THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (ereader that reads to you .txt) 📕

to be penetrated by light was a forest whose trees alone could be lit from the outside. There was light in there, certainly. But from the outside the branch seemed to protect whatever haunting occurred on the inside. “God help me.”
Slowly, Alexander Winsletenna rode back down the hill, not even contemplating looking back and not even knowing why he had rode up in the first place.
Slowly, Alexander Winsletenna, King of Prosperania, rode toward the forest, for the first time in his life absolutely petrified.

§

Adnicul slowly woke up.
A river was the first thing he heard, the sound of steady water splashing against stones.
He felt like a drunken man who had drunk all night and then woke up on a wooden bench in an unknown place. He felt as if his soul was on fire.
He sat up, feeling his cheek. There were grass patterns on his left cheek.
A grass straw hung in his mouth like an unwanted appendix.
His eye patch hung loose. He felt his eye for the first time in years. There was nothing there, just a hole. He could still remember getting this wound. He could still remember seeing that thing roll around on the floor, his open wound spurting blood.
He looked up.
Was that the bridge?
My God, he was below on the bank.
How had he ended up here?
He saw Centurion a few feet away, eating grass. He wondered how he had arrived here. He tried to stand up, his knees weak, his sprained ankle still hurting.
His knees were shaking.
Why wasn’t he dead?
He should’ve been dead, God knows.
“Why?”
The word came out of his mouth almost on instinct.
Then he remembered lying in the arms of Rumar inside the cave.
What had he said?
”Think, Adnicul! Think!”

“I am forced to …”

What was it?
Forced to … keep him there until further notice? Wasn’t Rumar a carnivore? Why had he been spared? He did not understand what this was.
He turned around and saw the path next to the river find itself up toward the hillside that could lead him to the bridge.
What could he remember?
He tried to think, but his mind was still asleep.
He recalled the conversation with Alex and the he recall something very large just picking him up off the horse and running away. He saw Centurion, as if on instinct, riding after him. He recalled seeing Alex way in the distance following him.
Then he recalled falling asleep and waking up in Rumar’s arms.
Adnicul went on his knees again and crawled to the edge of the water and splashed some water on his face. He drank some of the water in the river and discovered it was sweet water.
Had Rumar spoken about Uriel?
There was something that Alex needed to do alone and he could not have Adnicul around? What was that? Had he dreamt all of that?
Adnicul walked to is horse, thinking of what had occurred and why he had so many problems recalling the last few nights. He remembered being fed and pampered by Rumar. Pampered? Was this not the thing that had wanted to eat him?
He was confused. Why had he been kidnapped in the first place?
Adnicul walked to the horse and wondered how the horse had ended up there.
He splashed some more water on his face, and then he walked to the horse and took out his bottle, went to the river and filled the bottle.
He put the bottle in the saddle bag.
He was still weak and so it was very hard to mount, but he made it.
Slowly, he began riding toward the uphill path.
Clear was to Adnicul that he was needed in Yambalah.
What was so important that he could not be there when Alex entered the forest?
Probably that he needed to see Rigor Mortis again for himself. After all, it was his journey and not anyone else’s. Still, he did not understand why he could not be there to help Alex. He needed to find him again.
Adnicul rode up the hill, still feeling his hair unkempt and grass falling off his hair.
He eventually came up and started heading for the bridge.
He had once been so keen on his own victory. Winning and not caring what became of others had been almost a wonderful thing. Was there a risk of becoming like that again? A man whose only intent was himself? No, because Michael had made him remember Eden. All of that seemed so remote now.
Adnicul stopped by the apple tree, managed to pluck many off the tree while sitting on the horse. He put some apples in his saddle bag, gave one to Centurion and started eating one himself.
As he rode across the bridge, it became obvious to him that Rumar’s abduction had been a setup by the good forces. Was that true, though? He thought so.
What bothered him? He needed to find Alex. Then why did he ride so slowly? Was there not a reason, now awake, to be as fast as possible in order to protect Alex from the ghouls of Yambalah?
There were so many questions.
What had bothered him all along?
Was it something that Lucinda had said?
What had she said?
They had both talked about winning over Alex a great deal, but that had been before the treacherous behaviour. But she had kept on saying something that she always had wanted to do, something that never seemed important to him, like her time travels always had seemed a waste to him.
She had promised to …
What was it?
He came to the other side of the bridge and started trotting faster, animating Centurion to almost gallop.
What had she said?
The more he realized that something was wrong, that Alex might need him where he was, the more important it seemed that he got help in duelling his sister.
He passed all the places they had seen together before and the image of Lucinda uttering that phrase over and over grew more evident.
“My Lord” Adnicul thought to himself. “I have to be there before they duel but why?”
Images passed through his head. He reprimanded Eric back in 1422, the attacks on the harbour, inspections at Fraytollah, visiting Lucinda.
Then, as suddenly as the lightning could strike an autumn night, he remembered her words. In fact it had been one of her primary goals.
“Alex” Adnicul whispered slowly to himself. “She wants to fool you and you have no idea that this is her plan.”
Adnicul suddenly began riding faster, hoping to come in time.
Why had the angels held him back?
Perhaps it had been Rumar’s initiative all together and perhaps the angels had woken him up just now.
He rode faster and faster and the stallion seemed to be panting already.
“I hope I come in time.” Adnicul passed the ravine, but it made no real difference to him that there was a horrible chance of both the rider and the horse falling down the ravine, riding so fast down the path that was so narrow.
He rode on to the long road toward the city ahead and realized that this was not the country he been elected to rule. It was Lucinda’s creation alone.
It made it all the more important to save Alex and help him get his family out alive.
That made the words Lucinda had uttered over and over again even more frightening.
He recalled those words now better than before and wondered why he had ever forgotten them
„If I only could throw my brother down the demonic ravine beyond the January Tunnel. I would pretend to die in the duel and then I would watch him fall and become the victorious one anyway.”
Adnicul raced down the road, oblivious to everything sans one thought: saving his new friend Alexander.


