks, streaked past in this manner, at the imperial court of
the king, yet was there naught in the way of that
majestic yet mercenary personage anywhere within the remote region of
his own dominions, nor did Thor and Romar receive
word, in aught, of how he was faring in the distant desert domains of
Yasib, so as to derive determination as to the current
condition of the king, as as much as these heralds failed to return. It were
as if that mighty monarch had been suddenly
spirited from off the face of the earth, by some facelessly amorphous
ghoul or daimon, of Styxian source, perchance in
recompence rendered of the very deities he had made an avocation of
worshipping, on the account of the indefatigable
incontinence in lech lusts divers that had become the hallmark of his
iron-handed imperium.
Once a whole month had elapsed without their hearing aught tidings of the
king, Thor and Romar made summons unto the giants,
in the manner that had been prescribed unto them of the king and bore
them charge to cross the ocean blue and see, if they
were so kind, what had become of the king, and if he were in aught tint
of endangerment, or if he was already fallen at the
hand of whatever miasmic menace it was that had chosen to ambuscade him
in the godforsaken, bone-dry desolation of faraway,
austral Arabia, whereupon the unmannerly Briarean beggars indolent, who
had long erst moulded a fine art out of sluggish
torpidity, barefacedly took their new lords to task, vociferating their
plethora of swearing indignation at having had their sweet still
slumber so scurrilously shattered by a pair of impertinent Johnniescome-lately who were literally harebrained enough to have thought
it plausible that so supremely strong a sitting sovereign, should
succumb to strangely shapeless sinister spectral squadrons
somewhere secluded, notably since the king had not so much as cared to
sound his silver whistle by way of an alarum, and, irately
sounding off warning unto them, not to unduly rouse them again, in
particular, not on account of such tenuous ideas as the
potentiality of any scathe having been incurred of the king, thumped
their lumbering way back to the commodious castellated
constructions they had for diverse domiciles, rocking the tremulant
terrain, as they tonitruously went, like a crazy crash of
rhinoceroses. The green princes, having been guyed and rated and
vituperated by the hateful giants, could hence do aught but
to sit upon their tall, gilded thrones, and to wait on the return of
their basilic lord.
Another month went by without their receiving any tidings of the departed
sovereign wherein Thor and Romar sedulously
worried away at the nigh multitudinous ills of their commonweal, with
such assiduous industry as sat congruous with their
Christian sensibilities. The common people had been done a whole world of
good, at the expense of the pains considerable
taken of their royal regents, by these two, who thence had plenty whereof
to be proud, be it as it was that they were hardly
men of the kidney to rest upon their laurels.
One day, however, when the dripping ball that was the saffron sun,
shimmeringly set in the wimpling welkin, was slowly sinking
neath the horizon invested with violently vivid guidons of rich rainbow
chromas careering athwart the shifting spectrum of the
balas ruby, and the work diligent of the royals was done for the day,
the old king dead smashed his prolonged absence from his
domains with his sensationally sudden manifestation right upon the
alabaster throne emerald, of his inner lair. Thor and Romar
were just rearing their languid torsi from their regal seats to
go to the banqueting hall for their evening repast
when they were joltingly jarred from their scarcely settled ease by
the venomous crackle of a cadmium orange corona
composed of fizzing electrical sparks, the bestrewment of which abruptly appeared upon the
sheeny seat of the royal lair of the king, whereupon the
pharisaically petulant padrone himself, flashed into incarnadine being
thereon, salting the sizzling motes of carroty
carotene, about the thunder-and-lightning tesserae tiling about his
booted feet, as he did so. The king, as his two
age-repugnant regents beheld, was looking to be in the prime pink of
happy health, or, at least, as hale as one deep in the
vale of years, and hence amply habited in the silver livery of advised
age, could be. Flexed upon his punctuate physiognomy,
was a mow beamishly bright that bespoke the chorus of cheers informing
his hoary heart, and that instantly canted the festering
fears anent the state of his health that had nearly ruined their
serenity well-deserved.
Chapter 29 - Rymar
'Oh king, words have not weight enow of adequately transmitting the
toasting triumph transfusing our souls, forsomuch as the
vigorous vigil which, we kept for you, in your absence, has been
vindicated by this your safe return. At the risk of coming
off as being curt, kindly allow us of asking after wherefore it is that
our lord the king, was way incommunicado for so
longsome a time wherein we were beset by momently waxing worry on that
account,' gushed their effusive ebullience attendant
upon the imbroglio ravelled of their melled joyance lightening and
solacement salving.
