The Ancient Beast (Adere's Mission)

Chapter 50

The woman that the king of Abah was preparing to get married to having eavesdropped on the conversation between the king of Abah and his cabinet elders she returned to reoccupy her seat, knowing that the king was leaving the throne room and might return to the room where he had left her to go and conversate with his cabinet members. Shortly after she had taken her seat the king dashed in and said to her, "I would like to go for a hunt. If you would not mind let us go hunting together"

The lady got up but said, "I thought the land of Abah is threatened by the presence of the ancient beast. is it safe for us to go hunting now that the beast is on rampage? If that is what it is all I want to do is to ensure that nothing like that happens to us. My king, are you serious about us going for hunting now?" she wanted to know. The king turned and said to her, "Whenever I get angry I like to go hunting. If I get upset and I do not go hunting I will be restless until I kill something. I like to kill something now and I would not want to delay before doing that..Come along with me and let us go on a hunting trip" He moved and the lady followed him at once. They stepped out of the house and the armed men that were meant to follow him and the lady he was going on a hunt with saw him holding his Archer and knew already that the king was preparing for hunting. They too grabbed their bows and arrows and followed him suit. They all mounted their horses and the king said to the lady, "How fast can you ride a horse?"

"I may not know how to kill a thing but be rest assured that I can beat you on horse racing" she smiled and the king whose face was still rumpled did not want to smile, instead he kicked his horse and began to gallop away. His men followed him suit at once and before long they were already at the forest.

The hunting became intense after they had encountered a beast in the forest. The king who was insisting that the beast be left for him to kill aimed his spear at the beast and threw it. The beast dodged it and the spear fell. The king did not want to fail this time, not infront of his men. He quickly took out his bow and arrow and aimed it at it as the beast began to run and then he fired it. The arrow pierced the body of the beast but did not stop it from continuing running. The king mounted his horse and began to pursue the beast. The rest kept standing right there and wondering why on Earth the king would go on pursuing the beast without informing them of what he would like them to do for him. The king who already started galloping after the beast kept on firing it with his arrows. He did not stop firing it until he stopped seeing it. He stood right there and kept looking from one direction to another. He was angry with himself, wondering why it was taking too long for him to kill a thing. The woman that he was preparing to marry saw how angry he was and then at the same her eyes caught an antelope and she whispered to the king, "Here is a thing to kill. I would love to stand by your right hand as you aim at it, and this time you will not miss, but you will have it on the ground, blessing profusely from the sharpness of your arrow" The king saw what the lady has seen and immediately knocked his arrow and aimed it straight at the antelope and fired once. The arrow pierced the throat of the antelope and it's blood gushed like a pump. The antelope fell and struggled on the ground. The king's men cheered and celebrated that one shot from the king that did not miss. The king remained standing there and the woman walked up to the beast and bending down she picked it up and brought it to where the king was standing and the king said to her, "You stood by my right hand and spurred me to shoot to kill. I have much more regard for you now than I had for you then" he held her neck and kissed her on the lips. The king's men took hold of the antelope and put it in their carriage and began to go home with him. The king and his woman mounted their horses and followed from the back.

When they got back home the woman dismounted her horse and so did the king. The king held her by the waist and said, "today you made my day my dear, today you made me to smile and all I do is to look at you and I begin to wonder what exactly that is going on with me. I did not know what to do when my elders said that I was not going to have to marry you because they think that from where you come you are a threat to the throne but i tried to make them to understand that there is nothing like that. I am the king of this great land, a land that is well feared in all the lands of the world. If I say that I am not going to marry you what gain will it give to them, instead they just want to frustrate my life"

"Are you going to allow that? I mean is it going to continue like that? I want you to make a decision concerning this, I love you and that is all that I want to tell you. stand up for what you want, stand up for what gives you joy, stand up for what is rightfully yours and I will always stand with you. I promise to stand by you the same way that I stood beside you right there before that antelope. I could do far more with you. Just do what you feel is right by you and I will do what I feel is right by us. I did not want to say this but having seen, even if you had not told me that your elders hate me I am willing to fight for us as much as you are also willing to fight for us" The woman let go of him and walked into her chamber. the king remained standing there watching her as she walked away. On the tower stood the prime minister and the chief adviser as they were looking at the king of Abah. They kept wondering why all of a sudden the king developed love for a woman whom they had seen was going to bring destruction to the land of Abah. They swore that they were not going to allow the woman, the strange woman that had entered the palace to steal the heart of the king of Abah to destroy all that they had been building over the years. The prime minister looked at the chief adviser and said to him, "I am not sure if the king of Abah is doing all of this with his eyes. I do not believe that he is with himself and doing all of this. We have to ensure that our king does not slip out of our hands. We have to find solution for this problem. We need to stand our ground and fight what has come to fight against us. This woman has come here not only to make us feel so bad but to influence our king, to possess him. You and I know what I mean by possessing the king; if she succeeds in doing that we will hold no more water infront of the king. The king will no longer value us. If the king stops valuing us it is a big problem because suddenly he will stop listening to us. We all know what it means for him to stop listening to us. If you looked carefully at him during that time that he left the throne room I saw in his eyes something dark, something terrible. What I am saying is that it is better for us to stand our ground and face what has faced us. We should not allow these things to become the reason that we fail to stand on our feet"

The prime minister decided to have a word with the woman that had entered the palace of the land of Abah. He walked straight to her room and when he got there he knocked and the maids assigned who were attending to the woman and when the prime minister knocked one of the maids came out to meet him and she said to him, "She is about to rest"

"I would want to have a word with her and you should not have said that word to me knowing fully well of my position in this palace. I demand to have a word with her. Make arrangement for that Immediately without delay" the maid bowed her head and then returned to the room to inform the woman that the prime minister was at the door to have a word with her. When the woman opened the door she said to the prime minister, "Come in my lord" the prime minister asked the guards following him to stand outside while he himself went in to the chamber of the woman and when he had sat down he said to her, "Thank you for inviting me into your chamber"

"You are welcome. Do you care for a drink?" she asked but the prime minister shook his head, his eyes glued on her and not shifting. The woman noticed and then sat down.

"I am glad that the king loves hunting, I mean if the king did not like hunting my stay here would have been boring because I myself l love hunting. Do you love hunting just like the king?" asked the woman but the prime minister did not say something just immediately because he was still studying her. His eyes on her made uncomfortable and she said, "You are not saying a word?"

"I am fine. I was wondering, can I know more about you please?" asked the prime minister. The woman nodded and then began. "My name, that is my real name, is Selu and I am from the town of Ori where my father was a great farmer before he died. You knew about him, so your king said. I am here because I have decided to honor the king's invitation. Now that I am here I am only doing what will make the king of Abah happy. I have also heard of what is happening in this land of Abah, I mean it is all over the world of how it is happening in this land of Abah. The truth is that it is not always as it seemed for me. While I stayed with my father I learnt a lot about hunting, he was a great hunter too and being a great farmer he was always in the forest and there was no day he returned to the house without a very big animal for us to eat. I followed him most of the times and that was how i got to learn how to hunt. I followed the king to hunt but it was the king that killed the spoil that we brought home" she laughed.

"Well Selu I have heard what you said and i am very glad that you are from the land of Ori but the truth is that this was not what we were led to believe about you but as it stands I think you are right about your identity and you are not lying about it. You see my dear there is nothing wrong about your love for what your father stood for but the thing is that you are not welcomed to this place. You are not meant to marry the king. Why I am saying this is that you need to go away from here this moment and never return. You must do what I am telling you now to avoid making a terrible mistake that will lead to your own death"