CALLED BY GOD
Darce... Darce... Darce... will be the king. Darce... Darce... Darce will be the king. Cheers for Darce... Darce will be the king!. The ancient Persian playground rang with the chants, the noise and the delight of little shepherd children at play, and Darce, the child leader, basked in the joy of being selected by his friends to be the king of a playground empire.
Braiding weeds into a crown, the children crowned Darce king. In his new role as emperor of the playground, Darce commanded that the other children water his sheep. One of the children playing with those shepherd children was, in fact, the King of Persia's son, and he refused to engage in the lowly task of watering sheep. Darce then commanded that the boy should be flogged. The prince and his father, the king, were outraged. What? Lowly peasants whipping the prince, the king's son! Darce and his father, Mithradates, were summoned to the King's palace.
King Astyrages growled at Mithradates, "I sent my sickly boy to your house in the country. I hoped that the sunlight and the fresh country air would improve his health. You, you... allowed this commoner, this shepherd boy this, your son, to have my boy beaten." Mithradates stood shaking in his shepherd's sandal. He knew that this was probably the last day of his life. He also knew that Darce would probably be killed.
Turning and staring down at Darce the king snarled, "Boy, what do you have to say?" Without batting an eye, Darce responded, "Well, since I was the king and he refused to obey
an order I had him flogged. "No king," he added, "can afford to have his subjects blatantly disobey without punishment."
The King opened his eyes wide. "There is something about this boy," he mused. Speaking out loud he asked, "Mithradates, who is this boy? I know that no commoner would speak to a king in such a bold manner" And then the story tumbled out of the mouth of Mithradates. Darce was, in fact, the king's grandson, the one whose mysterious death, soon after his birth, had