Читать книгу The King is dead, long live the King! - Eugene Wish - Страница 2

In the empire of Kannassis, with its capital in Egoul Fort, Emperor Conrad I the Terrible of the Craddish dynasty ruled for forty years. He was the first king of this dynasty, which was originally from the province of Frax in the east of the country. The haughty and selfish prince dreamed of the imperial throne, so he paid tribute and performed rituals not only to his native gods, but also to evil spirits.

As a result, Konrad beat the imperial troops hollow and conquered the capital. After that, he even sacrificed the murdered emperor Leos and his family to his dark patrons. Further Konrad’s rule was a complete insolent and disgusting travesty of the sequarium and priests-sequarates He took the land from the dominant religion, dispersed all the priests and declared himself the head of the sequorium and the son of the one God. Conrad tried to keep everyone in constant fear – from priests to peasants and from princes to ordinary soldiers.

The paranoid king even created a whole separate punitive army of the Black Ravens, who were above all the nobles and judges, and acted only at the direction of the king.

This army had been robbing and burning towns for weeks; they devastated barns with provisions, they drank in taverns and again robbed everything far and wide: temle-sequas, shops, taverns, crypts and warehouses. Their cruelty knew no bounds, they killed one and all, leaving nobody alive even for sale into slavery. A lot of people suffered and died back then.

Many villages and even the small town of Montan in the Swamp Lands were burned for «heresy and betrayal’. At the end of that horror, the Ravens put heads on spikes, hung corpses on poles, and the few survivors they drowned in swamps.

The city never recovered from this bloody campaign and gradually went under the water, covered in stinking swamps. After that, the people called them the Blood Ravens.

Even King Conrad himself was scared of the fierce fury of his followers, and soon, on his orders, the royal guard seized the Ravens. They were burnt at the stake with a lot of ordinary people watching this in the main square of the capital. The king personally supervised the execution and read out the verdict.

After the crackdown, the king pacified his temper a little, although he returned to the practice of black magic and sacrifice. The sovereign completely sold his soul to the forces of darkness for his eternal life. For many years he had been tyrannizing the empire and its people, but his judgment day came.

***

Autumn. The end of October. Almost all the leaves fell from the trees. A patchwork of yellow, red and orange leaves covered the earth. The capital of Kannassis, Egoul Fort, blossomed with the colors of a warm rainbow. As usual, it was drizzling rain, sometimes turning into a downpour. Small rivulets with boats, which children made of leaves, flowed through the streets. The royal castle got dark because of humidity, and the tiles on the cone-shaped roofs got dirty red.

The spikes in the castle moat were damp, and a specific smell of wet wood came from them. The old king was in his bedchamber; the gates were firmly closed.

He was lying on a double bed under a black canopy, painted in the form of green stems with red roses. He slept alone in this bed for many years. All of his seven wives were dead or in monasteries. The first wife Brunehilde was stabbed by him; the second wife Ariadne was hanged for alleged infidelity; the third, the fourth and the fifth wives were burned as heretics; as for the the last two wives, he spared their lives and sent them to the monastery.

Conrad was constantly changing his position – he lay and then got up again, and peered into the mirror. In it he saw a thin old man with deep wrinkles on his face, bags under his eyes, and grey greasy locks of hair hanging down to his neck; with a grey moustache and a goatee. He kept waiting for his transformation, although the demons didn’t promise him eternal youth, only a long life. The king drank various potions and mixtures in order to somehow extend his life and possibly restore his youth. While he was finishing off the last potion, someone knocked lively at the door of the sovereign’s chamber.

– I did not expect anyone! Go to hell! – cried the emperor angrily. No one answered. However, in a blink of an eye the guest appeared in front of Conrad.

– Well-well, you are so rude, Your Majesty, I’m just from there… from hell, – the man dressed like a plague doctor said playfully.

– Damn it! – shouted the monarch, bewildered by such a statement.

– Yes, exactly, – the plague doctor pulled out some papers from his first-aid kit, – sign an acknowledgement that you will die soon and your soul will become the property of the Demon Council.

– I will die?! When is it going to happen? – asked the astonished emperor.

– Yes-yes, soon, but we won’t tell you when exactly, this is top secret information, – rattled on the doctor.

– But what about eternal life and youth? – enquired the old man.

– You will have it all, but only after your resurrection, – the Sorrowbearer answered seriously.

– And when will it be? – the old king was still pressing the point.

– After your D – E – A – T – H, – the hell’s messenger explained thoroughly, – well, that’s it, you have signed everything, goodbye!

The king froze in horror, but then drank some stiff wine and fell asleep.

* * *

Indeed, a week after the arrival of the Sorrowbearer, the old king died peacefully in his chambers at midnight on the first of November under the full moon.

An emergency meeting of the sequarium delivered a bull. It stated that a king who was worshiping demons and practiced black magic could not be buried as an adherent of Tritheism – the cult of the Triad: the Great Father, the Great Mother and the Great Androgyne. Majordomo Azolius was truly in panic due to this rejection from the sequarium. He sent messengers frantically to the representatives of other religions, but everyone refused, except for the dark elves, whom the deceased respected deeply and appreciated their occult knowledge and magic. A delegation from the dark elves quickly arrived at the castle.

They stood in a circle and began to read their dark spells. At the end of the prayer, an unimaginable thing happened: the usually creaky and croaky monarch spoke clearly and legibly, but in the dark elves’ language. His speech was paused for a second – the old man burst into hellfire. And at the same moment he burned to the ground in the delusion of that mumbling. Even the elven warlocks were shaken up by this.

Right in a split second, the emperor’s ashes, ignited, gathered in a fiery whirlpool, pierced the roof of the castle and lit the sky with a lurid flash. When the storm calmed down, from the dark haze stepped forward the same king. However, fifty years younger.

A bright face without a wrinkle, sharp cheekbones and chin, dark blue eyes, tall and fit, like twenty-five all over again. «What a stink from me!» Said Conrad in outrage.

He threw off all his clothes smelling of elderness and medicine and took a bath for quite some time.

– What have you done to him useless elves? – shrieked the majordomo.

– Let’s just say he took a fiery rejuvenation bath, – answered Elmore Parl, the main priest of the group.

– But you should have read the prayer, and not resurrect the king so young! – continued to shout the head of the royal office.

– Anyway he had no heir, don’t be so grumpy! – said the younger priest Elric Cross.

– But how can you imagine this? How is he going to go out to the people? He was an ancient smelly old man, and now look at him! Safe and sound! Neither the sequarium nor the people will like it.

– We will take care of this, – snapped Elmore. Seize him! – ordered the elf, showing with his staff to the majordomo. – Throw him in a dungeon, and we’ll figure it out!

The scrawny bespectacled man, Azolius did not even resist, but still shouted loudly, and that woke the royal guard, sequators and the White Magic collegium. The king was brought a new blue caftan braided with gold threads and sapphires, as well as new chausses and shoes.

«This is a whole different story! – rejoiced the new old king. – Where is the clergy? They should have been delighted at my resurrection at God’s command,» the emperor said ironically.