Portents
A Promptoberfest story
© 2024 by Walter Reimer

Thumbnail art by :icontegerio:

Prompt:  threaten

Acolytes bowed and scraped as the king, a tall elephant whose ears were decorated with gold rings, stepped away from his tiger bodyguard.  In addition to the rings, he wore a loincloth and sash of snow-white linen embroidered with gold thread.  A sword was belted at his hip and a circlet of gold-stamped leather adorned his brow.
“Bring me to the priest,” the pachyderm ordered, and the two dholes hastened to comply, scattering sacred herbs onto the path before the ruler’s feet, leading him toward the cave where the priest awaited him.
Inside, the cave reeked of unwashed wolf and was lit by small oil lamps.  Huddled within a heap of shabby robes the priest sat cross-legged, a paw lightly caressing the fat toad in his lap.  He bent down to take a long lick of the oily secretions on the toad’s back before turning glassy eyes up at the elephant.  “My King.”
The elephant glowered.  “You know of my quarrel with the Eastern Tribes.”  It was a statement, not a fact, and he demanded, “Why did you send to me that if I march my legions against the Tribes, I will surely lose?”
“The Gods showed me,” the wolf quavered, rocking back and forth.  “If you go to war without offering a fitting sacrifice, your heir will succeed you before he is ready, and your kingdom and line will fail.”
The elephant sat down facing the priest.  “What must I do, then?  What ‘fitting sacrifice’ must I offer?”
The wolf growled and gnashed his teeth, deep in the throes of the fetish, for several moments before he murmured, “Your oldest daughter, untouched by any, is the sacrifice demanded of by the Gods.  Only the fairest flower will send a fitting perfume to Their nostrils.”
For a long while, the two sat facing each other.  The elephant had three sons and two daughters by his wife.
One might not be missed, given time and the rightness of his quarrel.
So it was that, four days later, his oldest daughter was ritually sacrificed to the Gods, and the King marched off to war.
Later, after the rout of the King’s army, the death of the monarch and his two oldest sons, his youngest children and their mother visited the priest before fleeing into exile.
When asked, the wolf merely said, “The King may have been wrong about his daughter.”

end