'Have yourself easement aplenty, for your king is in fettle fine! Look
upon these my limbs bronzed of the pert kiss of the
sensibly spirited Arabian sun so animating, and see the solidness of my
sinews as rigid as a rock, and my thews as firm as
Gibraltar; am I not as fit as a fiddle, and as strong as a superhero,
nay, as sturdy as Samson himself? In the account
thereof wherefore did you, my rarely excellent regents royal, fall prey
unto the creeping cankerworm of chafing care for my
weal, as worthy a cause for concern as this last may be?' came the
cachinnation of the king.
'Nay, oh our king, you can hardly gainsay the brick-fast soundness of
our disquietude, inasmuch as we heard nought word of
your advancement within the Arabian territories, in despite of our having
readily dispatched nuncios to have ascertained
your standing therein. What would you have done had you been placed
in our boots?' returned the regents merrily.
'That much is troth, I confess, as the messengers whereof you speak,
found solace at my Arabian court, and so declined to
depart therefrom, but all that needless pother was but a storm in a
teacup. Let me give the gest of my eventful emprises in
exotic Arabia, in which, I managed to make my momentous mark, and for
which no preparator could have properly equipped me,
though he had been the Nestor of Pylos. Subsequent to a longish and
draining, trek executed over sea and land, I attained
unto the pompous palace of the distingué Yasib, king over all Arabia,
whereat I was fabulously feted with a royal feast, the
lavish likes whereof were rare even to me. Howbeit, that addlepated
dotard of a dainty dandiprat speciously scouted the
importunate obsecration I had tendered unto him, which, in effect, spelt
the failure of my mission, now all but dead in the water,
of yielding fruit. Never the less, just whilst I was, sadly
ignominiously, all but accepting that perhaps it would boot me not,
to linger farther in those parched nether regions that the world had for
a footstool, the most propitious fortune befell me of
entertaining an aidful visitant who went by the appellative of Abhar ElKaleef, and this rencounter, at the very least, on my part,
changed the complexion, in completeness, of my sojourn in the pulverulent
wilds of Arabia. This stout fellow reeking of myrrh and
frankincense and aloe claimed to be of purple blood, though I was
inclined unto thinking him, a rapaciously ravening Reynard,
going upon his filthily foxy face, and proceeded to proffer unto me a
time-beaten and weatherworn curio which, as it happened,
was a rusting lamp. I would have slain the malapert miscreant, with my
own skean or claymore, on account of his having
insolently fed me chousing falderal on the spot, had he not thereupon
given the archaic antique, a few quick rubs, with his
plump digits, whereupon a most splendent sight suddenly sprouted
therefrom, which had me rapt. This turned out to be an
authentical genie, though one who appeared rather dispirited and sulky,
who was compelled to do my bidding, if you can
envision so unprecedentedly wonderful a phenomenon! The supposed
patrician, then told me that the small son of Yasib the
Benevolent himself, had taken that very lamp unto his villa to
flaunt it divertingly to his friend, his own little
boy, and that he had begged the young prince, to have it lent unto
him, and that once he had had the so-called gewgaw
to himself had the genie sprouted therefrom, to his unqualified
astoundment. When I asked him wherefore it was that he had
chosen of having made a gift of that invaluably precious artifact to me,
and had not opted of keeping it for himself of
his own profit, the piggy punchinello promptly rejoined that his
affections lay withal me, and that he had a boon to beg of me.
