Part 2 -- The Kings in the Mountain

I had a great starting idea once for a modern fantasy novel based on the Kings in the Mountain. It would be a little like Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." Y'see, the legend of the King in the Mountain spreads across Europe -- different countries have different versions of the hero. The name comes from the story of the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Barbarossa fought the Pope a lot in his lifetime, but did a lot to expand the Empire's power in Italy and eventually died on the way to the Third Crusade. He fell off his horse, which was standing in the middle of a river at the time. Frederick's heavy armor weighed him down in the water and he drowned. His army turned around and headed home, which makes for an interesting historical what-if: would Coeur de Lion have defeated Saladin if he'd had all those German troops at his disposal?

But the story goes that Frederick didn't really die -- he was taken back to Germany and interred in a mountain. Which mountain? No one knows. But he's there, and he's healing from his wounds, and he's waiting. Someday, when the ravens stop circling that mountain, he'll emerge and rule as Emperor again, and save Germany from its worst peril ever.

One might expect a more apologetic culture hero from Germans, who are themselves history's leading cause of death (Number Two is plague). But no matter. Barbarossa sits waiting in his mountain, and he's already waited so long that his beard has grown through the table he's sitting at. So goes the story.

There are actually a lot of versions of this story. Lots of countries have a great hero or king who never died, but is just sitting in the bullpen waiting to lead his country out of tragedy and into a Golden Age. Here are some examples.

King Arthur: I don't really need to tell you about King Arthur, do I? The Pendragon's probably the most famous of the Kings in the Mountain. He had a magic sword, he was King of all the Britons, he fought the Saxons at the Battle of Mount Badon, his wife was the most beautful woman in the world, and he was mortally injured fighting his bastard son at the Battle of Camlann. He was taken to the Isle of Avalon, where he recovers from his wounds. He's called "The Once and Future King" because someday he'll come back and rule England again.

Interestingly, Arthur, or at least a very tangible model for Arthur, very probably existed as a Romano-British king or warlord in the time between the Roman withdrawal from Britain and the Saxon conquest. Anyone interested in learning more should read the works of Geoffrey Ashe, who makes a pretty compelling case that a king named Riothamus (possibly a title or honorific) was the REAL Arthur, living around the appropriate time and known as a great warrior and builder or churches and monasteries.

Finn McCool: That's an awesome name, isn't it? I knew a guy in high school who everyone called Finn McCool. I have no idea why, since he wasn't Irish, wasn't a culture hero, and wasn't even cool. You know Baby Huey, that giant duck cartoon character? He looked kind of like that. But I digress.

McCool is almost certainly entirely legendary -- a prehistoric Irish warrior. At a young age, he was apprenticed to a druid, who, no doubt in a desire to have a smoke or grab a nap, sent McCool out to catch the "salmon of knowledge." This sounds pretty much like what it is -- a fish containing all the knowledge and wisdom in the world. Whoever caught it and ate it would become perfectly wise. McCool caught the fish and began to roast it for his master. While tending the fire, he burned his thumb and popped it in his mouth instinctively. I guess that the thumb had brushed the salmon, because McCool instantly became perfectly wise. One wonders why the entire damned fish needed to be eaten, or even roasted in the first place. Presumably, you could just catch the fish, lick it, then throw it back in to conserve wisdom for future generations.

There's a lot more to McCool -- fighting monsters and such. It all gets pretty Beowulf-y, though, so I'll spare you that. The most interesting part is the salmon. That and the legend that McCool will someday return to save Ireland from dire peril.

Charlemagne: Again, pretty much no need to go into a lot of detail about Charlemagne. First Holy Roman Emperor, son of Pippin, had a lot of daughters who he never let marry so they just had a lot of bastards, red wine stained his beard, Song of Roland, yadda yadda yadda. Probably deserves more attention at some later point, but for now suffice it to say that there's a legend that he will return to save France some day. Also, did you know his burial shroud was embroidered with elephants? He got an elephant as a gift from some Muslim Caliph, and he thought it was so awesome that he wanted to have the image of an elephant with him forever.

Actually, the Nine Worthies would all probably make good entries. Some of them, anyway.

The Golem of Prague: Yep. A clay statue can count as a King in the Mountain. Once upon a time, the Rabbi Judah Loew, head of the ghetto of Prague, built a clay giant to protect the local Jews from pogroms. He wrote the Hebrew word "life" on its forehead and the Golem came to life. Sort of like Frosty the Snowman, only Frosty presumably wasn't made with the intention of protecting the Jews of Prague (not that I'm aware, anyway. See The Collected Works of Burl Ives) Over time, the Golem got a little nuts and just started killing Gentiles for no good reason, so the rabbi was forced to remove its life essence (through a simple act of erasure -- turning the word "life" into the word "death").

The Golem was "dead" (as dead as an artificially animated statue without volition can be, anyway), but the rabbi rather sensibly decided not to destroy it. He stowed the Golem in an attic in the Jewish quarter and resolved that it would stay there until a time of direst need. At that time he would be reassembled and the word "life" reinscribed on its forehead.


Other examples include Merlin, St. Wenceslas, and even Montezuma the Aztec. Anyway, my story was that there was some colossal threat to all of Earth that simultaneously woke all the heroes up. They would need to work together across cultures and centuries to defeat the threat. Trouble was, I could never come up with an original interesting idea for what the threat would be. Oh well.