Seven Sinful Crowns

King Zuhaleen

The King of Zuhaleen stood on his balcony, overlooking the festivities happening on the streets far below. From so high up, the people were nothing but blurs of colors and sounds, one massive movement of one massive whole, and it was his. Not for much longer, though. Tonight would be The Reaping, and the first step of The Passing, where he would vow his life to the Bloodfall and the priests, one from each temple, would bless him with the eternal life, a gift from the gods above. Then the children born this year would be presented to the temple priests, who would use their blessings to pull forth any birth magic, and then they would move on, the parents of the blessed carrying their bundles to his daughters, the queens, who would give them the blessing of the kingdoms, and claim them, and the others, the Su's, would bring walk down the stone steps, some crying tears of despair for their magicless children, and some tears of joy, for keeping them.

He had watched this every year from his place at the altar, and he always found himself wondering what each parent did, or didn't do, to warrant their fate. Did they pray enough? Were they loyal? Did they make a worthy offering? He sometimes made up stories in his head to pass the tedious hours of sitting, and watching, and waiting, and sitting some more. Some of them were murderers in his mind. Some of them seductress'. Some of them were heroes and some villains.

"Thinking about me?" came the silken voice from behind him.

"Never, demon. Yet you always seem to be seeking me out. Miss me already?"

"I never could say no to a man of power."

And King Zuhaleen felt himself begin to stir at the shadow woman's words.

"Thinking about me now?" she taunted, and fury pinked his cheeks.

"What do you want?"

"I've just come to watch the festivities. I like to dabble a bit in the flesh world. As you know."

The king groaned, throwing his arms to his sides and storming from the arched balcony.

"Be gone, demon. I have no time for your nonsense today."

"Don't you, though? The queens will have things under control...for now."

"What does that mean? Such a riddled tongue."

"Show me yours and ill show you mine," was all she said as she stalked the king, making her way across the castle floor until she came to him, so close she could hear the fluttering of his heart skip.

"I've always been fond of a riddled tongue, your majesty," and again, the king never stood a chance. For like most men, he was weak to a beautiful woman with a dark mouth, and he fell to the chair beside the bed, all speak of the queens control, or lack of, forgotten. 

***********************************************************************************************

King Zuhaleen was the last one to the altar that night, and he walked slowly, fully aware that this would be the last time he walked this path to the reaping. His daughters were all there, dressed in their gowns, so different, like each of them, and all so beautiful. He had made these women. He had created them and given them the world, literally. And in return they had ensured he live to an old, ripe age. For they were powerful, much more powerful than anyone here, even the priests, he suspected, and no one had dared cross them. For though they were quarrelsome and often sour, they loved him fiercely, and he had loved them in return.

And as he made his way to them now, slowly ascending the stone steps and taking his seat among them, he sucked the air into his chest slowly, his lungs filling like the sails of ships worn with age, and then he let it go even slower. As he he passed, the queens and priests stood, a ripple of gown and robe. It occurred to him that respect, true respect, was like that; visible and passed from person to person in a never ending ripple. Some may fear him, he knew this, but no one could deny he had done great things in his rule, his greatest feat the unity of the seven kingdoms. And they had been prosperous, and safe, and their children, once soldiers, were now just children who fought with wooden swords and skipping stones.

They spoke of the great sea dragons of the red sea, with their chests puffed out and their hands in fists, as if the words existed only in their tiny grasps, as truth. They mused of one day sailing the great waves and finding one of the beasts, claiming it as their own. And they spoke of Kavietah, the great bird who flew higher than the sun that shone on the great purple ocean. It's cry, sailors said, could call the waves or part them, and you could never tell which before it happened. From his balcony he often heard the children speak of the lost boys; children, who long ago, were filed onto rickety boats that were to part between the two seas, and begin colonizing a land for them on the bottom of the great, red world. They were never seen again, though their boats were found empty years later, floating the waves in terrifying precision, like fleets of a ghost navy, haunting and lonely.

The children were gone, but the children today spoke of them often, and gave them lives that much surpassed the glory of the ones they had lived. And that too was the way with death; it was so magnificent a feat, it couldn't help but to transcend the point in time between here and gone, that magnificence rippling over and lacing truth with gold and diamonds and stars. For the lost boys, the children said, were now pirates of the mountains, stealing gold and diamonds and stars for eternity, and to find them you must only listen for their song and their picks - and cross the great purple vastness with Kavietah, and the red with the sea dragons, and the shimmering ocean of stardust that lie beyond, and live.

King Zuhaleen sat on his throne, and the others followed in a brush of lace and velvet and silk and whispers. The people had began to gather, mothers and fathers and swaddled babes in front, and the others behind. To the left, the keepers sat ready to record the events of the night, and to the right, a handful of priests from the temple of knowledge, sat ready to do the same. Zuhaleen wondered if the accounts could differ enough to justify two versions. Perhaps. And when it began, the fire erupted and the wind howled with the voices of wolves and hounds and gods, and the priests among them stood, as the closest thing to divinity the world would ever know, and the children cried out in fear and hunger and discomfort as the mothers rocked and bounced them in their arms. And Zuhaleen watched the two sets of beings, babe and priest, and he wondered if any priest had ever voyaged beyond a temple in search of a dragon or a bird or a boy, and if any of these small children, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, would. And what, he wondered, defined divinity in the first place. Surly not dragons.