T H E T A L E S O F T H E H A U N T E D K I N G D O M

A Trilogy of Novels
By
Charles E.J. Moulton


BOOK TWO

THE WASTELAND OF

LOST MAJESTIES


© 2005 CHARLES EDMOND JAMES MOULTON

CHAPTER ONE:
THE FIRST PESTULENCE

The Banquet Hall, Palace of Rigor Mortis in Nocturania
Sunday evening, September 23rd, 1425 A.D.

The palace of the Nocturanian King was located not in the middle of the capital of the country or even in its vicinity. It was located in the absolute outskirts. There were no worldly dignitaries traveling from henceforth famous dominions to this land. The only renowned celebrities that were guests here at the castle belonged to dimensions subterranean in valor. Demons came to live here in this castle for a time, not rulers. Their names rung true of infamy and greed.
Nocturania had now been the devil’s empire since approximately three centuries. Two once joined brothers had fought over their own land and created two countries. These two empires were as diverse as they could be. The bad land was Nocturania and was excluded from everything that the good land, Prosperania, was continentally endeavoring to accomplish.
The country had fallen apart to the extent that local mayors and senators managed most of the bureaucratically necessary arrangements.
King Adnicul of Nocturania handled most of the dealings with war and terror. He would ride around the country and whip up excitement for some new change of strategy whilst wearing his suit of armor. The King wore a helmet with a four horns. He would never show his face during these raids. He would rape innocent girls, wearing the helmet and his dark blue cape while doing so. His blue stallion Centurion had held more than one maiden, abducted to some cave to be forced to show passion. The farmers would say yes to something they knew nothing about, a promise of eternal happiness and banquets of pheasant and swan. The local merchants would donate money they could not spend and waste energy they did not have on useless projects. Fraytollah had been kept in shape and the taxes had been raised only because of these useless donations. Now there was no Fraytollah harbor to speak of. What was left was war. In came tyranny and combat. Adnicul had been told by the evil one that he himself as the king of Nocturania was the savior that had tutored the witch to become demonic. He was the ultimate crossbow that could shoot its steel against the will of the present level of angelic fortune.
The real luxury in the land, however, lay in lavish demonic representation.
The Nocturanian king had a large banquet every year with every possible beverage and a large array of food assortments. The guests were all chosen by Lucifer and the date could be chosen by Adnicul. Lucinda had requested a banquet for the 23rd of September of this year and both demons had willingly obliged. They had understood that she wanted to celebrate and event she waited for long. Thirty three years had passed now since she had been thrown out of the kingdom of Prosperania. Avenging herself for having to sleep in the rain for so many nights back then was understandable.
Cursing the kingdom of her brother was one thing. Putting the actually theory to practice. Now war was on the verge and recreation was important to gather strength in order to do it all right.
Of course there were rumors among the village people near the palace what this feast was. The strange king who held this extraordinary banquet every year and no mayor was invited. Nocturania was hated in Medatlantia. So, who was at the feast? There were rumors of demons and the villagers tried to peak through the windows. Those who did had there heads cuts off and stuck on big poles outside the castle.
That evening was a gala evening. The entire hall was filled with lights. There were about a hundred of so called rush lights in the hall. They were desiccated vegetation with a burning wick standing on five legged stands. There were an additional fifty wall-mounted candleholders of gilded bronze with candles made of bee’s wax. There were forty metal and bronze chandeliers with twenty candles each. There were a hundred oil lamps burning on figurines of naked sirens penetrated by dragons. There were one hundred lighted copper candlesticks held by one hundred demons in togas.
All of the servants present here tonight were demons from the underworld. Their large jaws revealed four giant teeth sticking out above their green lower lips. With eyes so tiny but wide as copper kettles, they glanced the area of thee hall with extreme serenity. The ugly brutes were all dressed in sown wool indigo blue togas over an orange loin cloth under a gilded crown of fig leaves.
Along the wall there was a long row of tables that stretched the entire hundred feet length of the ballroom. Every table was full to the brim with food. There was ostrich and goose, duck and chicken, swan and peacock, snail and capons. All of this had been brought by Lucifer himself to the hall. There was asparagus and apricot, pickled lemons and truffles, mead and apple metheglin and wine. There were venison pies and trout, eels and crayfish, custards, dates, prunes, grapes and figs.
Along the fifty foot width entrance of the hall were sixty trained musicians and a chorus of thirteen singers, singing estampies and ballatas and madrigals. There were ten fidiculas, ten aulos, ten recorders, ten shawms, ten zithers and ten kettledrums.
There were two hundred people in this ballroom. One hundred were dancing and the other hundred were eating on lectus coaches. Some of them were copulating, some of them were performing little dances. Most of them were drunk.
The entire hall was full of people, old demons, young demons, cross eyed demons and black demons on leave from the underworld. They were dancing as if they had never done anything else.
In the middle of the room stood Lucifer himself in a red costume with a pointed hat and a ostrich feather stuck on top. His red skin against the canvas of the red clothing was compensated by a yellow taffeta scarf that he had wrapped around his waist. He was carrying a blue lance and walking around the hall between the dancing parties of revelers. Right in back of Lucifer was Adnicul, wearing a toga of blue satin studded with gilded diamond rubies. Next was Nina Ray, all in white. Her blond hair fell down over her chest and reveal and open bosom. It was an arranged toga that left the breasts present and available for Lucifer to fondle. She had a black mask on that hid her scarred face. Next to Nina Ray was Lucinda. Lucinda was wearing a dress from the future. It was red satin and blue-green silk studded with glitter and sparkling glass. Her hat was wide and white. She was holding a shepherd’s staff. This was supposed to symbolize that Lucinda was the savior that would lead these poor demons to the rescue by making the whole world a playground for Lucifer.
None of them knew that Lucifer had no intent on saving them. He just wanted to save himself.
The four apocalyptic leaders walked slowly up to the head of the room through the dancers. They all nodded very politely as they danced. There was Caligula and Nero dancing to a not yet written minuet. There was Cleopatra dancing with Cain and Salome dancing with Vlad the Impalor who had been so willing as to visit the alternate reality to join them in the ball.
Once arrived at the head of the room, Lucifer turned to the feasting guests of blissfully symbolic copulation. The three others promptly assembled themselves alongside of them.
Lucifer spoke with a very dark voice and played with his taffeta scarf as he did.
He raised his one claw and the music ceased.
Two hundred guests and one hundred demons listened.
“Dearly beloved demonic saints” he chuckled. “We are gathered here to celebrate an occasion of great variety. My dear assistant fiend Lucinda has, in the metamorphosis that had her acting the awakened demon Nomed Snekawa, put the entire land of Prosperania to sleep. As you all might gather, it was a fantastic joyful conquest. We even got the little princess to believe in her. It was no small feat to convince the girl. The victory over Belinda is an example that women, too, have balls of their own that they can roll into combat and carriage. We are now at the verge of battle. As you know, Nocturania has no army. We use forest gypsies to do the small work, such as raid villages and pretend to be sea farers. You are our army. You are the hope for the dark part of civil service and solitude. What we have here, though, is a full scale invasion. We hope to take over the neighboring country that my brother Michael created so many years ago. It will demand much of you. It will demand your utmost dedication and concentration. We will win, but you will have to see to your utmost powers and use them in a way that crushes the Winsletenna family. We intend to wipe out the entire country. We intend to leave little king Alex completely alone and search for his sibling just like I did many years ago without triumph. Lucinda is my last weapon against Eden. Now, however, gents and ladies of death: revel, copulate and devour yourselves and sink into the ultimate revelry of debauchery.”
Lucifer clapped once with his red hands and the music commenced.
The ball continued and the men and women started dancing again.
The four apocalyptic revelers withdrew into a corner, map and feather pen in hand.
Each one had a glass of melomel fruit mead. Each one was smiling.
In the midst of them sat Lucinda on her own lectus sofa, feeding herself with grapes.
The feast would continue until dawn.
The three hundred demons would then disappear to the underworld and Lucinda would be left alone with Adnicul without all the chandeliers and oil lamps and revelry.
As for now, she wanted to enjoy the fruits of conquest.

The Haunted Kingdom, Iuventus Sacrum, Clurafar, Prosperania
The morning of September 24th 1425

"One for the weapon. One for the health. One for the road ..."
- Lucinda Winsletenna, 1422

The first thing his royal majesty heard were birds, it was a prosperous chirrup that paled quickly. The sound started high and made a small trill in the end only to end upon a middle note. Alexander quickly realized it was a robin, a Turdus Migratorius, the same bird that he had seen outside the inn when he had come back from the stately visit to Alliland three years ago.
It had been a giggle that time. Did this birdsong sound like a giggle?
Alexander opened his eyes, only to see a wooden table and a cup.
The gilded cup the potion had been in it.
He only realized now that he had been drinking it before falling asleep. What was the last thing he remembered? Nomed walking up to him and telling him to drink up. Alexander sat up and saw his wife sitting next to him, rubbing her eyes.
“My God, what has happened” she murmured.
Alexander shook his head. “I feel like we were robbed.”
Belinda sat up and scratched her hair. She looked out of the window.
“What are on Earth is wrong here? Nomed gave us the potion, but where is Nomed?”
There were people standing up, scratching themselves, rubbing their eyes, yawning.
Alexander stood up and dumbfounded walked to the window as well.
"Where is Nomed?" Sieglinde asked.
Belinda walked up to the fireplace in hearing the question out of sheer intuition.
No sooner had the queen asked the question did she see Belinda reading a parchment left by the fireside. She walked up to her daughter.
“What is this, dear?”
Belinda gave her mother the note, dumbfounded. She wore the look of someone struck by lightning. “Mother, tell father he is gone.”
Sieglinde walked up to her husband and handed him the letter.
“He left a note” his wife said.
The king took the note, half in a trance and read it.
“Why do feel like we just have been betrayed?" he said and waved the paper at her.
“Something’s incorrect here … I don’t recognize what it is” Sieglinde whispered.
Alexander nodded and looked out again.
“Her promises fulfilled … Thirty years …”
“Thirty-three now. We should tell the others” his wife suggested.
Alexander tried to respond and discovered how hard it was for him to do so.
The king walked away from the window and gathered everyone’s attention.
“Friends” he said.
There was King Mormidar and Ulfaas in a corner looking up from a previous chat. His entire family scattered across the hall, senators, colleagues, friends and acquaintances.
“We have just found a note from Nomed. I would like to read it to you.”
He began:

"YOUR NOBLE MAJESTIES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

I HOPE YOUR COLDS ARE GONE BY NOW. THE RASH SHOULD BE CURED AND HEALTH RESTORED. DIRE FORTUNE MAY HAVE BROUGHT UPON THIS TIMING. AN ENVOY CAME FROM THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE TELLING ME THAT MY AGED MOTHER IS SICK, SO I WILL TRAVERSE IN ATTENDANCE CURRENTLY TO THE LAND OF MY ANCESTORS. IN GRATITUDE I BOW BEFORE YOUR GRACES FOR THE GRANDEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE. ALL THE BEST OF VIGOR AT THIS TIME,

Your friend and servant,
Nomed Snekawa“

Alexander turned around after reading the note and saw 36 citizens scrutinizing him.
“We have a problem” Alexander alleged. “The first occasion Nomed departed he had won the competition as our most prominent entertainer. This time the excuse is equally vague.” Alexander moaned. “I think he has done more to us than cure our illness. He might’ve gone to his mother, but I think all he left us with is a riddle.”
“How do we know he has a mother?” Patrick spat, giggling provocatively.
There was modest laughter across the room.
Belinda took a step forward. “There might be more to Patrick’s words than we think.”
Patricia filled in. “Yes, we know nothing about him. We only have his words about his past. He claimed to know fourteen or fifteen languages. Have we heard him speak anything else but Prosperanian? Yes, we did hear him do so, but he could’ve have studied those phrases. He has no proof of his past. We know nothing about him. We only have his word that he tells us the truth.”
Morgana walked up to her sister.
“What are you complaining about?” she cackled. “You jumped into the sack with him more than I did, you little slut!”
Patricia convulsed with laughter: “Well, who actually invited me? It wasn’t Nomed, was it?”
Alexander shouted, the echo of his voice reverberating around the Grand Hall.
“Girls, please” he said. “We are not here to quibble who went to bed with whom. We are here to solve a problem. Something is wrong and we do not know what.”
Belinda slammed her fist against a chair. “Father, I told you this chap was a peril.”
Alexander held up his hands. “I know. I am at fault here.”
Morgana chimed in. “You should’ve suspected something when he arrived unannounced after three complete years of absence and claimed to have a potion that would cure everything.”
Eleonore shook her head. “I knew that inviting that man was a mistake.”
Maria chimed in. “He came uninvited, if you recall.”
Belinda interrupted. “No one would listen to me, but I am as bad as the next girl. I accepted to join this establishment without having caught the cold.”
Alexander held up his hands once more to calm his daughters down. “Girls, girls, girls” he said. “The point that I emphasizing to evaluate here now is that we know nothing about this man, there are no records of his history except that which comes from his own mouth. I know I am at fault here. That is not a part of the discussion. I am only afraid that we cannot find out what has happened.”
He walked around, looking the assembly. They were all waiting for him to come up with a solution. They were kings and queens, senators and politicians, medics and healers, rulers and men of greater status. For a moment he was lost for words.
"... grandest moments of my life ..." Alex whispered inaudibly.
He could not place it. Nothing was different and yet ... everything was. He felt fooled in some way. As if something had happened between one o'clock this afternoon and now. Something awful. He handed the note to Sieglinde, who happened to be now standing right next to her father, who looked at Alex as if he had told him that the world had been swallowed by a tortoise. Alex was in a daze.
She looked around. "Who kept these flames burning?"
“Who lit them in the first place?" Belinda said. "It was light when we fell asleep!"
"Nomed must have lit them before going away ..." Sieglinde continued.
"Our colds are gone ..." Maria added.
“That doesn’t change the fact that something hidden has happened here” Maria said.
“The question is what?” Theo said, as if to himself. The messenger had many ideas as to what this might be. The theories included from magic potions to Nomed being an infiltrator.
Alexander looked at the other 35 representatives for the nation and saw how they looked at the other 64 civilians chosen to join the assembly. All of them were mumbling among themselves, asking themselves why they felt so strange.
“I have to excuse myself for this daze I am in, companions” Alexander said.
“That doesn’t matter” King Mormidar of the Hispanic realm chuckled. “We all are full of questions that remain unanswered and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Clear is that Maria is right. No one here is to blame. He came without anyone sending an envoy for him to enter the palace at all.”
“I have no answers to your inquiry, Mormidar” Alexander continued. “I am just asking you to keep your eyes open. What we have here is a riddle. Why did Nomed vanish again and who is he really? If there are any ideas in your mind as to what the solution might be then feel free to come to me with your theories. I need them. Hispania needs them.” He chuckled and sighed in a soft way. “We all need answers to these questions why we feel like chess figurines on a board of fortune and battle.”
Walter walked up to Alex. He placed his hand on the majestic shoulder.
There was a ghostlike expression on his face. “Alex?”
”Yes, Walter?” he answered, as if in shock.
“There are numerous select few of our continents in this room. They all need to go back to their affairs. I don’t why, but I don’t believe the epidemic ever was a problem. This is a problem.”
There was a hum of consecrated worry in the hall. All these dignified diplomats resembled worried children. Alexander narrowed his gaze. “I don’t know, Walter. I really don’t. I just know that my knee isn’t hurting anymore.” He laughed. “Might sound strange, but the pain is gone and this time I think it is not merely that I have faced my fears? I always hated that pain. It has been following me around since Lucinda threw me down the stairs just as she did with my brother. Now I have no pain and I miss it. Does that make sense, Walter?”
Walter nodded. “You know what I think?”
“What does your instinct say, Walter?”
“I think that this place we have woken up to is not real.”
For the first time in his life, Alexander was taking Walter seriously.
"Explain" Alexander said.
“Think about it, Alex” Walter whispered, narrowing his eyes. “Nomed left without leaving anything but a note. Who is to say there even was an envoy that came with a parchment? How come Nomed always has to leave in critical situations? When it matters, he leaves. This can only mean one thing: he is hiding something.”
“Accordingly” Alexander nodded “the epidemic was just a vehicle for us to drink the liquid.”
Belinda had a worried look on her face as she said: “The question is not that it did something to us, but what it did and if Nomed was working on his own. I believe someone else is at work here."
Just like on April 12th 1422, the main characters of this drama were looking out the window onto the hillside. They saw a figure in black still there and leaving the royal palace of Iuventus.
“What was that about the potion again?”
“It was made of herbs and spices” Alexander said. “There was nothing in it but chamomile and rosemary. I wondered how that potion could cure a rash.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the potion, after all” Walter said ever so softly.
There was absolutely no one cuddling up by the fire, because they did not know who the person was standing on the hill.

The Royal Palace of Rigor Mortis
Sunday night, September 30th, 1425 A.D.

Empires are built upon the basis of care and consideration.
Once a war is won, people need to collaborate. Worlds are created because people can cooperate. Likewise, entire galaxies crumble because creatures cannot let go of the seed of revenge.
What is far worse than total disinterest in other human beings is deliberate evil.
King Alexander Winsletenna of the Prosperanian Empire was a man of peace. He would rather sacrifice his own peace than insist that his merit would be credited with another golden star of success.
His long exiled sister was the exact opposite of Alexander.
Lucinda had returned from her exploit at her brother’s regal residence a week ago, having masqueraded as the Ottoman aristocrat responsible for Prosperanian demise. As if letting a threefold curse upon her brother’s kingdom wasn’t enough, she sat and played glumly with the thought of how to carry out the plan. The seed had been planted, now it was a question of how to water it.
Sitting sipping her favorite blend of bat-blood from a large silver-mug, she looked gloomily into the open fire-place. She wore a tight-fitting black dress that showed off her luscious curves, but somehow those curves were less enticing with the knowledge that this woman was capable of tearing down an entire kingdom just by the sheer force of her mind.
She looked like a woman from a weird Hieronymus Bosch canvas, dawdling upon a large oak throne with walnut and ebony intarsia decoration. The picture upon the back of the throne was that of a three headed Cyclops, a very strange creature with one shared eye between three heads. The chair was one of the oldest seats in the palace, apparently carved by one of John the Strong’s carpenters.
The flames within the marble fireplace danced, with each second passing more acquiring a life of their own. The woman sat watching this fire with incessant interest, as if the answer to her problems lay in the dancing blaze. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth slightly ajar. Slowly drumming with her fingers against the armrest with steady rhythm, there was the gaze of boredom in her craving gape.
She saw the entire fortune of her life as decay and disorder.
She had spent a week alone after the feast. Adnicul had left soon after the ball the next day and said that he needed time to bribe the queen to give him some soldiers.
Now, there was not even a rush light here.
She began to feel like a piece in a board game.
That bothered her. It also bothered her that she always had been toyed with.
A triumph here and there and then the eternal waiting was due. That was why she made people wait forever so that they could sense what it was like to wait. She wanted them to need her torture. They would beg for it. She was confused. Who could she trust?
She had always been an unwanted child. Never having been understood by anyone in her family, she had resorted to practicing black magic and inviting and courting boys in the royal palace in order to attract her older brother’s attention.
Soon enough, she found herself guilty of arson and felony. As soon as her brother was crowned king, he threw her out of the kingdom and she was imprisoned in a caged coach and thrown out as soon as the horseman reached Callenia.
She lived on roots and berries in the forests of Nocturania until he arrived.
Adnicul was a blessing in disguise and his imaginative fantasy and nomadic past turned her on. They found love, or was it lust? Lucinda did not know and did not much bother to dwell further into that matter. The fact was that Adnicul became more than a lover. He became her mentor.
Claiming he was there to train her to reface her brother, he was said to have conceived her and made her a demon. He claimed that their names fit together in a mold of fortune and fame for the rightful king and rightful ruler of the known world.
Lucinda believed this. At least, she did for a while. Until the master of evil, Adnicul’s chief and ruler, arrived and told her that she had been reincarnated by him in order to be the last weapon against God. She was told to keep quiet and wait patiently for the time when the truth would come out.
Together Adnicul and Lucinda mapped out a plan to kill the present king of Nocturania.
The old codger was the last ancestor of the original King John.
As soon Lucinda heard of Belinda’s birth and heard of how much loved she was she mapped out a plan to abduct the girl. Both Adnicul and Lucinda agreed to prepare the kidnapping and make the family wait and suspect and simultaneously suspect nothing. Then, in 1411, the time had arrived.
Six wonderful months of sorcery and torture passed. Then she was forced to let go of the girl.
She had been unbearable after that.
Aggressive as few, she traveled dimensions and visited future giants of hate until the day Adnicul convinced her to again try to attack her brother’s kingdom. So, she started harassing her family and she remembered her own words of returning to plague the kingdom in thirty years.
Back then, it had been just words from a loose jaw. In 1422, it was reality and the sister made it a vendetta to turn this into a dimension encompassing extravaganza, one where it encircled the universe who won the game or not. “This time it is for keeps” she told Adnicul one day in bed.
And so it was. She came as a lute player and fed the court with entertainment and glee. She created a fictional character with a fictional past. His name had been Nomed Snekawa, a name that spelled ‘the demon awakens’ backwards, and soon enough he won the national competition and the hearts of the entire country. He disappeared only for Lucinda to reappear as herself to curse the land.
Letting her family wait was her specialty. Three years of familiar bliss was followed by Nomed’s return. An epidemic, spread by Lucinda, was cured by Nomed.
Alexander’s former skeptic tendency was cured by song and wine and Belinda was convinced by eloquent words and a large manhood. It felt good to use the girl that had replaced her.
Now, Lucinda had returned from Clurafar without promised hooray or haphazard fortune.
So she had traveled dimensions tonight just to avenge her low status, visiting ghouls and monsters and had found the wizard charm of traveling through time. She had made love to the greatest villains of history all in one night, people from alternate realities no one ever heard of here.
She had visited a future man in Germany. She tried to seduce him, but was really turned off at what he had to offer. Nero, although a strange lad, was fun. Once she had found out that Caesar Nero locked people in concert soirees in order to play the lute for them, she thanked him and left. Caligula with his bells, very into SM, was humorous up to a certain level. Of course, her favourite companion was always Vlad the Impalor, well-equipped in every way.
She had often resided in Paris as Miss Lucy Winslet and ploughed through the men there.
Her thoughts circled around her next excursion in history, a dinner with Jack the Ripper? After all, she had suggested that last victim Mary Jane Kelly to Jack – or James Kelly as his real name was. She had been so pretty, that little girl. She was such a lovely victim. Where would she travel next? An evening with Caligula or a brunch with Ghadaffi perhaps – would that be a fitting journey?
A dinner at Adolf's house or a breakfast with Vlad.
As for good old Jack, he was not much of a talkative chap and quite careful about being when he went to his favorite inn, The Ten Bells. Lucinda had stood for a long time outside that pub and waited while he picked Mary Jane up. Lucinda had to admit it: she was spreading her vibrations across the galaxy only for Lucifer to find and Adnicul to get angry.
There was no question that all these adventures had only been revenge against Adnicul for letting her wait. She kept on wondering why Lucifer did not do anything. Lucinda had wanted to attack her niece already at her birthday feast and not just after it all had been over. Everyone had been gathered in the Grand Hall and it would’ve been a splendid occasion, but there was no question that the two masters were rigorous about when the curse was to take place. 30 years to the date after her exile. Numbers were important to the master. Lucinda wanted them to wait, yes, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to grill them slowly in a frying pan filled with lava stones, but not wait herself.
Lucinda could not bear the fact that people did not wait on her. Adnicul had promised he would be there after she had put the palace to sleep. He had promised her a celebration. She had waited thirty three years for that moment. She had been forced to sit still during meals, listen to boring lectures and say yes to all those old farts. Alexander had locked her in a cage and thrown her out of her own bedroom and forced her to sleep outside on the grass.
It had been a Sunday just like today was a day of heavenly rest for the Sabbath in the eyes of the creator. She remembered sleeping outside in the pouring rain during a winter of 1391. She swore herself to avenge her own misery one day for that night in the rain and make them sleep in the rain just as she slept in the rain. Her brother and his silly ensemble of dilettantes were now fast asleep in the Grand Hall of their own palace. They had swallowed her medicine and would not wake up, not ever.
Just as Lucinda sat contemplating her ill fate, the cold gust of an icy whirlwind crashed the window open. Lucinda turned toward it and stood up from the chair. She stretched her neck, the muscles straining and making a vein pop out and show itself upon her skin. The flurry took a few turns around the hall and the master appeared from the side window, his cape flying behind him and his black, wavy hair flying in the breeze. The wind slowly lowered him down and put him on the ground, before it exited through the window and stayed on the outside. He unhurriedly walked up to her, the footsteps of his leather boots echoing in the huge space of the hall. His eyes gave off greenly neon-colored glow and the smile that was on his black lips soon transformed into an evil grin that eventually ended in a frown that made him spit at her feet. He stood there, looking at her for a long while. She wouldn't look away. She knew the game he was playing and she did not like it one bit.
“Hello there” he cooed in a very low baritone. “Have we become a dimensional tourist?”
Lucinda walked up to the majestic man, the clicking of her heals echoing in the large hall.
She ended up an inch from his face and breathed on him very solemnly.
“Adnicul” she whispered coldly, ignoring his comment. “What would you do if someone just left you sitting in an empty palace for a week? That would make you happy, I think. I was a triumphant magician. Lucifer counted on you to take care of me. Now you go make love to the forest empress a week and leave me with the rats and the spiders and the ghouls. Thank you.” There was slight smile on her lips. “Why was it necessary to jump into the sack with the female version of Sir Robin of Locksley? I mean, you kept me waiting for an entire week whilst you were out bonking the queen. Copulation in all excess, but you don’t treat Lucifer’s last weapon with that much perversion.”
Adnicul grinned. “I am entitled to stay for a night in another bed.”
“I have a clear conscience,” Lucinda spat. “You never said you would be gone a week.”
Adnicul cackled. “We all have our skeletons in the closet. I think we should stay to the linguistic terms of our time. It is more dignified.” He sighed and looked her deep in the eye. “I have no reason to doubt you. This is serious, Lucinda. My energy is wasted on your will to avenge yourself on me. The pot is calling the kettle black.”
“How so” Lucinda sang in an icy vocal whiff. “Pot calling kettles black is hardly a term resident in these dimensional quatrains. Throw stones only when you’ve moved from the glass mansion. Besides, I kept on pushing this potion to be delivered for a long time.”
“Agreed, but your reaction was somewhat extreme” his majesty spat. “You left the trace of historical whimsy all across the ether. Adolf, Nero, Caligula, Jack the Ripper, Kennedy, Vlad Dracul, Cain and Abel. I know that Lucifer adores you and so he should. This is just too much. Did you try to gather our attention because you were left alone?”
“Yes” she spat. “I am a demon, but also a woman. I need attention.”
“You received a big blow from your brother” Adnicul grinned.
Lucinda sneered. “I received my brother’s confidence.”
He raised one eyebrow. “He positively hates you.”
“He loved me” Lucinda shouted. “Belinda hated me. Remember that I appeared as Nomed.”
“You made love to his daughter.” He laughed. “That confidence is as short lived as an arctic spring.” He gritted his teeth, grabbed her throat and pushed her against the fireplace. Her back arched against it and it hurt her a great deal. “I'll tell you what it is to me. It's time. Your time wasted on my expense.” He sneered and pushed her even harder against the wall. She moaned. “You keep forgetting that I created you. I didn't create you to set fire to California, dine with Ghadaffi or kill J.F.K for the fourteenth time. I didn't conceive you make a dimensional tourist as a companion.”
“Did you conceive me at all, Adnicul?” she asked. “If you did, why do I then have the feeling that everything is slipping through your grasp?”
He pushed her closer to the wall and now she closed her eyes and frowned.
“You are a virus in Eden.”
She cackled. ”That is not the issue, your majesty. You are not in control. Someone else is.”
She paced the hall and grinned at him, passing the tapestries and moving chairs away from tables. “You are a wimp, a faggot, a lousy little marionette entitled only to pee juice. You only awaken disgust in me and nothing else.”
“I carry out what is meant to be” Adnicul sang. “No one can do that but me.”
“You are only a marionette.”
Adnicul took Lucinda by the hand and flung her across the hall. She skidded across the floor,
ending up by a window. “You rat, you peace wrecking little crumpet. I was here before you.”
He went up to her. She was rubbing her knee. He picked her up by the wrists.
"I owe you nothing! Let me go!"
He pushed her and she fell on the floor. He sneered and walked up to the window. She grabbed her throat and looked down, catching her breath. “Es scortum obscenus vilis. Irrumator …”
She stood up, blood running down the side of her mouth.
He glanced up to the guillotine that stood by the large left window. He pointed at it and looked back at her. "Is this your future? Souvenirs from a revolution? Blood from a royal throat?" He ran across the room, his cape swinging behind him, over to a knife that was lying on a table. "And what is this? James Kelly's murder weapon from 1888? Should I care?" He walked up to her and pointed at her cleavage. "20th century lingerie?" She said nothing. "Victoria's secret?“
"Wonder bra!”
Adnicul laughed. "Well. Aren't you happy you met Karl Lagerfeld?”
Lucinda said nothing. She only looked down.
“I'm talking to you ..." He shook his head and turned away. I could rip you up just like Jack did ...” He snapped his fingers and at once they were in Mary Jane Kelly's room in 37 , Dorset Street , London, England , 9 November 1888 . It was a sight that Lucinda had seen innumerable times before. It was mutilation of severe magnitude. Adnicul looked at Lucinda. “You want to look like this?” She shook her head. “GOOD! Then I guess we are making progress!” He snapped his fingers again and they were once again back in the castle. “Let me tell you something, Lucinda!” He shook his head, looking for the right words to say and raised his right hand. “You have forgotten what revenge is ... You have forgotten why we are here. Alexander hates you. He loathes you. And yet he knows that all you wanted was a family. He has forgotten you. You are his waste. Do you really want to be his waste? You must lust for it. Don’t feel as if you should have your revenge against me, sister.” Adnicul smiled. "Avenge yourself. Hate Alexander.”
“I know that you are playing a game with me, Adnicul.”
“Then what is this about? This time travel thing” Adnicul murmured. “What is it to you?”
His eyes turned yellow and Lucinda looked into them, seeing Vlad and Caligula and Adolf and Ghadaffi and Idi and Saddam and Stalin and all the torture-instruments of the entire world rolled into one. She liked what she saw and, yes, she wanted revenge. Yes, she wanted revenge more than anything. Revenge. "Look into my eyes and tell me what you see!" he whispered.
She saw her ‘family’ laughing and joking. She saw them eating and drinking and singing. She saw Alexander in his castle receiving guests, she saw him speaking to his senate and receiving applause. She saw Belinda kissing her loved one and Alexander sleeping next to his wife. She saw Alexander's children rolling in the grass. She saw them and knew that they never ever talked of her.
She felt betrayed because she knew that when they did speak of her it was with hatred in their hearts and she wanted vengeance for it. Then she saw a picture of herself on the wall, the kin were throwing arrows on her face and laughing when it hit her nose.
"Our vengeance will not be fast and painless.”
“What about Fraytollah?” Lucinda grinned. “They found out about how we forged ships.”
He turned to her.
“We shall avenge it in due time.”
He turned around and walked toward the window.
“Where are you going?” Lucinda cried.
“To meet up with a certain apocalyptic rider” Adnicul smiled. “War is on the verge.”
Adnicul entered the whirlwind and disappeared again.
Revenge on betrayal. Revenge on family. Revenge on love.
“Not long now, Lucinda” she told herself. “The ball is rolling.”
"Joy" she said and paused, looking into the blurred vision the crystal ball was showing of a happy family reunion in the Grand Hall of Iuventus Sacrum. "Damn bliss! Those prissy fools."
Suddenly, she stood up, screaming and knocking back the throne. She shook her head and laughed. She paused. She stopped and stared into the flames of the fireplace. She pranced round the room like a dark dragon looking for a victim to punish, her glittery and black dress flying behind her. Then she stopped, ran to the table and crashing her long fingernails into the wood and tearing long tracks into the wood: “She might crash the party ..."
Her voice dropped an octave, turning into a growl while her mouth opened wide, displaying snow-white ivories on the blood red canvas that was her lips, its left side cocked upward into a snarl.
"Now, your destiny has come to haunt you, old man! I will avenge myself on all of your happy lives, for letting a sister cruise the darkness while you prosper in ... joy! There is another master. You cannot scare me, Adnicul!”
Lucinda looked up to the painting above the fireplace that showed Iuventus Sacrum as it had been thirty years earlier, raised her glass and drank. She belched and raised her glass in a toast: " Here is to you, you pompous ass!" She turned to the windows. She flung them wide open, outside raged a fierce thunderstorm, the thunder ear deafening in volume. She screamed at the storm at the top of her lungs, her dress fluttering and her hair flying, her fists crashing themselves bloody at the window-pane. Suddenly, he was there. It was not Adnicul anymore but the other one, the bigger one, and he was smiling. As she had loved him for a thousand years, disobeying every rule he had given her, now as a small revenge he had implanted pure hate into her black heart and made her wait.

