The Tale of the Evil King

With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien

Once upon a time there was an evil King whose forebears had sailed across a great ocean to a vast land. There they had slain with many firesticks and pestilences or else taken captive the native peoples of that rich and fertile land, which had many minerals in its earth. The other nations of the earth called this land Mordorica, as it was a land of death and destruction. Now this evil King reigned over it with an iron fist and none could withstand him and his many evil courtiers, whom the King paid with gold. The greedy King was wont to send out his great armies and fleets to conquer other peoples of the world, trying to conquer lands even larger than his own.

His cleverness in doing violence to others knew no bounds and he used artful men with cunning knowledge to make ever new weapons. These were to slay his enemies in ever new ways, from great iron machines that moved by themselves, or flew through the airs and under the oceans, to tiny microbes, made to slay any particular folk. His dark and dirty workshops poured out so much smoke that you could not tell when it was day and when it was night. Evil fires burned therein and the noise that came from them was like unto a great clanging and thunder.

The evil and artful King had so much gold which he had stolen from other lands that he could buy almost everything, and, as he thought, buy almost everyone, as he wanted. Only those who believed strongly in something else could withstand him. But he believed that he could buy everyone’s soul, forbidding others to buy anything from lands that stirred up his wrath. And the more powerful he became, the more evil and cunning he became.

People understood that the evil King could not be given any trust as he had taught many of his subjects how to tell falsehoods with words and moving pictures. You could not believe a single word that they uttered and you knew that the opposite of what they told must be true. As the King always spoke with his forked tongue, so they called him The Great Liar. His Dark Empire, which cast a great shadow over all the earth, they called The Empire of Lies.

native advertising

And so this King was harsh and conquered many rulers and lands and slew the peoples of great nations, far, far older than his own. He wrought destruction and laid low even the most ancient and renowned of cities. His deeds of infamy created fear among all the peoples of the world and they were made to buy and sell only in his own coins, which bore his image stamped upon them, and to speak his strange tongue.

Many years passed and the people of a once great land rose up, as they no longer wanted to buy or sell with that King’s money. They began to fight against the armies of the King in order to free their enslaved brothers and sisters in other lands. To the astonishment of many, the Great Liar began to lose his war, for his firesticks were all broken. The people in his Empire of Evil began to suffer and they no more believed in the lies of his words and the lies of his moving pictures.

Even the seas and the airs would not obey the evil King. The earth shook and the sun and the rain turned against the evil King. The trees burned with fear and winds blew mightily and the grain would not grow in the fields and the rivers dried. And wickedness was on all the lands of the earth where the evil King reigned. The men said that they were women and the women said that they were men and the children did not want to be born, for they feared to live in such a land.

And then too other ancient lands rose up against the evil King. And all of them joined together and said, we too want to live by our souls, as did our forebears. And they said: We want to speak our own tongue and buy and sell in our own coins, where we want, we want to be free to live as did our forebears before us. We are tired of this foreign and evil King and his foreign ways and the lies of his Dark Empire.

At that time even the people of Mordorica wondered why their lives had become so hard. And so did the peoples of the lands whose rulers had been bought by Mordorica. They wondered why they could not eat as before and why they seemed to have so few coins. They became restless and raised their voices. Their rulers took fright and told the King of Mordorica. He told the rulers to slay all those people, for he said that they were all wicked. But it was the King of Mordorica who was wicked. Now the cowardly rulers were very frightened, as the people were rising up and so one ruler after another fled to Mordorica and hid away.

There will come the tale of how Mordorica fell and their King was slain for his many lies. This was the beginning of a new world. But of this I will tell you in another book and at another time.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END