February 24, 2012

• Té Teperedcé Kroné: The Debtor King, Part XII

  

   

  Dawn came, and though he had arriven many hours before Médash chose to tie his horse under the small grove of trees and then sit at a wooden table near a small wicker shed, waiting. Hour after hour he poured through all memory of Rodhél, scrutinizing the response of his heart to each, and when it was that the red sun arose shimmering above the ocean of sand so, too, did the realization of love arise in his heart. Before he knew what to say to his beloved, however, she stepped outside into the glory of the morn, the wind playing out her raven hair and swaying her pale skirt. Words failed him, and naught but his tears greeted her as he stood, clad in his white robe and girt about in a simple kilt. Bare chest heaving, lips trembling, he fell to his knees and did her homage, his kingly locks covering his abashed face.

  “My lord!” Rodhél exclaimed, dropping an empty jug and racing to him. She knelt and lifted his face in her hands as she said, “My lord, what troubles you? What have you to do with me again this day after sending me from your sight?”

  “My lady,” said he, but only by great effort, “I am the King of Gold, with wealth enough to purchase ten kingdoms, yet I had not until your departure tasted the bitterness of penury. My pride, wounded by being so easily deceived, blinded me utterly to your goodness, and I beg you forgive me. God has taken away my blindness, and I feel unworthy to view what it is that He has revealed to my poor heart!”

  Rodhél dried his tears with her hair, gently as he had never known gentleness, and said to him, “My lord, you are forgiven, for never did I hold you in contempt. Your actions were just, for I should have come to you in the light and not in the shadow as though a demon or some other creature. Yet my awe of your majesty and the baseness of my ignorant treatment of you when last you came to my home made me a coward, and for that I have done my penance.”

  “And likewise, my lady, have I done mine, for though I have fought many a battle and bore many wounds, and though I have suffered countless things in my centuries of life I have not suffered, truly, but in these past weeks of your being parted from me.” Then he looked into her eyes as though peering into a new and wondrous land for the first time, as in days of old when a wandering Elven lord came over the top of a high hill and glanced, but for a moment, into the valley of Héleredh where Adama and Eva once did dwell, before an angel of the Lord came and hid it from all sight. For long did Médash gaze into her, and his heart then felt alien in all the world as though it had found, at long last, the home of its birth and belonging. He knew in that moment that the world would bear him no comfort unless his heart rested in hers.

  “Rodhél, in these weeks alone have I come to realize that in spite of all my wealth there is one treasure I long above all others, yet it is beyond even my riches to purchase, and I fear that without this treasure I will have no joy in this world.”

  Her eyes went wide and she said, “My lord, what would you have me do to help you obtain this treasure? For I have naught but an elderly father, a horse, and some pomegranates.”

  Médash said not a word, instead taking her calloused but graceful hand into his own, and the look of his eyes spoke to her soul all that she desired to know.

  A single tear, lit all aglow as a golden jewel by the still rising sun, wound its way down her cheek and trembled upon the precipice of her jaw before it fell to the earth. She grasped his hand, and the both of them embraced, crying out with joy. But it was not to last, for behold did come unto them her father, clothed in a rough spun tunic and leaning heavily on a stick.

  “Horse-thief! What have you again to do with us, eater of pomegranates?”

  “My lord, I…”

  “Father!” said Rodhél, “He is no horse-thief; he is our king.”

  The old man stopped a moment and looked upon Médash, spying the golden hand embroidered on the breast of his white robe, “That may well be when he is within his districts, when he sits upon the mountain and beholds the Salduar Forests to the east, the Wastes to the west, the Gharamere to the north and the Sanabhoro River to the south. But beyond his sight is our home, and thus is he subject to me. I am called Drostérn, but you have leave to call me ‘lord’ that our places may be well remembered here.”

  Médash did him homage, as was right, and he said, “Begging your pardon, lord, but it is that Médash, a man, seeks the hand of your daughter in marriage.”

  “She has no dowry,” was the old man’s reply.

  “She need none, lord, and you need not fear any shame because of it.”

  “She has no veil, for her mother’s perished to moth a century ago.”

  “She would have one made for her of silver thread and moonlight if she desires!”

  The old man, for a time looking quite regal, seemed to age again before the sight of all when he said wearily, “If I permit you to take her hand and the rest of her following, you take from me my every joy in this world. Thus I must deny you. So long as I have her I am the richer, for when I die it will not be my few possessions that testify on my behalf before my Judge, but my daughter. ”

  His words smote the king to the heart. Rodhél then moved to stand before her father, saying not a thing, and the two stood as that for what seemed a day to Médash-King. Then, sighing heavily as though a groan from within the depths of the earth, Drostérn said, “Man, if you desire my daughter to be your bride, you must offer me her weight in gold that it may be my livelihood in her absence. Grant me this, and she shall be your queen. ”

  The king said solemnly, pressing his closed fist over the golden hand on his robe in pledge, “This do I swear: should you and your daughter deign to accompany me back to my palace I shall grant you her weight in gold, as well as grant you all else that you should desire for your life-long provision.”

  A wagon was secured to the king’s great warhorse, a humiliating task for so grand a creature, but the horse bore it obediently, and within the wagon rode Rodhél and her father. Thus did King Médash ride again into Acton, clad in his night robe and kilt, bearing behind him a crude wagon with what appeared to be two common folk. The trumpets and watchmen all hailed him in spite of the strangeness of his attire, for kings are not made so by raiment. The fanfare called all manner of people into the streets, and in moments news spread as wildfire that Rodhél had returned to the mountain. As the king made his way through the city, flower petals began to rain from above as women and girls threw them from windows and rooftops, and a thick joy filled the atmosphere like honey and milk.

  The three broke fast together, and when all had eaten, bathed and dressed the king met with Rodhél and Drostérn, saying, “Let us go to the treasury, that we none of us may wait a moment longer for our happiness to be complete.” Litters were brought for the each of them, and within the hour they had passed through many guard posts and secured doors into a vast chamber filled with chests and shelves on which sat leather sacks of gold and jewels. Windows made of quartz and other transparent stone filled the place with such light that ignited the riches like fire, and the sight of it filled all with awe. In the center of the chamber was a grand scale large enough that a pair of oxen could easily stand on one side to be weighed.

  Disembarking from their litters to sit at ease on plush cushions, the king then explained to Rodhél and her father that she would stand on one side of the great scale while Médash had his servants begin placing sacks of gold on the other. Once the scale was balanced, all that was upon the scale would belong to Drostérn. With this her father was satisfied, and thus did Rodhél go to stand upon the scale. It slowly dropped so that its pan rested upon the floor with her weight, and servants were ordered to bring gold until the scale balanced. Sack after sack of gold was brought forward, and even after the number which Médash thought would be sufficient had been surpassed, still the scale had not moved at all! Soon twelve great sacks of gold coins had been brought—easily the weight of a strong bull—and yetthe scale refused to balance.

  He then thought perhaps the scale had become broken, and so he bid Rodhél to step off for a moment. As soon as she left the plate the side with the gold crashed to the floor with a sound that rang throughout the mountain, and when he bid her return to the scale behold! the plate that bore her gently came to rest upon the floor as though she weighed the greater. Médash ordered a dozen more servants to come to the treasury, and soon a great line of them stretched from the scale to the shelves, one strong man handing a sack of gold coin to the next and so on until the last man heaped it upon the scale. In three hours time there was such a mound of gold upon the scale that the chains bearing it broke and all came crashing and ringing about, never having lifted Rodhél from the floor an inch, nor even a height through which one could thread a hair.

  • 1:25 pm
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