BOOK II OF III: The Reign of the Sultan (56 page)

“Correct,” he answered. As a guilty look
suddenly crossed his face, he added, “I’m really sorry about that
fact that you never got pregnant, despite the millions of times we
tried. I know you wanted not only a child of your own, yet an heir
to the throne.”

“That’s okay, my love,” Brishava said with a
small smile. “I’ve had a very happy and full life spent with
you—you’ve taken such good care of me, especially these last eight
years! And you’ve done such a wonderful job with our empire.”

“I’m glad to know that, my beloved wife,”
Baltor said with a smile.

A few moments later, she sighed, “Soon, my
love, I will be dying… I can feel the last of my strength
waning.”

“No,” he argued. “Don’t say that!”

“But it’s true,” she countered.

“I don’t want you to go!” he yelled as a
couple bloody tears squirted out his eyes and splashed onto the
blanket. Once he had regained control of himself a second later, he
finally asked, “Would—would you like to become an immortal
too?”

“If you had asked me that question right
before my sickness,” she answered truthfully, “I would have
immediately said ‘yes,’ so that we could literally spend eternity
together. But look at me now—I cannot live forever the way that I
look!”

“How do you know that you won’t become young,
healthy and beautiful again?” he asked. Without waiting for an
answer, he added, “After all, I once had a bad scar on my forearm
from an arrow until I ‘became…’”

“Except for the medical fact that most scars
fade away in time, but not all, I don’t know the answer to your
question. But I cannot afford to take that chance because I look
like an ugly skeleton, so the answer is no,” Brishava answered.
“But promise me something, will you?”

“Anything, my love,” Baltor sighed.

“After I die,” she said, “and you find
someone else, which I’m sure you will sooner or later, don’t forget
about me, okay?”

“I promise you that I’ll never forget about
my soul mate of soul mates—you!” he exclaimed. “And that ever since
I’ve met you, forty-six years, seven months, and five days ago,
I’ve never wanted or loved anyone else.”

“Good to hear that, my love,” said Brishava
with a loving smile. “Good to hear that!”

“By the way, my wife, you didn’t answer my
earlier question.”

“What question?”

“What ‘strange rumors’ have you heard about
me?” he asked.

She said while looking away toward the wall,
“Bah! Don’t worry about them—I’m sure that they’re not true…”

Realizing that he wasn’t going to extract the
answer to that question from her, as he had learned over the years
that she had quite a few stubborn traits, he finally sighed, “As
you wish.”

After looking at the bowl of soup that was
still sitting on the table, he asked a few seconds later, “Do you
want any more soup?”

“No, thank you,” Brishava answered. “For now,
I need to get some sleep—I’m very tired. Oh…I love you very much,
my Baltor. Give me a kiss before you go.”

“Well, honey, I’m done with everything that’s
got to get done today, so I’m staying with you for the rest of the
night.”

“Okay…kiss me.”

After the two shared an endearing kiss, she
closed her eyes and fell right asleep.

Baltor kissed her on the forehead, before he
replied, “I love you too, my Breeze…”

Instead of calling for his assistants, he
dressed out of his daily attire and into his pajamas, and fell
asleep right next to his wife in bed with his arm lightly wrapped
around her.

The following morning, he awoke from sleep,
now facing the other way in bed—but as he turned to look over at
his wife, he saw with ever-growing shock and horror that she was no
longer moving nor breathing … she had died sometime during the
night!

Looking beyond the ceiling and up into the
heavens, he sat up in bed, and a few minutes later, he finally
broke down, quietly sobbing out with a hell of a lot of pain,
anger, and grief, “Trendon—Trendon Harrn! Where are you? It is I,
Baltor, and I have but one question for you. Why couldn’t we have
made Brishava an immortal long ago, like you and me? Where are you,
damn it?”

No response is given from Trendon.

A few minutes later, Baltor screamed out,
“
Damn you to hell, Trendon Harrn!!!
”

Even though Trendon didn’t respond, the
guards outside heard their Sultan screaming with outrage, and
immediately they did respond, kicking open the doors and running
into the bedroom with weapons drawn!