CHAPTER SIX

THE LAST DARK MILE


The king of Prosperania had finally entered this forest, the forest of the eternal full moon.
His journey to the cave had begun.
His heart was in torment, his soul was in pain, and his mind was joining the ridiculed souls of the underworld.
From the moment he had entered this final of forests, he had felt the presence of something not of this Earth. So, this was the original sin? These trees were all sprung from the forbidden fruit? Adnicul’s creation had promoted this? The thirteenth angel had been the innocent, unknowing instigator of a forest of forbidden trees?
As Alexander Roderick Winsletenna rode down this path all he could think of was the fact that he was here to save his family. He was petrified of failing. It was not even the fact that he was the king of a country that never would awake again. He could not bear the fact that he would never ever meet or greet or be able to love his family or anything else at all for that matter if he lost this duel.
There was a strange atmosphere here. Yes, the full moon had not penetrated the forest from the outside and no visitor could look in. But somehow the light of the full moon arrived here anyway, its light curving the branches and making love to the mud, dancing among the dried leaves and peeking through the holes between the branches of the bushes that seemed like claws to him that night.
It lit up the path enough for him to see that there was a long way ahead.
But it was clear to him that this was the way to the cave. Back in 1411 he had stopped at Rigor Mortis and never looked back. He had never come this far, his father had warned him before he passed away.
There was a silence here that seemed to tell him that the souls here in this forest were mean, but doomed to be so. It was not they wanted to be so, but that they were forced to thrive on revenge. Like Adnicul before the treason, their staring eyes had not yet met the light of day. Like the tyrant before the dungeon, they had been taken away from the tree of life to be included in the branches of mortality. This was the graveyard shift of the twilight zone, the shining of the fire starter. This was a soul not being able to take a stand either to life nor death, in limbo.
Everything seemed dark blue or grey here. The colors were those of mud and moonlight.
The trees seemed to be alive, glittering in this flora of darkness. They seemed to call out to Alexander, saying: “Help us, save our souls, stranger!”
Through it all, Mercutio kept on riding as if hit by a storm, faster and faster and still never arriving. The trees seemed to fly by his vision like dirty birds hoping to catch a butterfly in its nervous flight. The moon cast its shadowy light upon them both and for the first time Alex felt how frightened his stallion was. My God, this horse was terrified.
Alexander’s muscles were hard and his body was young. He had a large weapon on his back. But in his soul, Alexander felt like a nervous phoenix hoping not to be burned alive once the fire started to scorch his skin.
“I will come to haunt you one day old man!”
These words