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into the elite corps of palace guards in the military. You were either born into the elite
corps of the palace guards, or you got promoted into it after proving your bravery in
battle. You must bring fifty adult male tongues in a single battle to gain entry into the
elite corps. The judges could easily tell male from female tongues just by taking a look at
them. A warrior caught with a woman’s or kid’s tongue is automatically disqualified for
life from joining the elite corps. In every battle, the young warriors threw themselves into
fulfilling the almost impossible task of securing fifty enemy tongues.
The only other way into the elite corps was to marry Eghosa’s daughter. You
automatically became the captain of the ward of her mother in the palace. It was a route
that many young warriors wanted to take. But it was also a gamble for which they risked
nothing less than their lives, as Alfonso had heard. Because when one drank with the
King of Evil, the result was unpredictable. Young warriors who out-drank him got their
brides and received a direct entry into the elite corps. But those who failed drank a final
cup of wine laced with a slow-acting poison that killed the victim within a week of
ingestion. The twist to the poison was that the victim eliminated the last traces of it from
the body before actually beginning to die from it. But before leaving the system, the
poison would set the entire system up for simultaneous failure. It was called the Eghosa
tea. Mixed from many herbs, the exact ingredients of the poison are said to be known
only to the king, who killed the herbalist from whose hands the tea originated.
Although Eghosa had not himself produced the tea, before he killed the inventor,
he had a large of quantity of the poison made and stored in his palace. But since he
needed only the size of a pin’s head to kill an elephant, he did not need to remember the
ingredients; he had enough to last several lifetimes of enemies.
“A young and ambitious warrior must out-drink me to win the hand of my beautiful