The king, who was a bit disturbed by his wife's display, decided he should probably stay home for a little while. The last thing he needed was for rumors to spread that he wasn't doing his duty as king. He prided himself on being a very dutiful king, and maintaining his pride was of the utmost importance to him.

He hoped a few weeks would be enough time for everyone to forget the whole thing. As long as the queen continued to behave normally, which she had done for the few days he'd been home, he thought he might be able to get away with just two weeks. Perhaps he could get it down to one and a half if he slept in her room. He wasn't sure he was quite up for sleeping in the same bed, but a bottle of liquid courage usually helped (this was actual bottled liquid courage, not alcohol).

You see, though his own mother and father had been very dutiful about teaching him the responsibilities of being a king, they had forgotten to teach him one very important requirement. Begetting an heir.

They had assumed (and we all know what happens when one assumes*) when the time came, that he would just instinctually know what to do. Or (they also assumed) that some enterprising maid or lady would have taught him well before the required time, and that he might by that time have one or two children running around who he might or might not know about. They also assumed he was attracted to members of the opposite sex. They were, of course, wrong on all counts, and thus made an ass out of themselves, and him, and his queen, and their whole kingdom, not to mention putting the world on a path toward almost certain doom.

Had they ever actually spent time with their son, rather than handing him off to be raised by priests and mages, they would have instantly recognized he had no interest in women. He was, and always had been, attracted to men. And so he pranced gaily (pun intended) into adulthood, having had several affairs with like-minded tutors, and never having looked at a woman with interest.

Let this be a lesson to all parents who shy away from teaching their children about the realities of sex, less their children end up like this king and queen; each having parents who assumed they would be taught their required royal duties by others, but instead ended up laying next to each other for the first time in the three years they'd been married, starring stiffly at the ceiling above them, waiting for the other to make the first move.**

Finally the queen had had enough waiting and said, "So are you going to do something?"

To which the king replied, "I'm supposed to do something? I thought you were supposed to do something. You're the one who wants a baby!"

He had, in fact, asked some of his merry men (his nickname for them, since he was partial to the fairy tale of Robin of "The Hood" - about a poor boy from a made up place called Harlem who grew up to be a powerful gang leader and eventually married the daughter of the Mayor of New York City) whether praying to the gods really got you a baby, or if it involved something more. He was disabused of his earlier hopes and dreams, but stopped listening when they started talking about "vaginas" because it was just too horrible to bear.

The queen, who listened much more intently to her own ladies-in-waiting's instructions, now reached over and grabbed his penis. Unfortunately her hands were freezing cold (stone castles are drafty, chilly, places to live, and for some reason all the magic in the world couldn't think up the equivalent of a glass window). At this the king screamed higher and louder than a small child who's lost their ice cream, and instantly threw up a magical barrier to protect himself from his wife.

"Are you kidding me?" She yelled.

"Your hands are cold!" He protested.

"Why the hell did you even marry me if you don't want to sleep with me?" She cried.

"I didn't know I had to sleep with you! My parents slept in different rooms," he said.

"BUT THEY HAD SEX!"

"I suppose so... but that must have been when I was really little because I don't remember it," he said.

"Of course you don't remember it. It's not exactly something done out in the open," she exclaimed.

"Well..." He dithered, thinking of the many times he'd had sex out in the forest, or in gay brothels where he stayed while touring around the kingdom. Everyone he knew was perfectly fine having sex out in the open, but he started to think his knowledge of the subject matter was rather one sided.

"Really Henry, why did you marry me?" The queen asked.

"Well, I needed to have a queen, and my mother had died, so no one was filling that position, and you were beautiful - ARE beautiful, ARE! - (he had caught the beginnings of a glare), and you've got the most magical voice when you sing. You know, when we were first married I had dreams of us touring the country together as a little band. You would sing, and I would dance, and our entourage would play music, and we could be called 'Lordes' with and 'es' on the end..." he trailed off at the look on her face, though he still thought it was quite a novel idea. No other kingdoms had a traveling band of royalty that he knew of, though he didn't really know much about other kingdoms at all.

Suddenly a look came over her face which frightened him. She'd clearly had an idea. She smiled and began to sing a lilting song which skipped and hopped and completely caught him up. Soon they were dancing around the room together, and the tune began to change and became more sultry. He found himself undressing, and he enjoyed watching her throw off her clothes as she sung. Closer and closer they danced, and before he knew it he was waking up naked in her bed, and he was pretty sure they'd had sex.

That day the king was even more swollen with pride than he usually was. His prancing step had an extra skip to it as he proclaimed to one and all that he had done his duty by his wife and gotten them an heir. He had no clue how many times it typically takes to get a woman with child, but there have been plenty of lucky (or unlucky depending on the point of view) strikes on the first time, and he would have had no trouble believing that any pregnancy of hers would have been the result of that one night.

Having done his duty, and under the assumption that he had gotten his wife pregnant with the first (and only) try, he decided it was unnecessary for him to stay at home for the full three weeks he had initially thought about. Provided, of course, that someone somewhere in the kingdom had a problem that needed solving. He prided himself on being helpful, and he wouldn't dare leave his queen in her condition (whether pregnancy or insanity, or potentially both) if he wasn't sure it would be in service of his people, and so he sent for the court mage: Gerald.

