The Dark King and the Seer

Now that the Dark King had consolidated his hold on the land, he set about to remove all traces of light.

For lights, even the faintest of them, caused him wounds—sores bristling with angry fire that would not let him sleep. Even the stars on a cloudy night were too bright and a constant source of pain and a gruesome barrier to a good night’s sleep.

As a result, his chambermaids and Keepers of the Dark Curtains now worked day and night to better cover his bed chamber windows, especially those facing the sun as she traveled across the sky of his much too bright land.

But no matter how thick the curtains, and no matter how snug and tightly they covered the windows, the Dark King still could not sleep; his wounds alive and burning with what miniscule particles of sun and star still danced their way through to him, ignoring deepest black silk and wool and cotton working so hard to keep them at bay and safely outside the Dark King’s bedchamber.

And so, the slaughter began. The Dark King started with his chambermaid and then the new chambermaid, and then the maid after that, and so on until no sane person in the land would ever consider this precarious position, no matter how well paid; unless, of course, you’d be guaranteed to lose your head would you not accept the job—which is how the post stayed manned through rants and rages.

The Dark King then blamed the Keepers of the Dark Curtains and began to behead a series of them, but to no avail. Light would still make it through somehow and sleep would not come, his wounds would not quieten.

“Maybe,” suggested one of his advisors one day (grasping at very thin straws), “you are sensitive to light that enters other rooms of the castle, even though you are not there. Maybe just knowing there is light somewhere in your castle is the problem.”

This sounded like gibberish to the Dark King but by now, reeling from sleep deprivation, he was sufficiently desperate to cling to this suggestion as a faint hope and so had the Keepers of the Dark Curtains and an army of castle maids darken every window in the entire castle. Not a ray, not a flicker, not even a grain of starlight was to lighten the inside of his massive home, those were their marching orders.

This took several weeks, but in the end the Keepers of the Dark Curtains reported that every room (and nook and cranny) throughout the castle lay in darkness.

To no avail.

For, still, he could not sleep.

So, he beheaded the advisor who had given such bad (and yes, gibberish) advice, and then had his apprentice executed as well, for good measure.

Still, he could not sleep. His skin burned as if with constant, mocking fire.

At his wits end he called all his ministers and all his advisors and he put it to them to find every lighted room in the land and darken it. They all bowed and bowed some more and said Yes Sir they would do that.

The only ones happy about this turn of events were the textile mills and black curtain weavers who stood to make a killing from the miles and miles and miles of thick, black curtains needed to blacken every window and door and other light-admitting aperture in the land.

Even though the Dark King shouted and chopped some heads off to speed things up it took a full (sleepless) year for every window and door and other opening to be covered.

To no avail.

Still the Dark King could not sleep. ...