by Samuel Fort
Chapter 20 - The King’s Madness
Ben said, “I assume you told Lilian’s father about all this. What did he think?”
“King Sargon…” Ridley shook his head as if the name caused him grief. “He accepted Empyrean’s existence unconditionally, and he wanted it for himself. He charged me and my team of scribes to decipher the tablets. We didn’t get too far, however. Only weeks after he discovered the tablets our kingdom was thrown into chaos when the king began to have the dreams that would ultimately end his reign.”
“What kind of dreams?”
Ridley said with contempt, “Dreams in which the Sillum’s monstrous god offered Sargon the secret of the Empyrean and power over the whole of the world if only the king help the god accomplish what the Sillum had to do.”
“To open a portal and allow its monsters to invade this world.”
“Yes. The king took his dreams seriously. Though he coveted the power of the Empyrean, he did not wish to rule a world populated only by the creatures of an alien god. He proclaimed at court that the Gate of the Sun was a danger to the Nisirtu, and ordered me to issue short-fused scripts, only one or two degrees out, to have the structure destroyed. He even required a script that would entail the use of nuclear weapons.”
Ben’s mouth fell open. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, I’m serious. He wanted Bolivia nuked. Fortunately, the other Houses intervened, ordering King Sargon to abandon his delusions and return to proper governance of his kingdom. Seeing that the other Families did not believe him, King Sargon worried that one of the other monarchs might succumb to the foreign god’s temptations. He decided that he was the only monarch capable of resisting such temptations, which meant the other kings and queens had to be unseated. He alone would rule the Nisirtu. Toward that end, he waged a covert war against the other Houses by destroying the scenarios that kept them in power.
“Many of my scribes and I fled into self-imposed exile. Other scribes remained and did as he directed. The king’s ploy was destined to fail but many lives were lost and many century-old scripts were hopelessly unraveled. It was a disaster. The other Houses tried to take him by force but he was too well protected. They located me, which was inevitable, really, and commanded me to use my knowledge of the Fifth Kingdom and the king’s routines to write a script for his capture.”
“Which you did.”
“Yes,” Ridley said. He paused, as if meditating on his past actions. “It was not an easy decision, nephew,” he said at last, “We were as brothers, once. But he was out of control, quite insane, and a Nisirtu king minus his wits can do unimaginable harm. It took several months, but in the end he was captured.
“He and his entire court, including even me, were put on trial in front of the Council of the Ten. That is a star-chamber in which the judges are the monarchs of the Ten Kingdoms. This was, of course, before the Maqtu rebellion. A puppet king was given control of the Fifth Kingdom and thus was, ironically, one of the judges deciding Sargon’s fate. Lilian’s father was found guilty and supposedly imprisoned at some secret location. Regicide is impermissible under Nisirtu law but I have it on good authority that the man was killed shortly after he was shipped away.
“I fared better, obviously. As a reward for my cooperation, I was spared the wrath of the other Houses and managed to save both Lilian and Fiela. King Sargon was marked, you see.”
Ben shook his head. “What does that mean?”
“A person who is marked brings punishment not only upon himself but everyone around him. All family members and supporters of lesser rank are killed, regardless of age, until the third generation. In other words, the children of the guilty are killed, but the grandchildren are spared.”
“My God!” exclaimed Ben. “That’s barbaric! Everyone?”
Ridley nodded. “Yes, and in King Sargon’s case, the mark was worse. All generations of his family were to be killed, legitimate or not, as well as all generations of his associates’ families. Lilian, being Sargon’s daughter, should have been executed when he was exiled, and Fiela should have been killed because my brother’s grandson, her father, and a Peth, had dared to assist King Sargon in his covert operations against the rest of the Nisirtu.
“It was no easy task, but I negotiated with the other Houses to preserve both the girls’ lives and to have them put under my care, though the conditions were strict. I could not, unfortunately, save the lives of my scribes. Even the ones who went into exile with me were executed. It was a bloodbath.”
The two men were quiet for a long time, both caught up in their own thoughts.
Ben broke the silence. “Honestly, this is just crazy. Kingdoms, monsters, gods, magic, secret societies, and the apocalypse? It’s a hell of a lot more than I bargained for when I signed on. I mean, you pay well, and you’ve been exceptionally accommodating, but I think there’s a fair chance that everyone under this roof is insane. I’m increasingly suspicious of the man in the mirror. What happens next week if none of what you’re predicting comes to pass?”
The other man said good-naturedly, “If that happens you will be a rich man who spent a week at a luxury hotel with two gorgeous women. I, on the other hand, will have made a new friend who can visit me at the asylum I have so recently escaped from. There are worse fates for us both, yes?”