Belinda’s bedroom, Saturday, October 13th, 1425 A.D.

Belinda was sitting with her son Alfred in the nuptial bedroom.
She was sitting on the bed, wearing her favorite light blue summer-dress, leaning against the wall. Her son was in her lap. In her hands was a book. It had been her's before Alfred's, Alexander's before Belinda's and Patrick’s before Alexander's. It was a large rectangular, handmade book with a big painting of two young children on it. The two children were a little older than Alfred, who had turned two years old that year. The two children were walking in the forest. They were lost and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind them.
The girl, dressed in a red and white chequered dress with a bonnet and an apron, had a surprised expression of joy on her face, looking at the breadcrumbs on the ground. Breadcrumbs that the boy was leaving. He was dressed in gray leather shorts and a gray cotton hat with a red feather. He held a basket in his left hand and it was filled with breadcrumbs. He pointed self-confidently to the ground, as if saying: "You see, little sister, we will find our way back!"
The trees behind them were alive and looking at the siblings. Some of the trees looked happy and gay, like gleeful uncles. Some were morose and sad, some angry. Behind one tree was a witch. She wore a hat, a large brimmed black one with a pointed top. Her dress was black and long and she wore a large belt. Her face was warty and old and her toothless smile gave the whole story away:
Two children are walking in the woods, away from their house, and leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find their own way back, but a witch finds them and lures them into her own house in order to make them fat and eat them. She lets the cat eat the breadcrumbs first.
The story ends happily, with the father killing the witch.
Above the picture was a title:
Hansel and Gretel.
Under it was written:
Old Prosperanian Folktale.
The fashion on the picture was undoubtedly Prosperanian 12th century, the kind of clothes you would've found at that time in Clurafar. The tale was from the 4th century, early Wandiffian and apparently a true legend. True because two kids really had gotten lost in the woods and captured by an evil woman. But the difference was that the children were killed in the true story. Legend because the story had been altered in the last thousand years.
Belinda read to her son, who fascinated looked at the pictures:
"... and so, the two children walked out into the forest.
'How will we find our way back?’ the girl exclaimed.
“Can you see the girl there, Alfred?"
Alfred looked at his mother and smiled, pointing at the girl. "Uh-Huh!"
"Good!" Belinda said and patted him on the cheek. "See ... She is holding her bonnet in her hand ... Do you know why?" He shook his head. "It is so hot in the forest. It is summer." He nodded again and pointed at the text.
"Read!" the boy exclaimed.
His mother Belinda began reading.
“They did not awaken until it was dark night. Hansel comforted his little sister: ‘Just wait, Gretel, until the sun rises, and then we shall see the crumbs of bread which I have strewn about, they will show us our way home again.’ When the sun came they set out, but they found no crumbs, for the many thousands of birds which fly about in the woods and fields had picked them all up.”
At that moment Steven walked in.
He smiled at Alfred and sat down on the bed, ruffled his hair and kissed Belinda on the mouth.
"Kissy-Kissy!" Alfred said.
Steven smiled. "That is correct, my son! Kissy-Kissy!" He looked at the book. "What are you reading to entertain the young prince?" He raised his eyebrows. "A story about a witch eating children? Isn't he a little too young for that?"
Belinda shook her head. "I want him to be prepared."
The atmosphere had gone from jokey to serious. "For what?"
Alfred imitated: "For what?" But it sounded like Foh-whatt.
"If anything happens he knows evil can be crushed ..."
“He might have understood that already.” Steven looked at Belinda skeptically. "This is going to help him to combat the evil powers? You might try the good book. That did the trick for Jesus.”
Belinda nodded and looked down. “Let me make my own decisions, Steven. We’ve been through this before” She looked up and smiled at him tenderly. It was a soft, but hurt, smile.
Steven cocked his head, wonderingly.
"All right." He smiled at Alfie again. "You like this story, my boy?"
“Like ..." Alfred nodded.
"What do you like about it?"
"Bad woman dead in the end" Alfred smiled, displaying a grin of small teeth.
Belinda raised her eyebrows casually at Steven. "You see ..." Steven laughed.
"You win. As always." Belinda laughed her hiccupping goat laugh again. "Want to go for a walk later in the sun?" He looked at Alfred. "How about some of Geena’s strawberries and cream later?" Alfred nodded approvingly. "You want to hear this story's end first." Alfred nodded. "All right!" Steven ruffled his hair and kissed Belinda. "I'll be right back!" He walked out.
"Steven dear!" Steven popped his head in again. "Tell Geena to make another two portions of dinner. Patrick and Erica are eating with us today. I met them by the poppy field an hour ago on his horse. They are keeping so healthy that they can stand some good old Prosperanian cooking.”
"Weren't they going to town?"
"Not any more” Belinda cooed. “Not after Erica found out that he wanted to go for a mead.”
"I'll tell her!"
Belinda blew him a kiss and Steven left. Then she looked at Alfie.
"Want to hear about the breadcrumbs?"
"Brea-crumb." Alfie repeated. And so mother Belinda read him the story.
All the while, Steven was rushing downstairs thinking strange thoughts about his wife.
Belinda was reading the tale to his son because she wanted to prepare the young gentleman for eventual attacks from a certain aunt. All fine and well, the prince general wanted to say, but if there is no way to locate the culprit how can you stop him from tearing down your house?
Two hours later the three were walking hand in hand by the poppy fields near the oak-tree, talking. Patrick who was back in the palace had told them at dinner that Mustafus was due to come here any day to visit Clurafar. He had even expressed interest in an alliance with Alex.
Now the young family was telling their little son about the oak tree where their initials were engraved. Alfred was listening curiously.
Just an hour after that Alfie was running around the mid path after Lance and was throwing gravel around him to stop them from getting him. Alfie was screaming. "Breadcrumbs!" But Lance took no notice of his cousin's weird advice. Belinda took Steven’s hand when seeing this. Her grip was too strong for his comfort. He said nothing. The only thing he could do was kiss her hand.

Thursday, November 1st , 1425 A.D.

The royal palace had received something it had not possessed before: a mind of its’ own. Yes, it had always had a soul of its’ own ever since it had been erected. Now there was an atmosphere of a house waiting to sleep, hoping the inhabitants would soon leave. It was an eerie house, a haunted kingdom that had replaced the original on September 23rd.
That night, Belinda was awake again, afraid to sleep. Anytime she did sleep she had nightmares where Lucinda was the main character. She was back on the rack in the dungeon of Rigor Mortis hearing the name Nina Ray again and again. So she stayed awake.
That, however, did not change the fact that the palace of sacred youth changed that winter of 1425. It was breathing, taking over the life that was missing from the family. Everyone was sleeping. Only the castle was awake. It was a haunted palace floating somewhere else in time.
The only thing that kept Belinda going was Alfred. She would chase him down the hallways and take him on walks, sing him songs and tickle his belly. Steven seemed to be too busy negotiating treaties and inspecting troops to be home and so what was left was her son.
Alexander had changed. He wandered around with a wrinkled brow and had forgotten to shave at important gatherings, making his beard look tousled and untidy.
Alfred was a happy toddler with a bouncy laugh. Belinda seemed to feel that she was the only one spending time with him, though. The family all seemed like ghosts to her now.
He was the light of her life and he made sure to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind him when he went to strange place and he never went alone.
The person in really deep misery that November was Patrick Winsletenna. His father was ignoring him completely now. He lived in the castle, but he might as well be living at sea.
November 1st Adnicul received a memorandum on horseback that if he didn’t sanction fully to every single one his faults and all his mistakes in the Fraytollah affair, then Alex would send Adnicul Prosperanian Inquisitors to verify the truth about the pirate harbor


Saturday, November 17th, 1425 A.D.

A messenger rode into the palace courtyard on a fierce steed that day. He was a very active, thunderous young gent who knew this was his chance to impress on the king. His freshness was contaminated by an open wound of pain and worry. His horse galloped down the gravel, skidding sideways in front of the main entrance. One of the stable boys came out from the barn, where he had been shoveling hay, and got the horse and took it into the barn.
The messenger walked up the steps to greet the elderly gentleman that came rushing down the steps. The young envoy stretched out his hand
“Roland, Sire ... Ulfaas Nordhjiil’s messenger." He swallowed, catching his breath. "I am sorry ... I am out of breath ..."
"I am Rolf, the servant..."
Rolf waited patiently for him to finish panting.
“What is the issue you come to inform us about?”
He swallowed. "I have ridden day and night for six days without much sleep." He raised his eyebrows, smiling and supporting his hands on his knees. "Catch my breath and I will be able to talk."
"What is the matter, my friend?"
"I must see the king. It is vital for me to give him this message."
Rolf gave the boy a worried nod. “Follow me.”
The two men walked into the grand entrance with the black and white marble floor and the large paintings. They strode up the large staircase and onto the first landing. They wandered in complete silence down the sandstone hallway under arches and beside green lead glass windows, only to arrive at a large mahogany door.
Rolf held up his hand and vanished through the door.
It slammed shut with a large bang.
The young man stood outside Alexander's study, looking at himself in the silver mirror.
Rolf came out again.
"Young man! His majesty is occupied ..."
Before Rolf could finish, the young man was stumbling in and interrupted a hearty handshake. Rolf shook his head, irritated at this boy, asking himself who had assigned such a brute to ride with a message to this potent a gent.
A large man with a big mustache was smilingly shaking Alexander's hand and turned around to see what it was. The young man recognized the man as Alliland's King Mustafus the First.
"Young gentleman ..." Alexander snapped. "I told you to stay ..."
"I am sorry, your majesty ..." Rolf intervened. "I told the young man to wait, but ..."
"I know, Sire ..." Roland gestured to Rolf "... but this message was delivered to me for your majesty by Ulfaas and his Inspectors ... He said I have to get it to your majesty even if I interrupt a coronation."
"What is the message?" The large-mustached man had sat down now.
The young man looked at him. "I am sorry. It is private ..."
"Military matter, envoy?"
"The most urgent of matters ..."
"What is your name?" Alexander asked.
"Roland, sir ..."
"Well, Roland ... This gentleman is the king of Alliland and he is my new ally. We have joined our armies. Now give me the message ..." Roland turned around to Rolf and back to Alex. "And that is my loyal servant ..."
"In that case” the man said and cleared his throat. “Your majesty," the young man began, “a few weeks ago a fleet of ships arrived in the Danish Channel carrying fourteen tons of ammunition for the Russian army. They were undisguised military ships from Nocturania, Sire." The three gentlemen looked at each other, distraught. "Mr. Tom Barnes had signed the agreement in your behalf back in April that Nocturania and Prosperania do not, shall not and will not mix into each other’s affairs. But ..." The young man shook his head. "Well, he would not let the ships pass by under any circumstance and so that evening at a quarter to eleven the fleet returned and attacked the harbour."
“Attacks in the harbor?”
“Yes, Sire” Roland nodded.
"Has there been any injured?" Alex asked.
"When I left forty people had been injured and twenty were dead. By now, the war will have escalated and gotten far worse than it was when I left, Sir."
"Anyone of stature among them?"
"Not when I left, Sire” the man rubbed his chin and said. “Now, there might be many.”
"What were the ships aiming to do?"
"Deliver ammunition to the Russian Tsar, but the Prince-General thought their intentions were completely different. The Russian Tsar does not need to buy ammunition with his Arab trade-agreement ..." Rolf nodded.
"He is right ... Sire." Rolf added. "The fleet might've been a decoy ..."
“There is more, though …”
“What?” Alexander said, worried.
“Ulfaas told me to tell you, the name of the ship that was heading the attack …”
“What?”
”The Margetania, Sire …”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Margetania. Ulfaas told me to tell you ‘Fraytollah probably rebuilt the vessel’ and you would know what he meant.”
“Yes, thank you …”
Alexander's eyes were full of disbelief. His eyes were staring into the void.
“Fraytollah was destroyed” Alexander whispered so softly nobody heard it but him.
Mustafus took a step further toward the king and put a hand on his shoulder.
Alexander looked up. He had vanished into another dimension.
He smiled without joy. It was the desperate smile of a thousand sorrows.
“Mustafus” he said in shivering voice. “We destroyed the ships. Now they appear as if nothing happened at all.” Alexander took a deep breath, the air making a wheezing noise as it entered his nose. “Young envoy? I have an important question.”
The messenger looked up. “Any inquiry I can respond to with information that is accurately of my knowledge is mirthful to my spirit.”
“Did Ulfaas tell you if our men are still positioned in Fraytollah?”
The young man shook his head. “I think no one actually knows from where the ship arrived.”
Alexander shook his head and walked away from the throne. He walked to the window.
“We can’t win this war, Mustafus” he said softly. “They have sorcery as a weapon.”
Mustafus looked at him and said: "My army will be ready to help you, Sire." He was impressed with the extraordinarily deep voice of the man. "And I think we must act quickly if we are to win time ..." The voice was luscious and rich like wine. “We can win. I know we can.”
"Are you willing to assist me?"
"They must be stopped at all costs." Mustafus sighed. “You are my friend. Of course I will.”
"It was just pure luck that we just signed the deal now. We are stronger together."
Mustafus wiggled his mustache and his eyebrows came together. He looked worried.
"What do you have in mind?"
"We must go the senate and tell them what has happened. We must prepare for the worst." Alexander nodded toward Roland.
"What kind of ships were they, young man?"
"Nocturanian security ships, your majesty. Only used in heavy battle ..."
"How many?"
"Twenty ...."
"Twenty?" Alexander whispered. “We are at war.”
"Yes, Sire! The Prince General and the Doctor had to summon their entire fleet of twenty-two defense-ships to give the army full resistance ... When I left there was a full scale war going on. Normally this trip takes nine days in full gallop. I made it in six. It is imperative to be quick now, Sire. I do not know how many more are dead by this time."
"Do you have another messenger that will ride to my country and fetch for help?" Mustafus asked. Alexander nodded. "Then I will ask you to bring him to me when you talk to yours ..."
"We will have to be quick now!" He shook his head. "Damn it. Lucinda was right.” Mustafus and Roland gave the king a confused look. Rolf just smiled. He knew what Alex was saying, and it was not a droll matter. Alexander's lips were dry. He licked them. "Listen to me, Roland!" He walked up to the boy. "I will send my own messenger back there right now, I will tell him how dangerous this mission is, but that he will be given sufficient compensation and leave myself tomorrow morning for the north. You must tell him exactly what you told me. Rolf will lead you to him. His name is Theo." The boy gave the king a tired smile. "You tell me anything else of importance on the way to the senate. Then you return here and have a good rest here a few days?" The boy nodded. "I will tell the kitchen to make you a large meal and that you can use our thermal baths. We have wonderful wines and my jesters and orchestra will entertain you if you wish. Just tell Rolf here ..." The boy nodded, seriously. “We have work to do.”
Alex gestured to the young messenger. "Come ..."
Roland ran after them.
"Rolf. Saddle the horses ..."
"Yes, your majesty."
"And tell Geena to treat this boy well ..."
"Yes, your majesty ..."
Four pairs of feet ran briskly down the hall and Belinda rushed in her night-clothes and a white silk bathrobe after them out of the nursery, asking what the matter was.
"War!" Alexander spat and rushed down the stairs. She rushed after them, looking like a wide-eyed terrified painting of a mother who had just found out all her children were dying.
“What?" She snapped.
"The Nocturanian army invaded the Danish channel last week accusing us of breach of agreement." He stopped briefly on the landing. "We will combine our forces to attack back." Belinda looked at Mustafus. They had met many times before. Belinda seriously took his hand. "Many have died already and more will follow."
"Good God ..."
"This is what we’ve dreaded ..." Alexander said.
"I will go with you to the senate, Father ..." Belinda said and rushed up the stairs.
“No, Belinda. You must ..."
She turned around, seriously, and pointed at him. "I am the future queen of this country, Father." She looked at him sternly. "Steven is leading the troops. It is my duty ..."
"But not to the Danehamn. I would not allow it. You must be spared."
Belinda did not answer this.
"Is Alfred with someone?"
"Erica and Marie-Louise." She was running down the hall to her own bedroom while she was saying these last words.
"Put your clothes on. Quick. The horses are being saddled." He was already running out while he had said those last words. Neither of them heard what the other one said.
Just fifteen minutes later the trio was riding out of the gates with Roland beside them , briefing his majesty on the situation and not saying a word to one another otherwise all the way to Clurafar .
All the while Erica was teaching Alfred how to play chess and Geena worried polished the silver while Rolf briefed Theo on the last details on his trip up north.
The young man was worried. But this was his job. And he would be given more than sufficient compensation. The offspring knew nothing, because Belinda had not wanted to worry them. Just that something quite fundamental had happened. Over by the Danish Channel seventy people had been killed.
Among them was the red headed General Inspector.

The Senatorial Forum in Clurafar, Friday, November 23rd, 1425 A.D.

"We have been attacked, gentlemen! The full scale conflict was provoked by Nocturanian Forces. These squadrons have attacked the Danish Channel and its insecure holdings and now the inquiry is on the verge of collapse as to who has the right to its borders. Rumours are they are marching in from the west as well and soon will be reaching us."
Alexander sighed, speaking from memory without sheep’s vellum to a full senate.
"The Danish Minister of Channel Affairs Ulfaas Nordhjiil sent another messenger that arrived yesterday saying they are holding up well and that twelve ships have been sunk. But hundred and twenty people have died and a very important assistant to the General with them." Alexander pointed seriously to his side. "I have here my ally, King Mustafus the First of Alliland. Together with him and the Margetanian army we have arranged a full scale confrontation in two parts. One army, the Margetanian with half the Allilandian, will march toward the North. The other will go to the west to conquer the three thousand soldiers that are marching into our country from there."
Mustafus, wearing his trademark fur hat with red lining and a fur vest with a red shirt under it, stood up, looking quite grim and justifiably so this morning. His large mustache and bushy eyebrows roofed lip and eyes and made little bitter twists and turns. He spoke with a deep voice, luscious but bitter like richly sour Adriatic red wine.
"Your noble majesties ..." He pointed to Belinda and Alex and Sieglinde to his left. "Senators, Sire Cretan, generals and aides." He pointed to Zedrick and Rolf to his left. "Ladies and Gentlemen ..." He looked down and sighed. Then he looked up, distinctively. "This will be short. This is not a strategy speech. It is vital for me to state that those will be held in private. What I here must state, however, is that I, with H.M. King Alexander, had just agreed upon a joint military effort the minute the infamous message was delivered by a young man named Roland Serana, who is now rightfully enjoying his luxury in the Royal Thermal Baths and the benefits of the Iuventus kitchen."
There was modest laughter.
"I shall put this plainly. I am a plain man with plain talk of plain things. War is war and no flowers will be thrown at the matter. We have all through the years felt what our ancestors felt before us. Nocturania wants revenge ... for revenge's sake. They want the channel and the borders. They want power not as a tool for development but for their own perverse glory. We know from history that Yambollah and its regime never ever have been able to maintain productivity. The people are poor and the lack of sportsmanship in the infamous gladiator games are signs of barbarism just as the people themselves are inhuman. I therefore proclaim that this country must be crushed, erased, eradicated. They are a shame to our peaceful community. They have found it useless to even discuss trade agreement. We have suffered so greatly because of this land and done really nothing to stand against their values. Let us not secretly assert our odium against a demon. Let us plunk up and admit that life would be better without them. Let us be rid of oppression. Give life a chance, even if we must die to uphold its values. We have been provoked. We have been provoked because we wanted a peace treaty with them in the first place."
With these words, an afternoon of discussions commenced and it ended with a very glum assembly returning to its’ duties. Alexander and Mustafus rode the entire way home without talking.
Alexander did agree that the country was a land of villains.
What Mustafus had just delivered, however, was a speech that encouraged inhumane behaviour to conquer the inhumane.
Was that right? His sister was inhumane, but could a volcano really be extinguished with a tornado?

Thursday, December 20th, 1425 A.D.

It had been the quickest mobilization of any army in the history of Alliland. In a matter of weeks the entire army was on its feet and marching toward the meeting point near Clurafar.
The only reason why it could be done in such a manner was because this had been so far the warmest winter since 1311 and the armies could ride fast without snow.
An angel was with them. His name was Michael.
A messenger had been sent on November 18th to mobilize the Allilandian first five divisions under the protection of General Max Yura. It was a very fast decision on the basis of a new agreement. Max Yura was the fastest and most efficient generals in the entire top level. The soldiers that Mustafus called for were close enough to the borders to make it possible for them to prepare and travel to the outskirts of Clurafar in a month.
The day when the outcome of the mobilization became obvious the largest field near Clurafar next to Shushienea Valley was filling up with all kinds of strange and wonderful characters, who all seemed to be copies of Mustafus himself. All in all 2000 soldiers, they had traveled at breakneck speed to arrive here in time.
They all knew the problem: the enemies were slowly coming closer to Clurafar. Everything seemed to be controlled by Adnicul, but no one, really nobody, had seen him for months.
Alexander watched this morning scene with fascination. Having come here at daybreak, he had seen the transformation from calm, natural greenery to a scene where campfires were lit fast and big men in furs walked around slapping each other’s backs with greetings like: “Moroander abar, Lakvat!” – Hand over the mead, friend - and “Romar talam usiz!” – Try efficiency for once – and the classic: “Ukbek urtuor lah muff gerti!” – That mare looks like a sick hyena.
Alexander saw in their faces that they knew what they were up against. A giant army of close to five thousand was marching toward the capital. With the Prosperanian divisions there would be an equal number, but everyone knew that the enemy fought with spiritual weapons like mind control and the Allilandians were less used to that than their neighbors. They could fight with weapons.
King Alexander I Winsletenna was not so much troubled of the faculty of these soldiers. They were most possibly more adequate than his own soldiers. He was afraid of their emotional nature. He had only seen Mustafus cry once, but subsequently that cry had been so heart wrenching that the entire castle had cried with him. Mix that with mind control and you have a dangerous problem.
It was interesting, but Alex remembered April 11th 1422 clearly that day. He had been just hundred feet from here when Theo told him about Rumus and his accident. He had come a long way since then. Was this good? Was it good for him to mobilize all these people? He had no alternatives.
He had to. Christmas was around the corner. He had planned a family Christmas. All that was gone now. This would be a battle Christmas. Theo and Philip had made Alexander’s campfire so quick that he felt he only had taken a short stroll with Steven before it was ready. Marcus and Patrick had been raising the tent. That he on his own initiative had told Rolf to stay home and chosen to help his father made Alexander proud. He had really not expected that his son would do this.
What Alex was happy about was that he was far away from the big soldiers.
Why? Because his introduction to them would occur once they were settled. The entire court, including Belinda, had thought him crazy to wait from daybreak until their arrival and then until midday for the announcement. What they did not distinguish was that this was a superstitious ritual to Alex.
It would insure him that, whatever the outcome of the war would be, it would be for Prosperania’s benefit. He was wearing a vast pelt cape and sat by a huge campfire above the cold pasture near a cave that overlooked the scene.
There was a table with wine and food right nearby and he was getting drunk fast.
Occasionally, the men would look up and point at him. He would wave at them and they would either bow or run away. He was not afraid to communicate.
The mobilization of his own armies occurred right now under Zedrick’s command. They would arrive in a few days. The women of Iuventus Sacrum were naturally very sad that this Christmas would be celebrated without the men.
Steven was, contrary to Alex, not holding a wine cup but a map.
He presented it to Alex, who sat up and listened.
“Alexander?”
”Yes, my son!”
“I have discussed this with Patrick and we both concur in bringing forth this suggestion.”
Alex looked back at Patrick, who was holding a conversation with Theo.
“Pat gave you military advice? Is that safe?”
“Come on now, Alex. Your son is very smart. Give him credit for that.”
”Sorry” Alexander whispered. “I just have been so disappointed so many a time …”
“Look at this map” Steven said. “This is the field opposite the valley. If we cross the field to the other side we will arrive on the road that is big enough to transport us hundred and fifty miles north of the river. After a two week march we will soon arrive where the Danish troops are fighting the enemy armies. We have to stop them coming to Clurafar and they are fast.”
“Why not take the west road as planned?”
”It is way too open. This way, when we arrive we will come from the back and surprise them.”
”My God, my son is a genius. Why did I not think of this?”
“I don’t know why.”
“All I know now is that we must lead these people to victory.”
Patrick dared to walk up to his father.
“You like my idea” he smiled. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
Alexander stood up, his fur coat making the already large man seem even more imposing.
He put his hand on Patrick’s right shoulder. “My dear boy, I have underestimated you. I am sorry. Keep it up and you will become a general some day.”
For the first time in years, there was a genuine respect there.
Patrick felt something that he hadn’t felt since before Belinda was born.
He felt his father’s genuine love for him in his soul.

Saturday, December 22nd, 1425 A.D.

There were close to five thousand people here now.
For hours on end Alexander was looking at his map, receiving advice and told what to do next.
There had been no food for the king and no drink. He had been offered beverage, but all he could think of was the war. The war was all that was on the man’s mind. He was at war with himself.
Mustafus was with him and their haggard faces were showing signs of illness.
Down on the field soldiers from two countries were sharing food and water and fire, hoping to see their loved ones again one day soon, although the reality was a different issue. On horseback, a man in a black fleece hide rode up to the tent.
“Your majesty, mobilize your troops. Adnicul has sent an army from the west. We are attacked from two sides.”


Tuesday, December 25th, 1425 A.D.

“No, Belinda. I have to go.”
She was embracing him, tearing at his clothes. “I won’t let you. I know what this is now.”
Steven was running down the hall toward the west wing. “My soldiers are waiting for me.”
”Steven!” she screamed. “Stay! The curse has begun to work.”
Steven turned around. “There is no curse. Believe in my return.” He stepped up to her and embraced her. “Believe in our love.”
“I have never suspected your fidelity.”
”I never have never suspected you, love. Stay here, take care of our country, our child.”
”I am urging you not to go. This is not what it seems to be.”
”This is war” he said, running down the stairs. “Not superstition, but cold reality.”
“No, stay.” She ran after him. “We need each other. You need to be here.”
”Yes. But I have to defend my country.”
They were half way down the stairs when he took her in his arms and kissed her.
Panting, she cried. “Don’t leave. I beg of you. Don’t.”
“I shall come back.”
He rushed out the door and left Belinda crouched on the staircase, crying.
She was wondering why everyone was forgetting the haunted kingdom.


Wednesday, January 16th, 1426 A.D.
On the table was a goblet of wine and three empty bottles. The prince had not shaved for three days and he had slept only a total of two hours. The commencing battle, which had first only been confined to the channel, had now spread to the countryside. The army was at the plains of Flenia where large valleys were overflowing with vegetation. The Nocturanian Territorial Army had camped roughly two miles from where Steven's army was now.
He felt remorseful for Alexander, because a new quandary was on his hands. Another one that this time might ruin the last harmony of wits he had left. What Steven did not know was that the army that had been able to penetrate the Nocturanian borders had just crushed Fraytollah. The pirate harbor in addition to all its ship construction and falsification development was crushed.


February 1426

The Margetanian and Allilandian Army had been assigned to join in on the third of February, the Nocturanian forces seeming to be never-ending in number. The entire nation was in turmoil, people were dying everywhere, attacks being carried out all over the country.
What scared Alexander the most was that the forest gypsies seemed to be in on this as well and even joining the army. Prosperanians were dying everywhere.


Friday, the Ides of March, March 15th, 1426 A.D.

The palace that later was invaded by Nocturanian soldiers lay on the hilltop above one of the plains. It was still Prosperanian property and its location was a gem for the young couple. For once in her life since her baby had been born, Belinda had let Marcus take her in a carriage to spend some time with Steven, not being able to stand it without him. The carriage had left Iuventus early on the 7th due to a message that she received from Theo. Steven had written her that they were stuck above the plains of Wakara, haunted by Nocturanian soldiers that kept them awake all night and then did not return for weeks on end. Now they had managed to limit all the fighting to the day time and he would be happy to see Belinda here with him for a week at least. There was a castle that they could use for their mutual fulfillment. She had not suspected him to send a message. She knew his love of duty. The day afterwards, however, she left for Wakara and the trip took her a long time. His wife having arrived this morning, the Prince General had taken the entire day off from battle just to spend some valuable moments with his girl. They had spoken about home for almost the entire morning over meat and mead and bread and cake. He had cried on her shoulder and she had cried on his and then there had been laughter and song, for Belinda had brought her lute. After standing upon the balcony listening to the clinging of swords and the neighing of horses far away, they walked into the bedroom and lit a fire. After this they spent the entire day and the entire following night making love to each other.

Sunday, March 31st, 1426 A.D.