Gerald the magician was a middle-aged man with a short, plump, figure and receding hair. He had no chin, and most of the time everyone forgot he was there. He was a perfectly fine magician, which is how he'd gotten the position in the first place, but he was just a magician. He couldn't call himself a mage, that was for true masters, and "fine" was about the only adjective which anyone could come up with as a description for Gerald. "Nice" was an ok second choice, if one were pressed.

The king asked Gerald to contact the other village magicians to see if anyone had any problems they needed help with. He was keen on some dispute mediation, but a plague would be even better. He hadn't had a plague to cure in a while, and he didn't want to get rusty. The king could have done this himself, but there was a proper order to these things, and he wanted Gerald to feel useful. The king didn't even actually know the court magician's name was Gerald until that morning in fact, because he hadn't been at home long enough to learn it.

He hadn't actually known there was a court magician until he'd asked one of the footmen to send a messenger to the other villages for him, and the footman looked at him like he was crazy. Thankfully, one of the ladies-in-waiting had come down to the hall to get breakfast and heard his question, and she proceeded to tell him that nobody had sent people as messengers for years, that it was all done by magicians, and she was sure the footman would be happy to find Gerald for him.

However, when Gerald came to bring him news from the other villages, he showed up empty handed.

"I'm sorry my Lord, but none of the villages seem to have any problems at the moment," he said, wringing his hands nervously.

"None of them? None at all?"

Gerald shook his head.

"What about that village out on the edge of the kingdom? Fartheton I believe it's called? Yes, didn't they have some illness brewing last week?" The king had found it in the far corner of the large map of the kingdom painted on the wall behind his desk-chair. It was incredibly colorful, and not at all to scale.

"Well, Sire, the magician in that village said that my Lord cured it just a few days ago."

"What do you mean? I certainly did not cure anything in the last few days, except my lady-wife's woes if you know what I mean," the king tried smirking in a knowing way, but only succeeded in choking on his own spit, making Gerald wring his hands even more.

Once he caught his breath he said, "But really Gerald, you know I've been here, so who is it they say came to the village?" The king was quite miffed that someone other than himself should receive gratitude or praise from his people.

"I'm sorry, Sire, I really do not know. The magician said only, 'Lord came and cured the ill, and made the crops healthy, and settled our disputes already.' He said this was three days ago. I assumed he meant you," Gerald said.

"Gerald," the king said, "you know what happens when you assume. Please ask the magician who this man is he speaks of, and while you're at it, check the next village down the road and see if they've encountered this "Lord," because I should like to know who and where this stranger is, and what he means by impersonating me."

Gerald raced off to do as he was bid, and came back with even more tales of this Lord fellow from the other village mages. He was apparently extremely handsome, and powerful, and kind, and helpful, and all of the things which the king himself was, but he was also humble, so the people liked him rather more than they liked the king. Gerald did not tell this last bit to the king because though he was a shrinking, forgettable kind of man, he was not stupid.

At this news the king began to pace and exclaim incoherently for a bit, getting himself so worked up about this stranger in his land doing all of the things the king was sworn to do for his people (which was a bit of an exaggeration), he proclaimed he should ride out then and there to find this man and kill him! Ahem... and see what he was about...

By this time, however, night had fallen, and none of his entourage was very interested in riding out. Several of them wanted to go to the gay brothel in town instead, and their wives were suggesting that the king should sleep with the queen again since she seemed so much happier that morning. He didn't sleep with her again, but did settle on staying one more night and going to the brothel, as long as they were agreed to ride out on the morrow to meet (and maybe kill if we're being honest) the stranger who dared impersonate the king.

The next morning the king's party, full of bluster and still a little inebriated, rode out to meet this stranger. In riding at a full gallop through the castle gates (which is highly inadvisable and in some kingdoms illegal) they almost trampled a man who had stopped to help a large dog who was being starved by its owners. The king yelled back some kind of apology, for he couldn't have people thinking he was impolite, and spurred his horse on, engrossed in his imaginary quest, dreaming of cutting off a head, which he'd never done but was currently keen on trying.

In actuality, the man who the king had almost trampled was the exact man he was running out to find that morning, and the dog was not being starved at all. It had gotten rabies, and the owners were waiting that morning for the executioner (who did odd jobs like this to keep his reflexes sharp between executions - of which there were few) to put it down.

Lorred knew this of course. He also knew that the dog was going bite at least twelve people and three other animals before it was killed, and that at least two of those people who were bitten would hide it from their families long enough for them to wreak even more havoc on the castle and surrounding town. He chuckled to himself when he thought of the destruction he was sewing throughout the land as he ascended the steps of the castle to meet the one who had allowed him to touch the world again in this form. It wasn't all of him, not even close, but it was enough.  And a charming, handsome, adoring and giving lover was exactly what the queen desired.

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Next time on The Dark Heir...
The king does not sire an heir
The Mage Society takes drastic measures.
Gerald the magician finds himself stuck with a fate he never wanted.
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*
When you assume you make an
ASS of U and ME

**
No but really, sex education is really important and could save a whole lot of grief if people would do this properly.
Please and thank you!