The Kingdom

  “Does your God look down upon the physical union between men and women?”

  Bringing a shaking hand to my forehead I wiped at the sweat there, as my fireside conversation with Kuri years before came vividly to mind, “No, He created it.”

  “Then why are you resisting your desire for me?” came the response that echoed now of real humor. The woman was deliberately tormenting me!

  Just then there was a scream beyond the window in the city below and I hurried over to it dragging her along after me. It sounded like the wail of a mother expressing the ultimate grief over a lost one.

  I looked down towards the city, but night had fallen and there was little to be seen. I heard the cries of a sobbing child and then utter and complete silence as if someone had just dropped a veil over the whole city.

  That moment of silence was split apart by a noise of such utterly dark origin that it sounded as if it was a combination of enraged bull and thunder all rolled into one. The cry chilled me to the bone and with its sounding on the midnight air came a gasp from Susori who rushed up and pressed against my back as if seeking shelter from a storm.

  I half turned and pulled her around into my arms and hers immediately latched around my middle tightly. There was another cry of rage out in the night and I thought Susori was going to fall apart from fear in my arms.

  I already knew Susori to be a brave woman, but the fear of whatever monster lurked on the streets below had completely unhinged her. I held her face to me and rubbed at her back and eventually she stopped shaking.

  I watched her face by moonlight as she tipped it back to look at me. She stared at me deeply for a long moment. I’d never felt so intensely studied by another person, other than Kuri.

  She broke the silence by asking slowly, “Can your God do anything against such evil?”

  “Yes!” I said unequivocably and with my answer I felt the tension drain out of her, until it was just her and me again.

  With bodies pressed up together in a way that seemed designed to fit naturally, it wasn’t any great surprise that I found myself completing the picture by lowering my head until my lips were kissing hers. The kiss went on and on and I made a decision. A binding one.

  The events of this night were crazy. The situation of this city and of this land was deplorable, but right now all my desire was engaged by this woman in a way that I had never experienced before.

  No words were said as she pulled away from me and led me to the bed. I was surprised to see a light flare up as she lit several candles which quickly illuminated the room in a soft glow.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked softly.

  She smiled, as she turned back to me and started to take off what little clothing she did wear. “I thought you might like to see.”

  “Susori I....... you’re beautiful!”

  Still smiling she said, “I know.” She began to pull in the chain that linked us together and I went willingly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ask and Receive

  I watched as the sun steadily made its way up into the morning sky. It was a beautiful sunrise, but not half as beautiful as her. My gaze left the window to gaze into the face of my sleeping lover.

  She was much more than that. Much more. Having her along from now on would change a lot of things, but things had needed to change. I didn’t regret last night or this day that was beginning, instead I was thanking El Elyon profusely for both.

  El Elyon had brought me to this place and I had received far more than I could’ve ever expected. A treasure without equal.

  Susori began to stir and with interest I watched as her eyes opened hesitantly for the first time and then as she came to an abrupt awareness. Her head lifted as she looked me in the face. I think we both smiled at each other at the same moment.

  We barely knew each other’s names and yet we were a pair. I couldn’t refrain from anything when it came to her and seeing the same reflected in her eyes I kissed her with all the passion that I felt for her even as she likewise did to me. Beyond the touch of our lips there was a link already between us that no words could define. All my hesitations of the night before were gone, now replaced with a reality I scarcely believed was possible.

  We drew back from the kiss, but our eyes remained locked with each other.

  “What are you thinking master?” she asked, with a curious quirk to her one eyebrow.

  “Benaiah,” I said in return, by way of an answer.

  Her eyes sparkled as she rephrased her question, “Benaiah, what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that I want to spend forever in this room with you.”

  Her smile grew richer and she said, “I agree, but now is all we have.”

  My finger caressed her cheek, “You’re a philosopher.”

  She smiled and pressed her face against my hand, “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

  Our lips had but joined passionately again when there was a knock at the door. Startled, I jumped upright and Susori slid off to the side with a sigh of regret. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and just looked at her laying there, bare except for the encircling band of metal.

  Modesty was not of the same importance in this culture for sure and yet she had not lied to me of her innocence. I took the cover of the bed and tossed it over her as the door opened.

  It was Artaxis again. He smiled genially at me and then at Susori before saying, “Still here I see.”

  I didn’t say anything. He tossed something at me and I caught it out of the air. It was the key to the manacles.

  There seemed to be a greater symbolism at play here than just simply handing me a key to get out of a temporary restraint. I glanced up to him and he confirmed my thought by saying, “You are free to go. Most of your men were not injured severely and they are now ready to travel. Those still yet unable to travel I will send to Philanthia at a later date when they are ready.”

  I shook my head and glanced from him to Susori and said, “None of this makes any sense! What are you two up to?”