Steven knew very well that there was no turning back.
He knew Alex.
His family was in turmoil again and he needed to come home. Belinda was so far away.
Steven was crying. He could still feel his wife’s breasts pressing against his face, her lips against his shoulder, her hair in his face. All that was left was a strategy plan a shield.
Alexander had been here and briefed Steven on strategy, but now he too had left for home.
The result was discontent. Steven played the general, but did it badly almost on purpose. Why was everyone allowed to go home except the husband of the future queen?
Steven remembered how they had made love right here in the tent, lacking the castle they had found in the middle of March. Steven had been called to the battlefield and Belinda had gone with him. They made love four times in three hours and talked the whole rest of the night through. In fact, lying there in his quarters, warmed by three large masonry heaters, naked and covered by warm sheets, they made themselves believe they were in the castle again. Alfred was in the next room and sleeping and they would go to sleep in each other’s arms and eat breakfast together the next day before riding to the poppy fields.
Belinda only stayed two weeks because Alexander was afraid that she would be in danger if battle started again. He was right, of course. Steven was angry at Alex for sending the light of his life away from him. Apparently, Belinda was at the other front in the west now, tending to the wounded. Then she would be back at Iuventus, praying. Alexander had stayed for another two weeks before leaving for the west himself. What had bothered him even more was that they had fought again. They had left as friends, but the quarrel had been quite disturbing for both of them. All those old feelings had come back. She had asked him if he believed now what she had spoken of, if he was still a skeptic. He had to admit that he believed that there was more to Lucinda than just hot air and empty promises.
What Steven had seen on the battle field, the vicious strategy and the bloody mindedness of these animals called Nocturanians, had slowly convinced him that he had been wrong to be a skeptic. H had then understood that it had been a defense mechanism against evil. Now when there was no way to uphold that illusion or no reason to uphold it, he was depressed beyond grief. The battle had started the next day after his wife’s departure and three-thousand-five-hundred men had been butchered
in three weeks. Now, since four days, it had been quiet.
Steven had horrible nightmares. He was starting to drink.
Tom was there and was trying to do undercover work, but not much could be helped.
He could only think of the useless attacks upon the Fraytollah harbor.
They were getting worse all the time, his headaches.
He picked up Belinda's shawl and smelled it. He could feel her perfume engraved in its texture, feeling the soft touch of her breasts against his skin, her caramel-tasting lipstick against his mouth, and her hair against his cheek. He could remember the engravings on the tree, their honeymoon in Urbania, their marriage and their child. Their jokes and laughter and love for each other. He knew how it felt to kiss her body, how it was to enter her. How it was to make love to her with the torches unlit by the light of the moon. He felt the love in every part of his soul.
He wanted to say that he was sorry he had yelled at her when they had parted.
And he felt love for his son and his laughter and his funny habit of leaving breadcrumbs behind him. Something Geena told him to stop doing in the house.
Oh, how he missed them. Melancholy came over him.
The rain trickled down the roof of the tent. The darkness outside was overpowering. Out of every bush a ghost seemed to crawl. He longed for home. Even the most horrid fight with Belinda, and they had had a few of those, was better than this loneliness. Eventually, Steven fell asleep and dreamt horrible things about bereavement, about Lucinda, about Nomed, and about perverse rituals.
He woke up around three by the sound of galloping horses outside his tent.
Soon enough, Steven was outside riding toward another battle.
Apparently, Tom had noticed undercover soldiers trying to outsmart their army.
He was right and soon enough Steven was punching them in the bellies and trying to squeeze out details from them and find out what and who they were.
That night, the night between March 31st and April 1st, it was Steven’s turn to turn into a monster just like Belinda had turned into a dragon during the trials with Nina Ray. So it was an unshaved, drunk, angry and lonely prince regent that tortured the spies that night, hoping that this war would soon be over.


Shushienae Valley, Friday, May 31st, 1426 A.D.

The entire region of Nocturania, Prosperania and Alliland was a battle zone and Steven was never at Iuventus. He was out in the field with Tom, the army and Ulfaas.
Almost ten percent of the Prosperanian population had died in this war.
By this month the Nocturanians had come almost to the Clurafar borders. The Shushienea-Valley was one of the largest valleys in all of Prosperania and its splendor had often amazed even the hardest townsfolk. Now it would be a war zone. Being very close to Clurafar and an important point on the Prosperanian map, it was obvious that the battle would have to be victorious or the consequences would be disastrous.
Steven had already received several scars on his body and on the first day of battle, Tom lost an eye and was left bleeding in his tent.
After a week, Tom decided to walk out of the tent with his weapon to fight by own initiative. Steven didn’t know about it. A young lieutenant named Gordon Lateras had taken it upon him to take care of Tom while Steven was handling the battle’s southern most activities. When he saw Tom leaving the tent and mounting his horse, he leapt upon his and rode after him.
“Colonel Barnes!”
Tom looked at him, startled, blood dropping from behind the eye patch.
“Whatever are you doing?”
The screams and wails were distant but growing nearer. Clanging of steel was getting louder.
“Joining the war” Tom spat, riding faster. They passed a few bodies from the last battle. Bodies that had not been cleared. One had its head cut off and there was blood clotted at the neck.
“The Prince-General had asked me to tell you not to leave the tent.”
“To hell with him.”
”You are sick” Gordon screamed. “You need special care.”
“I cannot see my country be torn up and not do anything about it” Tom shouted.
He galloped away and Gordon after him. The clanging was almost close by.
There was a fog nearby now and the two galloped into the battle before they knew it.
Clanging of steel. A man with a gilded helmet and a steel nose protector clanged down his sword and hit Tom, who reacted quick and held up his weapon.
The two riders started fighting and Gordon joined in, but what disturbed by another man with nose protector helmet. The two men realized that the soldiers all looked alike.
Being disturbed by his one lost eye, he lost coordination and suddenly felt a sword cutting into his shoulder. He screamed and looked to his side. He could see his shoulder bone.
He fell off the horse and hit his head.
Then he saw them, slowly riding through the mist. The battle was raging around him, but the sound was far away. Everything seemed to be moving slower.
Two women, one blond and one dark-haired, and two men, one dark blond and one black-haired, were galloping toward him.

(On this day, Lucinda told me about the Four Apocalyptic Riders.)

They were approaching him with torches in their hands.

(Patricia stood up and smiled coyly. Tom grinned. She shook her head. “Still got that gap, huh?”
He laughed. “Trademark. Hey, Patsy. Nice to see you.”
”And you … Sit down.”)

Gordon looked up and saw them as well. Time stood still and would not move.
Simultaneously, two Nocturanian soldiers buried their swords in the two young men’s hearts.
Steven learned about their demise that afternoon, spent the afternoon bleeding and crying.


Thursday, June 13th, 1426 A.D.

The Nocturanian armies were gone away from the capital, but a third of the Prosperanian territorial army was gone and maybe and seventh of the population in the country was dead.
Tom had received a special grave in the memorial chapel beyond the palace church.
Belinda cried during the ceremony and did not want to speak to anyone.
She felt guilty for blaming him for the abduction of 1411 and she felt guilty for screaming at him at the landing after Steven’s drunken night in the brothel. Most of all, she felt bad about not having said good bye to Tom or at least sending him a message that he may want to take care of himself in the battle field. That night, she took a candle and walked to the chapel and wept.
When Henricus died, killed by an anonymous attacker, Ariana and Lisa galloped to the castle to search for help, but were killed right outside the Iuventus gates by an unnamed aggressor. They received a proper burial and their graves rested in the garden behind the memorial chapel.

Saturday, August 17th, 1426 A.D.

The princess that one day was entitled to become queen of the empire tossed and turned in her bed. The marital chamber felt lonely these days. Her husband was never at home and the times she saw him, she saw him rushing to a strategy conference with Zedrick or Alexander.
Alfred was a joy. One boy, however, could only take so much pressure. Rolf and Geena tried their best to live up to the expectations of being perfect babysitters and mood lifters. The fact that Alfred was in his mothers bed at this very moment made it even harder for Belinda to sleep. This little creature was counting on her and she couldn’t even count on her father.
Belinda kept seeing Steven at war, sword in hand and screaming. She kept seeing Tom pierced by a lance and the enemy conquering the land and turning gold to mud. She had seen so many wounded that eventually she had to admit to herself that taking care of the wounded civilians was not the answer, no matter how good a girl she wanted to be. She had given it up today. She heard her son’s snore next to her and decided that if she had to choose between her son and the country – she would choose her son any time of the millennium.
Her father was quiet. He kept his mouth shut and sat on his throne brooding.
He paced the hallways and cried. Steven was gone and Belinda was depressed.
That day Belinda had decided to kill herself. She failed. The rope wouldn’t hold.
So she told no one, not even her son.
She spent the night holding Alfred, wondering where the father of her child was.

Sunday, September 22nd, 1426 A.D.

It was shortly after mass and Belinda was walking restlessly around the palace.
Steven was on leave from the war. It was something resembling a truce.
Everyone knew that it was not going to last.
At least, for a week or two there could be normality to life.
Mass had been quiet and Belinda had been hectic.
Her hands were shaking and sweat was running down her brow.
The church service had been short and there had been a few hymns. What was strange was that, this time, mass had not clamed her down. It had only made her more upset. She couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone how she was feeling. She knew that Steven would understand. That was not really the point. Alexander would listen. Her father always listened.
The point was, however, that what she had feared for years now was reality.
Lucinda had arrived and cursed the palace. Nay, she had cursed the country.
“Look at this country” she whispered, talking to herself as she was wandering down the hallways. “Half of the citizens are dead and we are passing laws for no one. What had she said? She had claimed that the first curse would be ‘one for the weapon’. That has come true. One for the health or the nearest friend’s deceit. That means the breakdown of status and royal life. Obviously, Lucinda means the breakdown of the health of the kingdom.” She shook her head. “There is something else at stake here. If I could only remember what she said.”
She strolled down the staircase down from the first landing to the small entrance beside the kitchen. There she stood for a while watching the birch trees and the roses before she walked down the corridor to the main entrance. She supposed everyone was working or resting. No one was out and about and she gathered that no one wanted to. It had been a depressing service.
Belinda came to the main entrance hallway with its eighty foot dome and black and white floor. The marble staircase leading to the first floor seemed empty and deserted.
Walking to the large entry door, she saw that it had been opened ajar. There were voices outside. A baritone voice and a high voice were chattering outside.
It was Steven and Alfred. They were talking. That brought a smile to her face.
She rushed out onto the porch and saw them wandering toward the Poseidon statue.
For the first time in a long while, at least since the war, she felt something close to happiness. Yes, the sun was shining just as before- Yes, she was alive and well. Her country, however, was dying.
Seeing her two men just chatting away made her feel as if thing were alright. No curse. No Lucinda. No Nomed. No Nina Ray. No Fraytollah, just love and family.
She strode down the steps and stepped onto the gravel, following them inconspicuously.
Alfred was piggyback riding Steven.
Belinda watched Steven happily, lute swung up on back and telling his son witty tales.
“Father” the little boy chirped. “What did you do then?”
“Well” Steven answered. “I just felt it was time to leave. When Cretan tells you that you embarrass the Senate by speaking of older people as elderly prunes, which I did, then you must bow and slowly tip toe out.” Steven made little tip-toe movements across the graveled path in between the roses and lilies and orchids.
Alfred laughed. “Why did you have to leave?”
“Well, son” Steven chuckled. “Most of the senators are old prunes.”
Alfred chuckled happily. “Tell me another story.”
Belinda felt it was time to intervene.
“You should’ve never done that, Steven” she said. “You insulted the prunes.”
Steven turned around, displaying a very unshaven grin.
“Hello there” Steven sang. “Look who is here!”
Alfred waved with both hands in the air. “Mother!”
Steven let his son down, who toddled insecurely across the path to Belinda.
She picked him up and swung him around. She groaned as she held him on her left arm.
“What have we been feeding you, young man?” She shook her royal head. “You are heavy.”
Alfred looked at his father and said: “Prunes!”
All three of them laughed.
Alfred looked at his mother. “What are prunes?”
Belinda nodded. “Geena makes pork pie with prunes. You know that. They taste sweet. They look like figs only they are more crumpled.”
“Oh, you mean like Sir Cretan. Only that they are brown.”
They all laughed again very heartily.
Steven came up to them and kissed them. He ruffled Alfred’s hair.
“Exactly like that” Steven snickered amused and made a funny face, sticking out his tongue.
They quietly strolled down toward the fountain of the twenty foot statue, the splashing and sparkling water soothing their souls. Steven had a small wooden box with him that he picked out of his shirt pocket. It held some nuts and raisins. The three Winsletenna family members began chewing on the nibbles as they ambled down toward Neptune, Alfred in Belinda’s arms.
“Are you feeling better now, dear?” Steven asked.
She nodded and looked at her husband. She smiled and caressed his cheek.
“Of course” she said and sighed happily. “With both of you near me I always do.”
“Were you feeling bad, mother?” Alfred asked surprised.
Belinda nodded. “Alfred, mother is sad about what is happening to the kingdom. She cannot sleep nights and she ...” Belinda had to control herself in order not to cry. She smiled at her son. “No problem, child of light. I am fine. We are all fine.”
“I don’t want you to be sad, mother” Alfred said. “I want you to be happy all of the time.”
Belinda kissed the boy tenderly. “For a boy of three, you are remarkably wise.”
Steven shook his head. “Darling, I think it is time to tell him.”
Belinda looked at Steven with wide-open eyes. She looked at her husband as if he had bit her.
“Tell him what?”
Steven bit his lip. “Well, you know. Lucinda. We can’t keep it from him forever. You read him the tales of the breadcrumbs. If she ever appears, he should know what to do. Getting lost is one thing, but Lucinda does more than confuse her family.”
Alfred looked at his mother. “Who is Lucinda?”
They arrived at the statue and sat down on the edge of the fountain.
Belinda did not know how to begin.
So much was going through her mind.
“Alfred” she began. “Your grandfather has a sister. Her name is Lucinda. She is a princess just like I am a princess. But this princess is very wild tempered. She does things one should not do.”
“What things?” Alfred inquired curiously.
“She gets really mad sometimes. She only thinks about herself. Pretends to be someone else and then tries to convince people she is right. She has hurt mother many times.”
“What has she done to you?” Alfred asked.
“She used your mother and made her feel bad” Belinda said.
Alfred looked down. “I hate Lucinda.”
Steven caressed his son’s face. “We all do, son.”
Belinda took her hand and put it under his chin. She pushed his face upward tenderly, so that the boy was looking into her eyes. “My son, listen to mother” Belinda said. “If you ever see a long and thin woman with flowing black hair, then run like the wind. Is that understood? Run to mother or father. Don’t wait. Run.”
Alfred nodded. “Yes.”
Steven continued. “If you see anyone suspicious even, someone that you think might want to harm you, then don’t let them harm you. If we are not near you, then find us or someone in the palace. Any grown up will do. Patrick, Erica, grandfather, grandmother, Rolf, Geena, Ruby, Patricia. Run.”
Alfred nodded intensely. “I will run.”
Steven laughed. “Good.”
They all hugged, listening to splashing of the fountain.
Belinda was nervous now. She found the old red heart that she had received in the cathedral in a side pocket in her morning toga. She felt the inscription “Love and Family” adorned in its surface.
Somewhere inside her soul, she knew that this was a way too early a matter for Alfred.
She did not want to scare the boy.
God knows that she had been frightened as a child.
Alfred deserved better.

Wednesday, January 1st, 1427 A.D.

The war ended that day. All through the fall of that year it had raged on and went into the first month of the year. The Nocturanian militia had been responsible for the attacks by the harbor that much had been clear. Adnicul had obviously given the orders. They had now raged so much over the entire country that most of the land was in shambles.
There was a very strange rumor spreading across the country. Adnicul was not the one with the decisions. Someone else was holding the strings. The Nocturanian army had been pushed back from most of the townships and most of the large counties. This did not help. The land was empty and corpses lay in the street in such numbers they clerics and gravediggers could not keep up. There were no ships raiding the harbor anymore. In fact, there was not even a harbor. It lay deserted and empty. John Lyghort had been seen wandering around aimlessly by the harbor one day. The next morning had been found with three arrows in his back floating in the water near the Channel Senate. Ulfaas had joined the army of the rebellion. They were bureaucrats who had decided to do something on their own, but it was clear that they could do little when half of them died in the first attack. Only Ulfaas survived, along with his first officer.
Ulfaas was nursing a broken leg in his home in Daneland. That day, Steven and Mustafus and Alexander were riding the plains near the capital and watching the dead. A few soldiers were pacing the area on their horses. Those who were not dead, on either side, were gone. There was a cold fog that day. There was a wind and a penetrating screaming silence that could wake up the dead. None of the three men could speak to each other.
Yes, the enemy had been beaten. They were gone. What had happened to their country?
The promised golden age for Alliland had not commenced as Mustafus had planned. He had entered this war in hope of making his country rich. Virtually every Medatlantian country’s royal leadership had some sort of hand in this war. Mormidar was finally gone from Clurafar all together. He had taken the twins and his wife and left for his home. He left with the words that he could not afford to be friends with Alex any longer. Alliland? Well, Sieglinde’s parents were dying and there were no messages at all from them any more.
The war had been a way of life for over a year now. Prosperania was the winner of this war. Its countrymen, nonetheless, had been killed and there was only a small percentage left of what had been called the greatest land in history. Wandiffia was no more, replaced by glum solitude.
It was early evening when the men returned back to the battle field of the once so peaceful valley of the last conquest. They had returned from their depressing ride around the countryside to see rows of old weapons and men in armor lay still on wet snow. The flurry lay deep in drifts along every road side and yet they had gone out in furs to meet anyone and find someone to talk to.
Now that there were no people to talk to that found it worth the effort to speak to the broken king, the men did not want to talk to each other. Instead of talking to the others, Alexander spoke to his horse. It seemed he had never owned a horse. He owned the stables and he rode all the horses. A different one every week was his own for a short instant in reality. A king without a personal horse was like a man without land, nameless.
“What is your name?” the king suddenly said when dismounting the steed.
The two men, the prince regent and the Allilandian king, looked at the king speak to the horse.
“Alexander, my noble and utmost radiant king” Mustafus said. “Your horse can’t speak.”
“I have no personal horse, Mustafus. My stables are full of horses and I ride them every day, but none of them is really my own. What kind of life is that? A man’s soul is like a stallion. If he has no personal animal within him he is useless.” He walked up to a dead man lying in the mud on the very grounds of his forefathers. He had a long beard and, although this was a fact, he had obviously been a young man who knew that long beards were fashionable. Alex went down on his hands and knees. “Who were you? What thoughts and desires were yours for keeps?”
“Alexander” Steven said. “You cannot save the deceased. You can save the living.”
“Mustafus, Steven” he said, holding up the man whose head fell back onto Alexander’s shoulder. “This was once somebody’s son, this was somebody’s father and husband.” He looked at the men and sobbed. “Because of me and my false pride he is dead.”
Steven stepped off his horse and walked up toward his king.
Alex looked up and whispered: “Don’t make another move. Consent me my grief. It is all I own.” He caressed the man. “My kingdom is in shambles.” He stroked the man’s cheek one last time before laying him down gently and standing up. “Mustafus, you once told me to live my own life and not live it through other people. Well, for the past thirty-five years I have done exactly that.” He looked at the gently horse and walked up to it. “This horse is the one I ride most of the time. I think the stable attendants call him Caesar. That is an impersonal name for a horse. I have not had a personal horse since I was a young man. I will rename him.”
He looked up at the two men, one of them was crying.
”I want to name this horse.” He looked back at the horse. “What is your name?” There was a silence filled with bitterness. “Mercutio, you say? The Roman major God of trade, profit and commerce was named Mercury and therefore you are his child.” He patted the horse’s mane and Steven now saw a tear running down his cheek. “You shall be my special horse. I shall always ride on you until the day we have to part.” Alex rested his head against the horse’s throat and it seemed that the stallion was sympathetic to the king’s feelings. “Mercutio Junior.”
Then, as if on a given signal, the king mounted.
“Let’s ride to our stables and sit down in our chairs and forget this war ever occurred” he said. The three men left the battlefield of their lives, leaving nothing but dust and death and snow behind.
In the middle of bleak winter, Adnicul Nocturne had capitulated and withdrawn his troops.

Afternoon – January 1st, 1427 A.D.

Belinda had been watching the road all day. She had refused to eat. Refused to sleep, refused to work, and refused to do anything. There was only one word on her lips. “Steven.” Alfred had been there. She had fed him whilst drinking fresh grape juice all day, made by Geena.
Marie-Louise had done nothing but mourn. Her Robert had died a month ago in the war and she had nothing to look forward to and no one to love.
When the three men came riding down the main path of Iuventus Sacrum that late afternoon just before dusk, she handed Alfred to Marie-Louise and ran to the door with Marie-Louise running after her. She ran to the main stairway and down to the chequered floor across to the main door, opened it and left it open. She leapt into the snow and fell, stood up and ran to Steven, who stepped off his horse and ran to his wife and embraced her.
“I’ve missed you.”
Steven nodded and caressed her hair. She kissed him and stroked his cheek.
“I have been away for too long a time” he sighed. “I’m sorry.”
”Belinda.” Steven sobbed again. “We have won the war, but the army is in shambles.”
Belinda hugged her husband tightly, pressed her cheek against his chest and looked at the snow with wide open eyes.
Alexander stepped off the horse and gave it to Rolf who was coming his way.
Belinda rushed to her father, tears in her eyes, and hugged him.
“I am calling him Mercutio, Lindy …”
She laughed, sadly. “Oh, I see … he is an emissary. What does he have to tell us?”
“That family is the most important thing” her father whispered and held his head against her forehead. He kissed Belinda’s cheek. “I am tired of death. I want life.”
Mustafus had nothing to say. He took his own horse to the stables and watched the family walk in to the palace with their eyes and heads downcast.

Wednesday, February 26th, 1427 A.D.

There were parchment papers all over the marble table and there was no question that most of them were delayed orders. Here was one about the rebuilding of another road that was to lead past Paqutshur. Here was a second about the minimizing of the troops due to deceased militia and promotional reworking of the strategic tribunal. The third was a law that was to be passed concerning the tutorship of herbal medicine to senatorial councilors. The forth was an order that concerned the village clerics: they were to make house calls once every week to chosen believers. The fifth parchment was concerning her own senatorial speeches. They were to be conducted once every two months and not as often as before. The reason was simple: there was nothing to speak about. There was no hope and no future. The senate had lost the willpower to change anything.
She took a swan feather and signed her name next to her father’s signature and her husband’s name and titles on all of the documents.
Accordingly, the documents read:


Alexander W., Rex Prosperianium
Steven, H.R.H. The Prince Regent
Belinda Winsletenna, H.R.H. the Princess Regent Royal

Alex had not been home for three days this time. No one knew where he was. He would never say. Cretan came regularly and anytime Steven would urge Belinda to keep Cretan informed, she would just brush him off and say that she had so much to do that she could barely keep up with Alfie.
“Mommy?”
She looked up from her document, holding her feather pen in her hand.
“Yes?”
His face was all red. Sitting there by the fireplace on the red satin was good for him, but bad for the skin. Steven seemed to enjoy sitting next to him and keeping him occupied. It was wonderful that the war was over, because now they felt like a family again. Trouble was that she was spending all her days in the throne room instead of her father. He rode around all day trying to find peace.
“What you doing?”
”I am signing parchment papers. Documents about … new laws being passed by the senate.”
”Why?”
Steven laughed. She looked at him and smiled. She had not heard him laugh in a long time. That almost made her cry. She remembered how they had been before all of their troubles. Why could they not be like that again?
She dried a tear from her face and shook her head.
“Mommy has to work for Grandfather. He is out riding. The country must be kept in shape.”
Alfie looked down on his stuffed bear. He patted its brown belly and caressed its head.
“What does Bear say?” Belinda asked.
”Bear misses you, too” Alfred cried softly. “Work too much.”
She sighed. “Mommy will come soon.” She looked at Steven. “What are you reading to him?”
”Hansel and Gretel.”
Belinda smiled. “The one you didn’t want me to read?” He nodded.
That was when she noticed how quiet he had become lately. He had not spoken for a while.
She stood up and laid the pen to the side, her gown falling to the floor. She walked away from the table, past the throne and down the steps and sat down on the floor next to Steven, laying her head on his lap. Alfred leaned against his father’s shoulder.
Belinda turned her head toward the window and looked at the trees outside.
The cold, white, intense snow was gone.
Spring was returning to the capital.
”Can we be a family again, Steven?”
Steven looked at Belinda, worried. “We are one, are we not?”
”I am so afraid that we are only men and women on the move …”
She did not finish her sentence.
Steven sighed and looked out, while Alfred was playing with his toys.
Alex wandered in to the throne room.
Belinda looked up and smiled.
“Be greeted, father. Where have you been?”
“I have spent some time in town, discussing matters with the senate. We were so, so late always that I decided to spend the night in a room there. Cretan is boring, but he keeps on talking about himself instead of trying to change things in the country. The senators end up drinking and I end up yelling and the priests end up yawning and …” He looked at the family sitting together on the floor of the throne room. He realized that there were more important matters than ruling a country. There were matters such as the promised dinners of the royal housekeeper. “How was the swan stew? Did Geena manage to get enough rosemary and thymine for the brew?”
“That was the day before yesterday” Belinda answered. “It tasted good.”
He shrugged. “How are you?”
”Spending some time with Alfred and Steven here.”
Alfred looked up at Grandfather.
“Hello, Fah-fah.”
Alex picked him up. “How is our big man?” Alfie nodded and beamed. “Is your mother behaving well?” He laughed. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes” the boy answered.
Grandfather Alex threw him up in the air and cackled.
Alfred shouted and laughed.
Belinda was happy. There was something to laugh about and yet she was sad.
Alexander picked the boy up and took him to another window.
The two cuddled and laughed and eventually Alfred ended up in his grandfather’s lap singing songs and playing games and grandfather telling him funny stories.
“We are a family, Steven” Belinda finally said once husband and wife were alone. “I just mean that I miss the times when things were simpler. Sometimes I feel with the war and its devastation it has savagely killed our peace as well. Not the peace of our country. Our inner peace.”
“We even managed to destroy Fraytollah, Belinda. Yes, the war was horrible, but we took away their power and their glory. We managed to let go of their grip.”
“Steven, I am not speaking of this war” Belinda said, caressing her husband’s face. “I am speaking of our family. This is what I mean. You speak of the war. I speak of that I long to sit with you again and laugh with Alfie and my father. We laugh, we talk, we sing, we eat, we make love. Then there is that shadow in our past. It won’t go away. It is always there.”
”We laugh too little, you say?”
Belinda took one step closer to her husband. “Steven” she said softly. “Remember how suspicious I used to be of your fidelity before our wedding?”
“Yes.”
“Remember how we used to fight?” He nodded. “Well, honey, we cared back then. Now I feel
as if we are just living our life waiting for disaster.”
”What disaster are we waiting for?”
Belinda nodded. “Indeed. What disaster. We don’t even now what is coming next.” She looked up at Steven again. “We have to stop this ball from rolling before it rolls over us.”
“What disaster, Belinda?” Steven said.
Belinda looked down. “Kerberos.”
“What?” Steven said, confused. “Who is that?”
Belinda chuckled, nervously. She looked over toward her father. He was playing with his own grandson and was completely unaware of the conversation that was going on just feet away.
Belinda sighed and looked down. “When Lucinda came to the Grand Hall that October of 1422, I knew that she meant trouble. Big trouble” Belinda said and took Steven’s hand. He grabbed it and her husband took her hand. He knew, as well, that something sinister was on its’ way from her heart to his. “Steven, that hound scared me. Ten heads.”
Steven shook his head. “No, Belinda. Green fog, ten heads, bad seeds. Forget it.”
She took her finger and put it against his mouth.
“Here me out, darling” she said. “I know my father knows this. I saw it in his face. We were both avid fanatics of Greek mythology.” She looked at her father playing and tickling Alfred and then looked tenderly at Steven. She cocked her head. “That day was no coincidence. That creature guards the underworld. I have seen that creature in pictures, Steven.”
Little Alfie stuck his thumb inside his mouth and leaned against his grandfather’s chest.
The king sang him a song, closing his eyes.
“I did not realize there was such a creature. I thought someone made the fiend up.”
“I know” Steven said and sighed. He shook his head and laughed. “We cannot,” he emphasized, “cannot ever spend eternity trying to decipher what happened that night. Lucinda has powers, but we have shown that there is a way out. We have beaten them.”
Belinda shook her head. “Yes, I know there is a way out. But I think that we have to go through the underworld to get out of this.”
“What?” Steven stood up and walked to the opposite window. Belinda followed him. “What are you talking about? If this is one of your nightmares I will …”
Belinda grabbed his cheeks and gave him a long kiss.
“We better not speak of this in front of Alfie” she said. “I think we are still asleep and dreaming that we are here.”
“I beg your pardon?” Steven spat. “Dreaming this?”
“I believe,” Belinda continued, “that … Lucinda, posing as Snekawa actually put the entire country to sleep and wants her brother to herself.”
“Have you told your father about this?”
She shook her head. “I will not talk to him about that. You know him. He overreacts and then I have to calm him down.” She fidgeted with her hands. “Steven,, just remember what I said and keep your eyes open. For God’s sake, keep your eyes open.” She looked over at her father, who still was singing his grandson songs. Alfred was snoring. “It might just be a silly mistake on my part, but it all fits.” She took her husband’s hands and kissed them. “I am telling you, because I trust you. There is much more to this than meets the eye. I am asking you to …”
Alexander spoke. “What are you two talking about over there?”
Alfred had obviously opened his eyes.
“Nothing, father” Belinda chirped. “Do you promise to keep your eyes open?”
Steven nodded. “Of course I will keep my eyes open, if that will make you happy.”
“No” Belinda growled softly. “To make us happy you should be alert. Something wrong here and I don’t want to worry father.”
“He is the king, Belinda” Steven said. “He deserves to know.”
Alexander spoke up again. “Love birds. A young gent wants to sing you a lullaby.”
“We will be right there, father” Belinda said and turned quickly to her man. “If I tell father, soon Zedrick will know and Theo will know and about ten other people. I tell you and you tell no one.” Belinda smiled and kissed Steven. “We tell no one.”
Steven shrugged and shook his head.
“Steven” Belinda spat. “Promise me you will remember this conversation and see if you see anything strange or out of the ordinary. Keep it to yourself.”
Steven nodded. “I promise.”
“Thank you” She nodded. “Let’s go to the boys and listen to his lullaby and then put Alfred to bed. I think he needs a nap.”
So, the young family listened to the lullaby and laughed with grandfather and then slowly went to the young prince’s chamber and sang another song for him, putting him in bed and hoping that he would fall asleep.
They pretended not to have had that conversation.
Steven could not forget it.
He lay awake all night and thought of it.


