The story so far:
And now…Chapter 19
The Tale of the Lonely King
When Grub woke up he was sitting by a fire. He did not notice the fire. Instead, he noticed the huge, curious face that was staring into his own.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” said Scround. “Ever so sorry about that little mix-up, good chap. I am always misplacing that darn brain of mine. If you could find it in your gentle soul to forgive a wayward brute, I would be forever in your debt.”
Grub looked around. His friends were close at hand, seated around the fire. The other two creatures were lying down. All parties were eating an odd-looking sort of fruit.
“He’s asking for your forgiveness, Grub,” explained Melissa. “For trying to eat you and squish you and all that.”
“Oh, that? No worries, that was awesome!”
The big face beamed. “Huzzah! Now, let’s get you en route to tucking into some nourishment!”
Another look towards Melissa.
“They want to feed you, Grub.”
“Huzzah!” said the boy.
The strange fruit had been found by the third creature, who they came to know as Kintain. It had found the fruit in a cave whose mouth had been covered by a house which had fallen from the sky.
“Not a bad house either,” said Kintain. “Nice little three-bedroom affair. It’d probably go for fifteen-percent on the re-sell, before taxes.”
The only organic parts of the creatures that the children could see were the faces. Their eyes were bright, blue ponds set against skin the color and texture of old wood. The teeth were still somewhat troubling, due to their size and edge.
“What is this place?” Grub asked after everyone had had a chance to eat and rest their bellies. “And what are you? And who lives in that castle?”
“Grub,” said Melissa. “Don’t be so pushy.”
The three behemoths laughed.
“No worries, little lady,” said Scround, “he is only exercising his cognitive capacity. A fine thing for a fine young lad to be doing. To answer in order: This place was once the Kingdom of Zoidon, the world between worlds. Castles and villages stretched as far as the eye could see, and quite a bit beyond that. The air was filled with the thrum and hum as travelers moved from one dimension to the next.”
“And we,” said Plinga, “were once parasites as small as the cells of your skin. Smaller even, if you believe certain people. But we fed on the particles that get produced when you go around ripping holes in the fabric of reality. Quite good, those particles, and nutritious as well. Anyway, we grew bigger and bigger, but the locals decided it was all for the best, since the waste had to go somewhere.”
“And that,” said Kintain, gesturing in the direction of the castle, “was once The Watch-House for The Order of the Knights of the Shattered Sky. Old as time, they were, if not older. They crisscrossed the dimensions to right wrongs and set the clockworks of the universe into proper working order. They gave it up long ago, some sort of internal affairs problem. Something to do with too much paperwork. Since then, it’s been held and used by all manner of men and women. Pretty much exclusively of the personality type who will enter a strange place filled with strange people and declare themselves in charge of it and them.”
Kintain smiled with the memory. “Seems like only yesterday that this desert was full to bursting with caravans of wandering heroes and kingdoms, all of them chasing some different quest or destined love. Never seemed to matter whether they actually found it or not.”
“It must’ve been something to see,” said Lim.
“It was, my lad, it was.”
The fire danced, and all assembled looked deep into the flames and were rewarded with visions of the long-gone time, a time filled with the dream of gods and heroes who battled across the heavens and chased noble ends.
“But wait,” said Lim, “you keep saying what this stuff was. But what is it now?”
“Ah,” said Scround. “That situation is a little bit bleaker, I must admit. Now, this place is not much of a place at all. The life got sapped out of it. The towers crumbled to pieces and the pieces broke down into dust and the dust blew away and mostly just gets stuck under your fingernails at inconvenient times.”
“And we,” said Plinga, “ate too much until we were too big and the food too little. We managed to outlast the other predators that came out of The Collapse, but there wasn’t much after that. Now we live day-to-day, scrounging whatever we can. Every so often the hunger will get to be too much and we’ll drop dead.”
“That’s terrible!” the children exclaimed.
“Eh. Everyone needs a rest every so often. While we are dead, the sky still gets ripped and more particles come pouring out. Our skin absorbs those particles, and when enough has been eaten we can get up again.”