  Artaxis’s cheery demeanor completely left as he said, “I am ensuring that the future of my beloved sister is a good one. You are a man that I have studied from afar for some time. I had a dream that showed you and my sister together as a couple and now I have done my part to fulfill that dream. Now, get my sister out of here to some place where she will be safe! That is all I ask of you. Other than that, I pray that you make her happy all the days of her life.”

  Artaxis backed away towards the door and glancing at Susori he winked and said, “I don’t think the others will be ready to leave for at least another hour or so.” With that said, he clanged the door shut.

  “I’ve been set up!” I exclaimed into the silence of the room.

  Susori’s fingers squeezed overtop my shoulders consolingly as her face appeared off to the side of my shoulder, “You’re not mad are you?”

  I glanced at her. I should be mad, but one look at her intriguing brown eyes and how could anyone be mad.

  “Why have you gone along with all this? You must be a princess or at least something close to it!”

  Susori shrugged in indication that I had scored right on my guess of her being a princess but all she said was, “I trust my brother. He said I was happy in his dream. That said, I wasn’t entirely sure about it, but last night at the banquet……… the way you looked at me……… it was not a hard decision to become yours. I have no regrets.”

  I looked forward again and said, “Neither do I.”

  A slim brown arm reached down over my shoulder, “Could I please have the key?”

  I caught the outreaching arm. Our eyes met and again there was that sense of deep pairing that went beyond the fleshly side of mutual attraction which we were both reveling in right now.

  “I’ll let you go in an hour or so.”

  Her easy smile was back and she giggled softly, as I pushed her to fall back on the bed. My life had radically changed for the better. I wasn’t so lonely
now. Sure, I had many friends, some of which were very close, but none could brighten my world the way just one of this woman’s smiles could.

  *****

  I leaned forward to pat the shoulder of the mount I rode. The term mount was by far too humble of a word to describe the stallion beneath me, a gift from Susori’s brother. Susori pulled her mount up alongside of me to look at me curiously before asking, “Why have you stopped? The border is just ahead.” She pointed ahead of us.

  “Uh huh,” I said laconically, in agreement with her. My gaze never left her and she soon grew uncomfortable under it.

  “What?” Susori asked hesitantly.

  “What’s going on in Crona, Susori? I want explanations. Why this war? Why does your brother have his sister masquerading as a harem dancer? Last, but not least, why have I seen hardly any children running free among your people?”

  Susori had long since looked down at where her hands twisted the leather cords of her reins into kinks. She shook her head negatively, but I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. My hand closed over her fidgeting ones and gripping firmly I forestalled any further movement. She wouldn’t look at me.

  “I made a choice five days ago. A choice to have you as my bride and companion for the rest of my life. Now, you have a choice before you. You either keep your brother’s allegiance or………” I paused as her teary eyes lifted, “or you start out your new life with me by respectfully not holding back any secrets from me. What’s it going to be Susori?”

  She gazed at me for a moment and then looked away to the borderlands before us. Subconsciously her one hand slipped free of mine and rose to her waist. The band of iron which had encircled her was long gone, but I knew what she felt with the placement of her hand. A bond. She wasn’t among her people anymore, instead she was here with me.

  Her eyes came back to me and I saw acceptance of my headship over her reflected in the depths of her amazing eyes. “That monster that I heard the first night we were together…….it has something to do with the reason the children are hid?”

  She nodded, “We call them Gargons. They are a twisted creation of complete evil. They are half giant and half bull.”

  “What are they doing to the children?”

  Her lips quivered and a tear fell as she brokenly said, “Some have been sacrificed to the fallen Malachim we once called gods and eaten, but……… but we hope that many are yet still alive. At least that is what we have been told.”

  “Alive for as long as your kingdom makes war on the Kingdom of Philanthia,” I said knowingly, on a hunch, and she nodded.

  “What has been done to get the children back?”

  She shrugged, despondently throwing her arms wide in a gesture of hopelessness, “Everything! The more that we have resisted the higher the cost has been. We’ve had no choice but to do the bidding of these monsters. My people…….without children…….are finished and yet we dare not risk their lives by stopping this war! But this coming war will kill all of us and thus the future is hopeless. What would you do if faced with such a loss?” she asked passionately, as she looked at me imploringly before gazing at the 15 recruits recovered enough to sit on a horse and make the journey back to Philanthia.

  To a man they stared at her in wide-eyed wonder at what she was revealing. For them it had been easy to hate her nation for its unprovoked attacks, but now another side of the story had been unveiled and they were left without an answer as to what to think. Susori’s head sank down and her body heaved on a sob as waves of clamped down emotions swept through her.

  I nudged my stallion closer to her horse and pulled her to me with one arm and she sank against my shoulder, still crying. Softly she said, “We are a people without hope. We have lost all our honor to do the bidding of demons.”

  “These demons, Gargons, I believe you called them?”

  She nodded and I asked, “Why don’t you just kill them?”

  “We’ve tried!” she said in frustration as she pulled away from me.

  I captured her hand before she could move her horse away, “I need to know. How have you tried to defeat these Gargons?”