CHAPTER TWO

SCANDAL

Wednesday Evening - March 1st 1427

Alfred watched Lancelot closely.
He wanted to be sure that his friend didn’t cheat this time.
He was only three and a half years old, but he wasn’t dumb.
Lance shook the wooden box.
The dice inside the little thing made little noises that gave Alfred an excited feeling of fun.
The older boy took away his hand and rolled out the dice upon the floor of Alfred’s room.
The ivory game pieces rolled out and stopped on four and five.
“Nine points” Lancelot smiled. He clapped once with both hands. “Now you.”
Alfred looked at the dice and tried to count them. There was no way that he could count those little things. He knew how to count to five, but nine? No way.
He grabbed both dice and put them back in the box. They made that scrambling noise again. Alfred smiled and tried as well as he could to shake the sachet. Then he turned the container upside down and let the dice roll out upon the floor. There were more dots now. Actually, there were rows of three dots. He could see that. Two rows of three dots on each dice.
“You win” Lancelot said. “You have twelve points.”
Alfred smiled triumphantly. He knew that Lancelot would not be cheating him if Lancelot himself lost. Belinda’s son picked up both his dice and laid them in the box. He stood up, passed the bed and walked up to the cupboard with his playthings. He put the dice by the toy horse with wheels. He pushed aside the pottery doll from Coptic Egypt and put it next to the toy jug.
The dice rested safely next to the other toys.
Lancelot watched this with incessant interest.
Alfred toddled over to Lance and said:
“Let’s out on balcony and name birdies.”
Lancelot had promised to be a babysitter of sorts and agreed willingly. He knew how happy Alfred was to sit on his parent’s balcony and watch the birds, trying to find out what their names were and name them. Sometimes he would make up names and he would chuckle at the names he gave them. Then he would look up at the sun and hum a tune.
The two boys walked out of Alfred’s room and into the nuptial bedroom of the royal parents Belinda and Steven. The two adults had taken the time to be cordial to some of the Senators. Alexander and Sieglinde and Rolf and Geena had also joined them. The boys, it had been decided were too young to listen to boring older men exchanging ideas of diplomatic gallantry. These older men had been pleading for them to both come and speak to them and eat some pheasant and ostrich. There had been no speech in too long a time now and Cretan had almost cried when he asked them both to come and hold something of a conference in the hall.
Marie-Louise had been with the boys all morning and was just tired of keeping them busy. So, she told them to play amongst themselves. They had done so for a while now, but just needed some variation. The balcony provided that needy flexible vigor.
The weather was quite a sunny for a spring day and too warm for a late winter date.
What met the boy’s countenance was a lark flying about the sky and a sparrow picking breadcrumbs from the balcony’s stone wall. The birch trees were yet spare in blossom but they were hoping to soon pride themselves with leaves of plentiful glory.
The two gents stood there speaking about nothing at all for a bit.
They realized that the door to Lancelot’s parent’s balcony door was open. Obviously, the two adults were now in the middle of a fight. There had been a long silence that was now broken by a soft and mellow female cry with a Hispanic lilt.
The boys listened intently. Alfred did not understand everything. Lance understood most of what he heard and he knew that he could not enter his parent’s room to go to his own play chamber without having them notice him. He hated that his father stunk of mead and that his mother was weak enough to let his father cheat on his mother.
In the middle of the conversation poor Lancelot broke into tears. Leaning against the stone wall of the balcony, he found himself growling and stuttering how much he wished for them to stop.
“Mi mile amamanta color de rosa” Erica sighed. “I just want you to be faithful. Lance needs a faithful father. What kind of role model are you to him if you sleep with everyone but his mother?”
There was a loud laugh. “You ridicule me in front of everyone” Patrick screamed. “You said that I was a good-for-nothing drinker and whoreson the other day. When I crawl into bed you are sleeping. You never touch me anymore. How can I be faithful?”
“I called you a ‘hijo de la puta’ because you deserve it” Erica shouted. “Your pene has other homes than my warm organs. You entertain your Roberta and I am forced to watch.”
“Why don’t you join me in my amorous escapades?” Patrick said. “Look, there can be a joy in swapping partners. See how much fun I have with Roberta and you will see that I love you just as much even though I penetrate other females.”
There was a loud slap. It was the slapping of a female hand against a male face.
Erica now spoke with a grit that had even her son, standing on the balcony next to her listening to this, shiver with trepidation.
“Nunca sé porqué te casé. Estoy aquí porque tu padre cree en la unión. Cogida algún otro.”
Patrick now reacted to these words with hardness. He took his mother’s hand and threw her body against the floor with a horrid thud. There was a loud scream, followed by a horrendous roar. Patrick was out of his senses and there was ripping noise coming from the other room. Obviously, he was ripping his wife’s clothing to pieces. She was screaming and trying to break free.
Lancelot knew what his father was doing and took Alfred into his playroom away from his father. Rape was no joke. Patrick had raped his mother before and now he was doing it again. After a while, Patrick was finished and rushed out and screamed. I will be spending the night with my mistresses in the brothel. I will penetrate whom I wish.”
The door was left open and Patrick rushed down the hall and ran out to the stables.
Very soon there was a galloping horse speeding toward town.


Tuesday Morning – March 4th 1427 A.D.

Alex was now taking a little more responsibility for his palace, since Belinda had complained that she could barely stand anymore because of exhaustion.
The king was back in his throne room, mostly talking to senators and priests.
The two young boys had decided not to tell anyone of what they had overheard Patrick do to Erica. Erica herself had thrown away the dress in a box in the attic and tried to wash away the blood, claiming to have fallen. The entire palace believed her.
This morning, Rolf had arrived and had only come to tell the King what he knew that the King did not know. “I am only saying this, your majesty, because I think you should be informed of the circumstances. Patrick has been over there so often that it is sometimes more of a home to him.”
Alex put away the document he was reviewing and nodded. “Well, thank you, my dear friend. It is good to be relieved of ignorance.” He looked at the fireplace and the logs of fire wood burning inside it. “How long have you suspected that they have gone behind my back and led this double life?”
“I am surprised you have not noticed it before and screamed at them like you used to, Alexander. They have been frequent visitors there. In fact, those three have been spending more time in Madam Zonga’s than here on the grounds.”
Alex seemed to be looking out toward the garden, trying to find some answer out there that actually could be found in his heart. ”I hope they don’t conjure up some scandal.”
“Alexander” Rolf giggled nervously and sardonically. “Scandal is the least of your worries. Forget all those people who will wonder what the royal family does or not. Your children are being drawn into the arms of the devil.”
He saw the swaying trees and sighed. “Dear God. What shall I do? I have neglected them and I have no idea how to stop it? How shall I make this group of youngsters realize what they are doing?”
Rolf shrugged. “Reprimand them. Erica claimed to have fallen and will not say that anything else is true.” Rolf shook his head. “Patrick hit her. I am sure of it. Lance and Alfred know something.”
Alexander nodded. “I have spoken to them. They say they heard nothing.” Alexander pouted and groaned. “I feel sorry for Erica, so sorry. On the other hand, I feel it is good for Lance to have his father spend more time at The Rose and in town and not give his son a hard time.” He looked at Rolf. There was a look of sadness there that almost broke Rolf’s heart. “But he needs a father, does he not? A real father?” Rolf nodded. “We are running a country. We must uphold our reputation. What are people saying?”
“The Clurafarians know that the Prince is there all the time. But they don’t blame you for it. They blame them for being the bad seeds of Sodom.”
“Have Ellie and Marcus sent a message when they will return to us? I know they talk to Patrick frequently” the king said. He put his hand behind his back and looked out the window at the green trees. There was no answer at first.
“No. Sire, they have not” Rolf finally whispered.
“Well, I hope that when they do, they let me take care of discussions with Morgana and her husband. Patrick always overreacts. What bothers me is Richard, who seems to be living off his assets and not even considering returning to a military career. I should’ve thrown him out years ago. But I am afraid to throw anyone out and you know why, my friend.”
”May I be bold?”
”You often are, Rolf.”
He smiled. “You cannot change them. They will only get worse. If you want to change anything, exile them completely.”
”Rolf, I exiled one family member. You know how that ended.”
“I don’t want that to happen again” Alexander whispered. “Besides, I should be thankful if Ellie talks to Patrick when he is here. She is calm and collected. All I worry about is Maria. She seems to be so distant when she is here on visits.” Rolf did not respond to this. The two men, the king and his assistant, looked at the swaying trees outside. “I cannot exile family, Rolf, no matter what they have done. No matter how bad they have been. I did that once. Look where that has brought us.”
“There is a rumor, Sire.”
Alex looked at Rolf. “What?”
Rolf sighed and shook his head. He took a step toward the window and walked in stately manner around the room. Then he stopped at a safe distance from Alexander and turned toward him.
“The rumor is that your daughter is selling herself as a … well, you know what … at Madam Zonga’s as a prostitute” Rolf cried ever so softly. “I am just saying that to hint that she is a sinner.”
Alex stood up and walked to the window, stroking his beard.
He leaned against the stony windowpane.
“The world is falling apart, Rolf!”
Rolf joined him by his side, gently laying a hand on his shoulder. “I know …”
”The worst thing is that I have no idea how to stop it.”
The two men said nothing to each other after that. They simply stood in the throne room, looking at the morning sun, wondering how long it would keep on shining.

Saturday - March 15th 1427

Morgana's double life was now so infamous amongst the people that everyone was speculating not if she was selling herself as a prostitute but to what degree she was doing it.
No one really knew exactly what proof they had that she was leading two lives. That previous night, over a drink or five after a whole day of fencing she told Patricia about her double life. Patty's first reaction was absolute horror, but after an hour's discussion she had convinced her sister of its merits and Patty ended up finding it quite appealing.
Morgana, realizing that her father had drifted away from her to the point that a friendship between the two was impossible, had walked up to him with plea for a kind word and the last words met a cold ear.
"Father, I will not let you leave without reconciliation! I cannot have you depart without some sort of compromise!"
Alexander had left the castle that same morning for the Danish Channel in order to be able to help the rebuilding, never to see Morgana alive again. Patty was in on the double life and entered the brothel as Vanessa Carolin, with Morgana acting as a hooker bearing the professional name of Penrypola Pilpoa. The two girls found it fantastic that they were not found out.
Patty and Morgy arrived at Madam Zonga’s at twelve that day, almost three hours after their father had left the house. Belinda had been in bed with a headache and Steven had been taking care of Alfred, so only Rolf and Geena knew of their departure with Richard and Patrick.
Zeddy had joined Sieglinde in the throne room that day and were holding a very tense meeting with Julius Cretan about the situation in the senate.
The entire forum seemed to be against all this shifting of power. At times, decisions were made by four people and the felt insecure about everything. Belinda rarely went to church any more and they were worried that the leadership was falling to pieces.
Richard, Morgana, Patricia and Patrick could go unnoticed into their coach. Rolf and Geena had sworn to secrecy, thinking that they were just leaving for a private feast on the hill. Once there, a third girl named Henrietta George joined them in a drunken spree and ended up mid afternoon with two strange men in their bed.
That particular afternoon, the seven of them had left the brothel on order to drink themselves from inn to inn to inn. By the time they came back to the brothel, they could barely stand. Still deciding to enter the establishment, they stumbled in and threw a bunch of coins on the table in front of the large Madam just to irritate her and called her a dragon. That same day the news spread like wildfire all across the town. Every innkeeper had recognized them and now the people in at least two of the inns had brought each other up to such a frenzy that they began marching to look for the assembled courtiers. Theo had been on an errand near the Senate that day and seen the six enter the building and at once recognized the four royals. He at once dropped his assignment and rode to the castle to notify the queen. What he never saw was the six being thrown out on the streets and not being able to stand up because of their intoxication.
Her majesty, Zedrick Ronkenshire and Julius Cretan ran up to Steven and Belinda, who were notified that her sister and brother were at Madam Zonga’s barely able to stand in the middle of the day and the family left in a coach without the queen after mutually deciding to spare the king before they knew any details. As they arrived in the city, they saw an angry mob approaching six intoxicated figures outside a side street opposite the marketplace.
Obviously, Patrick had been awake enough to warn the others before they were attacked. Soon enough the four royals were chased down the streets by the mob who seemed to be growing. They accused the royals for starting the war and killing the people. Belinda was not popular any more and the leadership was bad. The crowd took anything they could and threw at them.
Seeing this, Belinda stepped out of the carriage and pleaded with the crowd to use their senses. Steven and Zeddy ran to her and tried to help her calm the crowd down.
There was a mixed reaction here. Some people, cried for help. Some people pleaded with them to save the country. Some people threw food at them.
Finally, they were chased into to coach again. The stones and food that were thrown at Philip, who was driving the coach, forced him to drive around the houses to meet the four victims on the other side in order to help them and get the into the coach.
Belinda again grew desperate and knew that the mob was murdering her family. She ran out of the carriage and to the mob, desperately trying to fight herself threw the crowd.
Theo was told to get any army he could in order to vanquish the mob.
Philip ran into the senate and found guards, who were busy hiding from the mob. He found younger senate members with weapons. He found a few monks with provisory church treasures.
Theo came back with soldiers who came in time to find the four family members chased by the mob down the streets to the senate courtyard, by now almost unrecognizably beaten, sans teeth and hair, lynched by hundreds.
The crowd was beaten and there was no way of telling where this revolt had started.
The four barely alive family members were brought to the castle.
Henricus Balthazar was brought to the palace with his assistants and his wife.
Theo rode and fetched the king, who was notified about the disaster. Toward late evening that fateful March night, Morgana died of inner wounds in Belinda’s arms.


Tuesday – March 18th 1427

The four bodies of Patricia, Morgana, Richard and Patrick had been laid out with satin covers over their corpses in the side chapel. Bernardus Paul’s artist sculptors had been notified that four coffins were to be transported from St. Raphael.
“Our country is falling apart, dears!”
Sieglinde looked at her husband.
“We must not let it.”
Belinda shook her head. “What can we do?”
“We can try to control the situation.”
“How? Three of children are dead. How can we control that?”
Steven was silent. “I don’t know, Alexander.” He shook his head. “I really don’t know.”
“Where are the angels when we need them?”

Friday – March 21st 1427

Coffins, already available had been engraved with the royal names and were placed in the chapel in an official ceremony that had the family crying and screaming. Belinda had no will to live and she told Steven that. Life was just too difficult. She wished that death would come as a release.
The four coffins, Patrick, Patricia, Morgana and Richard were positioned beside Tom on the far side of the inner memorial chapel.
That day, Alexander Winsletenna decided to avenge himself on his city.
That day, silently and secretly, he decided to ask Zeddy if the old blocks from the Wiltas that had been taken up to the army camp were still in the vaults.


Monday March 22nd – 1427

“I beg your pardon, Alexander, but you cannot seriously mean that you are willing to take innocent lives for the lives of your children.”
Alex held up his hand, giving Zedrick a look that must’ve woken up the dead.
He now regretted having brought Belinda and the family up to tell them of his plans.
“Please, I know that you all disagree with me. But my children were killed by my own countrymen. They were openly murdered and the Senate did not do a thing. They stood and watched. Philip even had to run in to wake some of them up.”
Belinda spoke and it was the fact that although it was very light in this throne room and there was a darkness here that was unbearable inside their hearts that made her say this.
“You can not fight with the same methods that Adnicul fights with, Father. Then you are no better than him. We have all lost our siblings because of this scandal, so we are in agreement with you that we are angry. But Maria and Ellie and certainly their men, too, would agree with me in saying that we cannot go and kill innocent people for the sake of the guilty, don’t you agree?”
Maria and Ellie nodded and Marcus and Martin seemed to be looking at each other, hoping that Alex would change his mind. Martin finally spoke. “We were called here in an awful hurry. It was luck that we all were in town anyway. This came as a surprise to all of us. We are just as deeply hurt as you. But you cannot spill innocent blood.”
Alex stood up.
“Who is innocent here? There were hundreds of people beating
my children to death.”
Belinda stood up, as well. “Father, when they were alive, you
wanted to disown them. Now it is a bit late for punishment.”
”I lost my children.”
”You still have us.”
Sieglinde agreed.
“They are right, Alex. Don’t spill innocent blood.”
She tried to calm him down by walking up to him and caressing his arm.
“I am the king. My city shall not go unpunished for destroying my family.”
Alex walked out, leaving the assembled behind.
That next week he went on with his plans against his family’s wishes.

Saturday – March 29th 1427

The army left to guard the city was sent into town with one hundred blocks of death to enchain any hundred people they could find as revenge for his children’s death. The entire family had found that Alex changed that day. Belinda urged her father not to do this, but he urged her to keep quiet. He would not admit that he was sorry never to have said good bye to Patrick and Morgana. Sieglinde slept in same room as her husband, but they didn’t speak to each other any more.

Saturday, April 5th, 1427 A.D.

The one hundred corpses were left in their blocks until a week after imprisonment as warning. Most of them had died within three days. There were tales of screams and wails that went on through the night. By Thursday night no scream were heard. Alexander was called The New Adnicul.

Sunday – April 11th 1427

That Sunday, Alex spent in the chapel praying. He was worried that no one came in and asked how he was. It seemed even Belinda was shocked at her father’s behavior. They had not really spoke since that day in the throne room almost two weeks ago. He missed her.
He had spilled innocent blood, certainly. But what was he to do? Not care that his children had died? That would not have been right. He looked up at the statue of St. Michael. It was holding a sword in the right hand and a rose in the left.
”Where are you when we need you, Michael?”
The door to the chapel opened. He looked behind him. It was Belinda.
With soft steps she walked up and kneeled at the front bench beside her father.
Alex looked to his side and then back at Michael.
The two did not know what to say to each other.
“I swore to hate you forever. But I was just as angry as you.”
Alexander looked up at the picture of Jesus above the altar. He was stretching out his hands and his face was shining.
“I can understand what is happening to us, Belinda.”
Belinda leaned over and put her head at her father’s shoulder.
“I need you.”
Belinda embraced him.
“I need you, too. I know that we need each other.”
Alex sighed. Memories came flooding back. Memories of how it had been. Picnics on hills, feasts in the Grand Hall, wedding in the city. He looked up at Michael.
“Help us, Michael. Please help us.”
Alexander had fought fire with fire.
He was hated by his country. There was no help to be found, not yet.

Thursday, May 1st, 1427 A.D.

Erica had drifted off the last six weeks or so since the incident. She spent all her time in bed. She had not drunken any liquids, not even water and not eaten any foods.
She had not had any will to do anything but sleep, so it was obvious that her life was over.
Ellie and Maria spent most of their time at home trying to cheer her up, but there was nothing that possibly could. She could just remember those faces in the river.
“There is a curse about, it’s roaming the countryside, there is a storm a-coming.”
The family sat around the large wooden table in the Grand Hall eating, when Erica came in that day. Bantrard stopped playing and let his lute sink to the floor. The family looked up. Erica, dressed only in a nightgown, stood in the doorway and watched them as they ate.
Then she slowly walked up to Alexander, who had seemed to have lost all his sense of direction. On bare feet she walked up to the king, her former beautiful doll like Hispanic face now haggard. She leaned across the mid table where he was sitting and looked into his eyes. There were rings under her eyes.
”You will die along with this country. You have signed your own death warrant, Alexander. This country will die.”
Maria stood up and walked to Erica.
“Dearest, go put some clothes on. We will go for a walk.”
Erica shoved Maria away and spat on the floor.
“I’ve lost my husband and now my son is lost.”
Sieglinde stood up, putting her cup down. “What? Lance is gone?”
Maria shook her head. “I sent Fabian and him out with Henry for a walk. They are fine.”
“That was this morning. They are not back yet.” Erica took a step closer toward Maria and spit on her. Maria winced and Erica could see the hand of her counterpart trembling. “They are going to die and it is your fault, you cow.” In a reflex, Maria raised her hand and slapped Erica.
“What is with you? What have I done? We have all lost someone dear to us.”
Geena and Rolf came in.
“Is she up again?”
Erica turned around and at once she was a new person.
She crouched over and ran to Rolf, almost on all fours.
“Oh, please, Rolf. Rolf, please. Find my son.”
Rolf grabbed her by the shoulders.
”I did as you told me, Erica. I searched the castle. They are not here.”
Sieglinde sat down and looked at Alex. “You knew about this.”
“I was sworn to secrecy.”
”They are your grandchildren. They are lost somewhere on the grounds. They have never done this before.”
”I didn’t want to worry you all. Rolf was going to look.”
Sieglinde stood up again, taking her wine with her.
“So, you searched the palace?”
Rolf nodded. “I searched the two bottom floors. Geena searched the third and Theo searched the fourth.”
”Has someone searched the attic?”
”No.”
Sieglinde turned around and confronted the family. “Who wants to find our grandchildren?”
Everyone but Bantrard stood up and walked out.
A search party was formed that again checked until the evening if the two boys could be found. They were no where. Torches were lit and almost everyone, including Bantrard, went out to look. Traditionally, Bantrard’s orchestra all lived in town. But even they were called in to look for the children. Roberta, the soprano that Patrick had been sleeping with, had disappeared all together after the incident around the ides of March. She was no where to be found. Belinda stayed home and read Alfie stories. It was obvious that the child was very distraught. His playmates were gone.
“Where are my friends?”
”I don’t know, Alfie. I don’t know.”
It was midnight when all of them, including the king, returned to the palace. The boys were nowhere to be found.
That night was a sleepless night for everyone.

Sunday May 11th 1427

Erica had all sense of direction.
She claimed to see visions of hell.
She talked of a pit, where the bottomless dungeons swallowed you forever.
That morning, she had been walking the pastures and somehow ended up by the waterfall.
No one really knew how, but that day she fell into the pond and was found toward evening floating upside down in the water. She was buried the following week. The memorial chapel was a crowded place for the dead.

Friday August 29th 1427

Sieglinde had been in the church for an hour now. Light was streaming in through the open rose windows and there was a freshness to the air in here. She had asked Bernardus Paul, who had been in the palace anyway to take care of some paper-work and was holding a seminar for young priests at Iuventus, to light candles all over and spread incense. The music from Bantrard’s harmonium filled the entire place with sound.
She was just very bitter about the fact that this summer people had begun to reject her and ignore the fact that she was still the queen of the country.
It was Sunday and mass had been celebrated at nine as usual this time of year. They had dined in utter silence, but Maria broke into tears and was taken to bed and given some wine to soothe herself with. She had taken a walk with Belinda and Alfred yesterday. And he had giggled as they all tickled him in the grass. He was being taught to read and write and paint now along with riding and his curiosity only grew as he grew older. He had just turned four last Sunday and had enjoyed being celebrated, but nothing was as before. Iuventus was the first post of the haunted kingdom.
Alex had not made it home in time for his birthday. He was still at the Danish Channel, trying to find a solution for the savagely ruined harbor. Ulfaas was impossible, so the messages from the king read. What was worse was that the rumor of Alexander’s block punishment in March had spread across the nation and now people were very skeptical toward the king. Nothing he said was good enough. He was no longer popular.
The fact that Lance, Fabian and Henry had just disappear out if sight in May was devastating Sieglinde. She had always tried to be practical, see all affairs in the eyes of reality. But the amount of damage her adopted country was experiencing was too unreal. She rarely alone sat in the chapel and prayed. Today, she did.
Sieglinde held a rosary in her hand. She looked down on it, crying, and a silvery tear dropped on the beads.
"Bantrard ..."
The man stopped playing his harmonium. "Yes , your majesty !"
"You can go home now, friend! You need some rest ..."
"As you wish. Good day, your majesty!"
"A very good day to you!"
There were rows of seats that stood next to the octagonal stone pillars with coats of arms of important families of the country. On each side of the altar were statues of Gabriel and Michael on the left and Peter and Paul on the right. Sieglinde remembered how full this church used to be in earlier times. Today, there had been nine people, including the Archbishop.
At the left side of the church, in the left aisle were small chapels reserved for three graves, Sieglinde's, Alexander's and Belinda's, at the end. Sieglinde had always been against reserving places for her own grave and let alone for some child who had not been born yet. But now she was beginning to see why. People were dying fast. Belinda had never known that the one closest to the door was meant for her when she once parted company with life.
“God, I hope nothing happens to her” Sieglinde silently told herself, surprised at the sound of her own voice echoing softly in the chapel.
Beyond that was a closed door leading to a half open house by the name of the memorial chapel. It was always a peaceful place. It was obvious to anyone that the queen needed to be alone. She was rarely disturbed. When she was required to assist Belinda, Steven and Zedrick in their throne room work for Alexander’s benefit, she did. But Sieglinde knew as well as they that she felt that her time as reigned ruler had to be given over to the young. She often gave advice. But the last half year she had lost interest in a country so torn apart. Her prayers would help. What worried Sieglinde was that Belinda did not show any interest in religion any more.
Sieglinde walked into that space now. She needed that place for reflection.
Rolf had not cleaned it up, so through the open windows leaves had flown in onto the sarcophaguses. There was Queen Lucia's mother, Baroness Luisa Zarzuela y Imargues, whose hardnosed critique of the Prosperanian regime for just annexing parts of Hispania was legendary and renowned. But still she became such a friend of the family that she herself chose to buried here.
There was Gertrude's grandfather, Lieutenant Erick Silverstatt, whose love of children made him open a hospital for children outside Clurafar was still existed today.
There was Sieglinde own cousin who had died in 1409, two years before the dreadful kidnapping, outside the capital of Margetania, supposedly by a Nocturanian band of raiders. And there was Erica and her child and a memorial stone for the disappeared children and their dog. Next to it Morgana Winsletenna and then Patrick, Patricia and Richard.
The light that appear over Erica’s grave at first made Sieglinde jump, blinding her eyes. Soon enough, she saw that it had white wings that flapped slowly sort of like the winds of a gigantic dove. It was androgynous and had yellow, flaming hair. She should've been afraid, but was not.
Nothing else existed. Time stopped.
"Hello, Sieglinde!"
The creature spoke with a deep voice whose soul seemed endless and whose timbre seemed richer than wine and more eternal than mother nature, the most compact and lively sea of spirituality she had come across.
"My name is Michael."
Sieglinde dropped down on her knees, hurt them but didn't care, slapped both hands on her mouth and let out a wide-eyed muffled scream of disbelief. The angel touched her knees and stopped the blood, caressed her cheek and kept on speaking.
"I have something important to say to you ..."
Sieglinde stuttered . "Who are you?"
“Who do you think I am?”
“You look like an angel.”
The angel nodded, smiling gently, closing its eyes.
"And ... and ... and ... you ... come to ... me?“
The angel laughed in such a way that made Sieglinde, in spite of her troubles, out of instinct laugh, albeit only letting out a nervous chuckle. "Remember, Sieglinde, that you are important to us." The archangel spread its wings and nodded to her. “You have a firm hand.”
She looked at her hands.
The angel smiled.
”I am not speaking of that. I am speaking of your soul. You do not fall for temptation.”
Sieglinde kneeled down at the angel's feet. "No need for that." She started to cry. "Stand up, child, and listen to me..." She looked up, like a Mary Magdalene to Jesus with widely desperate and exultingly adoring eyes. Michael had seen that look before for it was the same soul looking at him as so many years back. She stood up. The archangel spoke: "I come to warn you. This is more than an earthly war, my queen. This is a divine feud.“
“I don't understand ..."
"Then I shall enlighten you.”
She nodded.
“You are all in danger of losing everything.”
The Prosperanian Queen gently listened walking slowly next to an archangel among the graves like next to an old friend. Michael told her everything. The Morning Star and The Evening Star. The first one, Lucifer, plucked down as a pioneer passing the test and growing up and the latter, Michael, joining him as best blood brother.
He told her of how Lucifer could not be a brother among brothers and felt neglected by God and Michael and how alienation caught his vanity and how it lead to God's separation of the Evil from the Good but how Lucifer had found its diamond in the original cave and misused it to separate himself and kill his Good side and how it was now lying waiting for a solution in that cave.
He told her of the duel, the millennial imprisonment and the denomination of Lucifer. He told her of Adam and Eve and Rebecca and of Lucifer's empire in Hell, of his confrontations with Jesus. And he told her that God had split evolution into separate realities just to exclude Lucifer from the one. He told her that things were quite different here because Lucifer could actually intervene behind the scenes in the reality where Sieglinde did not live.
More dangerous in a way was that bad and good was in everyone. Medatlantia was Europe there and Prosperania was called The Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality, reigned by the Habsburgs. Margetania was Poland, Neapolonian Italy. But medicine was not homeopathic and life was shorter because a lack of roman infrastructure. Infrastructure was as bad as hygiene.
He told her how the devil's reentrance into Prosperania had been dated 1106 A.D, when Prince John broke away from the Wandiffian Militia. He told her that Lucinda was Lucifer's last try to gain control over the alternate realities. This was the last feud between the original brothers and Alexander and Lucinda were actually their advocates over here.
"Most importantly, I am here to tell you two things to save you. You are all in grave danger of losing life as well as land. Your country is dying. First of all, always look into your own light. Never let that light disappear. Let your own light guide you. Second, follow your intuition. Don’t let temptation crush you like it did Morgana and Patrick." The angel smiled bitter sweetly. “I leave you now and send you all God's blessings. I shall return."
They embraced and the angel floated back up.
Sieglinde stood alone in the chapel of the ancestors, hearing the calm summer wind whine and wail past the corners and the leaves rustle, moving slowly across the graves.
Her expression was one as vacant as the emptiness of the forest beyond the chapel and her mind could just not grasp fully what St. Michael had just said. She was part of a divine feud.
As she walked through the church some minutes later, she was still thinking about the angel's words.
“I have to tell Belinda!”
As she opened the door she was ready to turn right into the main hall of Iuventus with its mahogany stairs and although she wanted to she could not for the beast was there. The creature was as large as the other one. But it wore horns and had a tail. It stretched out its tongue, playfully flicking it at her like a snake waiting to gulp down a newfound victim.
"Hello, Sieglinde!"
Petrified, the Prosperanian Queen backed against the door and bump into it.
The creature slowly approached her and there was nothing she could do but wait to die or wait to breathe or wait to hope. And on her neck the creature breathed a silence, giving the Queen her long awaited message of eventual sleep.