“And that,” said Kintain, gesturing to the castle “has long-since been populated exclusively by the imprisoned and the dead. The Lonely King holds court there now. What’s left of him, anyway.”
At the mention of the name, a winter breeze found the camp and breathed across the flame and down the backs of the gathered children. Not even the armor on the creatures’ backs could keep away the chill.
“Do you know him?” said Lim. “Do you know what and why he is? Can you tell us?”
The three creatures were silent. Lim was almost about to wonder if maybe they hadn’t fallen asleep or curled up deep into their shells or been offended into silence, when Kintain spoke up.
“Yes, lad, we know of him. And his story. It’s an old story, so old you don’t even have to know the words to know the story. The wind whispers the tale into the knots of trees, and the nymphs sing of it in their gatherings. But it is no happy thing and the night would be gladder if we did not darken our fire by its telling.”
“Please,” said Lim. “We have to know. Otherwise a whole lot of people are going to get hurt. Maybe even die. The kind of death where you don’t wake up a little while later.”
Kintain sighed. The gust threw the children into the air and blew the fire out.
“Sorry, sorry.”
It took a moment for everyone to be reassembled and the fire re-lit.
“Very well,” said the ancient giant. “If confrontation with him is the destiny you have selected for yourselves, then I will tell you all that we know of the one they call The Lonely King. Listen. It begins, as these things tend to, once upon a time…”
Once upon a time in a faraway place, there lived a King who spent his every day sitting on his throne, deep in misery. You see, it is the most sacred duty of kings to sire princes to continue the title of the family. This task was of greater priority than any other Kingly demands, such as hosting tournaments, naming things, and making sure the peasants didn’t starve to death.
And though this King hosted many tournaments, and had quite the knack for naming things, and was careful to ensure that only an acceptable amount of peasants died from starvation, he did not have a son to carry on his legacy. As such, this King bemoaned the failure that he perceived his life to be.
He distracted himself by declaring war against one ally, then allying with that enemy against someone else; or by making Tuesdays illegal; or declaring anyone named “Todd” an enemy of the state. Such frivolities did make the days go by that much quicker.
But none of it filled the gaping hole in his heart that had been carved out to make room for a son.
By the time he reached his seventh wife, The King had grown desperate. His wife, too, was feeling not a slight amount of desperation. The other six wives had been befallen by bizarre accidents, usually the kind of accident that sprung out of heavy sharp things being placed in places where heavy sharp things should not be because they might, and in these cases had, fall down in a heavy and sharply manner. But despite all her efforts, she could not get with child.
Now, it so happened that this Seventh Queen had a sister who was a famous seer, known and requested for miles around. The King summoned the sister to court so that she might divine if an heir was incoming, or if he’d be better off starting over with a new wife.
The Sister arrived at court in peddler’s rags and traveler’s boots.
She approached The Seventh Queen’s caravan as a beggar.
“Alms…alms…for the poor…” she begged.
“My sister!” cried The Seventh Queen, seeing through the disguise at once. “Whatever has become of you?”
The Sister cast off the rags to reveal golden robes and her magical staff. Arm in arm, the two sisters returned to the castle.
“My sister,” began The Queen, “my sister you must help me. Tell The King whatever it is that he wants to hear. No matter what, please tell him that his son is fast approaching!”
The Sister took The Seventh Queen’s hands in her own and vowed to do what she could to assuage The King’s mind.
That night, as the darkest hour of midnight swept across the land, The Sister led The King up to the highest peak of the tallest tower. With conjuring words, she bid the spirits of the dead descend from the sky to race circuits around the tower. As The King watched, black clouds swelled while the magic woman moved in a rhythmic sway. The dead came, and they did dance upon the air in that witching hour. The dead presented The Sister with the vision she had bid.
What she saw surprised her. Her sister, it seemed, was already with child. The signs would begin to show in a few days’ time.
“Well?” demanded The King. “When do I get my son?”
