Tales of PulchraGea, Vol. 1

Chapter 10: The King is Dead, Long Live the King

When I wake up, slumped against the wall, everyone is gathered around Katy, who is collapsed in a puddle of tears on the floor, wailing like a banshee. The scroll in my pocket is buzzing with unviewed news notifications. Now I understood: her father Gavin Rinnal, King of PulchraGea, is dead. The whole land is in a state of mourning, but none so much as her.

The Purple Keystone is in my hand, the blue in my backpack, and a new feeling of weight in my heart. If the king is dead, I am the King. The responsibilities of the Crown fall to me. I know there are people who would kill for this power, but those people aren't me. I have lived too much of my life with too many other peoples' responsibilities in my mind. I have been too many peoples' slave for too many years of my life. I start to panic, bile climbing up my throat like an ocean tide. For someone like me, being a king isn't freedom, it's another shackle to weigh me down more than ever before, and I have no say in the matter. Right now though, my heart goes out to Katy, suffering as she is; I can see her bawling so hard that she's starting to gag on her own sobs.

Even though there's nothing I can do about that, I can resolve to at the very least to get us out of this chamber. My intuition tells me it was no accident that the Purple Keystone found me here. Even though there's a puddle of hurl on the floor next to me, and even though I suddenly feel so weak in my knees that I can barely stand, I get up. I gather what strength I have and command a way be made to us.

Nothing happens. Where did I mess up? Did I do it wrong? How did I fail when I literally just passed this test? I fall to my knees again. Tears start to well up and only by sheer force of habit do I not join Katy on the floor with a puddle of my own. I don't know why, but I suddenly have an urge to look at the wall I was just slumped against. My key is still in the keyhole. I twist it and a staircase opens in the faultless rock.

It's much later, back in Argentum. The Keystones are in the Library's Gatehouse, and efforts are being made to recover the known gates and get them above ground. The staircase we climbed led to an old abandoned shack on the surface, almost fifty miles from the outskirts of Bay City. We contacted the Bay City Law Officer, who gave us a ride back to town, then made arrangements for the Keystones, then returned to Argentum for the funeral.

I assumed it would be a somber affair, but many people were dressed in the colors of whatever tribe was most prominent on their family's patriarchal side. Those who hailed from Argentum had two sects of color, purple and silver. Robin White had advised me to wear purple, as befitted my new status. Doug wore a darker purple suit, Crystal wore a dazzling emerald dress, and Katy wore an outfit completely obscured underneath a large silver cloak with a lacy purple trim. The Law Officers of all the towns, including Bridge Parker and Robin White, and their respective deputies wore a plain grey uniform of Office with stripes on the shoulders, around the cuffs, and down the leg denoting which town they were from as well as a neckerchief or ascot with their ancestral colors. Gavin Rinnal was not the most popular king, according to Robin, but he had the peoples' respect for his role at the very least.

It was a strange ceremony. In PulchraGea the dead are burned and the ashes scattered to return to the land. The kings' ashes, however, are put in a pressure chamber and turned into a diamond prism. At the ceremony for a king, a hologram of white light is projected through it to form an image of him. The image diffracts into the colors of each tribe, skipping Orange due to the way the prism is created. Apparently it's a nearly lost art, used only on deceased kings once every hundred years, kept alive to be used one time ever few generations. No words are spoken the whole time; it's as if the entire delegation knows exactly what to do. When the rainbow hologram comes on, though, everyone in attendance started cheering but me, mostly because next was the coronation, and Katy, for obvious reasons.

I joined the Law Officers as they took the stage after the cheering died down. They led me to the forefront just as the sun was falling from the sky, leaving it's reds and oranges streaked along the horizon until they too faded away. Someone dressed in a hooded robe, who was apparently a priest or scholar, stepped forward and began speaking in ancient Sirren-thal. He gave a speech on the deeds of Gavin Rinnal, his chivalry, strength, faithfulness to God. Then it was my turn, pushed forth. My stomach roiled; I didn't want this, but there was no way I could back out of it. Finally, the last part came. The priest addressed the crowd, asking if there was any among them who objected to my appointment as King or doubted my ability to lead. It was purely ceremonial. Noone in the history of PulchraGea had ever objected. For the first time, someone stepped forward and flung their oversized ornate purple cloak aside and drew their sword.