Danehamn Harbor – Saturday, September 6th 1427

Alexander was in his tent with Ulfaas. They had now been here a month now. A large piece of parchment was laid out upon the table, showing them how the losses of the war up north and how the budget could be refilled to rebuild the area. The two men had contemplated for almost an hour now what strategic move would be best to rebuild the harbor.
Alexander knew that his country was dying and in the back of all their heads a demon was prowling. "One for the weapon..." Outside the tent, they now heard galloping hooves approaching. There was a skidding of a horse and the stallion, for it was a stallion, neighed. The man stepped off the horse and tied it to a tree. The two men at the table did not turn around when the man came in. He just stood there for a while and waited. Then Alexander noticed the patient silence behind him and turned around. He smiled, although the smile was vacant, sleepless and bitter.
"Theo, my boy!" He had not seen the boy for three weeks now. He had been with his mother in Clurafar on stand-by if anything came up. Apparently something had. "One day I will repay you for all your traveling." Theo noticed how old the king looked. Bags under the eyes, beard half-gray now, a bitter expression in his eyes, uncombed hair. Ulfaas stood beside him, sad, saying nothing. His shirt was open and he looked old, rugged and melancholy. Sweat was running down his chest. It was unbearably hot.
Theo knelt down on his right knee, took his sword and put it in front of him, head down. Alexander walked up, put his hand on his tired head and said: "Theo, what is the matter?“
Theo stood up and his eyes were wide now. He looked worried. "Your majesty ... I have rode many days and nights to tell you this. I have lived on grass just to get you this message ..."
The two most powerful men in Prosperania looked at each other and laughed. It was the first time they had laughed in a month. Alexander patted Theo on the shoulder. "Thank you. I needed that. What is the message?"
Theo sighed. "You will choke on your laugh when hearing this, your noble majesty." Theo's voice was trembling. Alexander looked at his hand. It was shaking. Theo's lip was trembling and a tear was trickling down his cheek.
"Good God, Theo. Come and sit down."
Theo shook his head and swallowed.
"The Queen, your majesty ..."
"What about her?" Steven intervened.
"She has had an accident."
Ulfaas and Alex gave each other a petrified look. “What?”
"Apparently, someone visited her in the Chapel of the Ancestors and told her something she should not have known for ..." Theo stopped. Then he leaned forward. "Your majesty, she has lost her speech." Theo looked down. He shook his head. "What is worse, that someone must have done awful things to her. We found her outside the church. A trace of blood lead from the Chapel to the door. The person could not have passed the entire crowd that was gathered in front of the main entrance, but did. We know not who it was, your majesty." There was another pause. "But the person ... mutilated her."
Alexander started shaking Theo. "In what way, Theo?"
"By deriving her from the possibility of speech." Theo looked down again. "She can't speak and she will not write to us what happened. Clear is that something happened that shocked her. And we both know that she is not easily scared." Alex answered not with words but with a silent nodding confirmation. "She requests you. It is all she does all day."
"Theo. In what way did this individual derive her from speaking?“
"Your majesty. All the blood. This person wanted to shut her up completely. That is why we believe someone told her something she should not have known. So the person, whoever it was, came as an answer to that other one who must’ve told a secret ..."
"Theo, my boy. What did the person do to her?"
"He cut off Queen Sieglinde's tongue ..."

Sunday September 14th 1427

There was a look in Sieglinde’s that spoke to Alexander of great secrets. She wanted to write words on a parchment. When she held a feather the writing on the paper was just too scratchy to decrypt. He had been sitting by her side for the entire day and just read to her. Belinda was kneeling at her mother’s feet. Frequently, when Alexander looked at her she was crying. Steven came in now and then with Zedrick or with Alfie to cheer them up. Rolf and Geena were trying to cheer the boy up.
Alexander tried not to cry. Bernardus Paul was in the palace and was ready to give his last blessings. There was a look Sieglinde’s face that spoke to Alexander about great pain. Her tongue was not she could not speak. Her hands were shaking and she could not write. Her wounds were deep and she could not stand up. Her eyes were clouded and she could not blink.
Alex would speak to her and read to her and sing to her.
They embraced frequently and the kissed frequently, but the tears mixed with the blood on her lips that kept on dripping from her mouth and Henricus Balthazar had to be called from his provisory room next door. At sundown, Sieglinde died in her husband's arms after listening to her husband sing her a song, a smile on her lovely lips and a glow in her eyes. She gave up the ghost and slipped gently into sleep. Alex refused to leave the room and fell asleep embracing his wife’s dead body.

Wednesday September 17th 1427

The entire week, Alexander had refused to leave his wife’s side, screaming at anyone who came to his side to take her away. That day, Sieglinde was buried in her own side chapel at Iuventus. Alfie put a flower on the casket and slowly and calmly the family walked out, tired and melancholy, without any knowledge about the truth.


Monday October 13th 1427

The third plague was due and the people that hadn’t died from the other plagues would certainly die from this one. It was spreading everywhere and was related to the sickness that Nomed had cured. But the blisters everywhere made everyone suffer terribly. Eleonora and Marcus still were the sanest couple around and had permanently moved to Iuventus. Belinda and Steven never left each other, helping Alex whenever possible. Maria and Martin had absolutely nothing in common. Their differences inspiring quarrel after quarrel. That day, Belinda had cried all through the meetings with her father. She saw his pain. She also saw how Steven had lost all sense of direction. She saw how her son was becoming numb and rejected everything that she did. She knew that Ulfaas was on his way here to talk with the king about the developments of the rebuilding of the harbor. The only problem was that no one really believed that the harbor could be rebuilt, for whom. There was no war, but the population seemed to be disintegrating. There was no contact with other countries anymore. Mustafus had disappeared from the scene entirely. Walter? No one knew where he had gone. Cretan had not sent a message to the castle for a month. There was no contact between anyone anymore. In the evening, she sat down by her desk in her study. She found the old book from 1411 there and knew she had not written in it since then. She could not believe that her mother was dead. She felt she could not be alone and yet she had to be. She felt all these events to be ludicrously untrue and yet they were happening to her. How could that be? How could her life be turning out to become such a disaster? She sobbed as she lifted her feather-pen, trying to find words to write, letters to fill the empty page with, hoping that they would soothe the pain and leave some happiness in her soul. Tears streaming down her cheeks, sobs attacking her bosom, she wrote the following poem in bright red ink. All the time she was blaming herself for becoming so powerless to change the course of events in her life.

“Do we compose the music of our lives?
Are we just notes on a page?
Are we the stars in the skies
Or animals in a cage?
Is our spirit, our tormented inner bird,
Just like the early morning breeze,
An inner country, like in tales we’ve heard,
A kingdom that will rise from wounded knees?
The ghosts that haunt our realm,
As anonymous as what our soul never hears,
Are they the apocalyptic riders
That give us our daily new fears?
Where do we find the answers?
Where do we find the serene
Inside angelic springtime
In the heart of what a family can mean?
Will I ever be able to embrace him
Tell him all will be fine?
Will I ever take myself further
Than what is beyond me and mine?”


As Ulfaas and his followers traveled through the land from Danehamn they encountered only beggars and whores, poor people lying by the side of the road, crying. Yes, Prosperania was now Poverania, the land of poverty. The winner had lost.

Friday October 17th 1427

Mercutio shifted from hoof to hoof and it seemed that Timothy did the same.
Steven still stayed with his principal of having different horses assigned to his name as the case allowed. This was a black stallion named Jupiter.
The ghostly atmosphere here was astonishing.
The three of them could recall the vibrancy that this marketplace seemed to have.
“What is this?”
There was an autumn wind here that ruffled their hair and seemed to tell them that a storm was approaching.
“I have no idea, Alexander!”
”Everyone has disappeared.”
Belinda began trotting toward the side streets.
Empty fruit carts everywhere. Open inn doors with no one inside the inns.
They had met no one on the way over here and it seemed they would not meet any one anywhere else. “The haunted kingdom.”
Alex looked at his daughter.
“What did you say?”
She looked at him and shook her head.
“I said the haunted kingdom. This is Lucinda’s haunted kingdom. We are living in what could be called the haunted kingdom.”
That afternoon, after riding most everywhere, they headed back to the palace and told the survivors of the ghost town that Clurafar had become.

Saturday November 1st 1427

The country of Prosperania was a ghost-land now and leaves were scattered across the countryside. Garbage lay unattended in corners and criminals roamed the countryside raiding the shops and farms.
The incidents surrounding Maria’s death were as strange as they were uncomfortable.
That evening shortly after midnight, unbearable screams were heard from the woods. It had sounded like Maria. But they could not find anything. Maria was not in her bed. Martin was in tears.
Next morning a disastrous sight met their eyes. Maria was nailed upside down to the love-tree with its royal nuptial initials. Her body was all bloody and her eyes were wide open. Her arms were nailed to the branches and her feet spread around the tree. There was a note pinned to her stomach, saying: "Love-tree-crucifixion ... By Lucinda!"
That same evening Martin hung himself from the fireplace in the Grand Hall.


Friday November 7th 1427

“What will it be like when you love me?” Steven looked over at Belinda, her hands clutching the sandstone of the balcony in front of her. The sun was up but it did not shine. There were too many grey clouds in front of it. She looked at Steven. “Oh, I was just singing an old song.”
Steven embraced his wife.
“Steven?”
”Yes, dear?”
She started sobbing and turned to him, her eyes wide and the fear in them evident.
“Why are we all dying?”
Steven looked up at her, surprised. “What?”
“We are living in a dead zone. This is not the land I know. I see no point in living, when there are no people to govern. What are we? We are lone travelers in a forsaken land.”
“There is always hope” Steven whispered.
”But people keep disappearing. Out of sight. Will I disappear?”
Steven shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Where do they go?”
He held her tight. “To a better place.”
She remembered how Nomed so often just had disappeared out of sight and how repeatedly she had felt like asking him who he really was but never ever done so. Had she trusted him? No. She had never admitted it, not even to herself, but she had never trusted him. Then why had then given him the permission to come in to their house, eat their food and cure their ailments. She had seen so Many people just vanish and Belinda Winsletenna was wondering who would be next. “I hope you are right” Belinda shrugged her shoulders and said. “But this is not like death. It is like a zone between the living and the dead. It is unreal.” With these words, Belinda put her head against her husband’s chest, hoping one day to awaken. All she knew was that disaster was coming her way and she had no way of stopping it from rolling over her, over Belinda’s broken heart.


CHAPTER THREE

BELINDA'S BROKEN HEART


Wednesday, December 24th, 1427 A.D.
Rumzil underground territory. Near Yambalah, Forest of Western Callenia,

The short creatures were skittering about preparing their sacrifice. A young woman of 29, dressed in a white nightgown, was tied to a large oily pole whose top was stuck into the stone cave-roof and stuck into the dirt floor. She was on a small hill and all around her were the creatures setting small mounds of sticks at the foot of the hill on fire. All in all there were as many mounds as there were fangs in their individual mouths. The hill itself was a mass of faces all stuck into the gravel. The eyes were wide-open and their mouths screaming. She wanted to shout, but couldn't. So all she did was watch, the silver-blue radiance of her iris turning ice-cold and her peachy complexion turning pale.
Oleana von Ochsenskjöld, Zedrick Ronkenshire’s estranged daughter, had disappeared from Baron Walter's castle and the Baron had been desperate. He had sent a search team out to find her, but had found nothing but gypsies and witches in the forest. The gypsies had in their council decided to hand the quiet girl over to the Rumzils. They disliked the Baron and had always done so because he was not afraid of them at all. This was revenge.
So here was Oleana, dressed in nothing but a nightgown about to become a sacrifice. She had heard of these creatures. A tear trickled down from the right wide-open eye-white. One petrified tear.
There were on-hundred Rumzils all in all and she was this year's victim. Soon, she would be down in the ground munched by a thousand small of the Rumzils termites for what would maybe last ten years.
The constantly smiling fat little creatures with the brown teeth and the large narrow eyes jumped about lighting the fires. Right opposite Oleana on the cave wall was a picture of the devil stepping on a cross. Oleana had by her mother been brought up to believe blasphemy was the worst thing anyone could be guilty to. But these creatures were already in hell.
Now the creatures seemed to be ready. They stopped and formed a circle around her and slowly walked up the hill, each carrying a torch that they had lit with the help of one passed around to light all just before under complete silence. Then, half way up, they stopped. Out of the dirt then, suddenly, crawled a bigger Rumzil who was more frightening than the rest. He was fatter and had more teeth. His wide little body mirrored his head and his eyes must've had at least three different irises each peering and circling about. His smile was one of death and decay.
Once out of the ground, Oleana saw that he was carrying something in his hands. It was a tray with a head on it. From here it was virtually impossible to see who this was, but in any case Oleana , eyes still wide open , vomited over her dress and started crying . She then looked up, face all red. The head was surrounded by what seemed to be lettuce and tomatoes by this smiling hundred brown fanged monster. The other Rumzils nodded slowly and began to chant their leader’s name: "Urban! Urban! Urban!" and some were laughing, no, cackling would be a better word. Then she saw who it was. And all the bottled up fear came out in loud cataclysm. She screamed a thousand screams, her eyes fixed on her son's head on the plate, bashing her head bloody against the oily pole. At once the Rumzils, who fed on fear, started screaming with her in chorus and jumping up and about, dancing in perverse glee, which made Oleana scream even more .What she did not know was that she had another head coming.
The Rumzils had succeeded in grabbing this girl from the real world and drawing her into the haunted kingdom and devouring her inside the bowels outside the gates of hell.

Friday, January 16th, 1428 A.D

Alexander had just the same attitude as everyone here. Seeing Ellie and Marcus hanging from the chandelier in such a holy place had made him vomit. He now prayed by the bedside. His children were in yet unmarked coffins in the memorial chapel. They were yet uncarved for who would carve them?
All the sculptors and stone layers were gone. The question that actually bothered everyone more than anything else was ‘how had the couple gotten up that far to tie the ropes around the stone hooks above the lamp?’ They had hung there on each side, with their head lolled to the side, their mouth open and their tongues out, eyes dead and open. Almost four weeks later, Alexander was still awake nights, sitting in his bed and screaming into his people and almost howling at the moon, with one inquiry incessantly coming back: why them? They had always been a team, calm and cool, almost suave and at least he would’ve expected them to take themselves enough in control to stick together when times got a bit harder. How had they come up there? Belinda had to be calmed down with glasses of wine and herbal oils before she finally could find enough peace to lie down.
The devil does not come expectedly. And when he does he is welcomed like a friend ... and then leaves his rubbish behind him like useless waste. He knew very well that the drinking of the potion had been the start of all the pain and horror. The plagues had not commenced before the potion had put them to sleep. When they awoke the young bon viveur was gone. Nomed. What was in that name? There was something there, something that he could not quite place. The thought was there on his tongue, but it refused to present itself. There was hope there, but then it disappeared. He knew that Nomed was not what he seemed, but what was the secret. What was in that name. Nomed Snewkawa. Nomed. He repeated that name over and over, as if he was trying to find the meaning in a riddle. What was in that name? Why did the awakening of the monster commence the fire?
Snekawa was Lucinda, the awakened fiend.
What was stranger was the messengers that had returned over the course of the last one and a half years? They had asked around everywhere and even checked with people from the Mongolian Emperor's court. No one had ever heard of Nomed before he arrived at Iuventus. What scared Alex most was that he of all people, who was so dutiful, never ever thought of checking his records. He, too, included in this group. He had lived with them for two years and shared everything with them at all times.
Who had killed his wife and why? Nomed on a secret return to the palace? No. His anger from the first weeks had subsided, but now there was that fear there. Something was amiss, something new and unknown that somehow had some hope and faith in there. He had held her in his arms when she died and rocked her back and forth for a whole day after that. His pain had known no end. He remembered his dream from before the scandal at the senator courtyard. He remembered Patricia's sweet smile as a child.
She had written him a poem two months before she was beaten to death in the capital:

May God’s path rise to meet you,
May God’s moon grant you grace,
May God’s love rise to greet you,
May God’s sun shine down on your face,.
I hope God blesses this country
For I always bless my pride,
I always know that the favours
Of the Lord reach my inside
But when I look so sad at the empire
I see a kingdom in pain
I see the haunted reality
I see it again and again
I am hoping that my faults
Will be forgiven in that other place
May the road rise to meet you,
And shine down on your beautiful face.

As he held the poem in his hand, written with Patty's neat hand, probably thought of even then in her last tumultuous and confused months, a tear fell upon one of the words and muddled up the ink of the word … reality…
And as King Alexander looked up to the sky that day, he saw a greyness that seemed to conflict with every ounce of reality in him. The always black bearded and black-haired man was now old and grey and had no hope in life at all. Everyone seemed to be dead. That was unreal if anything.
Alexander found himself longing for that hurting knee. It had been a sign of reality.
There was nothing real about this world and Alexander hated every bit of it. He stood up, walked away from the grave and strolled home.


Tuesday, February 1st 1428

It was cold in the chapel, very, very cold. And yet, Alexander sat there in his fur coat wagging to and fro in front of Sieglinde’s marble coffin. It was a large fox fur coat that had been given to him a long time ago by Henricus Balthazar at the time when the physician worked at the castle.
The blustery weather raged around him with snow entering his eyes and settling down on his red fur hat. His greying beard had ice popsicles hanging down from it.
For around forty minutes now he had watched the casket that had been crafted by professional craftsmen in town in the beginning of the decade along with his own coffin. At the time, Alexander had found it superfluous to create coffins when he still was so alive and well. Sieglinde had insisted, saying that it was good to be on the safe side with things of that kind.
The queen was in there and she was rotting, her flesh and bones falling to bits.
Alexander looked up at the inscription. ‘Beloved Mother, Radiant Queen, Trusted Advisor, Matron of the Empire, Friend’ were the words. These words on the casket were chosen by the woman herself and now she was in a coffin that she herself had designed.
Alexander’s lower lip trembled. His feet were hurting and his eyes were red and his skin was sore from the cold. A branch was being thrown back and forth by his feet. There was nothing that could take him away from his wife’s grave.
He glanced into the chapel and saw the warmer chapel and how wonderful it would be to be in there and pray. He could not go in there. Sieglinde was not there.
How had they met? How? She had been on a stately visit with her mother to the nation and there had not even been a plan to have them get married. In fact, it was even planned by King Bertrand to have Prince Alexander marry a Princess from the house of the O’Conners in Dublin West. However, when Alexander met Sieglinde there was no doubt that she would be the one that he wanted to live and die with. He always thought he would be the first one to transcend into the other world. It made him sad to realize that he was alive to see his own wife die.
Was she really and truly dead? If not, where was she?
Somewhere in his heart he wanted to believe the idea that this was some kind of crazy illusion just created for him. If course, how otherwise could he explain the fact that the entire world around him was crumbling to pieces?
He heard a door squeak out in the church.
He looked up to see who it was.
It was Belinda. She peaked in through the door and discovered her father sitting on the sandstone floor in the sepulchre chapel. She sighed and shook her head, deciding promptly to rush to her father’s aid in order to convince him to come with her. Belinda had been somewhat distraught up until now. She had looked almost everywhere for her father. Everywhere except for the most obvious place.
She stopped before the three small steps down to the memorial sepulchre of the Winsletenna family. There was a long pause as the two family members looked at each other. They both wondered what to say. Belinda took a few steps down toward her father and stopped near the casket.
“Father” she finally said. She had a hoarse throat and her cold did not get better by the fact that she was out here. “You must come with me. You will die out here.”
Alexander chuckled. It was a melancholy and very gritty cackle. He shivered and his teeth were rattling. “Then let me die. What is there to live for?”
“There is hope on the other side” Belinda answered. “Come now.”
There was long and quite thoughtful pause. Alexander gazed around, first at Sieglinde’s casket, then at the trees outside, then at his own hands and finally at his own daughter.
“What other side?” Alexander looked at Belinda and hoped she would answer him. This was not a leader. This was a worried man with nothing but hectic trouble inside his mind. “What do you mean?”
Belinda sighed, wanting her father to stop asking question and come before he froze to pieces in the snow. “Father, please. Don’t ask questions. There are things I have to tell you.”
He shook his head.
Belinda rushed up to him and took him under the arms. She lifted him by his arms and caressed his hair. “Please come with me. I know that you do not leave mother’s grave, but you will never bring her back by not leaving her. She doesn’t want you to die.”
Alexander looked down. Belinda pleaded with him to understand her. He could not be reached.
“Father” she said sternly. “You must live. You have to fight Lucinda.”
Alexander looked up at his daughter. “Why?” His gaze was confused.
“Come with me.”
After a hard convincing both of them finally walked out of the church and out to the side entrance wing. As they walked up the staircase to the first landing, Belinda noticed how much her father shivered.
The entered the Alexander Room. It had been well heated just as she had ordered. A bronze kettle of fresh soup was bubbled over the open flames.
Alexander sat down on the gilded ebony chair and stared into the flames. He clutched his fur coat and looked into the fireplace as if the answer to all his problems lay in there. Belinda took the ladle and poured in some hot vegetable soup from the bronze kettle into the wooden bowl. She gave it to her father and he ate the whole bowl very slowly. They spoke only with thoughts and gestures. The fire held them a long elegy of peace.
When the bowl was empty, the King put the bowl and spoon away onto a nearby table.
For a long while nothing was said. Slowly, Alexander began to warm up. The bloodshot eyes were healed and the skin turned a healthy pale light pink. Belinda had no idea what to say.
“Father” she finally said. “I understand how you feel. Losing mother is a great loss and especially the way she went was a great disaster. We don’t know who did it. We have our own ideas, but we don’t know.” She took his hand. He looked into the open, jittery fire. The flames looked like tongues licking the wall. Alexander was in another world. “I tried to kill myself as well.”
That woke the King up. There was a look of surprise in his countenance. Belinda smiled and closed her eyes, nodding. “Yes, I know. Bad girl.”
Alexander shook his head. “No” he said, very softly. “No, not bad girl”
“It passed very quickly” she responded, now also looking into the flames like her father and hoping, just as him, to find the answer there inside the flames. They saw the seven levels of hell in that fireplace. Wasteland upon wasteland of murderous, bloodthirsty hunger was present in that fire and yet there was a comforting peace in that fire. It was as if the calm of all the eternal love in the planets of the cosmos lay within the heat of the embrace of that element. “I tried my best to get over the fact that our country is deteriorating, but I couldn’t. The rope wouldn’t hold and I spent the night crying. Alfred was my only friend.” She looked out into the blistery air and sighed. Her gaze tried to differentiate what were the bent optical views of the lead glass and what were the blustery icicles on the window pane. She sighed.
Belinda looked at her father.
“Father, my heart is aching just as much as yours” she finally said. “But mother would want us to go on. She would not want us to leave this place with a whimper. The royalty of the empire never has and we have been attacked numerous times, not only by angry fiends.” She squeezed his hand again. “Father, don’t give up. Don’t be flowery. Take the strength you have and make it a promise to conquer your fear.”
“My fear is not the problem, darling” he said. His eyes would not leave the fire. “There is something wrong with this world.”
Belinda nodded with her eyes still fixed on the fire. “I know.”
“Sweetie, I think Lucinda has made us fall asleep on that table in the Grand Hall on the 23rd of September 1425 and that she eliminates everyone in this country until she has me alone. I know that she knows that she wants me alone. God only know, honey, where you all go once you die. Perhaps to a horrid place or to a better one, it is all open right now. I know that Nomed was Lucinda. His name spelled the demon awakens backward only because we were to fall asleep. I should have listened to you.”
“Father” Belinda said. “You were …”
“No” he said. “You were right. You knew all the time what he was. A fake, a fraud, a phoney, that is all he was.” Alexander chuckled bitterly. “I should’ve known that he was a liar when I heard what his name spelled backward. It was a typical Lucinda joke. She made us fall asleep by the spell of a man named the awakened demon. That was all Lucinda’s work.”
Belinda pulled up her oak chair a foot closer to her father’s throne and embraced his throat with her hands. It was a loving gesture. It was also a controlling gesture.
“Father” she whispered as if she was afraid that someone world hear her. The only thing audible except her whisper were the cracklings of the wood in the fireplace. “Whatever is waiting for us on the other side, we will make it through healthy and whole. You will have to stay here and fight. There might also be a chance that you yourself will have to venture out to find Lucinda. I suppose that she wants you to duel her. I suppose that this is all a way to get you alone.”
“I cannot understand how this land could get empty so fast. The world is falling asleep. Everyone is disappearing faster than it seems credible” Alexander whispered back. “That is the only explanation. This world has to be an illusion. It cannot be anything else but an illusion.”
There was suddenly hope in their hearts. They knew that something was wrong and they had spoken what they feared out loud. The wind sang them a song from the outside. It circled the palace and turned the corners and it hugged the sandstone basis of the empire. The winter outside seemed to grow darker, deeper and more ominous by the moment.
Somewhere in the wilderness the wind sounded like the voice of a sibling waiting to let the hyenas of Hades loose upon the sleeping empire.

Monday March 1st 1428

“We are all pretending to be kings and queens. We are all pretending to have a country. No one has been seen or heard of since November of last year. They are all gone. And yet, we sit here and pretend that everything is fine … Where is everyone?”
These were Alexander’s thoughts that day.
Louis Sommerville, who had been gardener for Alex so many years, had been given the permission to retire shortly before the scandal at Madam Zonga’s. For some odd reason, Alex felt guilty that he never said a true goodbye to the man. He was most probably gone forever by the look of things.
Belinda sat with Steven in the sitting room playing chess on the marble set that Sieglinde had given them a year ago, shortly before she died. Steven's dreams had been so extremely violent that he dared not sleep any more. Belinda had to force him to relax for a second.
Alex was in his study working, meeting the executive of the only sickbay near them that still had somebody alive in them. They were mapping out a rejuvenation programme. It was a weak attempt to try to save something that was hopeless. Marcus the messenger and Rolf were baking a cake with Alfred, who tried new recipes. But sometimes Rolf and Geena had to convince him his recipes were a little unusual. For instance, they told him a week ago, cod and haddock do not necessarily mix with cinnamon in a cake made of sugar and plum. Alfred was a bright boy with a shining light. His lack of gastronomically developed expertise was forgivable as a trait.
The Physician Balthazar had died in the castle last week and there was no one in the castle to treat them at all. It was unreal because no matter how many messengers were sent off they never returned. There was nothing to govern. Lucinda kept popping up in the strangest places, scaring the hell out of everyone by looking into windows at night and then disappearing or in the mirror just to vanish when they turned around.
Alexander dreamt about her. But he dreamt about Adnicul as well. In his dream Adnicul of all people was imprisoned in Rigor Mortis and could not come out and Alex was trying to save him. There was something trying to break free in his dream for the clock by Mansicart was there on the mantle piece and twelve strange figures were chasing him, trying to tell him something, pointing at the clock and the handles who pointed at a quarter to eleven for some reason.
He could not understand who they were or what they wanted. There was something important there. But Alex could not understand what.
“We are all pretending to be kings and queens. We are all pretending to have a country. No one has been seen or heard of since November of last year. They are all gone. And yet, we sit here and pretend that everything is fine …Where is everyone?”

Thursday April 22nd 1428

Alexander knew now what this was amounting to. Everyone suspected it. No one spoke of it. No one dared to. This land was dying. Lucinda was behind it, most probably. Some people knew, some people didn’t believe it. Some didn’t suspect it.
Lucinda wanted him to die and die slowly and alone. And he had no chance to defend himself. He had let the devil in, Nomed, and invited the three plagues by drinking the potion. There was no turning back. A part of him still ran around trying to govern something that wanted no governing. That part screamed. The other had accepted it all and wanted death and death as soon as possible to join his ancestors as supreme loser.
Steven and Belinda never left each other’s side, but they never seemed to speak with each other for real. Alfred seemed to be careless about everything and nobody cared that he was.
The eventless month that had been could only be countered by the utter catastrophe that came next. Ultimately, what happened next was pure tragedy.
The day was quiet except for a stroll about the acres of Iuventus.
In fact, it was the most pleasant day in a long time.
It had been a too quiet and happy sunlight to be able to be real.

Friday April 23rd 1428 - Morning

On that morning a young man rode up to the gate of the palace with a large coach with a big black stallion tied to it. He was a man none of them had seen before and he introduced himself as a messenger from the Hispanic army. His name was Luis Gonzaga and needed to speak to a certain Geena Johnstone. He was lead to the palace and told to wait in the Main Hall.
When the round lady came out to see the dashing young Hispanic, he told her that he had news for her and that she might want to sit down. That this first living being they had seen in over a month had arrived at all was a surprise, but in the manner he arrived was equally surprising.
The man was given wine and short-bread and the seven people sat down by the welcoming room table. When Geena heard that her long lost daughter Maren had returned to Clurafar and was alive and well, that there was an explanation for her disappearance, she understood why sitting had been necessary. Luis claimed that Maren had worked at the Hispanic court for the last fourteen years after she had been kidnapped by a team of a team of Gfuhre nomads. She had suffered from amnesia. Her memory returned just last year and that was why she wanted to come back.
Maren had been very apprehensive about returning to the castle after all that she had been through. She had decided to wait by the memorial statue of Simon right outside the palace gates. The man said that he had been assigned by the Hispanic court to come all the way here to bring the girl.
Maren had been away for fifteen years and Geena had given up ever finding her. It had been a Sunday morning when Maren disappeared. Geena was then a widow and very much capable of raising the child on her own. She had been 14 at the time. She would be a young woman of 29 by now.
Alexander, no matter how much he insisted someone come with, finally understood she needed to see Maren herself. Geena could not wait to come and see her daughter.
She was nervous like no one else had been before her or since. Just an hour later, she was gone.
Soon enough, Alexander got worried and thought it had been wrong to send her off alone. Steven and Theo were sent off to search for the old girl. Alex himself rode out only to return telling Belinda and the rest that nothing had been found. Rolf volunteered to ride out and search and did so. He soon returned distraught, claiming to have seen a ghost. He wanted Steven or someone to see for himself and said he would be waiting by the old oak tree where the carriage was standing.
Belinda followed Steven on her horse. He had said she must stay home with Alex and that there was no need for worry. Alfred needed help. Alex was alone in the castle. The king said he must not stay, but Steven insisted he should. Steven was Prince-General and could not forgive himself if the king died.
Belinda rode out against everyone's will an hour later.
And so while Alfred and Alex sat with one of Alfred's favourite books, Hansel and Gretel, reading the part about the breadcrumbs, Belinda rode off to the inscribed old Love-Oak-Tree to see what all this fuss was about.
What met her eyes was pure carnage. No, the carriage had not left the grounds at all the last week. It stood leaning against the tree, its doors and windows were broken. The black horse and its young coachman were nowhere to be seen. But the four corpses that lay scattered about in front of the wagon was a sight that made the angels cry. She fell off the horse Timothy who skittered away and stopped a few meters back. She tried to stand up again, but fell down, running towards what she saw was Steven all bloody, laying around three meters from the coach. She ran up to him and screamed. His eyes had been plucked out and fresh blood was pouring down from the sockets. His legs were spread and his pants were ripped as was his white shirt. The black vest he had had on was two meters away in shreds. All over his body were scars. Belinda fell upon her knees. Her eyes were wide open very much like Oleana's in the face of her Rumzil ridden death. She clawed with bony fingers on the dirt. She put her fingers in her mouth, making her face all dirty and muddy. She shook Steven desperately, calling out his name and screaming. Tears were streaming down her face.
Belinda ripped at her sander coloured hair and howled a cry.
She took another deep breath and screamed: "NOOOOO !"
Geena's body had been cut up in five pieces and they were scattered all over the place. Marcus, or what was left of him, was thrown over the tree. Rolf was probably the worst. His body had been ripped open and his intestant’s spilling out. Belinda, who had eaten two apples before coming here, turned around and vomited, then wiping the vomit mixed tears off her face with a trembling hand.
She breathed in several times in quick spurts of tears. She swallowed hard. She ran across to Timothy, who ran away from her. Belinda fell down and shouted. "Timmy..." She cried. "Ti- ... Ti- ... TIMMY!"
She stood up. Her cheek was smeared with blood and almost blue with blisters. Tears, vomit, blood and dirt blended and formed a reddish grey mixture that ran down toward the old tree.
"TIMMY!" She ran further but fell down again, hitting her head. Blood ran down her face.
Timmy was gone now. God knows only to where he had gone. He had galloped away from her, perhaps to the waterfall, where he almost rode when he took off on his own.
She stood up, under streaming tears and headed for the castle.
When Belinda ran up the mid path a half hour later, bloody, vomit dropping from her cheeks, dirty and in streaming tears, Alexander ran up to her, Alfred closely behind him.
"Mother!" Alfred screamed, also crying. "Mother what is the matter?"
“Lindy... Good God, Lindy. What has happened?"
"Father... Alfie..." She was on her knees now, sobbing. "It's ho- ... horrible." She sobbed some more, grabbing gravel with her hands and letting it run through her fingers. Alex and Alfie embraced her, crying. "All of them ... They are all mutilated. The coach ... Father ... The coach is destroyed. They are all dead. All of them ..." She screamed now, lifting her head in rage. “Someone has butchered the all.”
“Who?” Alexander wept. “What has happened?”
“Steven, Geena, Marcus, Rolf. Butchered” she cried.
Alfred screamed and Belinda crawled to him and embraced him. “Shhh” she said, comforting. “Mommy’s here, Alfie. Mommy’s here.”
Alexander ran to the stables and came out with Mercutio.
Belinda looked behind her and saw him saddling the horse.
“What are you doing?”
”I am going to see for myself what is there.” He kicked the stallion in the side and screamed. Alexander rode off in full gallop to save what could be saved.
Belinda looked into the distance realizing what was happening.
A half hour later, Belinda still with Alfred in her arms, Alexander returned.
He was solemn, he was crying, he was not saying a word.
Belinda was rocking the child to and fro, humming, small tears rolling down both of their cheeks.
Alexander was pressing his hand against his mouth.
Now there were only three. The only three citizens left in the haunted kingdom.