“Soon,” said The Sister. And then she remembered The Queen’s plea. With the future so close at hand, so assured, the magic woman decided there could be no harm in sweetening the pot.
So she told The King that not only was his son already in the making, but that once borne, the boy would become stronger and wiser and greater than any other man in the land. And that he would grow to marry the most beautiful and wealthy lady in the whole world. And that their children would come to have even greater fates than either parent.
As you can imagine, The King was quite excited by this news. He may have even danced a jig, but that might have only been scandalous gossip.
When The Seventh Queen announced her pregnancy three days later, The King bade minstrels spread out across the land and sing out the glorious destiny that awaited the royal lineage.
The King was so excited that he could no longer sit still or sleep at night. He moved about the castle at all hours, overwhelmed with distracted agitation. So agitated was his distraction that he went through a door that he should have known not pass through, and a heavy sharp thing went about its heavy and sharp business.
The Queen died in labor.
The Boy had all his needs seen to. A fleet of expert nannies had been flown in on the back of a dragon and then thrown off the back. Those who were quick-witted enough to survive were deemed worthy of attending to His Royal bum. A squadron of athletic coaches and a cadre of tutors were assembled and then put to battle. The survivors formulated a schedule for his education and training that encompassed every waking hour of the day that was not already devoted to such necessary wastes of time as eating or sleeping.
Contingency plans had contingency plans.
The Prince took easily to these lessons. By the age of five he was besting all masters in swordplay, archery, jousting and algebra-based combat. By age seven he could duel any chess master to a draw. By age eight there were never any draws.
By the time he was nine, The Prince could not wake up and stretch without some new champion of some profession or other marching up the front lawn and demanding a battle to see who was the true master of whatever it happened to be that day.
The ones who escaped with their lives did so muddled, bloodied and limping. Any challenging chess masters were advised to bring along small bags with which to carry whatever limbs they had lost in the tournament. Chess was a much rougher game in those days.
On the day he turned twelve, the marriage proposals began. Girls who were young enough to still require carriage and cradle, and girls who were old enough to be his mother’s mother, all came bearing candies and flowers. All were turned away with the utmost gentility, so that none felt embarrassed or slighted in the least.
The Prince’s mind was an electric thing. Each day saw a new proclamation that improved the lives of his people by ten-fold.
The colors of the flowers grew brighter. The food tasted better. The sky was bluer and the sun never glowed with such comforting warmth as it did while The Prince was young.
“And this is not the best of it,” the people told each other. “The best is yet to come. The destiny still awaits.”
These thoughts spread from the fields to the shops to the servants to the guard and finally to the ears of The Prince who by this time had become The King.
He was not surprised to hear it. Those words echoed in his memory of every moment of his life.
“You did good. You did well. But the best is yet to come.”
The King took no wife and grew his beard. His only pleasure came from the nights, when all the world was asleep and took its expectations to bed with it.
Years passed.
The kingdom stayed prosperous. The people stayed happy.
And always the refrain: “The best is yet to come. The destiny is waiting.”
At last he could take no more. He announced that he was going on a quest. Greatness, he told the people, was still outside his reach because all he’d ever known was this land. He must go out and find strange new ideas, and then he would be able to raise the people up to greater heights.
“Huzzah!” crowed the crowd. “Huzzah!”
He dressed in peddler’s rags and traveler’s boots and set out, telling no one where he going.
And he did go on many an adventure, and he did learn many a thing, but those are of little interest to the story we’ve begun.
What does matter is that throughout all those adventures, and even with all those lessons learned, none of it revived any sense of joy or love. Like his father, The King had an empty space in his heart, and could not think of how to fill it.
He was nearly resigned to return to his kingdom and his life when one night he became lost in a storm and was separated from his horse and his paltry few belongings. The King may very well have died that night, but for the flickering candle light which he discerned through the swaying trees and crashing lightning.
The candle was inside the window of a small cottage. In that house was an elderly lady.
The old lady, it must be said, never had any intention on creating tragedy. She had not foreseen the grief to come when she had inspired That King to lethal excitement. And she did foresee any now as she allowed This King into her front room. If she had known who he was, the night would have gone different.