  She looked at me, but I could see that I wasn’t what she saw at the moment, “Once we had one cornered in an alleyway and we had the forces to overwhelm even its formidable strength, but it just disappeared. They come and they go as they wish. One moment you see them and then they’re gone and another child is missing. They’ve seized well over half the children of the nobility and many commoner children as well. My brother’s sons and daughters are all gone. One daughter was left at the gateway of the Palace. She’d been gored through by one of them and then trampled to the point of not being recognizable!”

  I stared at her out of a keen sense of empathy for the extreme emotions playing across this stranger, turned lover, turned companion for life that I was blessed to have. Nothing I could say was going to make her feel any better so I said nothing at all.

  I gestured to one of the recruits to come up and help Susori dismount. That done, I rode off alone toward a promontory point after having given the order for the others to wait.

  *****

  Susori wiped at her eyes and asked the recruit near her, “What is he doing?”

  The recruit looked from his retreating commander to the otherworldly beautiful woman before him. The sight of her did strange things to confuse his tongue in saying the simplest of things, “He’s……ah…… praying. He always prays when…… when it’s bad.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “And when things go well too. He prays a lot.”

  Susori blinked several times in apparent confusion, “You have seen his gods answer him?”

  “Oh, just one God ma’am. His name is El Elyon and I’m convinced it works!”

  Susori looked puzzled by the last statement and the recruit added hurriedly, “The praying. I’m convinced the praying works. A lot of us picked training under him not only because he’s the best, but because, well, the Creator just seems to really like him and more people survive under his leadership than other recruitment commanders.”

  Susori looked from the recruit to the back of the man she now belonged to. In many ways Benaiah was still a mystery to her. An increasingly wonderful mystery. A mystery that she wanted to unravel and better understand.

  He was a man of prayer and strong faith, but what else was he?

  Could he also be the deliverer of her people? Somehow just looking at him gave her a burst of hope that perhaps the impossible could be achieved. She wanted to be with him to hear what he was praying to his God, but she sensed that he wanted to be alone so she stayed where she was.

  *****

  I stared out over the promontory down to the rocky valley below. I felt like I’d arrived at the invisible pathway of divine direction.

  I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to go cut up monsters, but there were problems to that simplistic approach.

  “Problems indeed,” came a voice off to the side of me.

  It was Urtholan. I glanced over to where the group waited and Urtholan answered my question before I could speak it, “Only you can see me at present.”

  Nodding, I turned to stare back over the promontory. “How do I fix this?” I asked slowly.

  Urtholan responded with, “Your problem is multidimensional.”

  “How so?”

  “The Gargons have traits of my kind that fell from Grace. They have abilities, although limited, to move between the lower dimensions and this is how they avoid detection and capture. Gargons as a whole are rather stupid, but when motivated and controlled by one of the fallen ones they can be quite formidable.”

  “What do I have to do to keep them from escaping by entering into another dimension? Can I win a fight one-on-one with one of them?”

  Urtholan smiled, “Those are two questions best prayed about, I think. The Father is always listening. You should pray to him as nothing is impossible for the Creator of everything to accomplish.”

  Urtholan began
to walk and I knew he was about to disappear, “Why Urtholan?”

  Urtholan stopped.

  “Why would the Creator allow members of your kind to do such evil as the creation of things such as the lion men and these Gargons?

  “We all have choices Benaiah. Some choose poorly. Very poorly. Yet for your kind there is special favor shown.”

  “How so?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Man was made in the image of El Elyon. Your potential is endless and yet how few of you there are who choose to live up to your potential. Do not be so quick to judge the faults of others Benaiah. It is a matter better left in the hands of El Elyon.” Urtholan disappeared then and I was alone with my thoughts.

  I hadn’t been ready, without Urtholan’s help, on the streets of the city against the powers of darkness. What made me think that I was ready to go against them now?

  I looked off in the distance towards the group as I felt the weight of Susori’s gaze on me. At a lack of a better way of expressing my extreme lack of knowledge and experience I asked, “El Elyon help me.”

  That didn’t seem like enough, but I didn’t know what to ask specifically and yet El Elyon must already know what I needed. El Elyon did know.

  So then what was left for me to do?

  The answer seemed unbelievably simple. Children needed to be saved and while I was but one man against superior forces, if I was in El Elyon’s will it didn’t matter. If I wasn’t in El Elyon’s will then I would die at the hands of these Gargons.

  I really didn’t want to die now. In fact, since meeting Susori I’d never been looking forward to continued life more than I was now.

  It was very tempting to just take my wife and escape the predicament of this situation and let the people of Crona cope with their own mess, but I very much felt that such an action would be against the will of El Elyon. Such an action would be against the loving nature that El Elyon had instilled in my heart.

  The only way from here was to go forward. Forward meant to do battle and not retreat, which would be akin to heading back to Philanthia right now.

  Philanthia was out. So then, that left these child snatching monsters to deal with.