You think you can use us to gain whatever you yearn for, and you can. We don't judge if what you desire is good or evil. But never forget that we are gods. So have a care for what you wish — we might just grant it.
But there is one wish all men want us to grant them. It is the desire to know their own destiny. Men and women are so desperate for a glimpse into their futures, they will squander a kingdom for the knowledge - 'What will I become?' 'What will become of me?' — that we have the power to show them.
But knowledge always comes at a price, knowledge changes you, perhaps it can even change your destiny too.
You don't believe me? Let me show you. I have a tale for you, one that concerns me intimately. Hear it out and then you shall judge, for as I told you, we never do.
I was born, dragged from the earth, as you would say, in the hot, blood-soaked lands of the Saracens. Who my midwives were and why they risked their lives and sanity to pull me from the ground is another story, and perhaps I shall tell it to you one day, but the tale I want to share with you now begins many years after my birth. It begins in the cold lands far to the north, in England to be precise, in a piss-poor village called Gastmere, in Norfolk, during the reign of King John.
John has borne many titles, one such was Duke of Normandy, though he lost that to King Philip of France. But he has others; his toadying courtiers call him the true king of England. His nephew, Arthur, would doubtless have dubbed him thief, traitor and regicide, if he had lived to utter such words. The Pope proclaimed him apostate, the worst of the Devil's brood. John ignored them all for he had once had another title — John Lackland.
His own father, King Henry II, had bestowed on him that mocking epithet. For Henry had lands aplenty stretching from England to northern Spain. But when John, his youngest son, was born, Henry promised him nothing, not so much as a stinking village, for as the youngest of five lusty sons, John was surplus to requirements, his father's lands already pledged to his brothers. And what can you do with a babe that has no inheritance, no glorious destiny? Why, you give him to the Church, dump the infant in an abbey, and bid him pray for the souls of his royal father and lordly brothers.
But the boy without a future was determined to obtain one, steal another man's destiny if there was no other way. He lusted after his brother Richard's lands, those great domains of Normandy, Aquitaine and England. The premature demise of Richard Cur-de-Lion might be considered by some a misfortune, but to his loving brother John, it was as if the stars were smiling on him. Fortune has blessed him, nudged along by a good sprinkling of cunning and a little dash of murder. For John has finally got his wish; he rules England. And the people of England have been granted their wish too; they finally have a king prepared to stay on English soil and govern their fair realm. So all is well, a happy ending you might think. Not so, not so at all. You don't need the powers of a mandrake to see that both king and people are deeply regretting their wishes now.
For the year is 1210, and it is not a good year for England. The land lies under Interdict; the churches are locked; corpses lie in unconsecrated ground and babies sleep unbaptized in their cradles. The cause is the problem that has always vexed the throne of England. The king believes he should have the right to name the Archbishop of Canterbury, and is determined to see the plump backside of his own secretary, John de Gray, sitting upon the most powerful ecclesiastical throne in the realm.
But Pope Innocent III has other ideas. He dared to send word to John declaring that his most favoured cardinal, Stephen Langton, had already been appointed to the post. King John replied with cordial greetings and begged to inform His Holiness that if Cardinal Langton should ever dare to set foot again on English soil, he would take the greatest pleasure in having him hanged from the highest gallows in the land.