And if it had gone differently, well, no matter. There is no use lamenting the lives that might have been.
It was while he was enjoying the glow from her fireplace that The King saw the collections of bones adorning the old woman’s walls.
“My dear lady,” said The King, “what use do you have for such hideous ornamentation?”
“They’re for my work,” his aunt said, “using the dead to assist the living.”
“A witch,” murmured The King. “As if I haven’t had enough problems with your kind already.”
“Well, excuse me for leaving the candle on while I try to do some reading.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that, as a boy, a witch told my father about my great destiny, and now I’ve had to live with it all my life. I can’t enjoy anything now because I have to be constantly wondering about how it will affect then. There is no present for me, only a future that I don’t understand and never asked for.”
“If it bothers you so,” said The Witch, “why don’t you just get it removed?”
“Remove what? My destiny?”
“Sure. We remove boils and warts and all such manner of unpleasant bits of business.So why not a destiny?”
“Can you…will you…release me from my fate?”
Normally, The Witch would have said no. It was a bad habit, taking in strangers and messing around with their lives. Ever since her sister had passed, The Witch had withdrawn from the world, broken-hearted to think of the things her gift could reveal or hide.
But there was something about this sad young man in front of her fireplace that kindled her old kindness. There was something so terribly familiar and lonely about his figure that she could not bear to turn him away.
“I…suppose…”
They worked for two weeks, hardly ever halting to sleep or eat. Her cauldron bubbled and boiled while The King endured all manner of troubles and toils to fetch back the ingredients that she would need.
At last it was done. With the final application of dragon scale and phoenix blush, the foul brew was complete.
Into this concoction The Witch sank the instrument of removal. It was a mask, fashioned from skull and rock and carved with mystic runes. The Witch clamped it into place over The King’s head.
She placed her hands on either side of his head and spoke words which no mortal man may remember.
The mask began to glow.
The Witch took up her needle. The end was sharp enough to cleave the atoms in the air. She aimed it at his left eye.
“Keep still,” bade The Witch, and she slid the needle in.
He awoke in an empty forest clearing. The woman and her house were both gone. Outwardly, there was no sign of any sort of transformation.
But inwardly, inwardly he was a changed man. A great storm had blown itself out to sea, leaving the shoreline untroubled. Only the soft light of the dawn was left, warming his soul to pleasant pursuits.
He laughed then, because he could. Laughed because there was no reason to do so, and no reason not to, and given the choice he chose to laugh to his heart’s content.
And with that, he went off into the world, ready to answer to no one.
He got ten years. He was happy for five. He drank and ate and slept too long and was chased out of doorways by angry landlords, always with laughter at the edge of his lips.
And if he overheard tales of abandoned castles and civil wars, of famine and feud, it only made him raise his glass that much higher so that he could find the bottom that much quicker.
But after five years, he could not drink or laugh away the tales. He felt his abandoned people weigh upon his soul. He could not forget. He could not release the guilt.
One evening, he grew so reckless and drunk that he was chased into the forest by other patrons. He stumbled into a forest clearing and there collapsed, face first, to the floor of dirt and leaves.
When he awoke, he found himself at the foot of the old woman’s house.
The Witch was waiting in the doorway. She beckoned him to enter.
He stepped into the cabin, feeling every bit of the mud and filth which encrusted him. He eyed The Witch, filled with sorrow and rage.
“You have failed me, witch,” he said. “I am still in misery.”
“I know,” said his aunt, “and since I have learned of your identity, it fills me with grief to see you now, like this. It never comes out right, these magic fixes…” She trailed off. “Come. Allow me to amend my mistake and set you back on course.”
“No!” he cried, and he backed away towards the door.
“But…but you are in misery! Abandoning your destiny did not work.”
“But it did,” he insisted. “For five years I was as happy as any man could hope to be.”
“An illusion,” snapped his Aunt.
“Perhaps,” he said, “but so long as I did not know that it was it an illusion, life was good. If only I could return to that state-”
“You cannot,” said The Witch.
