The new King was different. As soon as he ascended the throne, he banished all the wise men. He didn’t need their counsel, he claimed.
The strangest thing though were his pronouncements. A week after he was made king, he claimed that the old queen had tried to poison him. The only problem was that the old queen was blind and deaf and could hardly walk.
The he announced that the men from the Northern Province were planing a revolt. What made this astonishing was that the Northern Province had the most loyalists to the monarchy and so the whole nation wondered why he said that.
Then shortly after that, he claimed that the people of the Ajia Kingdom to the east were bringing disease into his kingdom. The King of Ajia were angry and pulled his envoy.
Over all in the kingdom, everyone wondered why he said the things he did. They all feared what he might say next or which other kingdom he might anger.
One afternoon as the King walked through the royal gardens, he saw a beggar hunched near a tree. He wondered how the beggar got into the royal gardens and asked his guards to remove him. As the guards headed towards the poor man, he started crying out loud:
“O King, have mercy on a hungry and suffering soul. All I want is some food.”
The guards grabbed him and started hauling him away but his cries got louder.
“Stop!’, ordered the King.
The guards stopped, dropping the poor beggar like a sack of potatoes.
“Now why should I give you anything?”, asked the King haughtily.
“O My King, because I have a gift for you”, the beggar answered.
“You have a gift for me?”, the King asked, sneering.
“Yes, I do”, the poor beggar answered.
“Well then, let me see it. If it is worth my while, I’ll feed and cloth you. If not, you are in deep trouble”, the King barked.
“It is a story, my Lord, a wonderful story indeed”, the beggar said fearlessly.
“A story! A story!”, the King said as he burst out laughing. “Well, let me hear your story then, you wretch”. The King’s curiosity got the better of him.
And so the beggar began to tell the story:
“There was a Shepherd Boy who tended his sheep at the foot of a mountain near a dark forest. It was lonely for him, so he devised a plan to get a little company. He rushed down towards the village calling out ‘Wolf, Wolf,’ and the villagers came out to meet him. This pleased the boy so much that a few days after he tried the same trick, and again the villagers came to his help. Shortly after this a Wolf actually did come out from the forest. The boy cried out ‘Wolf, Wolf,’ still louder than before. But this time the villagers, who had been fooled twice before, thought the boy was again lying, and nobody came to his aid. So the Wolf ate all the sheep in the boy’s flock.”
There was total silence in the garden after the beggar finished speaking.
“That is the story, my Lord”, he added.
The King looked sternly at the beggar, opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it. Finally he said to the guards, “Feed him, clothe him and throw him out of the kingdom like all the other wise men”.
Then he turned and walked back into the palace.
Some claim that after that encounter, the King made no more incredulous statements. Others claim that nothing really changed and that he angered the King of Ajia with his claims so much so, that war broke out between the two nations. Yet there are those who claim that the encounter never happened.
Whatever the case is, those who have ears, let them hear.