After looking around the room for immanent
threats, but seeing none, the guard-in-charge then looked over at
Baltor, saw the blood all over his Sultan’s face and pajamas, and
asked, “What the—are you okay, my Sultan?”

While covering his face with both hands,
Baltor sobbed, “No, I’m not…your Sultaness has died…”

“Wh—why is there bloo—blood all—all over you,
sire?” the guard dared to ask, though his words obviously came out
all stammered because his heart was distressed and hurting over
this new piece of news.

Not looking up, Baltor hysterically replied,
“Don’t—don’t worry about it—just leave us be for now. I’ll let you
know when to bring in the Sultaness’ handmaidens, okay?”

The guard asked, “Are you sure you’re okay,
my Sultan?”

Baltor’s voice cracked a bit, as he snapped,
“Yes, I’m sure! Say nothing of what you saw to anyone, ever. Now
leave…”

Without another word, the guards exited the
bedroom, closing the doors behind them.

Once Baltor had regained a control over
himself, an unknown amount of time later, he looked back down at
his wife’s body.

Gently he crossed her hands over her chest,
and ever so softly he said, “Brishava, I am going to miss you so
terribly much. Only now do I realize what I’ve lost now that you’re
gone—after all, you are everything to me…”

A few moments later, Baltor cleared his
throat, before adding, “I’ve heard the proverb that ‘time heals all
wounds,’ yet will the emptiness in my heart ever be filled again?
Will I ever know joy and happiness as I’ve known with you, my
beloved soul mate, since the day we met in this very palace nearly
a half of a century ago? If this saying proves untrue, will the
eternity of life I’ve been supposedly blessed with be spent
damned?”

Angrily now, Baltor swore, “Damn it—why did I
not think to make you an immortal when you were young and vibrant?
Because Trendon Harrn warned me that he would destroy us both into
oblivion the very second I made you into a vompareus? Now that I
think about it, I should have ignored his warning, so that I could
have spent oblivion with you. It would have been a far better
existence for the both of us!”

After taking a deep breath through his nose,
he said, “But then again, I didn’t know you, when that
once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity was given to me! When I made the
choice, I did not consider for one single second the fact that I
would meet you or all my wonderful friends that are dying one by
one. Perhaps I hoped and believed that they would live forever like
me?”

Perhaps a minute later, Baltor answered his
own question, “Throughout the course of my sixty-seven years of
life, even when I did see the signs of aging in my friends, I
ignored them, thinking them like the common cold or flu… You
know—something that would pass…and then, magically, they would
become once again young and vibrant! I was wrong—so very wrong to
think these types of thoughts… I’m sorry, my love of loves!”

Baltor began caressing both sides of
Brishava’s cheeks with his hands.

Consolingly, he said, “You know, my Breeze,
it’s too late to bring you back from the dead, but I will never
forget the love that you and I shared…that will never ever die! I
promise you that I will love only you forever, my beautiful
wife…most likely, my only wife forever! I…I love you…”

Baltor slowly rose to his feet, walked into
the pool in the center of the room, took off his robes, washed
himself with soap and water, rinsed, retrieved a nearby towel,
dried off, put on a set of clean robes, walked back over to his
wife, and gave her one final kiss on the lips…

Once done, he loudly commanded, “Handmaidens!
Prepare the Sultaness for the funeral tomorrow morning.”

Brishava’s personal handmaidens entered the
room, all of who had been crying and sobbing outside the hallway
upon having heard the news from the guards (also crying). Two of
those six girls held a stretcher.

The other four girls delicately lifted
Brishava’s body off the bed, and put her onto the stretcher. They
bowed to their Sultan and then departed the room with sniffling
tears of their own.

Baltor walked to the curtains, pulled them to
the side, walked out onto the balcony, leaned onto the railing, and
stared out across the palace courtyard from sunrise to sunrise,
thinking very deep and hard…

The following morning, besides the entire
city that had showed up to attend Brishava’s funeral, as well all
the governors and nobles of the empire, Cheo, Thar, Humonus Jr.,
and his half-sister Rhea had also arrived … thanks to the
messengers dispatched all across the empire.