“Methinks you lie,” he said. “I think that there is a way, but that you would deny me my happiness.”
“I deny you your madness!” protested The Witch. “Yes, there is a place where mind and body can be separated, where man can be reduced to no more conscience than a beast. It is wicked beyond all measure. A man who did that to himself…” she shook her head. “He could scarce be recognized as a human being.”
For a moment, her words seemed to strike a chord. He wavered in his resolve.
His aunt said, with kindness, “These are shadows and specters you chase, my King. Life, a true and happy life, lies with other people. And those people are in great need of you.”
Something in his heart hardened. He whispered, “Why should I?” Then, louder, he said, “Why should I care what becomes of anyone else?”
She did not respond. When he turned around, it was to discover that he was once more outside and alone.
And it is said that he traveled far, and he traveled wide, until at last he came to discover a cave in the deepest part of the darkest forest. And in that cave, echoes held dominion and souls existed without any body to answer to.
What happened in there, I cannot say. No one can. What is known is that the thing which pulled itself out from that earthen maw was no longer a king. It moved on all fours like a beast, and it killed and ate and howled at the moon with the other wild things.
And into the night, the dark thing fled…
“But,” Scround interrupted, “he still had that royal blood in him. And that stuff does come in handy if you’re interested in making potions or casting spells. Got quite the whammy, royal blood does. So, for a time, he was passed around from witch to warlock to necromancer and then back again, everyone mutating and twisting him further and further away from what he once was.”
“And so,” finished Kintain, “it got to the point that he was so mixed up and dangerous, The Order had to get rid of him. He was bending the walls of reality with every breath, and that can cause quite a bit of a problem. But what could they do? Couldn’t kill him. If he dies, that’s it, his story’s over. But he doesn’t have an ending, so he can’t die.
“So, what they did was, they locked him away, froze him forever in the walls between the worlds.”
“And he’s trapped there forever?” asked Lim.
“And he’s trapped there forever,” said Kintain. “Until someone lets him out.”
“Why would anyone want to let him out?” Lim asked. “You said it’d destroy the world.”
“It would,” said Kintain. “Probably quite a few of them, in fact.”
Derek said, “So what is this Voice doing trying to let him free?”
“Well,” said Plinga, “it’s The Lonely King.”
“Right, we got that. The Lonely King has been locked away and now the Voice is trying to unlock him…it…him. But why?”
“Because,” said Scround, “it is The Lonely King.”
Derek looked at his friends. “Are their brains not fastened on tight enough?”
“One is the other,” said Lim. “The Voice is the part of him that he cut away all those years ago, isn’t it? Somehow, the part of himself that he abandoned in that cave found a way out. And it wants to reunite with the body.”
“Because what does The King care about the world?” said Melissa. “Or any world, for that matter. And because he can’t end, because if he ends that’ll have been his fate-”
“-it doesn’t matter how many worlds he burns through in the jail break,” finished Derek. “He’ll land in some other dimension and just start over.”
“Probably be a real jerk, too,” said Grub. “A guy willing to wipe out a planet for, you know, selfishness, that’s probably not a guy you want calling the shots at, well, anything.”
“Maybe once that was his aim,” said Scround. “Chasing power and not caring about collateral damage is quite the kingly pursuit. But no, I think he now hungers for something else.”
“What?” asked Lim.
“An ending. I do not think our friend The King believes he will survive the freeing of his physical self. Nothing will. All realities will fold in upon themselves. Should he succeed, existence will be warped into utter, empty black.”
“It’d be the end of everything, ever,” said Lim “Everything that ever happened, everything that ever could have happened, it’ll be blinked out in a second.”
“So we stop it,” said Chowdah.
Every eye swiveled to the little girl.
“What? We were gonna do that anyway, just because he was a jerk with an awesome dog that he probably trained to be awesome and give rides, I hope. So what if we happen to also be saving the earth and the universe and all the other billions of earths and universes that might exist?” She shrugged. “That’ll be, like, a bonus.”