The Wizard Of Never Was (Part1)

Once upon a Time...

Well, actually, that’s not quite true, because this didn’t really happen at all. Let’s begin again...

Once upon a Time that Never Was, in a gloomy chamber without a door, atop the highest turret in the royal palace, at the heart of the magical kingdom of Karmalot, there lived a Wizard.

He wasn’t just any old wizard. He was known as The Wizard, mainly because he had forgotten his own true name. However, when people spoke about him, you could hear the capital ‘T’ and the capital ‘W’ in the tone of their voices. They respected him and they were afraid of him too.

Mothers disciplined their boisterous children by using him as a threat. “If you don’t stop making all that horrible noise,” they warned. “Then The Wizard will come to cut out your tongues and use them to sole his pointy-toed slippers.”

Fathers quoted the almost poetic wisdom of his sayings to their doting sons. “Red sky at night,” they intoned, as they stared towards the brightly glowing horizon. “Shepherd’s cottage alight.”

To say that The Wizard had forgotten his name was not strictly true. It was more the case that he was so old and wise, so ancient and knowledgeable, so wizened and omniscient, that there was no longer enough room in his grey haired head to contain everything he knew. Little things that didn’t matter, such as name which no-one had spoken in centuries, had to step aside to make space for more important concerns.

Today was different though. Today, The Wizard was beginning to feel his incredible age and to wonder whether senility was finally creeping up on him.

He gazed out of the turret window, across the fields where farmers toiled as he had watched them and countless generations before them toil, across to a distant green hill dotted with daisies and buttercups and clover, at the summit of which there stood a massive horse chestnut tree.

This tree was taller than any of the castle’s spires. Its branches spread out like a huge leafy umbrella under which the whole country’s populace and all its livestock could comfortably shelter and remain bone dry during the heaviest summer shower. Its trunk was thick enough so that, if anyone had the strength and determination to cut it down, it would form a round table large enough for King Nosmo and all his knights and their squires and their horses too to hold a twelve course sit down banquet, with room left over in the middle for the court jester, a troupe of acrobats, a six piece orchestra and a group of morris dancers to provide the entertainment. When autumn came, there were enough conkers to arm every small boy in the kingdom with an arsenal sufficient to lay siege to the Slush Queen’s fortress itself.

Yes, it was a big tree alright. People reckoned it had been there since the beginning of Time, that its roots reached so deep that they poked out on the other side of the world and that its branches reached so high that the Moon had to be careful not to get tangled up in them.

Yes, it was an extremely old tree too. Yet, The Wizard could remember tending it when it was just a weedy little sapling. In fact, he could remember the simple yet touching little ceremony he had performed when first planting the seed:

It was Midsummer’s Eve, which for some confusing reason that no-one could ever adequately explain was the day before the first day of summer. The weather was trying its best for the time of year, but could only manage a bit of weak sunshine in between half hearted drizzles of fine rain.

The Wizard stood at the crest of a hill, which was then bare of grass, wild flowers or trees and little more than a nondescript mound of mud, waving his arms theatrically in arcane gestures and loudly invoking the blessings of whatever powers came to mind. With his swirling purple robes and windblown silvery whiskers, his appearance was a triumph of presentation over intent.

“Get on with it, Wizard,” snapped the newly self proclaimed King of the newly self established kingdom of Karmalot. “Before my armour gets rusty.”

The King was quite an impressive sight in his armour of gold and silver, which made the most of what sunshine there was and gleamed, sparkled and shone in a most regal fashion. He looked every inch the hero, which was exactly the image he wanted to project. He declared himself to be the champion of the common folk, their liberator from the cruel yoke of the Emperor’s oppression.

He called himself King Boncoeur. A name that could be translated to mean ‘Good Heart’. However, the majority of people were poorly educated, so to them it sounded as if he was called King Bonkers. A nickname that stuck and persisted throughout the whole of his short reign.

Surprisingly, considering that he was the first king of a newfound kingdom, the history books have very little to say about King Boncouer. What they do say is not very complimentary, so it may just be a case of academic discretion.

What is clear is that most people were unimpressed by the notion that they had somehow been ‘liberated’ from the Empire’s rule. For the most part, the Emperor has left them alone to get on with farming their meagre plots of lands and tending to their modest flocks of animals. All they were required to do was make some form of tribute on the Emperor’s official birthday and occasionally kowtow to some visiting minor dignitary. Although such a life was not always easy, the hardships they suffered were due to the vagaries of nature rather than the cruelty of men.

To be fair, King Boncoeur hadn’t intended to be cruel. He was an ambitious man who overreached himself in pursuit of a crown without thinking about the consequences. When leading his rebellion, he had made promises to his allies without a clue how he was going to honour them. Just dishing out titles such as Lord Such-and-Such and Baron Somebody and the Count of Somewhere-Fancy-Sounding was not enough. There had to be land to go with the title and a swanky manor house from which to rule the land and servants to run the house and work the land.

The liberated common folk suddenly found that they had become slaves. Their farmsteads now belonged to some dreadful foreigners who dressed in funny clothes, stank of strange herbs and spoke in weird accents. Not only that, but their new masters were forever complaining about the weather, the type of apples that grew in the orchards, the way the meat was cooked, the lack of proper toilet facilities, the paucity of local entertainment, the surliness of the peasants... The list went on and on...

Unfortunately, there was no hope of a counter revolution or a peasant’s revolt. The King and his allies employed a sizeable army of mercenaries to impose their rule and maintain the peace, which was the source of another problem: the army needed to be paid in order to ensure its loyalty. Therefore, the King was forced to impose a tax upon his subjects to fund an army to keep themselves in line. Not only had they become slaves, but they were poor slaves as well. They couldn’t even afford a sense of irony.

King Boncoeur did not prosper. He had to maintain an expensive patrol and establish fortifications on the borders of Karmalot to protect his kingdom against reprisals by the Emperor. Then, emboldened by his example, the neighbouring regions began to declare their own independence and established their own kingdoms, which began to fight with each other for territory.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, he found that he couldn’t trust his own allies, who each had an eye on a throne for themselves. It was only the magical power of the sword Hewslice that kept the royal crown upon his head and the royal head upon his shoulders.

Hewslice. Oh, yes. The Wizard brought his reminiscence back on track: the ceremony on the hill to symbolically mark the foundation of Karmalot. The fall of Mad King Bonkers was still a few years in the future.

“Draw forth thy sword of office,” commanded The Wizard.

With a dramatic flourish, the King drew his sword from its jewelled scabbard. Swish! it said, then Whoosh! as he swung it aloft and finally Zing! as it vibrated in his hand as he held it high in a gesture of triumph.

“Oooh!” gasped the crowd who had gathered to witness the ceremony and who were rather starved of more sophisticated entertainment.