Monday April 26th 1428

Steven, Geena, Rolf, Philip and Theo had been buried in the garden outside the chapel of the ancestors. Alexander cut down the oak tree and the wagon and everything was burnt.
Belinda spent all her time by Steven’s grave in the sepulchre chapel.
Belinda had not wanted to let go of Steven and had even jumped into the grave.
Alex had to pull her up against her will. She had screamed:
"I want to die, Father. Let me! “
“No, I will not let you die. You are all I have.”
”There is no future. Let me ...”
“Don’t jump into the grave with Steven, he had wanted you to carry on your mission.”
”What darned mission? For whom?” she cried by her husband’s grave. “There is no country left to govern. Fine queen I will be. The queen of a haunted land.”
”Your mission is to live. You have important tasks to accomplish.”
”What tasks?”
”Going on is a task important in sufficiency to conquer oblivion’s regard.”

Now she was sleeping and Alfred was with her, but they did nothing but sleep and Alexander still had Belinda’s words ringing in his ears.
Belinda had lost all her zest, all of her fury, all of her passion.
It had gone after he had convinced her to live on.
She might as well have jumped into Steven’s coffin; she would have been just as dead.
She was living her own death.
She did not speak, did not sing, did not love and did nothing but sleep and cry.
She was a woman without a distant sky to look upon and someone whose life had no meaning.

Tuesday May 18th 1428

Four minutes worth of time is all it took to lure the little child to come with her.
Since the day when her husband had been so brutally mutilated, Belinda guarded the little boy like a mother eagle would guard her newborn. She ate and slept and drank and wept and bathed and even did her lavatory duties only in his presence. She would not let him go for an instance.
The little boy, of course, was traumatized beyond belief and completely numb with fear.
He had nothing to say and laughed only very rarely.
Often enough he would sit in his room, Belinda by his side and Alexander sitting by the window, playing with some valuable toy. It was not really playing. He touched it and stroked it and pulled it along the floor whilst mother and grandfather sat still and paralyzed looking out at their haunted kingdom.
It had been Alexander’s idea. They had been so many days inside the palace that they had turned in just as dusty artefacts as the statues in the corners. They saddled Mercutio and Timothy and rode into the capital. What met them that Tuesday morning was a sight that would’ve made the demon’s shiver.
The capital of Clurafar was completely empty. The inns were deserted, the Senatorial forum was vast in its’ solitude and St. Raphael’s Cathedral was a place of God still welcoming believers, but no believers alive to be welcomed in.
Belinda asked where they all had gone and Alexander answered that they probably were asleep in the real world just as they were.
It was early afternoon when they returned to the palace grounds. It was clear now to all of them that this was Lucinda’s illusion. This was not the reality. The question was how to escape from it. They had no plan. Belinda suggested they go up to the hill and overlook the view of the land. There was the place where the best ideas came to their heads.
Alfred, for once, found himself playing and running in grass just like a normal boy of five years of age would. He found no birds in the sky and no bees to chase, but he did find grass and he did find the sun. Belinda watched him closely and new that one of them was next. Either she or Alfred would go next.
“Be prepared, Father” Belinda told her father that day. “You will not leave this illusion. You will have to go on. Somehow, when I am dead, search us. Find us and fight Lucinda. You will be the only left alive in the haunted kingdom.”
It was shortly before dusk when the three family members rode to the waterfall.
They had decided that if they stay only a half hour they would be home before dark.
Alfred had been playing in the grass and reading a parchment about flowers when the woman in a black dress came up to him. She came from behind and whispered into his ear that she had a surprise for him behind that tree. She had fresh cream tart and honey toast with wine nuts there. There were roasted almonds and honey dunked pears in sherry with stained glass candy sprinkled kinderbitz. There were waffles and gooseberry fool cakes and a very large bowl of apple roasted peanuts.
Belinda and Alexander noticed nothing of this. For two minutes the woman in the black and glittery dress talked to Alfred, who willingly followed her behind the tree. In the last minutes of his life, Alfred remembered the bread crumbs and tried to scream.
It was too late. The hand that held him down and crushed his skull in two separate pieces was too strong and soon enough his mutilated body floated up stream toward the mother.
Belinda could not stop screaming and kept on yelling all the way home.
Belinda’s face buried inside the pillow, her eyes felt burning hot and bulging, she spent the night crying in bed. Swollen with pain, Alexander wandered about the palace holding the boy and hoping that the stories that Belinda told him about this being the haunted kingdom was true.
Belinda literally felt how hot the salt water was that protruded from her eyes. She blamed herself for not holding him all the time by the hand.
Alfred was dead and now there were only two left, she and Alexander. She had no will to live. There was no hope at all left for anything.
“My dear son, why did you have to leave me?”
In her hand she held the note that she had found pinned to her son forehead.
It had been written by Lucinda.

Curisosity killed Alfred

A poem by Lucinda Winsletenna
(Belinda, I told you I’d keep my promise)

There is almost no one here,
So that’s why I am coming to you, dear,
Don’t worry, this is not the end,
But your father will have to do more than transcend.


I told you that I would give you war,
And some scandals that the cleavage made soar,
No there is nothing more,
But for Prosperania to be what it is … a bore.

Friday May 28th 1428 – Belinda’s last day in the haunted kingdom

Belinda never recovered from the incident. She often just sat in a corner, moving back and forth on one place, huddled up like child, chanting: "Oh, my broken heart ... Oh. Help Me. Someone please help my broken heart." Alexander could do absolutely nothing. No matter how he tried.
She walked like a ghost at night, pacing the hallways. Walking all the places she had loved. The garden. The Grand Hall. The Alexander Room. The throne room. Places filled with activity. Dead now.
Alexander fed her, but she grew pale. She refused to eat. She spoke not. Sang not, loved not.
The last days she lived up again, picked flowers and sang Bantrard’s songs, but her mind was blank and she called her father "a welcoming stranger". Her skin was deadly white like a dying angel's breath waiting for the snow on a sun rising afternoon.
The last day she was lying in her father’s lap looking up at the clouds. The garden next to the Poseidon statue was in blossoming splendour although no one had worked to keep it florally potent.
“Father, where are we?”
“We are at home, love!”
Belinda looked up at the sky through the branches of the tree. They let in a few rays of the sun and made the eyes glitter. She took a look up at the balcony that she had had so many a breakfasts upon, her and Steven dining together and planning a future that would never manifest itself.
She gasped.
A tear ran down Alexander cheek. The breeze came and dried it away.
“We’re at home!”
Belinda bit her lip and a wrinkle appeared in a flight of worry between her eyes. “Dad!”
Her voice sounded almost childlike. He looked at her face. The blisters made her face almost unrecognizable. The plague had returned and attacked the very person who deserved it the least. Her face was full of scars and her eyes were tired.
“Yes, my darling?”
”Why did Steven have to die?”
He stroked her cheek as he looked into her brown eyes.
“Why Alfred? Why anyone?”
She sobbed and dried away a tear with a trembling hand.
“Why this pain?”
Alexander tried not to cry. “Why are we chosen to suffer? Why can’t they leave us alone?”
“I don’t know, babe! I don’t know!”
She looked up at the sky again. One leaf fell down and landed in her lap. She tried to reach it, but couldn’t. Alexander saw the struggle and took it, gave it to her. She held it up against the light. The crisscrossing veins in the leaf spoke of a living being that was in full growth.
She gasped again, this time in agony.
“What’s the matter?”
”Hurts.” She shook her head and tried to move. “I can’t move.” She sat up, but fell back.
“Don’t try, love.” He kissed her forehead. “Don’t try now. Rest.”
”I’m dying, Alexander. I do not know how we can win this game and perhaps we will never be
able to. Our land is empty and perhaps it is all just best that we die.”
“No.” He pleaded with her. “You are going to live … You are strong.”
She put a finger against his mouth and smiled.
“When I am gone, Father, I want you to keep it alive. Keep the spirit of sacred youth alive when I am dead. Don’t give up. Go out and find Lucinda. Promise me that you will track her down.” She coughed. “I do not even now what I am dying of. Lucinda gave me this cough and I … Promise me that you will find an answer. Don’t give up.”
He shook his head. “Belinda, love. You will not die. I cannot live without you…”
”Do not cry, Father … Do not give up.” She looked at him, reindeer eyes a glow past the scars of
her broken face. “Promise me you will keep this alive.”
He looked at her, his eyes dead and cold. He nodded, bravely. ”I promise.”
She looked up at the sky, gasped, catching her breath.
Alexander sobbed in surprise. “What?”
“I …” She stopped. “Father, I see them.”
”Who?”
“Everyone.” She looked excited and managed to sit up, took Alex by the cheeks and turned it toward the lawn. “You see.” He could not, but he nodded all the same.
“Yes. I see them.”
”Mother and Steven and Alfred and Morgana and …” She embraced her father and sobbed. “I
don’t want to die … I don’t want to …”
He grabbed her tight and tried to give her some of his energy to keep her alive, but she was like a feather slipping out of his fingers.
“Carry me up to the picnic hill, Father! I want to see the grounds from above one last time…”
She struggled to lift her hand and her father wondered what she wanted to do.
“No, Belinda!”
She shook her head.
She reached to her chest and inside her bra.
She slid her hand inside the left breast side of her dress and took out a wooden heart, painted in the colour of red. She looked at it. “I want you to have this …”
“What is it?”
“A heart. A young girl gave it to me at St. Raphael’s when I was praying there in disguise. She was distraught over a failed relationship and I was there to help her with advice. I always hoped that I could help her to find her peace.” She handed him the heart.
He looked at it. It said “LOVE AND FAMILY”.
“It is yours. Keep it well and remember why you must fight.”
He looked at her and stroked her cheek.
“I will …”
“Don’t loose it …”
He shook his head and put it in his left trouser pocket.
“I love you, Father …”
He nodded, but before he could pick her up to respond she slumped back and died in his arms.
At two o’clock in the afternoon of the 28th of May that year of the Lord 1428 Belinda gave up the ghost, her soul travelling to other dimensions.
It had taken Lucinda almost six years to corner her brother. Now there was only one.
Alex didn’t know how many hours he sat there rocking her back and forth and crying, but finally he carried her up on the hill overlooking the grounds, where they had picnicked every year on her birthday except this year, when there was nothing to celebrate or no one to celebrate with.
He lifted her to the skies and screamed, tears streaming down his face.
“Here, Belinda!” Tears were blocking his sight. “You see, here you have your home. Iuvent…”
He fell down upon his knees and dropped her, Lindy’s head lolling to the side lifeless.
He lay with his head rested against her chest for too long it seemed. Then he breathed in and out a few times, his breath became shallow. He stood up. Through gritted teeth he whispered.
"Look, St. Lucifer, what you have done to my kingdom!"
He then turned around and watched his palace from above.
"Lucinda. You have me where you want. What now? What ... now?"
Nothing but the wind answered him.
He sank down onto the grass and buried his head in his hands, sobbing with tears streaming down his pale, bearded face. Then he looked up and screamed toward the overcast heavens as if he had seen a ghost lurk up from behind him. He remembered Lucinda's words of a confrontation, a duel, and his thoughts that she only could bring him to a fight if she brought him down.
"You took away my grandson, you took away my wife, you took away my country, you took away
my people, my prosperity , but you had to take away my BELINDA.. Why don’t you kill me now?”
Then he remembered Belinda’s words.
“Keep the spirit of sacred youth alive when I am dead.”
He wanted to. But how? His land was empty and the people were dead.
Where could he find Lucinda in this haunted illusion?
The wind blew in his hair and the rain pounded his face and the trees bent of the storm and all the while Alexander stood their on his own outside the now lonely Iuventus Sacrum screaming at the top of his lungs at a spirit that wasn't there. Not yet. Lucinda was watching him from the distance, waiting for a time to summon him to come to his Final Confrontation.

Tuesday, June 1st, 1428 A.D.

Screams and wails were echoing through the arches of his haunted palace.
Alexander for the third night in a row was running along the corridors of every aisle and every corner of the house, trying to get away from the fiends that kept on kicking him in his sleep. Something was needling him with a sharp object and something was standing in the corner of his throne room when he arrived there in the morning. There were ghouls in every corner, it seemed.
The thing that was following him that June night was large and brown and tried to convince him that he was going to die a slow death. The thing had large horns and a mouth as large as the canyons of the lost sinister parts of the valleys around Adnicul’s palace :
When his majesty King Alexander ran into the Grand Hall that night, he saw a feast in full swing. It was a celebration with transparent guests eating and copulating at the same time. He ran out onto the lawn and saw other guest eating themselves up. Then his eyes turned to the stables and he saw the horses dancing with the fiends. There were flowers in the garden urinating in the fountain.
Alexander ran into the palace again.
His eyes were wide open and his heart was beating so fast that he feared that his veins were going to burst and leave the blood squirting upon the walls.
He had not shaved now since Belinda’s death and he had been dressed in his fur coat and his night gown for days. He had fornicated in the vaults of the chapel and he had found himself laughing himself silly for no reason at all at his own mirror image.
Alexander was going mad.

Saturday June 12th 1428

For the next week and a half, Alexander walked the fields and the pastures of his land during the day and sat quietly eating his food in glum misery at dinner-time. He thought of bringing an end to his life by killing himself, but the fact the he had no guts to do so brought him down even more.
His madness in the beginning of June ceased once the ghosts disappeared. They had let him sleep after haunting him a forth night. Now the problem was that the world was turning unpredictable.
Small groups of citizens appeared here and there.
The king would at times roam the area and try to find people.
He often did.
His land was a savage and ripped apart country where former middle- and upper-class people now were beggars at the mercy of the kindness of other people, looking in trashcans for food and living on what they could find in the open fields and stealing from people's garden-trees, the gardens that still existed, that is ... The thought that struck him was: Did anyone exist at all?
The eternal fire that reputedly had been kept alive for years in the castle, passed from torch to torch had one guardian. He did the best he could and did nit know why.
Iuventus Sacrum was a lonely castle with weeds growing in the gardens and trash blowing into the lobby. And there was only one inhabitant. The courtyard was full of dry leaves and rats nibbling at garbage and there were cobwebs in the basements and in the attic. He hated his life and hated being in this castle that once had been so happy. He kept the wooden heart with him at all times and made sure to kiss it every single day. He walked into the grand hall with the coats-of-arms with it in his hand and the fireplace too often seemed haunted with ghosts of the past more than with lit with the occasional fire and the tears he cried over the thoughts of all the parties that had been celebrated here made him want to jump of the balcony and throw the heart into the flames. The festivities surrounding the grand wedding of Steven and Belinda had been wonderful, well most of had been. He had been so proud of his little baby-daughter Belinda. Such a proud woman with such fine ideas. Now she was dead and gone. Alexander broke into fits of tears on the floor by the fireplace and screamed with anguish.

"Play something merry, will you ... old chap!“
"A song of old days gone by but with a happy, dancing touch!“
Echoes of music and laughter fill the hallways of distant life like a man standing at the end of a tunnel hearing the ravishing party on the other side.
"What should I play, your highness!“
"Play something merry, will you ... will you ... you ... ou ... u ..."

All this time Alexander was thinking of Lucinda's words in his reoccuring dreams: "In the light of that final duel, one last chance is yours!" When would this duel take place and where? Would she summon him? And what would she have him do? What, in reality, did he have to fight for? Sieglinde, Steven, Belinda and most of his other children were dead and gone and his country was a place of misery and death. Prostitution and treachery prospered, which was the only thing that really gave the country's name a reference-point. What should he then fight for? Himself? That served no purpose. Lucinda could win if she wanted to. She could have her triumph. Without a family, he didn't want to fight her. He was a lost man. He still continued eating and sleeping, he told himself. Sometimes he even went for a walk or played something on his lute, an instrument he loved to play but never could play. Other than that his life was worth nothing to him.
Little by little, Alexander deteriorated. The bushes and hedges and trees and grass around the castle grew and were never taken care of . Weeds grew all around it and the few people who passed it saw what fate had done to their kind king. A lonely man in a lonely castle. Outside, in Alexander mind of the outside, Prosperania turned into a war-zone although no one was there at all. Invisible brawls and haunted robberies everywhere. Ghostly prostitution was the main trade and even prude ghoul countesses had turned into whores.
This was hell and King Alex didn't care.
He knew that Nocturania would probably take over and turn the nothingness of Prosperania into eastern Nocturania when he was dead and make it evil. He was spiritually dead and numb. The bottom floor of the castle was filled with weeds and grass and bushes, whose branches had grown inside the open door of the castle.
Cobwebs and dust, deterioration and decay ruled like a sleeping giant over all of this. The king ate, but mostly he just slept. On the occasional walks he took, he dreamt that he passed a pub where he dreamt somebody was there and then maybe drank some old wine and nobody really knew who this old bum was. Nobody had seen this old man before, not in his dreams. Perhaps he took advantage of some lewd old maid who needed an extra quid in exchange for some fun.
He had stopped caring and the castle had stopped being a castle and he had stopped living and the country had killed its last glittering ray of hope. Prosperania was dead and buried along with the royal family of a lost king.
His lost country was in the lost mortality of a lost now and lay lost, buried six feet under ground along with the dead rats of a lost yesteryear.
That morning, the wooden heart he distinctly remembered putting on the night time table next to the candle was gone. He looked for it that entire day all over the palace before giving up, realizing he had lost the last memory of his daughters love. Such was the rise and fall of the kingdom of Prosperania. With this incident began the king’s long time isolation.
Soon, King Alexander would be the only inhabitant of the haunted kingdom.


CHAPTER FOUR
I S O L A T I O N


"A song of old days gone by but with a happy, dancing touch!"
“Follow your fears. They will lead you home.”
-King Alex's visions, 1429


Night time, June 21st 1428

King Alexander of Prosperania was walking down an unfamiliar path paving the way over a grassy plain scattered with corpses. The full moon shone upon these corpses and the branches of the trees that stood here and there on the plains cast shadows on the bodies that looked like claws.
He realized that the dead people here on the plains were the Prosperanian people. He was walking in what was the remainder of the Empire.
Alexander was walking down a path among the ruins. Suddenly there were people there, standing facing the left field as if numb and as if rejecting him, turning away. He watched them, fascinated and scared. What were they watching? Then he saw who they were. It was Belinda, Steven, Sieglinde, Rolf, Geena, Morgana, all of his children. Mustafus, Walter, Theo.
Other people were there, as well, not as bright. He looked in their eyes and realized he saw emptiness. Ignorance of spiritual reality. But they were all there. Waiting for something. Waiting for him. Then they turned to him. All of them. He stopped. He looked at them. Their eyes were wide open like Oleana's in the face of the Rumzil. They all chanted one thing. One mutual thing:
„Salvum me fac Deus quoniam intraverunt aquae usque ad animam meam.”
It meant: “Save me, O God: for the waters are come in even unto my soul.”


Morning of June 22nd 1428

It was in the middle of the night when Alex woke up from his dream. Belinda had died more than a month ago now and he knew not anymore how many times he had rode out to seek something. Anything. Someone, anyone at all that would be able to tell him who was left here, if anyone.
He saw buildings empty and churches left desolate. He saw courtyards full of hay and parks without people, parliaments without senators. Everything was deserted. Everything was haunted.
He walked into St. Raphael's Cathedral where his daughter had been married in 1422, seven years ago, but no one was there. Not even a priest. He went into the senator courtyard where the five of them had been lynched, Zeddy, Walter, Patrick, Morgana and Patricia. He stood on the spot where there still was a stain with a fence around it and looked at it, almost weeping. He knocked on every single door but no one was inside the houses. He even walked into Madam Zonga's brothel and saw the feather-boas and the unmade beds. He saw the negligés and the underwear scattered on the marble love seats. He saw the brasseries lying across the table.
He metheglin in the boxes and the bottles of wine broken. He saw the instruments unplayed. He thought he heard mumbling of voices and groans from upstairs, but was wrong. It was his own wish for company. He saw death and decay and sat down in Madame Zonga’s to have a glass of the wine that stood there in the waiting room and urged him to drink.

July 1428

Alexander did not shave. He did not speak unless to his Mercutio. Often he would ride around the countryside and look for people in vain. He would fall asleep in fields and he would run around naked in the forest. He slept on wooden floors and he ate his food with his bare hands. His posture was bad, his hygiene was worse and worst of all, his soul was deteriorating. That summer ended in an autumn where Alexander was losing everything, including his sanity. He rode around Clurafar and tried to find anyone. He discovered again and again and again that he was alone in this world. He found himself going crazy and wondering what had made everyone disappear. He knew that something had happened to create this, he did not know what to do about it. He was too much of a coward to kill himself, he had no country and no subjects. He was insane, fat, old, dirty, alone and chased by ghosts, hunting him down cobbled streets, the only inhabitants left in the haunted kingdom.

August 4th 1428

He had been standing on the courtyard of Iuventus Sacrum that day screaming, having decided to just try to see anyone at all in town, knowing fully well that this was an absolute improbability. He had been here no more than an hour, sitting on the steps of his own senate when it occured to him that the cloud were not moving. There were no birds in the skies. There was a wind, there was a slight wind from the east, but there were no birds. What was this world. Mercutio shifted from hoof to hood, snorted as if agreeing slightly with the king’s words. He stood up and looked around. He had seen his daughter to her wedding here. He had held speeches. He had sung as a young boy here on this spot, obliging to his mother’s wish that he should vocalize a song by the name of “Flowers of Hweoim” for the people. He still remembered standing on this very spot sometime in the 1380’s singing it.

The flowers of hweoim it is told,
Grow in paradise’s garden.
They are the makers of the young and the old
And their fruit is that which does not harden.
We see the trees and we hear the breeze
And so we find our enjoyment,
Within the love of a single rose that blooms in the eternal garden.

But this was no garden? This was fake? No clouds, no birds, no people.
“Lucinda” Alexander opened his mouth and said. “What are you up to?”
There was naturally no answer to this question. The wind wained in response.
“Sisterheart” he cackled. “I know you are there somewhere and I do not believe that this haunted kingdom is real. It is just as fake as you are in this moment. Where are you and what do you want?” But there was no answer and so Alex was forced to ride home again on his friend the stallion and drink himself drunk on old wine and his belly swelling with dried figs and salty meat.

Autumn of 1428

Most of his days, Alexander spent trying to gather the leaves on the ground together and pile them up. He ran down the corridors at daytime and screamed himself horse. Then he hid under the blankets during nighttime, afraid of anyone and nothing. Toward the winter, he was gaining a portion of his sanity back. But he was a recluse and the only citizen of the haunted kingdom, unexplained horrified victim of a demonic coup. How did stay alive? By drinking himself drunk most of the time, living off dried fruit and salted meat from the cellars.
What was worse was that Alexander had lost himself into a corner of isolation.
He remembered his promise of going out to find his sister in order to save his family.
There was, however, no chance of tracing where Lucinda was. So, Alexander stopped looking.
He started not to believe that this was an illusion.
He started to become lazy, spending the days emptying the wine cellars and reading old books, getting drunk and copulating with imaginary females.

December 5th 1428

It was a cold winter that year. Alexander had fires burning all day, all night. All he did was keep the fires burning. He lived on what was in the wine cellars and the dried meat in the cupboards. There was enough dried meat and dried figs and often he would sit alone in the vaults and drink himself drunk, the breadcrumbs sticking to his beard and the wine dripping on the floor. He would run around in the castle screaming and urinating on the floor, sleeping on the hall couches and ripping up the Persian rugs. Was he sane to believe that the dream he had dreamt had anything to do with reality?
Why? Why live? Something kept him alive. What? Save us? He had heard that phrase in a dream recently and he had no idea what it had meant. Save us. Save us. What did that mean? He spent most of nights screaming himself hoarse like always, running down the hallways.

December 8th 1428

He even ventured three days away from Clurafar to find out more about his theory. He went into inns. Food was there, always fresh and lovely and he ate it. He was drunk more times than one. He stopped in the most remote towns even he had not seen in thirty years. But no one was there. Everyone was dead. But there were no corpses. No sick people. No beggars. No rich people.
No whores. No priests. No tailors. No carpenters. No innkeepers. No one at all. Alexander Roderick Winsletenna was the only person alive. That was the strange thing and it seemed that everything that had been destroyed in the war was rebuilt. That was impossible. Here he was, the only person alive. There was no one to send a message for.
There was no one to kiss goodbye to. There was no one to feed or comfort. No one to hate.
No one to love and now, in the dead of winter, the king awoke in his palace at night wondering what on earth or in heaven or hell the dreams meant.
So he went for walks, lighting a large wax candle and feeling the darkness ooze decay on his wandering frame as he shivered.


December 14th 1428

Lucinda had left him alone. She had now narrowed things down so that nothing else but him was left here. What did she want? Show him what exile was like? He was obviously the only one left in this world. But was that possible? Someone somewhere had to be left someplace. That made it so unreal. This was so unreal. No one existed. No one existed at all. That day he tried to kill himself. He found out that he was too much of a coward to even try and ended up crying on the floor.


December 23rd 1428

Alex thought about that a great deal. He thought about how restless he had been. How much he had yelled at Morgana and Rolf. How he had excommunicated Walter. How he had ignored Patrick.
How he had fought with his own libido back then and right now. How restless.
How he had lived his life through others and expected others to be as perfect as he wanted to be and never could be unless he let go and relaxed.
"The irony", he told himself one day aloud walking down the hallway, "is that the exact thing we dread is the answer to our problems! The irony is that relaxing away from things we blame ourselves for will make us solve what we criticize. We think abolishing it will give us reason. We are so very wrong... in every way. Follow your fears. They will lead you home."
What did that mean? Instead of hitting Walter and Morgana, Patrick and Zedrick across the face he should have confronted them with the question: why are you doing this? What is the driving force behind your anarchy? He supposed that God would've asked the devil the very same thing in the days of the original sin. What was Alexander's place in all this? He did not know. He only knew that this place was the haunted kingdom. Though, these thoughts did not help him now one bit. He knew there was a problem and he knew confronting Lucinda was the actual solving of the task, but he did not know how, where or when. Yet...
The only reason why he stayed alive was because of the fires and the extensive quantities of dry storage of meats and smoked foods. He got drunk more than he could remember. He ended up often having fights with himself running down the hallways with wine bottles in hand, sometimes naked and sometimes bloody. He had eaten himself silly on the salty fish and conserved sweets and now had a beard the length of his legs. But his mind was confused. This world could not be real, could it? That day he decided never to try killing himself again. There was a reason for him to be here alone after all.


December 24th 1428

On Christmas Eve he had another dream.
This time he was in a long, rectangular hall without windows, with rows of chairs facing each other. They were wooden chairs and no one sat in them. Yet he felt the presence of everyone in the country right then and there, sitting in the chairs. It was obvious that they were haunting his mind.
The rows seemed endless. It seemed the long hallway never ended.
He walked among the chairs slowly, in between the rows, and felt these invisible spectators watch him closely. He heard whispers and quiet groans. It was like a man who stood three rooms away from where a wild party is going on. He hears the echoes of the voices. He knows something else is happening somewhere. But not exactly where. Or why. Or how. Or when...
The ghost of his past sitting on the chairs appeared as smoke. He recognized them. They were the same ones as in the previous dream. Now they looked at him for help. In the same sort of smoky eeriness words appeared in the air:
"FIND THE PATH! CARPE DIEM! AUDACES FORTUNA IUVAT!”
Then Nomed was there, elegantly dressed. He walked up to Alex and bowed. When he stood up once more there were words on his forehead, as if carved by a knife primitively in something that appeared as straight red lines of volcanic acid: Tool of Darkness .

