The Spurned King: An Epistolary

A mother's prison missive, a legend of false power.

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

The following letter was written on rag paper by Dogaressa Domalo Fippolo of Sargia to her two sons whilst imprisoned in the city of Tavanle. 

The nineteenth of Eptimus, in the year fifteen-hundred and eighty-nine.

My fair and precious sons, Caterro and Iso. 

The night is dark and the lights hide their blessings, so I must write to you now. Each of you I bore in the month of Vesumpis beneath the constellation of the spool and distaff. Thus, even as I spun you in my womb, may I, by God’s grace, spin wisdom for you now, that your virture might endure amid the snares and poisons of your foes.

Open your hearts and minds, for you must be forewarned: we, the house of Fippolo, have endured most foul betrayal from the Vantoni family who have no nobility either in pedigree or action. In one season, our inheritance has been culled to only you two. In such calamity when God has closed his eyes to us, it is natural to question the value of goodness and virtue. 

The Vantonis and their ilk follow an emergent and wicked creed: power, they claim, is untethered from goodness. Instead, so they aver, it is to be found in raw force. It hisses from bowstrings, spits from gun bores, sings from swords and spears. It takes its measure in arrow shafts, grains of powder, strokes of the strop, and barrels of blood.

Caterro and Iso, mark my words and brand them to your hands, that each time you raise your arms there they will be before you: the bounties afforded by brutish strength alone are shallow and fleeting, and will just as soon prove your own downfall as they will your enemies. 

Therefore I take these few pages I am provided to recall to you a tale that I told you when you were young and still fit into my arms. I will recite it here in more detail than I have before, that it might remain with you in perpetuity. It is a tale and a myth – myths, as I have told you many times, have ways into the deepest parts of men’s hearts where mere statements and arguments cannot find purchase. Listen now as you might have on those winter nights by the hearthfire in Sargia when cold and desolation were words only for those things that lurked outside. 

Recall, my sons, The Spurned King of Grova Marna…

***

Our cradle called Dhaeghom is filled with ancient beings of awesome power. Some say the strength of these beings has reached its twilight.

But as the stories remind us, this is never so. Such beings do not perish, they only wait. For as long as God permits, they will never be banished. 

In those days, the great city of Grova Marna stood in its splendor on the edge of the Nerugart Ocean. The waves turned with fishing ships, the farms around yielded abundant grain, and the droving roads into the wildernesses of Cusc ran with sheep and goats. Trade vessels from distant realms enriched the city’s ports: silk from Tasfadhina, bullion from Ganth, and immaculately white salt from the mines of the south. Vicar Nelkim II sat upon The Presbyter’s Throne and reigned over the Credic lands with a hand as gentle as the breeze that blew across the flaxen fields, as orderly as the serried rows of olive trees in their sun-dappled groves. Wealth redounded upon wealth. 

It was then the wicked and idolatrous god called Rejatis looked upon this fair domain and said, “We beings of the ancient world dwell in places remote, yet all the while man makes his own bounty. Why not seize their goods as a keeper seizes honey from his bees? Is this not our right? Are we, the mighty, not owed the homage of the weak?”

The other gods told him no, that such a scheme would yield no profit. But as Rejatis watched the world of men, envy and avarice grew like a cancer in his heart. 

So he went down to Grova Marna, where outside the city he took a full-grown cedar and snapped it at the bole, then with his bare finger whittled it into a giant club. He went to the city gates which in a thousand years had never been broken and stood at nearly half the height of the entrance itself. He demanded entry, saying Grova Marna’s king had arrived at his halls. When they refused him, he sundered the portcullis in only three blows. 

Through the byways and avenues he walked, swinging his cedar club with the ease and dexterity that Himil mercenaries do their greatswords. In a strike, buildings were burst open like termite hives and everywhere the Grovic people were crushed. Dogs that came to harry his ankles were snatched up and devoured alive, and their remains were tossed and fell upon balconies and rooftops like festoons.

The Vicar’s guards, the finest warriors beneath God’s gaze, formed defenses at the palace steps. Rejatis waded through their midst, swinging his club like a herder’s crook. When he found the guard captain he seized the man up by the leg. “You would assault your own king? My kingdom has no place for traitors!” he said, and squashed the captain’s head like a grape. With the numerous deaths and the guards’ dispersal, Rejatis walked unhindered into the palace, and at The Presbyter’s Throne he stole the crown, then threw Vicar Nelkim II from the high balcony that overlooked the lands. He roared, and the whole city and surrounding countryside heard his cry as he declared himself sovereign of Grova Marna, ratified by his own terrible fiat. 

In the weeks following, many tried to dislodge him. Armies of the bravest and most skilled warriors were sent to him from all about the Credic lands. He met them at the gates, in the fields, in the harbor. The lands were watered with blood and fertilized with bones. Soon, none remained who might defy him. He returned to his throne. 

He summoned tailors and had the most sumptuous robes produced in hues of deepest blue and set with shimmering gold and silver. He ordered the finest wine, and drank it from the enormous sacred thurible that used to swing from the cathedral vault for the burning of holy frankincense. He called for food, the choicest the city might procure, commanding that the private larders of his people also be opened, or he would quell them. He laughed and ordered songs and dances, and when his entertainers displeased him he would slay them and leave their bodies decaying on the floor where they fell. Eventually, the flies grew too loud and he ordered the corpses removed, but the stench lingered until he had costly spices brought in and burned. At each ringing of the bells at the Clavian monasteries, he would march out to his balcony and cry out to the city to remind them who their king was. He would laugh again, and shout to the other ancient beings to witness him and his unquestionable conquest.

