Tale: The King and the Chaos

(A new feature for my Blog; here is a sample of my fiction that I produce from time to time. It’s not related to Narnia in any way, but it does take on eternal themes, in my humblish opinion.)

The King and the Chaos

It had been many years since the last king was crowned. He had lived to a ripe old age with all his borders held in peace. At various times, cities that belonged to neighboring kingdoms, not the king’s own, saw the prosperity of their neighbors and switched allegiances to have a share in the good king’s rule and happiness. In this way the kingdom expanded without bloodshed, without fight, and without death.  

    Legends were told of the old king’s grandfather before him who bravely faced the embodied chaos and subdued it. The soon-to-be kings were taken naked into the wilderness by their priests and advisors on the day of their coronation and left with only a sword, their wits, and the strength of their arm. The grandfather was found the next day, bloodied and mangled, but alive. He would not speak of what transpired but declared he had beaten the beast back into the deeper wilderness where ghosts howl and the furies wail.  

The old king’s father, strong of arm and skilled with the traditional curved blade, was found without a scratch but told the tale of a scaled beast with black eyes who wove its way across the sands and through the briars at the magic hour between sunset and dusk and sat across from him within an arm’s reach and simply stared. The black eyes looked deep into his own as if evaluating him, studying him, searching deeply for something. The old king’s father was said to have kept his hand firmly around the grip of his sword, every muscle held on edge at the very precipice of action and waited for the beast to make a threatening move. In such a position, staring back at the beast that stared at him, he stayed ready for action until the sun burst over the horizon with the piercing gleam of dawn. The light burst was so intense that he looked away for a moment to protect his eyes. When he looked back the beast was gone as if it had been made of smoke entirely.

The old king himself was, as his forebears, removed of his prince’s crown, stripped of his royal raiment, and taken into the wilderness. The sun was hot, and the distance wavered in the heat making the trees look to be made of little more than imagination. The old king was much younger in those days. He was in the active prime of life. His oiled muscles rippled as he moved. He was as sure and certain of his skill with the curved blade in his well-tanned hands as those who came before him whose name he proudly bore.  He looked back at the city, the glimmering jewel of all creation, and felt pride in all his family had accomplished, all his people had accomplished. They cheered him as he walked naked through the streets, believing him every bit the hero as those who came before. He had trained himself diligently. His grandfather had told him how the beast would fight. His father had told him that it could be defeated by strength of mind and will. He had trained himself for both.  

The priest pronounced the ancient blessing over the cup of water and gave it to him to drink. It would be his last until the sun dawned the next day. The great teacher of the city took a finger of red paint and drew a line on the king from the forehead to the center of the chest. The general of all the king’s armies took the paint and drew a line from the center of the chest and out to each of the king’s arms. The head lawmaker put his whole hand into the paint and placed his print upon the king’s abdomen.

The king then bowed to each, and they left him there alone in the wilderness to face whatever may come.

When the old king died, his son was informed. The young man shouted at the messenger for interrupting his much-needed sleep after a night of debauchery.  

Though his closest advisors would never have said it to the king nor agreed with him when he said it, the king was well aware to whom he was leaving the crown.

“He will learn,” the old king often declared in moments of lonely honesty. In such times he would raise a hand to push back his golden crown and scratch at his wrinkled forehead before shaking his head and sigh. “I just wonder how many will have to suffer before he becomes a lover of wisdom.”

The messenger proceeded to press the prince, for it was quite important news. Three bodies in the dimly lit bed stirred and the prince declared that he may as well rise now that his concubines were awake. He threw a golden chamber pot at the messenger along with a frustrated command to leave.

Hours later the prince emerged from his chambers in a silken robe that he left untied and open. His female companions were dressed similarly and shared the same intoxicated look about their eyes as the prince. It had been quite a night indeed.

The prince was unlike those who came before him. Where they were strong and well-trained both mentally and physically, this prince of men was thin, weak, and given to childish fits that embarrassed both courtiers and commoners alike. His dark features fluctuated between vacant boredom and a smug sneer multiple times in every conversation, especially when the subject at hand was anything to do with his role as leader of his kingdom.  

When he was informed of the ritual that was to take place that very day, he dismissed it as a ridiculous tradition that was the first thing he would abolish as soon as he was king. It was inconvenient and certain to cause his white skin to burn in a very unkingly manner. His advisors and courtiers looked at one another and thought to say more but chose against such honesty.  

The prince then demanded that if he were going to be stuck naked in the desert then the least they could do was allow him some companionship. They reminded him of the tradition; that the king alone was to face the chaos. The people, they declared, would be expecting him to go alone into the wilderness and only his faithful four advisors. With a heaving sigh he consented and then whispered to his three maidens who giggled in response and made themselves scarce.  

