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 El- Kaleef 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 gimlet- eyes 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 well- rid 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-in- waiting 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-than- knightly 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 all- too-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 sweet- and-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 travel- weary 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 Johnnies- come-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 El- Kaleef, 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.

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