December 25th 1428

Alexander was on the hill now. It was Christmas Day. Another winter. Going crazy. No one in the country. From here everything looked normal. He saw the eight guesthouses from here that Queen Lucia had built in the 12th century: The Lily and The Tulip, The Rose and The Forget-Me-Not, The Anemone and The Orchid, The Rosemary, The Orange Blossom and The Lily.
Everyone wallpapered and gardened with its particular flower. Just a few years ago they had been full of people. Now they were empty.
He saw the poppy fields down where the oak tree used to be leading to the sunflowers. He saw the waterfall where the horrid occurrence had taken place seven years ago. The accident that started it all. He saw the palace with the small forest around it, the pond in the middle and the path through it.
He saw the garden and the gravel and the stables and even the gates. Beyond it he saw the road to the city that he had seen so many times before, travelled more times than he knew to count. He had seen it all, every inch. But now it had a new meaning to him entirely.
He almost expected someone to come up, maybe Geena or Rolf, perhaps Belinda or Patricia and tell him that Zeddy had arrived for the conference. He knew that would not happen. He knew everyone was dead or were they? Lucinda had definitely shown him his power. He had tried to counter her with her own methods. But it had not worked. He had desperately tried to save his land. But no matter what he did, Prosperania had died.
What struck him up there right then was that all of the people around him, his children as well as friends and everyone, had perished on their weaknesses. Patrick, Morgana, Patricia, Walter and even Zedrick had debauched themselves to death. Sieglinde and Geena had died because of their innocence. Belinda had died of a broken heart. Marcus and Martin because of their dry nature. Erica because of sensitivity. Everyone he knew had died on the graves of their own problem.
Now he was all alone. How was he going to perish? Alone.
From up here everything looked all right. But he knew that he was completely alone. Why did he not despair more? He should've despaired. Was he really all alone? He could not very likely be all alone in the world, now could he? He had travelled way beyond Iuventus and Clurafar and even the capital district of Kyrilliland way into Gargetania ... and found nothing. Found absolutely no one at all.
The other kings always sent him messengers. He knew all of their messengers so well now that he called them by first names. Yet, since April no messengers had arrived at all.
What did it matter? His near and dear ones were all gone so he might as well die as well. What was the point of living now. He looked around him. Yet, he wanted to stay alive, something was about to happen. How many picnics had he not experienced here. The voices of the past were ghosts in his mind. Those ghosts were here and he felt them calling out to him. Zeddy sitting next to his throne and Belinda shaking her head that her father was telling the same stories over and over. Steven talking about undercover military work and Sieglinde walking up to him and saying: "Alex, you must stop Steve from encouraging Theo like that.” But Theo had been impressed and wanted to become a lieutenant. Theo had joined the Hapa-valley battle and been awarded. Theo had married a girl named Julietta and lived in Alliland only to return last year, not to die in battle, but of the plague. Yes , what was the phrase again? Not 'The Lord works in mysterious ways' , but 'The Devil aims to surprise'.
Sieglinde had been afraid for his health when he went into undercover work. But he contracted the plague at home because he was not out there working.
He remembered that Erica and Patrick had wanted a girl, a little baby sister for their son, but they had gotten their death instead.
He remembered Belinda's laugh, the hiccupping goat as Steven used to call it , and how she had made him come down to earth after becoming a little to cocky. He remembered Sieglinde's soft body and the way she leaned against him. He remembered how she could fill a room with her silence when she disapproved. When Walter walked out with the ladies-in-waiting after his arrival when the accident occurred, Sieglinde said not much but every person knew just how much she disapproved of his behaviour. Oh, how he missed all of them. They were here or was that a mistake to think that?
There was that feeling again he had felt before. It was like someone was calling for his help.
He could not place it. Lucinda and this world were in the way. What was that feeling?
That night he ran through the palace, screaming at the top of lungs, asking Lucinda to appear.
In vain. He was determined to find out what this feeling was. Why he felt that there was hope.

December 31st 1428

All alone up here he realized that through all of the years there had been one weapon against Lucinda that he had forgotten: Christ and God. The most powerful weapon of all. Yes, he had gone to church every day, even said his goodnight-prayer. But whereas Sieglinde often went to church to pray, Alex seemed to be so busy governing that he seldom had time to ask God or Gabriel or Christ or any of the archangels for guidance.
The conclusion he made was: in all his work for Belinda and Sieglinde and his country he had forgotten not only God but his own family. He would change that.
Therefore, after taking one last look at his empty land, he walked down to the palace and entered the palace chapel to pray by Belinda's grave.

January 1st 1429

He had visited the graves and rode out to Clurafar in a sort of routine to find anyone at all, but returning in vain at dusk to the castle to find a haunted home waiting for him there.
Calls for help reached his way, but Lucinda tried to stop them.

He had two dreams, one about Sieglinde and one about Belinda. Both of them were real occurrences. Both of them he relived in his dreams as they really had happened. Both of them had died in his arms. But the dreams ended differently. And Alex wondered why.

Belinda had been alternately crying and laughing that whole day. She had stopped eating. She often walked around picking invisible flowers and asking him when Steven would return from the war. He had almost forced her to eat. But there was no way in making her eat. Her red brown hair was still as beautiful and her peachy complexion was only slightly gone. But the appealing curviness of her figure, her womanliness, was gone. She was thin and frail now. Thin and frail.
They had sat by the fireplace in the first landing sitting room the evening before and for a short while Belinda had lived up and become almost normal. But her dream world returned very quickly again to her mind.

He had found her at the foot of the stairs that day, in a pool of blood. She was lying at the foot of marble staircase at the East Wing entrance. Her frail hands had been carrying a boquet of dried flowers, roses and tulips mostly, when she apparently had fell down and hit her head. When she lay in her father's lap as he sat on the cold marble floor, head almost resting on his left thigh and looking up at him distantly she only said: "Father, my dear father! Help my broken heart!"
As those sweet glowing eyes silently burnt out, it was as if a clear flame had been extinguished, his heart raged and his eyes inundated like a river too high in tide. As he walked up screaming with agony that day, he cried each time he dream this reality, he shouted why God and could still remember lifting her up to the heavens and saying : "Why, God? What now?”
Then he saw that Prosperania suddenly arose from its ruins and that its people awoke.

The second dream he had that night was about how Morgana and Patricia were brutally mutilated on the open streets. He saw them being lynched and the mob walking away. He then saw himself walking up to them and touching them, making them come alive again.
Morgana told him that this, too, could become reality.

January 5th 1429

It seemed that Alexander’s life now was more present in his dreams than in reality.
The fire was kept alive and there was a fire going most of the time in the castle.
That night, however, the king dreamt that he was the captain of a large ship and that his ship, the Prosperanian Glory, was being sucked into a whirlwind.
He woke up just as he saw that Belinda was his first officer aboard the vessel.

Night time, January 10th 1429

Alexander dreamt about his wife again. Sieglinde was in their bedroom in the dream and he had been spending about three hours talking of their mutual memories together. He had told her how they met and how they married, their mutual coronation, and the birth of their children. Sieglinde's eyes had lit up every time he said something like that and her tears of melancholy joy were only slightly less encouraging than the loving caress she gave Alex on the cheek after he told her the stories.
He had barely left her side. She was weak as well. Her tongue had been cut off. She had bruises and scars all over her body. She had a deep wound in the heart area. One rib was broken. She was dying. But even so near death she was gorgeous.
He had been singing her songs for a half-hour, stroking her hair and kissing her hand and smiling at her, when he discovered her pain had increased. She looked at him, gave him a sweet look that definitely spoke: "I love you!" and died. The flame inside her eyes died. But as he then stood by the coffin and it was to be lowered into the earth, the lid opened and Sieglinde popped out, frilly as a little schoolgirl. Followed by Belinda, seeing his serious and surprised face, said: "Oh. Come now, Alex. We are not dead. We are in a gap ... Somewhere. Find us."
Then they skittered off to the forest screaming : "Find us!" in high voices , almost singing a melody of a small third : A - F# .

January 15th 1429

As the dreams were very encouraging, he kept praying for guidance to understand them. If they were not dead, where were they. Please God, he said. Let me find them, wherever they are. But God did not make the situation better yet. He made it worse. Or someone did. Calls for help reached his subconscious ears, deafened by demons.

January 29th 1429

Nightmares. Now he was having nightmares. He had been alone now for six weeks and the palace was now not comforting like before. It was a hell-hole of shadows. Alexander felt alone like never before. He had been thinking before. He had wondered earlier. Now claustrophobia was taking over. Life seemed strange. He stopped eating regularly. There was enough to eat, but he just did not want to. He rode out occasionally, sat on the empty senator palace courtyard in the empty ghost town of Clurafar until his legs fell asleep. He sat in the Grand Hall where so much action had taken place before. Iuventus Sacrum was dead now. Prosperania was dead now. Alexander was going crazy. Because he had no explanation for all of it. Undoubtedly this was Lucinda.
The feeling that someone needed his help was stronger than ever, but the demons in-and outside his head strangled those voices more and more. His only strange light was riding out every day on his horse and somehow, somewhere hoping to find... someone. But he never did. Mercutio was getting old and he needed two hours now to ride into town instead of one like before. But the trips were nice. Sometimes he would for fun raid a shop, destroy a window, and steal something because no one was there to witness it and that it when Alex knew he was going insane. In his visions he was a regular at Madam Zonga's and became very popular. But the ghosts had scarred faces, disabled plague ridden bodies. Alex often sat alone by the fireplace in the sitting room hearing the voices of the past talk to him. He rocked back and forth and sat with wide-open eyes, grinning, in a house that was full of ghouls and dead spirits. He remembered the evening in 1422 when the eleven of them were looking at the figure on the Palace Hillside.

February 1st 1429

“And who do you believe is her master?"
"The Devil" Erica said.
Alexander took a step in his dream that night and walked forward in the darkness over to the fireplace. He knelt down and poked around with a stick in the fire. Then he threw it in. The fire crackled and popped. A spark came out from the fire and a piece of glowing wood landed in front of Alexander. He shoved it back into the fire and stood up. The wind was howling outside now, Maria and Ellie were embracing each other and the rest were quiet. Alexander walked up to the window again and looked out.
Sieglinde looked out to the full moon. The light shone in her face and made her look like figure-head on a ship, her scarf around her shoulders, the light on her features. Her voice meandered into a whisper: "God help us!" She walked over to Geena and they both sat down and started to talk.
Out on a hill around three-hundred feet from the window stood a large figure in a blue uniform. His cape was fluttering in the wind and he was looking at the castle. Alex gasped. "Come and look!"
The eleven people in the room suddenly felt a common urge to comfort one another. They were all in the same boat now. As they did what they were told a petrified face came upon them. There by the palace hill a figure stood watching them from afar. The moon shone behind it and the cape was flying in the breeze. Standing on the palace hillside right between the fountains up on the grass, there was a daunting deadly calm over it all. Erica did the sign of the cross, Maria shook her head, Eleonora was observing, Belinda thinking, Sieglinde biting her lip, Patrick was sneering, Geena and Rolf were holding hands and the rest were just too scared to think. Alexander's heart was beating faster than he would care to admit.
"Who is it?“
Alexander shook his head. "I don't know, Belinda... I really don’t!“

He remembered this conversation vividly after dreaming about it, shivered, and didn't know if he should scream or weep. For the first time, the King that had been the symbol of strength and control on the land was a weak little man who stared into the void with petrified eyes, feeling ice-cold hands of death upon his neck. At his neck were hands that would not obtain him under any circumstance. They could threaten him, but they would never seize him.
Mercutio broke his leg on that day on the way back from town. Alexander tried desperately to save his devoted friend but it was obvious that it was impossible. He died on the 7th. Now Alexander was completely alone. That was when the real nightmares started.

February 4th 1429

The wind blew in his hair and the rain pounded his face and the trees bent of the storm and all the while Alexander stood their on his own outside the now lonely Iuventus Sacrum screaming at the top of his lungs at a spirit that wasn't there . Not yet. Lucinda was watching him from the distance, waiting for a time to summon him to come to his Final Confrontation. Cries of help. Lucinda fought back against these voices.
For the next week and a half, Alexander walked the fields and the pastures of his land during the day and sat quietly eating his food in glum misery at dinner-time. He thought of bringing an end to his life by killing himself, but the fact the he had no guts to do so brought him down even more. His land was a savage and ripped apart country where former middle- and upper-class people now were beggars at the mercy of the kindness of other people, looking in trashcans for food and living on what they could find in the open fields and stealing from people's garden-trees, the gardens that still existed, that is ... The thought that struck him was: Did anyone exist at all?
Iuventus Sacrum was a lonely castle with weeds growing in the gardens and trash blowing into the lobby. And there was only one inhabitant. The courtyard was full of dry leaves and rats nibbling at garbage and there were cobwebs in the basements and in the attic. He hated his life and hated being in this castle that once had been so happy.
The king was wandering around in circles and was unable to get out of his own solitary confinement.

February 21st 1429

Alexander Winsletenna had not shaved since December. He had not washed for a month and he was going crazy. He was hallucinating. He walked into the grand hall with the coats-of-arms and the fireplace too often and cried over the thoughts of all the parties that had been celebrated here. The festivities surrounding the grand wedding of Steven and Belinda had been wonderful, well most of had been. He had been so proud of his little baby-daughter Belinda. She had been such a proud woman with such fine ideas. Now she was dead and gone. Alexander broke into fits of tears on the floor by the fireplace.

"Play something merry, will you ... old chap!"
"Play us a song of old days gone by but with a happy, dancing touch!"
Echoes of music and laughter filled the hallways. It was a distant life to him now. It was like a man standing at the end of a tunnel hearing the wild party thee rooms away, but one he was not allowed to enter.
"What should I play, your highness!"
"Play something merry, will you ... will you ... you ... ou ... u ..."

All this time Alexander was thinking of Lucinda's words in his reoccurring dreams: "In the light of that final duel, one last chance is yours!" When would this duel take place and where? Would she summon him? And what would she have him do? What, in reality, did he have to fight for? Sieglinde, Steven, Belinda and most of his other children were dead and gone and his country was a place of misery and death. Prostitution and treachery prospered, which was the only thing that really gave the country's name a reference-point .What should he then fight for? Himself? That served no purpose. Lucinda could win if she wanted to. She could have her triumph. Without a family, he didn't want to fight her. He was a lost man. He still continued eating and sleeping. Sometimes he even went for a walk or played something on his lute, an instrument he loved. But other than that, and perhaps reading a book or two, his life was worth nothing to him.
Little by little, Alexander deteriorated. The bushes and hedges and trees and grass around the castle grew and were never taken care of. Weeds grew all around it and the few people who passed it saw what fate had done to their kind king. A lonely man in a lonely castle. Outside, in Alexander mind of the outside, Prosperania had still turned into a war-zone although no one was there at all. Invisible brawls and haunted robberies everywhere. Ghostly prostitution was the main trade and even prude ghoul countesses had turned into whores. This was hell and King Alex didn't care. He knew that Nocturania would probably take over and turn the nothingness of Prosperania into eastern Nocturania when he was dead and make it evil. Lucinda had won. He didn't care anymore. He was spiritually dead and numb. The bottom floor of the castle was filled with weeds and grass and bushes, whose branches had grown inside the open door of the castle. Cobwebs and dust, deterioration and decay ruled like a sleeping giant over all of this. The king ate, but mostly- he just slept. On the occasional walks he took, he dreamt that he passed a pub where he dreamt somebody was there and then maybe drank some old wine and nobody really knew who this old bum was. Nobody had seen this old man before, not in his dreams. Perhaps he took advantage of some lewd old maid who needed an extra quid in exchange for some fun. He had stopped caring and the castle had stopped being a castle and he had stopped living and the country had killed its last glittering ray of hope. Prosperania was dead and buried along with the royal family of a lost king. His lost country was in the lost mortality of a lost now and lay lost buried six feet under ground along with the dead rats of a lost yesteryear. The cries of help were muffled.

February 23rd 1429

This was the day when Alexander at last became a true victim of his own solitude. As he had been living for such a long time a complete recluse, he had begun confusing reality with dreams.
He could not longer differentiate a dream from the reality.
Everything was a vision.
Everything was a hallucination.
He had been walking down the hall one night with a lantern in his hand, nightshirt dirty and full of holes when visions and illusions started tormenting his soul.
He fell asleep that night in the middle of the hallway and spent the rest of the night being tossed and turned and thrown into visions of the future and the past and other realities.
Lucinda was playing a game with her brother, putting him into impossible situations.

Alexander dreamt he was in a hallway in the summer-house Lucinda had destroyed so many years ago. He was running, but as he ran he felt himself sticking to the floor. He looked down and saw that the floor was covered in dried blood. He turned around and saw Lucinda approaching.
He tried to run away, but couldn't. His feet were glued to the floor and down from the ceiling a gigantic spike was aiming for his head. Suddenly he was in a large arena with thousands of spectators, only all of the spectators were different versions of Lucinda. There were children and grown-ups and grandfathers and even dogs. But they all had Lucinda's face. There were court jesters and entertainers and people eating large legs of lamb. There were couples making love and drunkards belching and dogs fighting. And they all were Lucinda. He tried to see something else, but couldn’t. Lucinda was everywhere. He was in the middle of the arena and it became obvious that he was the main attraction. His feet and arms were tied together and he was slowly being lowered from a chain into a bubbling pit of steaming hot tar. The crowd cheered as he came closer and closer to it. He screamed and screamed, but the screams were nowhere to be heard. Silent screams from the bottomless pit. He looked down into the pit and bubbles were bursting and there were corpses swimming in it. It was hell. And then a huge monster jumped out of the pit. It was a large devil with big horns and a tail and six arms. It looked like the mixture of an insect and a person. It bobbed its head up and down and its eyes were yellow in a swimming sea of black. They were Lucinda’s. This was Lucinda. It breathed in heavily and then spat fire on Alex, burning up his rope and making him lose his grip of the chain he had been tied to, falling into the tar. The hot steaming fluid burned through his veins and seared his flesh and a thousand mouths were chewing at his bones. Above him was the Lucinda-monster, raising its foot and putting it down, crushing him like a bug ... along with the calls of mercy from someone beyond time.

Alex sat up and realized he was in the hallway. His neck hurt tremendously. With hurting bones he tiptoed into the bedroom and went to bed. He woke up ten minutes later after very short and intense nightmare about being chased down the hallway by a ghost. He shouted and screamed, his brow completely drenched with sweat. The rain was smattering against the window pane outside and somehow the storm outside seemed more comforting than the silence in here. It was preposterous how scared he felt in the face of this life. Who was crying? Someone was crying, but he could not place it. Whenever he tried to listen the voice disappeared? It was his own imagination. But it was strange, was it not? What were these feelings of calls of mercy and assistance about that had followed him since Belinda's death? What was that all about?
His breath was heavy and his beard was grey. His hands were shaking and his eyes were bloodshot. He stood up from his bed and ran out, stumbled across the hallway and fell down, hit his head, stood up, felt a wound and the blood oozing out of it, continued.
Then he saw a light. And a vision was before him.
Bang. He was no longer in Iuventus. He was in a field at the beginning of time.

When the three-hundred rainy years were over a bright white light shone on Lucifer and covered him in shining sin, exposing his solitude. God spoke again:

"Lucifer! Listen to me! Let me kill you! Let me put an end to your meagre existence and you can still be remembered as my brightest angel!"
Lucifer stood up and screamed: "Never do I want to be remembered as anyone belonging to you! Never! And never ever will I return to heaven!" Lucifer spat. “God!" The heavens were quiet yet again. "GOD! DO YOU HEAR ME?" He paused. "I will become your adversary, your enemy, your foe and rival, your antagonist and slanderer, your backbiter and satire. Wherever you are, my noble lord, I will be in your way. When you sing I will spit. When you create I will destroy. When you speak of soul, I will speak of flesh. When you make your animals talk of culture I will make them talk of carnal desire.“
"Then it shall be as it is written. You have chosen your life.“
A fierce wind blew across the surface, blowing around the ultimate beast. Lucifer stood strong and sneered. "You can't crush me!" A bright crashing bolt of electric , white lightning charged down from heaven and struck Lucifer with the power of forty-thousand angry souls , having him shake and shiver and scream and scream with pain. Lucifer's eyes rolled backward until the eyes of his head were complete white. He started to scream and drool and shake with the intensity of forty million demons. His skin grew red and his two horns grew bigger. He grew a tail that parted itself twice. His tongue sliced itself and became that of a snake. He grew black fur and his eyes grew red. He started spitting smoke and his feet became hooves. He shook and shook and shook until his whole body was red. The lightning made him tremble, vibrate, quiver and fluctuate and all the time God was watching his one time favourite angel turn himself into a snarling half man-half beast with his help. A tear was in his eye. Lucifer spun around like a toy. A toy. An evil toy. A bad, shaking doll about to become a shark, a wolf, a demon, a hyena, a hell-hole of terror.
"The divorce is final. You are no longer my child!"

The demons were playing games with him. They were giving him little nightmare plays and Lucinda was the director. Back in the castle, Alexander's head snapped around to face the shadows of the hallway of his old familiar castle. He was petrified. The only thing he could hear was the shivering sound of his own shaking breath. He suddenly realized that his eyes were wide open and that he had no socks on. He froze like a furless poodle in Siberia. Belinda, where are you now?
What the hell had that been? God and Lucifer? Divorce? What was that? His mind was too stressed to wonder. All he knew was that he was scared to death. That was all that mattered.
He slowly walked back, trying to find his way. As he did, another vision came his way, swiping across his iris like kaleidoscope glue. He longed for Sieglinde and Belinda and knew they were dead, and yet his mind hoped they were not. But that was silly. They had died in his arms. He saw a golden book in the darkness in front of him. A future book of history in another reality. Then the story came alive and he saw the culprits responsible. And forgot his family.

Her friend Annie Jones' words about her 'Runnin' like the wind if 'e appears' echoed in her mind like the after-effects of someone beating a hammer against steel in a church. But the words were gone long enough to have her feel in his trap. She looked into those dark brown eyes and suddenly saw a red demon dancing in there. She saw the devil rubbing his groin and spitting. She saw those wide-open eyes looking at her with the look of hell. They took her down to hell and there she saw Vlad the Impalor dancing with a man that was to be born next year. A man with a silly moustache. Annie, where are you now? Where are you now, Annie?
Cathy didn't run. She just stood there waiting for him like a statue. In his strong arms just waiting for death. His grip was hard. So hard. Then the knife came out. It was almost a relief. She didn't scream. She just looked at its hard glittery edge with a surprised look of almost phallic admiration. She heard echoes from the past talking from its surface.

Alexander found himself having fallen asleep in the Grand hall and again went to bed about three o’clock at night. He dreamt once more about the murderer called Jack.

"You might think my name is James Kelly, dear. And you might be right. I am the only escaped lunatic at large in East London this fall of 1888. I escaped this summer and started murdering girls in August or September, can't remember ... Can't remember September, pardon the pun ... I have murdered a long time now and you shall be my masterpiece, you unfortunate one. You will be included in every killer-book for a thousand years. You will be included in plays and books and stories and in documents. You will be eternal. You will be a legend. No one will ever know who you really were ... but your name shall ring out through the entire world ..."

Alexander sat up and screamed at the top of his lungs, ran down the hallway and up the stairs to the Grand Hall. Then he ran down with his lantern in hand and back to his bedroom and fell asleep.

The glittery edge of the silver knife was glowing in a moonlight that seemed to come from nowhere. She looked into those now grey-red eyes as they shone against her. They were Lucifer's eyes. She saw that those eyes were the eyes of original sin. Cathy was a simple girl, but she could tell well from evil. And as the man with a maniac smile slowly sunk his silver phallus into her shaking belly, she let out a silent scream ... and saw the truth.

There was no way of telling where this was going to end.
He felt as if was a ball being tossed between devils.
Alexander went to the Alexander Room where he knew there was a bottle of mead.
He drank it in one fast gulp and was chased by demons all the way to his room.

"I am the devil. I am the archangel God had wanted to abolish.
The archangel that rested among the favourite ones but who God abolished because he didn't want to let him perform and spread vanity around the galaxies. I am Lucifer and I have been escaping through the alternate realities for eons, avenging God...
"I am working through James Kelly who was raped by his father and sold to child labour by his mother because his father sold her body to a bunch of horny Jewish bankers ... His anti-Semitic hatred will spur a text on an alleyway wall where he falls a minute from now .
You are a part of a legend, love!“

This was an endless night, full of spite and envy.
No matter how he tried, there was no way he could prevent the dreams.
He slept maybe ten minutes at a time and all the time he had these horrid nightmares.

And so Cathy fell on the ground with a thud and the man began his work with meticulous precision. Soon enough he was running through the foggy nights with a bloody knife in his hands, a maniac smile on his lips. Someone had stood in a doorway and seen him run. But that didn't worry him, for a demon was dancing the boogaloo in his eyes and the demon was on his side. He ran and ran until he fell and hit his nose, wiping his blood away with Cathy's shawl, smiling at the mixed blood types. That is when he found the chalk and wrote the text on the wall. He knew how to write. He was not incredibly smart , but clever enough to write down a text about his past . A text that referred to his mother and the horny Jews and that she didn't love him like she use to when she became a whore. He had escaped the foster home after a year to kill his father. And so he thought: Revenge is here at last. I am killing my mother again and writing myself out of sin.

The jewes are the men that won't be blamed for nothing

"There ya go, ya old creep!“
So he dressed like the Jewish bankers and was killing the whores just to feel the sense of justice pumping through his veins at last. That's why he would lay down and cry on his flat floor in Whitechapel to feel like those bankers would've felt when the whores were so mutilated they could not be shagged any more . His eyes looked up and his head looked down. He smiled, threw the chalk, dropped the scarf, and ran away to Whitechapel High Street, where he lived. Only a demon could have so much fun. Jack is back, the billboards would read tomorrow morning. And just about now a bobby would find drying blood on the pavement and throw up when he saw Cathy lying there in that small square dead as a doornail.

Alex fell to his knees, slapped his trembling hands against his mouth and shut a muffled shout of acute trepidation, as soon as he was left in the darkness again. He could feel the darkness around him, spitting on his future coffin and rubbing its groin in the face of sacrilege. Alex tried again to stand up, but found that his knees were much too weak to stand at all. He fell to the floor and tried to stand again. But fell as second and a third time. Belinda, where are you now?
When he looked up again in that darkened hallway, a third vision tormented his mind.

He was on a hill now. It was dark. A creature with small horns, crouched over perversely, was standing next to him, tormented by a storm, screaming. He was obviously in pain.
Lightning struck the crucifix numerous times and the sound of the thunder was deafening. The sound of the crying women grew stronger and stronger until he thought his ears would burst. He clutched them. He clutched his red ears together and green blood started oozing out. His eyes turned white and his mouth opened wide in a choked, hoarse scream, while he scratched his face, looking like a sad, unimportant, cowardly freak in a circus. No way would one believe that this creature was God's enemy number one. Now he looked like a dumb single red painted mutant of a man whom no woman would touch even if she where asked to by mercy.
The women screamed more and more and suddenly, in the illusions of his eye, the crawled up to him, eyes open wide and the iris looking like islands in a white sea. Lucifer looked at them and for the first time he was scared to tears. He looked into their eyes and there were crosses in them now in stead of irises. One of them said: "Do you knooow... your Judas helped your Jesus?" He looked at the cross again and saw the son of God looking down on him and smiling. He closed his eyes and shook his eyes: "This can't be happening!" He looked at his hands and on them were crosses upside down. He sobbed. "No!" He looked back at the women. Their eyes were open. "...founded Christianity!" Lucifer said: "What?" The women nodded. "You tried to crush God, but all you did was help found Christianity!“
There was a loud bang and suddenly St. Michael was there , with his sword in his hand and shining above the cross , his white cape flapping in wind and his all too familiar black hair and black iris producing so much purified hatred against him that it made him want to scream . Two of the souls he hated most in the universe in one place. This was a nightmare .The moon shone on Michael's back and the sky behind him thundered. He knew that God was within the soul of that moon and was looking at Lucifer with calm intent of a maker scorned. "You have hurt my son!“
Then he saw Michael's serious face looking like a Greek bronze statue raising his finger and pointing at him. He gasped. A white tunnel of light shone through it. It approached Lucifer and suddenly he was in it. He was in a white room. The light was too bright. He could not see. He ... was ... on ... He was on a balcony. In a red robe. There was a crowd below him screaming words at him. He could not hear what it was they were saying.
Then Lucifer was there and he started screaming: "I CURSE YOU, BASTARD!" so loud that he felt he would never be able to hear again.

Alex stood up, screamed and rushed as fast as he could back toward his room, slipped and fell and hit his knee bloody, but stood up again clutching it. He reached the bedroom, entered it and closed the door, locked it and went back to bed. The rain was still clicking on the window pane. He felt like an ant that had no way in finding his way out of a giant maze. He felt like a helpless child.
The fourth vision was on its way now, creeping up like an old war wound.
Sieglinde, where are you now?

He was in Rigor Mortis. Lucinda was there. There was a new vision now taking over his mind and squeezing it like a grape. She looked up to the painting above the fireplace that showed Iuventus Sacrum as it had been thirty years earlier , raised her glass and drank. She belched and raised her glass in a toast: " Here is to you, you pompous ass!"
The bat started sniggering behind her back and she turned around quickly and looked them in the eyes and said: "One more snigger and you will suffer!" She turned to the painting again and smiled : "Lucinda is back !"
She turned around to the windows. She flung them wide open, outside raged a fierce thunderstorm, the thunder ear deafening in volume. She turned around and screamed at the storm at the top of her lungs, her dress fluttering and her hair flying, her fists crashing themselves bloody at the window-pane.
Suddenly, then, he was there, smiling. As she had provoked him for thirty years, disobeying every rule he had given her, now as a small revenge he had implanted pure hate into her black heart and made her wait. A bolt of lightening whooshed through the window and into the room. She jumped and backed up a few feet as it circled the hall four times, going up and down and back and forth , bouncing on doorframes and crashing windows , finally landing on the chandelier . A loud crashing thunderous noise was heard and he landed laughing lowered from the ceiling. His feet touched the floor and his cape settled from its own breeze.
"Lucinda" He said, smiling. She giggled like a teenager. "Welcome to hell!"
Lucinda ran up to him overwhelmed with the joy of great hate and together they embraced each other hard laughing and screaming, breaking vases and kicking dwarves, scratching at each other’s faces and punching each other in the stomach, having a wonderful time rolling around the floor. Then they picked up a book and read from it.
And shivered:

THE REVERSED GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SATAN - Chapter 666

LUCINDA and ADNICUL were now outside the gates of hell. Standing guard was Nero with a two-headed hyena named Gighis the Hunn. From time to time the one head spat and screamed and the other nodded and smiled.
As they opened the gates to the pit, LUCINDA looked down into a red, wet hot throat. The sounds coming from down there were cries for help. She was led down the downhill path to a carriage that took them into the snake pit.
Finally down on the ground she realized the floor was alive and people's heads were sticking up out of it. Some were buried into the cave walls and some were hanging from the ceiling. There was every possible sinner here and every possible sin.
She saw past, current, future and even alien sinners who had died on earth. She saw lawyers and captains and monsters and whores and plumbers and oarsmen and kings and even a nun or two and Alex saw them too.
ADNICUL walked in with her to the grand centre where the walls were lined with monsters and ghouls torturing sinners along the walls. Vlad the impalor was juggling heads in a corner and Caligula was playing with his bells and singing.
ADNICUL turned around and now he was completely transformed: He was bloody and beaten and wounded. Another creature arrived. He was the devil, his horns sharp and his forked tail swinging to the rhythm of the whiplash music. His fur was black and glowing. He grew five times in size, his red skin thumping with radiant fire from a black heart. He lifted his hands and put them around LUCINDA.
He was huge now. Enormous. And phallic. Yes oh yes, he was breathing heavily. So heavy that the dead people under him blew away. LUCINDA started shaking and screaming and rolling about on the floor, kicking and drooling. Then she was lifted up, looking more attractive than ever and wearing a new black dress with a cut up to her waist showing her right leg and its long stiletto heels. Her mouth was bright orange and her eyes pitch black. She had been transformed to become that ultimate demon.
CALIGULA came in with a three-headed dog, each head drooling and barking and displaying its fifty fangs. It was a huge dog named Reficule and Lucinda liked it right away. It would become her loyal friend and helper in her journey through hell on earth.

LUCIFER finally spoke to her in an ultra-deep contra-bass-voice that seemed to rumble like the calm, victoryconfident hurricane on its steady move:

"LUCINDA: YOU ARE NOW MY FEMALE COUNTERPART, MY DISCIPLE OF HELL. THIS HOWEVER MEANS RESPONSIBILITY. YOUR DEMONIC ASSIGNMENT WILL BE THE COMPLETE AND UTTER DESTRUCTION OF THE PROSPERANIAN EMPIRE AS WELL AS ALEXANDER AND HIS FAMILY'S DEATH.
I TRUST IN YOU TO CRUSH THE MAGIC KINGDOM.
REMEMBER THAT I WAS ONCE GOD'S FIRSTBORN!"