It seems he had been hankering, a longsome weary while, for a prize
position in my honourable attendance, whereupon I fed his
suilline heart, by way of a fleet flurry of main thrusts arrowing, withal
the cold steel of my prize falchion wickedly curving,
the ponderosity thereof not withstanding. At the end of the day, ne'er
would it have done to have such a fulsomely
facundious fool as was that porcine pharisee, left with life liberated
wherewithal to have had me give an Obelus unto Charon,
so as to have me, cross the Stygian ferry to the undiscovered
country whence bourn no traveller returns, as you will
surely agree. As I had ratiocinated, afore I laid the finger of death to
that peccable peccary pinguedinous, having harked
back to the nigh catastrophic case of the knavish Kalmar and his
pernicious perfidy, it would have been singularly unsound
of me to grace such a fawning fisting hound with my trust, when I
had already attained procurement of the finest
fruit that he could have borne unto me, namely, the lamp and the genie
therein, wherefore I gave him the attempering quietus
that is the great leveller. After all, had not Kalmar affirmed his fealty
unto me, his king, upon umpteen visits unto my
very fastness? I daresay, if as much as he, a staunch warrior of mine,
for many a year, could have suffered seducement of shiftily
serpentine subversiveness, to have him divest himself of the tabard
of trueness, then what more of that fatty farceur,
to do in like manner, or peradventure even worse wise? When kind
nature sounds her signal of retreat, I would rather
discharge my last debt on my own long account, than be pervertedly
precipitated unto the bank of Jordan at the feral hands of
a slyly slippery sounder of sleek saurian swines fit for the
slaughterhouse, as it were. Thereof much, I couch certain, you
cannot begrudge me of setting forth, by way of perspicaciousness in
induction. Within any case, once I had the sharp sickle
of Pale Death haste onward the end of the journey of the cunningly
colubrine Arab arriviste to the beyond of Azrael, I
adjured the mysteriously morose genie to tell unto me the revelation of
the meteoric rise of Yasib, from rags to riches,
and to have that common-or-garden hind denuded of his earthly excellence,
the praiseworthily perfusive puissance whereof
would be momentaneously made over to me, as my bequeathal condign
committed into my care. Notwithstanding that the
insufferably conscientious genie was adamant in his unimpeachable refusal
of bringing about the bane, by the impassible
stroke of death of Yasib and his house, I still managed to prevail upon
him, by main force of coercion effectuated of my
unvanquishable masterhood supreme, to render the royal family, innocent
of their sovereign stature and all attendant
thereon, whiles contemporaneously superimposing me, in totality, upon the
map of their now whilom might, which anon revealed
itself to be a pricelessly plenipotentiary stratagem, when I
presently found myself to be the overlord of all Arabia,
with the marmsome Yasib and his kindred beggared and consigned, of the
hand of the selfsame genie who had catapulted him to
paramountcy unto the very ends of the earth. Therein, in the muddy
moonscapes interminable lying contiguous to the poles that
the planet has for undergirding stanchions, does the quondam grand
emperor of Arabia, now stravaig with his loved ones likewise
destitute, and, herein, in the meanwhile, in my house gloriously grand,
do I now straddle the rainbow, in fantastic fullness, of
the motley mass made of the disparate nations, at my ease. No longer will
I have to languish as a prey unto the aggravating anxiety of
knowing not, if I shall be put to the worse, before the strong soldiery
of the austral Arabs, for these last, as well as the
variegation of the heterogenous Hesperian realms that had already been
overborne of my hand, ere my sunnily serendipitous
acquirement of the magic lamp, have I aggregated, much as a fastidiously
sedulous weaver working at her loom, buttressed by
the twin nacres of callidity and industry, to create rich tapestries
margaritaceous, by way of avid annexation, into a
makeless masterpiece of concinnity mosaic rivalling the iris itself, for
the pearlaceous play of opalescine light born of
the multitudinous crasis polychromic that is the pith and marrow of
this, the coloury collage of my mother-of-pearl medley
of nacry nations. Thereafter did I offer up thanks lavish to the great
gods, for their goodly gift, of the genie, who is,
unto me and my exalted empire, like the glazed icing on cakes, and the
powerpacked cherry topping a pie, and the frothy
cream overlying Danish pastry, such is the magnific meridian of
mastodonic might whereto I have been articulately erected,
borne beneath the alimentary auspices of that pachydermal personage bound
unto me, in the staunchly fast yoke of servitorship
fardel yeomanly. Since too I was bearing medium of waxing discomfiture of
the cankering concernment of my attendant athelings,
appertaining the health of their trifling trinkets of adjuvant realms,
and thus was very wroth, I mere forfended their
nettlesome complaints clamant so depriving my peace, by arranging
to them palliation of a deathly despatch to
their ends, carried out, courtesy of the argentine axe forcibly
flourished of the royal executioner; perchance you can
catch the congruency thereof. I would wager you that their shallow
solicitousness was amply allayed of the swooshing swish
of the silver blade that saw their decapitation upon the scaffold. At all
events, my vexation was abundantly assuaged of
their ebb of life, not least whereas aught daemonic cloak-and-dagger
machinations to mayhap usurp my throne, that
might have found fermenting occupancy within their rumbustiously rumbly
number, were lost deep in the darkling depths of the
river Styx, in the sulfurousness of hellish Hades, for aught I knew.