***

On some morning in the following season, he woke and called for wine and dance. Nobody attended him. He shouted and slammed down his club like a gavel until he’d made a crater in the floor. The only retainer who answered was a club-footed child with eyes of milky blue cataracts who told him his palace was empty, and that all had left his presence out of fear. 

Rejatis stormed down the corridors howling. Anyone he found he demanded to report to the throne room, but all that were left were the frail, the old, and the young. He ordered them out into the city with a message: those who do not pay proper homage to their king shall be personally slain by him. 

His messengers left, but the sun set and then rose again and not one returned. All those who could flee had done so already. 

Rejatis looked from his balcony, and finally the scales of conquest fell from his eyes and he saw momentarily with the eyes of a ruler. His streets were empty. The markets and shops, vacant. The harbor, deserted. Only the birds and the rats remained. The largest city of man in the known world, the seat of The Vicar of the Creed, had emptied out onto the road away from the ancient city, fleeing to anywhere but there. 

Even as he stood there beholding his desolation, the cataract child limped up behind him with a shiv to try and slay him. Rejatis caught the lad and jettisoned him over the balcony. Then he again took up his cedar club, but this time when he put his bare finger to it he honed its bluntness into a cutting edge. Bearing it now like a sword, he bounded through the hollow streets and past all his despoilment, out the gates and toward the road clogged with refugees.

The people screamed and wailed as he approached. He swung his cedar in great arcs and scattered them like chaff: the men, the women, the children, the animals. Those who survived he would snatch up and question: “Who is your king? Who is your sovereign?”

“You are, Lord! You are!”

“Then back to the city! Back to your dwellings!”

They would obey, if only for a short while, then turn away and attempt to escape the place that had become their prison.

In great bounds he pursued them, threatening and enjoining them over and over to return to their houses and hovels and live as obedient subjects. Over and over they agreed, but when he turned his back they would again fly futilely toward the wilderness, even with their bodies broken, even when all they could do was crawl. 

The morning and afternoon he spent herding and quelling his subjects. The moon rose on his slaughter, then settled, and on the first golden rays of morrow his work was still not done.

On the third day, he sat. Gods do not know fatigue as we do, but what Rejitas felt there could be understood as such. Scarcely aught remained of his cedar scepter. Like flotsam was it soaked, but instead of pallor it bore the maroons and browns of the victims from which it had drunk. He sat along the path and looked back at the carapace of Grova Marna miles behind him. He touched his crown. “I am the king of Grova Marna,” he said, and so he was, and was not.

He departed into the wilderness of Cusc.

***

Grova Marna has been reinhabited. Its fields have been regrown a thousand times and children play in its streets. Rejatis’ scorn lives on only in song and legend and a few scars in the landscape. But as for the god himself, he still wanders the land of Cusc. It is an inhospitable place, but it is indeed within the realm of Grova Marna, so it belongs to him. The bulbous lilies and crocuses that bloom in the springtime among the poor soil are his, and he has been seen to trample on them wherever they sprout — they grow the more abundantly, as flowers do. Even in the wilderness, his efforts are to no avail. 

Shepherds and lost travelers still encounter him on occasion. They tell of the tattered and discolored robes that hang from his naked form, their luster long gone. He still wears his crown. His cedar stick is worn to the heartwood and no longer even reaches the ground. Whn he captures travelers he is known to beat them and assail them with orders until they escape or are dead, as with all his subjects. “You are in the territories of Grova Marna… my kingdom!” he shouts at them. “Do you not know I am the king? See my robes! Behold my crown!” Scarcely can his victims even understand his words, for they are spoken in the archaic form of times bygone.

It seems that even after the passage of centuries, he still has not learned that his method of reign produces an ephemeral dynasty. It is as likely to grow as the cedar he wields. He has come to be known as The Spurned King of Grova Marna. It was not his subjects who spurned him, though; it was he, Rejatis, who spurned the very laws of nature which God himself inscribed. Rejatis thought to build a kingdom on violence and force alone, but the power of these things extends only as far as their agents’ reach. In the end, even the child in the palace tried to stab him in the back. His untold strength could not last even a year.

In Mycregia, there is an Ailinic poem about The Spurned King. Too long to include in full, but I shall translate the final verse here:

And there he dwells, his kingdom far.

His castle, cliffs; his subjects, twigs and spall.

He is the King of Grova Marna.

He is the King of naught at all.

***

And now, my sons, we reach the end of my missive. I have fed you tales since you were at my breast, and so even while imprisoned I must do the same. I beg you: do not be like The Spurned King, nor like the Vantonis. Do not mistake might and power for that which enables rule. This crude power comes like like a squall: it rages and ruins, but after its time is blown away by sunlight and fairer seasons. Rather, recall those things passed down to you by the Sacred Texts: loyalty, justice, temperance, piety, fortitude. These are what great kingdoms are built upon. In times such as these, you must cleave to them all the more.

I am imprisoned, but the two halves of my heart are free. They are called Caterro and Iso. They are my every prayer, my every breath, my every tear. And I shall see them again, whether here in Dhaeghom or in Caelum. 

Take courage, brave men of Fippolo, and be steadfast. For Sargia. For God. 

Your mother always,

Dogaressa of Sargia, Domalo Fippolo

***

Domalo’s letter was smuggled out that night and successfully delivered to Caterro and Iso Fippolo. The following day, on the twentieth of Eptimus, the Dogaressa was publicly beheaded in Tavanle’s Piazza d’Vantoris. 

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