The Ornaments of Love

Chapter Fifteen

Veronica, who had momentarily forgotten that anything of such importance remained in her hand, redirected her attention, focusing her eyes on the letter.

She began quietly, allowing her voice to grow louder with each paragraph:

A Lost Kingdom

by

Dídac Adriá Ferrero i Martell

The clouds rested high on the bordering mountains of the immense kingdom of Fioriono, the jewel of the legendary continent Catafierno, and the greatest of all civilizations. It was a time of peace that brought about a succession of gluttonous kings who cared for little else but their own glory, seeing to it with every breath that their names and figures were immortalized by their sons. These young men were sent out into every respectable and profitable field of enterprise, eventually creating a small but distinguished aristocracy that bore the names of ten monarchs.

The tenth of these prideful, gluttonous kings, Jehoiakim Rex, was distinguished in his tenure only by his method for ensuring the propagation of his name. Jehoiakim saw to it that, of the hundreds of sons he fathered through his harem of wives, only but a handful—those who met his stringent criteria—were allowed to leave the palace and situate themselves in this evil aristocracy of vanity. Whereas, Jehoiakim's predecessors had inserted a catalog of sons into their crumbling and cursed society, the tenth and most vile of the evil kings allowed only a small margin of sons to pass out.

All of his sons, however, were first to be put through the scrutiny of his outlandish tests. Those who failed were slain. And of the first ninety-four sons bore to him, only twelve passed through the trials into manhood.

But of his abundant sons, only Prince Didacus, son of Jehoiakim's first and most important wife, Franciska, the rightful Queen of Fioriono, had the birth-given right to be reared as the heir to his father's throne. It was Prince Didacus who was raised in the fashion of a soon-to-be king, tutored and labored over by the highest minds in the monarchy, much as Jehoiakim had been as a child, ever being readied for his father's eventual death.

All this was met with utter contempt from King Jehoiakim.

Jehoiakim, in the diseased state of mind he held upon entering his forty-second year, decided he would not tolerate the offense that this young boy imposed upon him, his son or no.

"To think of it," he moaned, "that this boy should be treated like a king, that these fools about me who bathe him in their loving affections will ensure themselves security when I am gone. I will not stand for it!"

Indeed, the king felt it outrageous that anyone should be treated with even half the measure of respect he demanded for himself, for this king truly felt himself to be immortal. The concept that all his possessions were but temporary was a foreign idea, which he would never recognize. And so, he set about his swift calculations to have Prince Didacus done away with.

By the week's end, Didacus had been scheduled to compete in a private sword match for His Majesty's court. The boy would go against his own instructor and the fight was to be carried out to the death by Jehoiakim's own insistence.

"Will you have a weakling for a king!?" the monarch shouted at his court.

But his advisors were in a private uproar, at a loss to do anything that might counteract the king's demands. Their only hope of appeal came from the distraught Queen Franciska, who was in agony.

The court begged the queen to somehow intercede, but she made it clear that there was nothing at all that could be done.

"The King is a force onto himself. If I were to but improperly bat an eyelash, it would mean my end. You all know this to be true. Why do you ask me?"