Once everyone was assembled around Brishava’s
gravesite outside the city, Baltor proclaimed, “Brishava will
forever be my love, my wife, and my soul mate—our Sultaness. I know
that you will all miss her, as will I—let us never forget all that
she has done to make the Sharia Empire glorious. Right now, I have
a song that I wrote last night, which I’d like to sing to you all
now…”

After clearing his throat, Baltor began to
sing with a baritone voice … every syllable he purposefully
stretched out.

“
The time is here,

For us to hear,

Her love so shines,

Let’s drink the wine…

She teased us best,

We laughed our jests,

Yet she taught us this,

Let’s enjoy our bliss…

These truths she’s shown,

We’re not a-lone,

Love binds us all,

Within our halls…

Now that she’s gone,

‘
Cept in this song,

Only now we see,

We must be free…”

Everyone that had attended became utterly
surprised and amazed to hear Baltor’s incredibly beautiful singing
voice, as he had never before sung in public … every last woman,
and quite a few men, cried.

As Baltor finished singing the last word in
the final stanza, however, even his voice slightly cracked … it
took him several more minutes before he finally regained his
composure, while ever so forcibly fighting the urge to cry.

Cheo, now a venerable old man, gently placed
his arm around Baltor’s shoulder comfortingly for only a second …
suddenly tears began to spring from Cheo’s face.

While the unabashed crying took place, Cheo
signed out, and Humonus Jr. verbally interpreted in Pavelian, “I,
King Cheo, readily cry because my brother, our Sultan, cannot. All
who knew Brishava not only loved her, yet easily thought of her as
a precious sister—never shall any of us forget just how warm and
gracious she was to all of us, from our first encounter with her,
to our last. Surely she is in heaven now in the ‘colorful skies’
smiling down on us!”

Once Humonus Jr. had taken a short pause to
catch his breath, he concluded, “Finally, I would like to say that
we of the Sharia Empire will continue to loyal serve you—our truly
great and powerful leader. Hail, Sultan Baltor Elysian XVth!”

The crowds went into an uproar crying out,
“
Hail Sultan Baltor Elysian the XVth!!!
”

Looking back into the crowds, Baltor
declared, “Thank you all…”

After taking a deep breath, he said, “I have
a little confession I’d like to reveal to you now. You all may be
wondering why I look so young for my age, even though I am
sixty-seven years old. I will tell you the simple truth—as I told
Sultaness Brishava prior to her death. I am an immortal!

“I will never get sick nor will I ever die.
As you all know, I have built magical teleportation devices, and I
have many other magical powers none of you know about, including
the ability to read minds and to teleport entire armies. So if I
was you, only think positive things from here on out.”

Most people gasp upon hearing that
proclamation, though it didn’t surprise Cheo at all to hear that
news—after all, he was all-too-aware that Baltor had never aged a
day since they met, but never voiced his suspicions out of
respect.

Baltor concluded, “One final thing that I’d
like to add is that I will always be a just leader for you all—if
you have a problem that cannot be reconciled with your neighbor,
you can still talk to me about it on any Moonday. Thank you all for
coming to my wife’s funeral. Goodbye for now.”

Following his words, Baltor, his friends, and
his soldiers reentered the palace. As for the rest of the city of
Pavelus, they spent the day in quiet reflection … most of the women
and children cried. Even many of the men shed tears, as everyone
loved, respected, and now missed, Brishava.

Over the course of the next fifteen years,
Baltor learned, one by one, about many more friends that
died—mostly of old age.

King Cheo was the next to go—nearly a decade
later—at the age of eighty-one … he had died in his sleep in the
middle of the night, yet on his “face of death” strangely remained
a smile from ear to ear. Only hours earlier, during the twilight
hours, he had commented to his son about just how colorful the
skies had been at sunset.

Eight months later, Stormea died at the age
of seventy, after having acquired pneumonia, which could not be
cured.

Replacing him as the ruling-general was Mena,
of whom had been commissioned to officer right after the “Dark
Gnome Wars,” and steadily promoted through the ranks until she had
attained commanding-general only four years earlier…