“Yes, Bluecoat. I’m so sorry for him. What an unfortunate rock slide—ill-timed, wasn’t it?” He laughed long and hard.

“No matter how you try to hide it, your true nature eventually surfaces, doesn’t it? Whenever you speak, you lie. Whenever King Elyon speaks, he tells the truth. I choose to follow truth, not lies.”

“Truth? What is truth?”

“The King is truth.”

“The King takes everything from you and demands everything of you.” Smoke rose from the crown of his head. “Is that love? What does he give you in return? Sorrow, suffering, shame, ridicule. Remember your friend Quon? That is how the King repays his servants. The more you yield to the tyrant, the more he demands of you. Turn from him while you still can!”

“To turn from the King is to turn from life itself. You, Pretender, feed men gravel, telling them it’s bread. And when they break their teeth and wail, what do you do? Feed them larger rocks until they choke and die.”

Talking back to the Impostor seemed to drain him of the power to disguise himself. His bloody head, smashed long ago by a rolling stone, hung and bobbed like a boxer about to go down. His eyes were empty, like two holes in a mask.

Suddenly, I felt his mighty will grab hold again. He rose up before me, muscles bulging, much taller and stronger than Marcus, his head nearly hitting the ceiling of the dugout. Seized by evil strength, he raised his fists to the sky. He hissed long and hard, then screamed, “Baal jezeb ashnar mordol nuhl—keez gimbus molech nargul dazg!”

He spit the words as if he could not bear their weight on his tongue. I reeled backward at this foul, dark language. My vision blackened, I groped for sight.

Marcus, his eyes ablaze and the tendons of his great neck stretched, stared at the evil prince, then raised his right fist and cried to the sky, “Elyon miriel o aeron galad—chara domina beth charis o aleathes celebron!”

His speech was loud as a deafening waterfall yet soft as a gentle brook, the words sweet as honey. The raging beast covered his ears, wincing and shouting vile foreign slurs in a fruitless attempt to drown out the cascading echo of the golden words. I heard, though I could not see, a multitude of the King’s warriors take up the words of Marcus in a glad shout that then became a mighty song.

“Do not speak again in the fallen tongue,” Marcus warned. “For though my power is as nothing to yours, fallen star of the morning, I can still speak Elyon’s truth in the ancient language … and in the face of those words you shall surely wilt—just as you must in the final day!”

“Speak not that name,” the Usurper snarled frantically. “I cannot bear to hear it, I who have made myself equal to the Most High!”