That evening the prince was taken to the gate of his palace and stripped of his clothes and handed the curved sword which he then slung over his shoulder with a distracted air. The people gathered, thronging the streets, balconies, rooftops, and windows to catch a glimpse of the prince who would become king. Instead of cheering and lauding him their king as he remembered his father telling him they would and had done for him, they all stood silent. When he so casually placed the dull side of the traditional blade upon his shoulder, they began to murmur amongst themselves. The prince was suddenly aware of an opinion of himself other than his own and demanded of his father’s four advisors that they command the people to applaud. The four put on a good show of cheering for the king and the people picked it up to just barely an acceptable level. The new prince smiled, spread out his arms, and turned to allow all a glimpse of his supposedly kingly form.

The cheers did not lessen, nor did they increase, as the four advisors guided the spoiled, weakling prince through the streets of his father’s city. The young man proudly took great strides with his chest puffed out and occasionally danced a jig to the laughter of his people which he took as admiration.  

Once outside the city walls the heat and the wind seemed to increase which caused the prince to complain. The advisors bore all his complaints with grim silence. It was a relatively short walk to the sacred space in the wilderness, two hours journey perhaps. All five figures were relieved to finally arrive, one more vocal than the other four.

The priest poured water into the sacred chalice and began to speak the blessing over it when he was interrupted by a grabbing hand that took the chalice roughly from his grasp. The prince drained the cup in one gulp and demanded that the ceremony be gotten over with as quickly as possible. The rebuffed priest scowled angrily at the prince but choked back the hot words he thought to say.  

The greatest teacher of the city took the red paint and when the gestured line moved onto the chest the prince giggled and demanded that this part of the tradition was to be done away with. There was no one to see, he explained. And besides, he explained, if he wanted to be painted on, he’d have beautiful women to do it, not three disgustingly old men.  

The teacher, the general, and the lawmaker looked at each other and then to the priest who shrugged. The general alone stood forward from the rest and asked with a gesture for the traditional curved sword. The prince looked at him with contempt but gave him the blade. The general took two steps away from the man and stared at the blade for a moment. He then looked back at the prince with barely contained disgust and threw the blade into the dirt at his feet.

At once the prince demanded that the general pick it up and hand it back to him, but the man’s back was already turned and he was walking away. The general had never retreated in his long career. That day was not a day on which he would start. The priest followed after and then the lawmaker and finally, after a moment’s hesitation, the great teacher too left the prince behind.

In the hot sun, screaming at the top of his lungs, the young prince told them all what he thought of them, what he thought of their stupid tradition. He yelled that it was a sham, that his father had told him that nothing happened on the day of his trial and nothing was going to happen that night either. It was all a folk tale told by untouchable caravan folk, told by women caravan folk, no less. He shared with them his conviction that it was nothing but a scare tactic like stories of the Djinn to get little children to behave and grow up to someone else’s standards of ideals. 

It was not long before the prince was aware that he was shouting at no one but the wind and the scavengers of the wilderness of fur or flight. He looked at the city of his father and wanted it to burn just to spite the leaders and spite the people who half-heartedly clapped and cheered for him. He gave a soul-baring scream of frustration before he found a rock and threw it at his father’s city, wishing that he had all the wishes of a Djinn to make it go farther, turn bigger, and catch on fire before it decimated the city and the people within it.

The night fell, and the morning came as sure as it always had. The greater powers of the universe continued on, heedless of the fall of an old king and the rise of a new one.

The four advisors spent a restless night in their separate chambers. One by one they discovered they could not sleep and one by one gathered around the great table that they had once shared with their beloved king. None of the four spoke a word but they all, for the first time in their storied lives, were of the same mind. The long night they held the silence.  

Once it was dawn it was the general who broke the quiet around that table as he ordered a horse to be prepared and a rider to go with him. The two rode to the sacred place in the wilderness and what they saw was beyond description. As a spinner of tales, I must, of course, try to describe it to you nonetheless. No matter what I tell you, it was in truth far more than what I heard from them.  

As they came upon the sacred spot the general smelled a familiar smell, that of blood on sand. The younger rider, having much less experience than the general, was unable to prepare himself for what he might see and ended up on his hands and knees retching onto the sand.  The general’s dauntless eyes took in the scene and he pieced together what must have happened.  

At some point during the night the prince’s entire cadre of concubines had apparently come to him and brought him food, drink, music, to entertain and comfort him, and a tent to protect him from the elements. It seems that at the height of the wine and comfort something descended upon them, snuffed out all pleasure and in its place set upon that throne fear. Not one of them survived and many bodies were missing entirely.

The body of the prince remained, and the general noted the direction of its one outstretched arm. It was pointing, all five fingers desperately reaching, toward the curved sword that still lay where the general had thrown it into the dirt.

Beyond the prince’s lifeless body the general could make out a trail liken to the markings left behind by a massive snake that wove its way through the sand and through the briars, toward the light of the rising sun.