A wonder working power in the precious...

...credible as they seem are not the results of mass stereo...

You may wish to adjust the dial.

You're currently tuned to the wrong station. I'm At the end of his life,

At the end of his life, gasping for a few more breaths in power under the purple sheets of his deathbed,

he knew it wasn't famine, plague, or goths, or the cataphracks of Persia that had ruined his empire.

But the whale.

Here's how things began.

With the purple skyline of his city dark against the riot's golden fires, he'd been

preparing to flee.

A small boat would carry them across the strait, away from fires, from teeming crowds,

from the constant cries of victory, victory, that echoed

through the streets. He and his wife were both born low, he'd reasoned. They could make

do with a quiet life. But when the moment came, the empress had refused to go. Regal, for all her common birth, she stood strange and

tall beneath the portico of their chambers in full regalia, with the darkness full in the dark

purple of her robe, in the shadows of her red hair, and with the golden firelight reflected from

the gilded panels of the Loros robe that wrapped around her body,

from the pearls of her diadem at shone, and from her glass-green eyes.

Those who've worn a crown, she murmured, should die without it.

What are you saying?

An emperor cannot survive as a beggar, she declared, still gazing out at their burning city.

And as for me, I will never see the day that they do not call me empress.

...