And as she was lead back through the throat of the beast, saying goodbye to her old friend Nero by the gate, holding Reficule in her hand, she at last found herself happy that vengeance was here to stay. After all, she was glad to be LUCIFER'S Virus in Eden.

And he put down the book, not really knowing what was real and what was not.


Night time, February 25th 1429

The floor seemed to be alive. He was running down the hallways and the tiles on the floor were all black and white holes that gaped and closed like mouths, hungry mouths wanting him. He ran from side to side, bumping into old paintings of Roddy and of Gertrude and of Bertrand and Simon. He knocked down vases and they crashed down on the floor. He slipped and fell on Persian rugs and broke his fingers but did not care. He had stopped shaving, eating, living... so why should he care about a broken finger?
He ran down the east wing second landing hallway. There were fifteen coats of arms on each side here. He knew this was the only entrance out into the stables and the thermal baths and nothing else, but he just ran, for no reason at all. As he did , the coats of arms all came alive , their spears turning into arms and reaching for him, his white nightshirt fluttering in the breeze of itself. They seemed to scream at him with open, shouting holes of hell.
Then the whole castle shook. Somebody was pounding on the door at the end of the hallway. Here to the left Maria's and Martin's apartment had been located when they chose to live here at Iuventus. Help me, my children. Anyone: Help me.
He stopped. The doors to his left as well as the end hall hallway door crashed open and a transparent giant moved in. It was Lucinda and she was dressed in black, her long hair flying in the breeze. Her eyebrows were pressed together in the middle and made a little V toward her forehead. Alex looked at her with open eyes, petrified. Now he really felt like a rat in a maze. Completely powerless. He began running backwards, falling down and running nowhere with his legs, slipping while trying to get to get up while Lucinda came closer and closer. She stopped and the black giant, who now filled the entire hallway closed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, bent back and then forward, opening her mouth sending out bats, hundred of bats out of her mouth. Alexander's breath turned short and fast and loud. He whimpered like a dog as he ran and ran, seeing no possibility in escaping. The entire palace seemed to be alive now and he was running down hallways with hundreds of bats behind him, crashing into the walls. Help me, Belinda.
He ran down the steps of the staircase and to the main entrance. There happened to be a full moon tonight. How strange... There always seemed to be one. It was always there. Why hadn't he noticed that? That could not be real... He ran to the left toward the church and into it, closing the door. He stood there leaning against the entrance for a while, with closed eyes panting. Just trying to relax. Thinking about nothing but Lucinda and the bats. Then he turned around, back to the entrance and when he opened his eyes again there saw Lucinda's head, grinning, V on her forehead , eyes clamped together and death on her face. He opened the door again and ran out from the church, thinking he should've stayed in it. He ran up, bats now all around him, eating at his legs and head and screaming, screaming, squealing and flying. He finally came to the second landing again , ran down the hallway down to his bedroom , closed the door , locked it , went to bed with a crucifix and prayed to Mother Mary for those creatures to disappear. Belinda, Sieglinde, even Morgana or Patrick: Help...

March 3rd, 1429

Everything waits for you Alex alex alex alex alex .

The castle was alive. It was a breathing giant.
Breathing out. Echoes of a summer night in the garden. Breathing in. Pain of hell dancing the jig on his brain. Breathing out. Lucinda there clutching his throat. The main entrance was now filled with dry autumn leaves. A few rats cruised the hallway, the garden was dead.
He had tried to kill himself so many times now that he had stopped counting, he believed at seven tries. Jumping from the roof, cutting his wrists, self strangulation, God knows what else, but it wouldn't work. Even starving himself to death didn't work. For here he was. Alive. He was thin and pale but he was still here.
He slept everywhere. Sometimes in the hallways. Or the church. Or the sitting room. He went into the forest or the garden to do his business of latrine. The actual latrines were now so full of leaves and dead bugs that it was unbearable. Constantly the wind blew. He made himself a fire now and then, but he did not see the point. He wanted to die, so why make a fire. He might be able to freeze to death. That was a possibility. And, yes, damn it was cold.
His routine had become completely distorted. He slept whenever he felt like it and sometimes he just wandered around, wondering what the hell was going on with him during the night. The breaths of three thousand demons were upon him.
Often he wondered about the curse. One for the weapon. That was the war. One for health. That had been the plague. But the third? One for the road? The empty road. Was that the third curse? Didn't that seem strange somehow. He thought of all the people that had ran through this place before. Theo with his exuberant professionalism, Marcus always out of breath . Rolf with his dry sense of humour. How Marcus laughed when he first had met him. "Sorry , I am out of breath..." - "And I am Rolf, the butler...". Geena with her bouncy jellylike eagerness. Walter jovial, Ellie calm, Maria spontaneous, Belinda self confidant, Steven dashing, Zeddy full of temperament. All of them gone into oblivion. All of them. He even longed for Morgana's company and was ashamed that he had treated her so badly the last years of her life.

March 7th 1429

That final night of his ongoing isolation there had been horrid thunderstorms that made the shutters bang like mad in most of the castle and the wind rattle the doorways. Alexander sat awake, sheets clutched in hand under the pillows, screaming with fear. The rain, it sounded like hail, poured down against the window-panes and it seemed the house was alive.
He felt like someone was crying for help again. It was scary. Strange. When he finally could fall asleep, he dreamt strange, strange things.

That night, Alexander had a dream. He dreamt that he was in a castle in Nocturania. He recognized it. It was Lucinda's castle and it was thirty years ago. He was a young man then and a newly-appointed King of Prosperania. Lucinda sat on her throne and Alexander stood in front of her, head bowed down and he was kneeling. She hit him repeatedly with a stick until he was on the ground, bruised and bleeding. She chained him to the wall and sucked his blood, little by little. Then her thirteen demonic dwarves came and started nibbling off little bits of his feet and the vulture landed on his head and plucked his skull open, picking on his brain. Finally, the raven landed on his shoulder and started to eat his eyes. Out of nowhere, in this hellish situation, Belinda appeared. She was more radiant than ever before and she wore her wedding dress. She looked at him and smiled: "We are not dead! Find the answer!" He started hitting around him with his fists to free himself of the birds and the demons to be able to touch his daughter...

He woke up in cold sweat in his royal bedroom. His brow was dripping wet and his night-clothes were soaking. The sheets and pillows were drenched. His old and haggard face stared into the darkness and the only thing that stared back was his own image in the large, decorative mirror by the door Belinda had given him oh-so-many years ago. He looked to his left and saw the place where Sieglinde had slept before she died. The red satin draperies rocked gently in the wind. One of the large led-glass windows had opened and rain was poring in. Alexander went up to close it. He did so and then turned around. "What was that?" He looked around him. "Belinda ... Alive?" He shook his head. "It was only a dream!" he sighed to himself. "But what if it's a sign ..." But had that been the cries of help he had heard inside his mind. The cries that Lucinda had tried to muffle by chasing him down the hallways and showing him future killers?
The wind shrieked outside and the slow click-ticking of the rain against the windows outside made the situation even more ominous. "That's impossible! I buried them myself! They are down in the castle-chapel in our cathedral along with the other family-members! They can't be alive!" He shook his head again and paced the room between the large mahogany-dresser and the bed with the red baldachin and all. He was fluttery and stressed. At last this now pale, thin king had something to live for. An idea.
It wasn't much, he would grant the Gods that, but it was a start .
He fumbled in the dark and found the large lantern that he always kept by his bedside.
He reached for the lock and opened the lid.
He put on an extra pair of socks from under the night time table and put them over his socks that covered his tights. The robe that he put on over his body had a fur lining that warmed his neck. He felt his old skin tingle as he walked in the dark to the door, he walked to the door and opened it. Thank goodness. The candle was still burning. There were about a hundred left made years ago by The Sisters of Mary Magdelen who kept providing them with candles. No. Used to.
There was a puddle of wax on the stone floor.
There was a cool breeze from the door as he walked to the night time table.
He grabbed the lantern and walked out to light it with the help of the lantern.
When it was lit he saw the hall better
He put on his pointed red poulaine shoes and grabbed a hold of the key to the church.
They were calf with red silk and gold edging, with precious stones and pearls. Like the gloves that he put on, these shoes had been made for him twenty years ago.
He had never locked the bedroom door since he had been here alone. He took it out and now walked over to the fireplace. There was still some fire left there. He grabbed a torch and lit it, knowing that he could’ve lit the lantern with the fire in the fire place. Blowing on the flame and making it bigger, he warmed himself up. For the first time he bothered to look in the mirror and laughed at himself for being so silly? For whom did he have so much fear?
The dream had a reason and he knew not what the reason was. The lantern made strange reflections on his face and he shivered, looked away.
He looked back.
His mouth said, unwillingly contradicting his mind:
“The chapel. Go to Belinda’s grave in the left wing.”
Hodie aperuit cum erubuerint.
The mentor awaits.
He went out into the stone-hall-way and down the large stairs, past the sitting room and down the first landing, not bothering to look at any of the portraits of his predecessors as he walked by them. This was routine because he was afraid they would come alive. But now it seemed like they were smiling. Something had happened to him.
Chapel. What waited for him there?
”Nonsense, go back, lonely man.”
But the sound of his own voice made him realize that he had nothing to loose.
There it was suddenly. He was alone in the world and this world couldn’t be real, really. My God, everyone had died and left him. No one was alive in Clurafar or the area around it, that was a reason enough for him to suspect that something was fishy.
He saw the dust in the hallway for the first time and the bushes and all the trees and the decay in the light from the lantern.
The painting of his father and mother by the stairs looking at him was a sign to move on.
They seemed to say: “Find out what lies in the chapel.”
He knew not what awaited him now, maybe nothing, but he knew that whatever waited for him in there was certainly better than his nightmares. Something had happened to his soul. For the first time in months, no in years, he felt a spark of hope. He rushed down the larger corridors at the bottom floor and opened the doors to the cathedral entrance. He took out the big key and opened the door. It creaked and wailed, not having been opened for so long, at least in this way.
"Too long!" he said to himself. “Too long without a visit! That will be changed from now on! I will tidy you up, Iuventus Sacrum! I will not let Lucy win!"
Why did he have hope? Was it because the cries of help had an owner in his mind now?
He walked into the cathedral and a wave of Christianity and past memory came over him. This formerly broken man smiled for the first time in half-a-year. His dirty, sweaty brow turned from worse to better. He sighed. The white pillars lit by the torch surrounding the middle of the cathedral were still there and the coat-of-arms were still on the walls. He closed the door behind him with a large resonant bang that echoed in the great church .The statues of the saints and the large painting by Master John Eric Penderesci of Jesus at the time of his resurrection was still there and it was still as beautiful as ever. Why had he stopped going here? What made him forget his duties? Wasn't he a king? A king of what, he asked?
But then he thought: A King of Myself and My Past!
"I shouldn't let myself deteriorate like this!"
There is always hope, was his next thought. But where was the hope? Not in his life anyway.
Why did he fool himself? But this is hope lay. In his memories. In his own past. In the happiness here. In God.
"Remember God. Forget the misery."
The loud words he uttered were constantly contradicting the horrid satire that was wrenching his soul, saying he was a loser and a spiritual wreck grabbing for air and hoping to catch a golden robin. The misery, the other voice said, is there to build from God hope like a potter does a pot from clay. Yes, clay is unformed, just like misery.
"But of this unformed lifelessness becomes usefulness if you use it right."
What a remarkable change of pace, he thought. Why was he so happy? Hadn't he lost all hope? Apparently not. He walked on through the mid-aisle and looked around. His slippered feet echoed a gentle wosh-wosh in the cathedral. It was a reassuring sound of home. Maybe victory lay in not letting Lucinda bring him down. Victory was just another word for happiness.
A King and his Christ together on slippered feet. He smiled at the thought. What a good thing it is to have God, he said. In the lowest of the lows, he comes and picks you up and breathes new life into your heart. His eyes glanced at the great place this was. So many memories, so much time spent here. Weddings, funerals, his first communion, confirmation, bible-readings, church-services.
He walked up to the altar and turned around. The only light that shone through in this great place was the light of the upcoming dawn and the bright full-moon, but it was enough for him to see where he was going. The moon shone in his face and he started singing a Gregorian chant he used to sing as a child:

"In splendoribus sanctorum, ex utero ante luciferum genui te. Dixit Dominus Domino meo: Sede a dextris meis."

He stopped singing and smiled at the sound of his own voice echoing in the church.
He hadn’t sung these chants in thirty years. Not since 1392 had he sung in Latin.
Why was he singing? He was alone in a kingdom without a future.
He was crazy and dirty and drunk and …
Suddenly he heard a voice.
It said: "You always had a good voice, Father! But you couldn’t play the lute to save your life…" He jumped almost three feet up in the air when he heard the voice. It had been a woman. The first voice from reality in over four months. A girl this time. Father? Belinda? Who? "Who's there?" He was shaking with fear. He didn't know what to say. "Belinda? Who is there? If someone is there, now, don't scare me ... I am the king!" There was a laugh. He shook even more. "Come out! You are scaring the hell out of me!" He waved the torch about, giving the church strange shadows. But this was eager anticipation, nervous fear, not screaming fear.
The road to the door seemed endless and he had to admit he was scared.
He walked onward a bit and stopped when he heard a noise coming from the side of the church, from the chapel. He looked in that direction and found nothing. His footsteps echoed in the large, abundant cathedral.
Then he heard it again. That noise.
Someone moving in the chapel of Belinda and Steven.
Who was there? He walked toward the light he saw in there. He saw a figure in white.
It was faint in this light, but he had seen it clearly. Dear God, who is this?
The word "Father!" puzzled him. It was Belinda's voice, but it could have been his imagination. She was dead and gone, God rest her soul. But he could see that woman clearly as he saw the light of the candle. Next to the coffin stood a blonde figure in white, standing right beside Belinda's sarcophagus. A coffin that had been reserved for him, but that he had used for her, since no one had been there to bury her except him. But who was standing there? He hadn't seen a person for so long that seeing someone made his heart jump. He ran faster and faster until he fell, flat face down on the stone-floor, right by the chapel-stairs. The golden candle-holder made a cling-clanged-clang on the marble floor and Alexander moaned. "Rubbish!" he muttered to himself.
He moaned and looked up. The face that met his was framed by golden sander hair and reindeer eyes. The light of the moon fell on her face and she was smiling.
Three words were uttered: “Hello there, Father!”


CHAPTER FIVE:
UNCOVERING THE ILLUSION

It felt as if angelic creatures were spinning his cranium on a helm of destiny.
It felt as if fireflies were doing a ballet around his mount under splendid moonlight and playing juggling playoffs with his intelligence.
It was the buzzing of the breeze of those flapping wings that made him almost drunk with love. Alexander had spent years now mourning his country and his soul. Realizing that what Belinda and he had talked of actually had a truth to it was chaotic frenzy in an emotional sense.
It was euphoric beyond description.
Belinda had found her grave steps from where he was leaning and yet she was alive.
That meant that all of them were alive. His wife, his children, his servants.
Somewhere in time they all were alive.
That smile. Oh, how he had missed that smile. Those dancing eyes, those dimples.
Why, that dress. That was the dress she wore when she died.
The dress she was buried in and she was wearing it.
“Belinda” Alexander said with a desperate sigh. “Why are you here? Are you a ghost?”
Belinda stretched forth her hand.
His trembling fingers touched her right assembly of digits and he saw how the large lead glass lantern was shedding some light upon them. The fingers touched in a way that he never thought possible again. There was a shot of light that went through him. He looked up.
The daughter smiled.
“I am as alive as you are, Father! This world is naught what it appears. Come!”
Alexander stood up and backed toward the side mausoleum that had been built for him to use one day. He walked down the four steps with the lantern in his hand.
He looked over the edge of the stony coffin and found the balsamic, herb drenched, preserved body of Belinda there in the same dress.
There was a small shriek that sounded almost like a woman’s cry.
Alex rushed to the steps and up to the left wing of the holy room.
He stretched forth his lantern and the light from it shone on her face.
“Who are you? Who sent you if you are not the replica of my daughter?”
”I am not a replica nor was I sent here by anyone” the girl pleaded. “I am your child, Father.”
”Then how come there are two of you?”
She smiled nervously, a deep cry in her voice. This might be harder than she thought.
It seemed that cry spoke of great risks being taken and long roads being travelled in order to be there. It spoke of despair of losing the love of a father that was an absolute necessity for the existence of truth. These were old memories. Glances of yesterday went through his mind.
A little girl cocking her head at her father and demanding attention. A mature woman holding a speech. A girl singing a song.
The vibrations that reached his heart were Belinda’s.
He could read her like a book and always had been able to read her.
This was familiar.
There was a very great deep resemblance to the feelings that he thought were dead and long gone. The girl, the woman more likely, smiled and hoped that the father would believe her.
“I am not Lucifer or Lucinda, just your daughter Belinda.”
There were tears in her eyes.
A trembling lower lip.
“That daughter loves you very much” Belinda said and reached forth her arms.
Belinda gestured toward her father, a tear in her eyes.
“Come father, please. We talked about this. You know that this is not the real world.”
Alex took one step and then he took another.
“Believe me.” Belinda’s eyes were watering. “Please.”
Once again the rush of the old feeling came back as the four hands met.
He felt those hands. He knew them. He felt her. It was Belinda.
“I know you. You are Belinda.”
The young lady smiled and nodded.
The father and his daughter embraced.
“It is you.”
There was a muffled cry against Belinda’s shoulder. Tears were streaming down his face.
All at once those feelings, bottled up tears, came out.
The king of a haunted kingdom cried and cried and cried.
His daughter caressed his head and sighed a sigh of relief.
The first victory was won.
She had made it back home.

Two smiles and two teardrops later

Belinda walked around the small mausoleum lighting the six candles on each side with the help of the wax candle inside her father’s lantern. All the while Alex was sitting there dumbfounded and just gawking at his daughter. The chapel grew lighter and lighter as the young woman lit each wax candle, making the inside of their souls turn equally light.
The king knew that these candles had not been lit for a long time.
This little chapel had been long overdue for a visit, but Alex also knew that the pain in seeing the uncovered coffin was too much to bear.
There was no lid.
There had only been a coffin and the lid had been ordered.
Belinda had just been put into the empty space reserved for himself and since then he rarely visited the chapel because it scared him to see her. He had wanted to forget it all, eating himself through salty reserves like the dried fruits and meats and fishes of the cellars and drinking himself piss drunk on bitter wine, losing all dignity.
The only thing that he kept alive was the fire in the castle.
There was always a candle burning through the night that gave light to another in the morning.
“Belinda?”
The girl with the golden brown sander looks turned brightly toward her father, lighting the tenth candle. The wick melted briefly and flickered, growing larger and then beaming.
“Yes, dear Father?”
Her looks were astounding, the colour and form of her dress emphasizing rather than hiding her bosom and curvy derriere. There was nothing sexual in the observation. That would’ve been shameful in its familiarity. No, for Alexander Roderick Winsletenna it was the sheer delight in seeing his gorgeous daughter alive.
It was strange, unclear, and somehow even wrong. She was not supposed to be alive.
It was as if he was dreaming a strange, wonderful dream and a teardrop later she would be gone and that fear would be back with him, breathing ice on his lips once again.
But she was there, alive again, pretty, regal and interesting.
“How come?” he said and looked at her, inquisitive. She lit the eleventh candle and moved to the twelfth. “Why are you alive? I mean” he said clearing his throat “it is you, isn’t it? I mean ...” he laughed “I have no explanation for the fact that your body is still in the coffin and that you are here.”
She lit the candle that concluded the holy dozen and put the original candle into the lantern.
She set the concave white lead glass lamp with its red and bronze top onto the pedestal a few feet away and sat down next to her father. He shook his head, his lips trembling.
The man did not know whether to laugh, cry or scream.
“I am alive. I exist. But the story I am about to tell you will shock you, so I think you might want to have a glass of wine.”
”Where will we find that wine?”
She pointed at the round ivory cupboard in the corner.
He suddenly remembered that three bottles
of sweet vintage muscatel had been reserved for the holy purposes of mass with three gilded silver cups. “The good Lord will forgive us in the light of what I will tell you.”
“Don’t you want to go into the Alexander Room? I mean, that spot is maybe somewhat better heated.”
”After I have lit all these candles? Why did you have to tell me after and not before?”
“It is just that I think you might be cold.”
”Are you?”
He shook his head. “I should be, but with my three layers of clothing and my robe I am fine.”
”Why do you sleep with so much on you?”
”You wouldn’t believe how cold the castle is when nobody is here. Solitude is a cold thing.”
She nodded and patted him on the leg. “When you have poured the wine I will light a fire in the corner fireplace. It is important that we are here in this place where my body lies. You will know why soon.”
Alex took Belinda’s hand and kissed. She smiled and kissed his.
While he walked to the ivory and alabaster holy supper cupboard, taking out a bottle of old sweet wine and two cups, Belinda began speaking.
The tears in her eyes disappeared and her eyes cleared.
“When I died, the cause of death was despair.”
“I know” Alexander said. “I suffered with you.”
“I know that you did.”
”When you died I almost died with you.”
”I could feel that” Belinda answered.
Alexander scratched his head in embarrassment. “I tried to kill myself by hanging. I was too much of a coward.” He looked up at her. “Now I am happy I did not.”
“I am as well” Belinda smiled. “Don’t try that again. We need you.”
He nodded. “No dear. That is over.”
She sighed a painful sigh. Inside her soul she was by a beach gazing at her own calm sea for the first time in what seemed to be years. “Nothing else but a broken heart killed me.” Alexander walked over and set the cups onto the space between them. “I remember looking at that view and then just dying.” He poured the wine. It was almost a holy act, the angels by his side doing it for him, exquisitely guiding his hand to bring forth the holy liquid to make a new child. Hope was the child’s name. Hope versus fear and hate and misunderstanding. “But I woke up again and when I did I was inside the palace in my room, Steven’s room. There was a white light outside. So white it was scary.
When I walked out into the balcony I realized that what was outside of this palace was no garden, no Clurafar, no grass, no trees, no world. The palace was rising and falling and resting on thin air.”
Alex sat back, resting his filled wine cup on his left knee.
Belinda kissed her father’s hand once again and walked over to the one fireplace maybe six feet from the alter fresco of Virgin Mary.
She kneeled down and put a few pieces of wood into the fireplace.
“I walked out of the room and up and down stairs and found that everything was intact. It was Iuventus Sacrum, only it wasn’t ...” she looked at her father, a bitter, strange smile on her lips. She threw the wood in and stood up. “Then” she continued “I found people. I found mother and Steven and Patsy and Pat eating dried fruit” she laughed “in the Grand Hall. Even Bantrard was there playing.”
She took a candle away from the wall and lit a small piece of oak with it.
“Steven and I were blissful to see each other but I was very confused. I would not speak for a long time and I missed you, Father. I kept on mourning.”
Alex looked at her and then down on the ground. “So the ideas we had about the illusion were true after all. I would not have dared to believe it.”
She grimaced a very painstaking grin and gathered some courage. “Part of the reason why I kept on mourning was because my family, our family, Father, told me what conclusions they had made about their presence in that place.” The fire began to crack inside the fireplace now. She blew some wind upon it and threw another log. “They were not dead, none of us were ... or are ... dead. We might be more in reality than you are.”
Alexander looked up and let the wine cup drop to the ground.
There was wine all over the floor now.
Belinda rushed to a handkerchief that was clutched between the fingers of the corpse in the coffin. Without a blink or a hesitation, she grabbed the handkerchief away from the oiled hands of her own dead body. She kneeled and picked up the cup, dried it off and put some more wine into the cup.
Then she dried off most of the wine with the cloth and hung it onto the pedestal with the lantern to dry. Red or no, it was unimportant if the cloth was stained in this world. After all, the world was not real.
She went to the other fireplace to the right of the altar and Alexander, too stunned to speak, just listened to her talk, drinking almost all of his wine. Belinda had not touched hers.
As she worked on the second fire, she went on.
“Well, the 34 that had been there before I arrived had realized what they had suspected when they had been here. The reality of the horror had been too horrible for the unreal. No one country can die so fast or in so many ways. They told me that they were actually in a waiting room for something else. It stood to reason. We had all been killed one by one.” Belinda threw in a log and the wood caught flames. “My mother said something smart after that. They had looked for an answer. One by one of the people that all had remembered dying came into the replica of Iuventus Sacrum. They were all people that had gone from here and appeared in there. It wasn’t heaven because it was too desolate for that.” The girl took her father by the hand and lead him back to his bench. She drank all of her wine in one gulp and poured herself another glass. She sat down and took her father’s hand. He noticed that her hand was shaking. He caressed it with his thumb. “It was Bantrard that actually had come with the idea. He remembered the potion that Nomed had given us all on the 23rd of September 1425. It was a potion for a supposed epidemic. Who knows how the epidemic got started. The fact was that it did and that Nomed provided the cure.”
Alexander looked up and the stunned awe in his face was obvious.
“You mean that...”
Belinda nodded, reassuringly. “Everyone of the 36 executive present at that meeting table, not counting you, died and was brought into some sort of replica of the palace. The rest of the present probably were cast into a no man’s land of some kind along with the rest of the world.”
”How did Bantrard find out?”
”Not hard. We’d all suspected what he said. Interestingly enough, he found that everything in the real world existed here but in a parallel world. So he found things that you had left in the other world, the one not real, and one day he found a list of all the guests at that party.”
”Not real. What do you mean with not real?”
Belinda patted his hand and took a sip of her muscatel.
“Here comes the reason for your drink. When we woke up Nomed was gone and we were cast into a sleeping world where a war started, an epidemic raged and hate conquered us all. I fought with the entire family and everyone seemed to die. The country died. We were all extinguished. But, and this idea came from me once we had sat for the twenty-third time talking about this, this world was asleep. We quickly gathered that you would never ever arrive, thus never die in this world and come to ours. Why? Because Lucinda wanted you for her own. She wanted to cut away everything and just have you alone. It was the only possible explanation for all of this horror.”
Alexander shook his head. It was an incredible story, but so very probable at the same time.
His heart said yes to this. He had always doubted the reality of the world around him.
“So what is this world.”
”We have all had dreams. At night, the bland world around us turned black for about eight hours resembling night. During one of those nights, Steven and me cuddled up in our bed, all of us 35 had the same dream. We all described our dreams very vividly at breakfast and this morning was a really big surprise. There was always food in the cellar, always. Something always wanted to keep us alive.” The bitter laugh that came from her lips spoke volumes.
“The dream that we had was so exactly real that it could be northing else than a sign. We dreamt about the 23rd of September of the fateful year when Nomed served us the potion, but we saw it from a different perspective. We saw how Nomed gave us the potion and how we fell asleep. We saw him turn into Lucinda and leave through the fireplace. We saw the seasons came and went and how we kept on sleeping. We saw how the clock on the fireplace of your throne room remained set at one single time and how the date never changed. Father, we are asleep. We are still sleeping, all of us. We are not living now on the 7th of March 1429. We are still asleep in a never ending dream in a time capsule. Yours and ours. The difference is that you are set in a world that entails the entire universe. What lies beyond ours is probably no more than nothing at all. Our Iuventus is all we have. You were spared to disappear from this illusion because you are the one that she wants to duel. The exile was so frightful for her that she wants to duel you alone. There is so much at stake for her that she wants to duel you at the cost of everything you have and are. You need to stay here and stay alive in this illusion, for there are forces that also want to destroy you and let you and everything sink into oblivion. Lucinda will keep you alive because she wants you to duel her. There is a great deal at stake here. Probably more than we know.”
Alexander stood up and circled the coffin, drinking the wine.
Belinda saw that look on her father’s face. It was the look of someone that had regained hope. There was new problem to conquer. The king was back. But the king was deeply worried. The problem that had arisen was a bigger obstacle than he had anything that ever faced.
He drank the wine, looked out the window, stopped, walked on, and scratched his head. This went on for ten minutes. Then he stopped and kneeled down. He took Belinda’s head in his hands and kissed her forehead. He smiled at her tenderly.
“You are alive. That is what is important” Alex said. She nodded. “Just tell me, Lindy: Nomed?”
She said, without any hesitation, so ruthlessly that it shook him:
”The awakened demon. He is who you think he is. You said so on the morrow after our awakening.”
He sat back on his knees and then fell on his bottom.
His eyes wide, he stood up with the help of his own hands.
He kneeled against the stone podiums that coffin was resting on.
Time was standing still, the thoughts were racing.
“Nomed Snekawa. Demon Awakens.” Alex grinned and closed his eyes. “It is typical of my sisters black humour. I should’ve seen it. But we all fell for it.”
Belinda embraced her father from behind and kissed him.
“We didn’t know and didn’t want to know. We didn’t think it could be real.”
Alex turned around and hugged his daughter.
They stood there for so long that they forgot time.
They stood there and thought about life and what might wait for them at the other end of this mess. Alex caressed her light brown hair, her left cheek resting on his robed chest.
“How were finally able to make the transition to me?”
She took her cheek off his chest and looked up at him.
“That is an interesting story.” She indicated at the bench and they sat down. “After the dream, we understood what was going on. It was me again that figured out something. I felt so near to you in the throne room and I kept on looking at the clock that Reland had given you on your birthday. It had the figurines of two brothers and it was obvious who these angelic creatures were. Blood brothers. I looked at it like you did at times and tried to think about what you were doing right at that moment. I was often there and cried and prayed. Then, one day, I was looking the clock that never ticked and it just came to me like a vision. Of course, that was it. This was so big to my aunt, your sister, because so much was at stake. She had halted time in its key area because you were actually brave enough to throw her out. She knew also that by throwing her out she wanted you to decide between good and bad. So she split realities and made an ultimatum: Meeting her in the illusion that she created to fight for everything.” Belinda sighed, swallowed and nodded. “I think that if you lose the fight of this game, the game that you must fight, then Lucinda will win everything. If you win, she is expelled from all realities for ever.”
”You mean that this game is the original war?”
Belinda smiled knowingly.
”This is it.”
”Oh, yes. My belief is that all of this stands to reason. I mean why go through all of this trouble because of an exile. That was just the catalyst. The brothers are fighting this. St. Michael is strong enough to make you his ally. But his brother is the fallen angel and has my aunt on his side. This whole scenario is the ultimate battle and you are completely alone with this. We need you to win, because the architect has designed you like that. It is the painted picture you have been created for, the actual image that you have won to protect.”
Alex stood up and he began to understand the way this world worked.
“This is all her illusion, correct?”
Belinda nodded. “Correct.”
”Then if I am right, I can use it to my own benefit?”
Belinda shrugged and nodded at the same time.
“If you so wish, Father.”
He shook his head and smiled. “Then what is my task?”
“There is a proverb behind the clock that Reland gave you. He told you about the fallen angel and the war in Eden. What he told me alone was that what had inspired him to make the clock after that image was an old leg

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 11.06.2011

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