All but one old crone.
Oh yes! she declared, playing it for all she was worth. Old and
useless, she would have death or glory, and cannily raised her cracking
voice in shameless petition for the lost virtues of Puffat, a
many-times thrice-removed relation of the Emperor!
Puffat suffered horribly before execution, declared she, with one
squinted eye and one enlarged, red-rimed one in her woeful lamentations
to an increasingly wrathful Emperor. Puffat's beautiful brown eyes were
put out, wailed she. Puffat's big toes and thumbs were hacked off,
gesticulated she, jerking at her own toes and thumbs with either bony
hand and a rising croak of wheezing lungs and that unnerving, squinting
stare.
Puffat's excruciatingly agonizing gangrenous leg was kicked repeatedly.
Puffat this. Puffat that.
"Enough!!"
Emperor Euphrates finally slammed his fist down on the chair arm and
jerked himself straight upright in his seat, towering over them all in
a furious rage.
In the sudden silence, he glared down at the silent cluster of
terrified widows.
"Borla!!" pronounced Emperor Euphrates, grating out his Chief Advisor's
name.
"Hmm?" said Borla, somewhat jittery at the rank savagery of his
Emperor's expression. But he was nothing, if not competent, and showed
no further sign of his nervousness as he quickly recovered himself and
fell smoothly into the litany of his accustomed royal pronouncements.
Pages:
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221