Forasmuch, though, as the farcical farceurs and devious
deviants and steatopygous sophists, had I, in entirety, achieved
downright disembarrassment of, of force majeure, the
principal distemper inciting ebullition within the basal lot of my
otherwise sanguine spirit, was the pertly procacious
genie, in his incessant impugning of the elicitations that which, I
entreated of him, anent felling the gadflies that were my
foes, in one fell swoop swift. From every appearance, there lie extant
certain circumscribing moral precincts hemming in,
like prudish skirts, in the soothfast facilities of genii, such as the
dictate most unfortunate that expressly prohibits
their taking human lives, that thence automatically incommodes the
realization of my exercise of godlike potencies.
Howbeit, albeit that I could avail nought against the arcane preternatural
orbit divinely ordained, I was able to bask amid the nigh hindmost boons,
my historically momentous all-encompassing ascendency, booted unto me,
in luxuriating, ephemeral gay day
after ephemeral gay day, within the palace lagoon scented of pure ottar
of rose petals, the fragrancy whereof was redolent of
the nosegay exuded of the perfumed tincture of the roses, whiles with
comely courtesans, the peregrine pulchritude whereof I had
thitherto never sweetly savoured, and certain of whom, had the face of a
Venus, and the brains of a Minerva, and grace of Terpischore,
and the memory of Macaulay, and the figure of Juno, for divertissement
sultry, in the poetry of pareunia.
Once the beguilement of the broiling days spent in the creamy company of
bosomy odalisques, after the manner mentioned afore, had
relieved itself of its nacred novelty and hence all appeal for me, and
enfeebling ennui had commenced to rear its hideous head,
I bade the genie whisk me home, and so here I stand before you twain, my
loyal boon copemates, who will desert me not, whether times be fat
or lean,' quoth the boon king, as he gobbled down the dainty delights of
brown beccaficos that had abruptly appeared, likely of the
cajoling conjurations of the genie, before him, on a superb silver salver, whereat
a mighty vociferation, redounding externally off the palace
partitions, chopped upon him, striking him, stock still, rooted to the
striated marble floor, in his antwerp-blue attitude of mordant munching!
Chapter 30 - Rymar
Down ran the tawny cascade of lovely kickshaws, like some otto-scented
fountain fragrant, and up trumpeted the clarion
cannonade of the battle cry of the very Zyenar armisonant, 'Oh Kymar the
Great, your deracinating days of hegemonical rule
unjust over the sweet innocent earth are come to nought, for we, Yasib
and Zyenar, have come hither to set the crapulously
grievous injustice of your rankly regrettable primacy to rights! Come,
let us forthwith have ourselves a royal ball,
with the measuring of swords stinging!'
'Folderol! Oh you precious rascals, know you not that the plenipotency
of Rymar the Magnificent, soars impervious to aught
dastardly diminution as might be shamelessly shrouded about it of such
dishonourable spalpeens as are you? You will rue the
day you blackguardly disregarded the lenity I had graciously rendered
unto you in my sufferance of your prolonged presence
in this my world, in foul favour flagitious of striving to prevail
upon me your mordantly murderous machinations
Mephistophelean, when I rank atomise you, under the massy might avalanchine of
my masterly, and, for that matter, masterful,
mammoths, and, take it, true or no, my cunctipotent genie overshining.
Bestir yourselves, and get you, down to the charge,
and raise the ancients and pennants, oh thews of mine, for all of you, my
genie, my giants, my princes, my varlets, my myriads
and even my myrmidons, make mine limbs wherewithal to bridle the brazen
bezonians blighting this globe, over which cosmopolitan
composition command shivering is mine and mine alone!' quoth the king obtending
in a hoarse crack, as in the obtenebration of his kernel keratose
boiled over the red-hot thirst for bloody battle, as was congruent with
his habitude hateful.
Copyright © 2009 Luke Indran. All Rights Reserved.