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

/> What it all amounted to was that he was a puppet?
He started walking down the steps and realized he was no longer a springtime wanderer but had ventured into autumn.
Of what year, he wondered?
He did not know. Neither did he want to know.
Maybe the seasons would change according to his inner life.
He knew what he had found in the training hall. In there he had found himself.
He heard a horse neigh and looked to his right. There, standing next to a tree, was Mercutio. Familiar old Mercutio, saddled and ready to gallop. The stallion was sturdy and was looking Alexander’s way and the king at once realized that the horse’s eyes now were so awake that his conscious self had not only awoken, but received what could be described as a monument of spirituality.
He actually saw the horse smile. It was a nice smile and a sweet smile.
It was the smile of a stallion.
Behind him one of the robins on the front stoop was giggling.
He walked up to Mercutio and petted him on his mane, feeling the soft texture of his neck hair.
Alex realized that he now no more had a belt for his sword but a
holder for it hanging sideways from his lower back, something Theodorakis Killi had tutored him to make for himself when he had been taught to swordfight in his youth.
He put his sword in its holder and mounted the horse.
That was when he realized that he was being watched.
On the large open space to the left of the main entrance of the
castle two people were standing.
The were chattering in some to him unintelligible Hispanic
linguistic murmur.
He realized then and there that he hadn’t really looked behind him to see from where he had come and saw that the tall castle was simply Misar Rularia, where Zeekha apparently had spent the last years of her life. The three towers that seemed to shoot up into a blue sky had four long spears sticking up on top and small windows where he could see people as well.
These people were looking at him. One of them was even waving at him to leave.
The two people were looking up at the left tower and smiling.
He did not recognize them. He knew that he had chased a Hispanic villain years ago the young man looked like him. He was tall and handsome and there was no doubt that he was the fiancé of the girl. A redhead.
She was a redhead.
But now that he had seen them, he realized that they had no shoes on.
The two of them were barefoot. Although their clothes were elegant and black clothing, such fitting to servants to the crown, a crown of some king of probably Nocturanian origin, their feet were dirty and full of scars. Now he saw that the man’s left foot was bleeding. A bone was sticking out of it. Alex had to cringe, for as the couple slowly turned toward him he saw that their faces were bloody and the man’s throat had been slit clear open and his muscle tissue and tendons and even gullet could be seen even from here.
The woman was wounded only from the breast and up. Her left eye was hanging out and her mouth had been slit open so that one could see her lower gums.
Alex felt himself fall of the horse and hit the floor, his guts spilling out on the ground.
Mercutio behind him, he felt himself looking up and seeing the couple’s feet and then legs and then crotches and then …
He looked up and saw them gazing down at him.
He grabbed Mercutio by the mane and jumped on the horse, down the hill across dry pine combs and fallen leaves.
He looked behind him and saw them slowly walking behind him down the hill.
He kicked Mercutio in the side to urge him to hurry up.
“Ride faster, get out of here” he bellowed at his stallion.
The hill grew steeper and soon enough Alex found himself leaning back and holding Mercutio’s bridles so tightly the horse began to froth at the mouth. The skidded and hit what seemed to be a real road and before riding off he saw the two young people approaching him slowly but surely down the hill.
“Hee-aah!”
He kicked Mercutio in his sides and began galloping down the hill toward what he felt would eventually turn into the street of a town once he was close enough to pass what he thought would be an avenue a bit of a way off.
He could hear the two youngsters skidding down the hillside in order to catch up with him.
He galloped down the road and onto a well beaten path alongside the real one. He took a shortcut across a field and as he looked back he saw the two looking across the field on the other side of the pasture. They started their walk across the field just as he skidded alongside the field and rode into the forest again. They kept on following him as he came onto the main road again.
He had to parry a little to come upon the road. It was clearly difficult for Mercutio. He was fighting not to fall. All the time those bad vibes came shooting out from the demons approaching. He looked back and he saw the skidding down the hill as well. He could see the young woman’s eye dangling from her socket and the veins of the gullet of the man thumping and throbbing.
He rode sideways and bent the steed and turned a while and finally he jumped across the ditch with the stallion to the road. Mud was squirting across the road and under the horse.
They were coming closer.
He had no more than landed on that road and began to ride frenetically when he turned around and discovered that he was nor followed any more. The two wounded youngsters had vanished. He stood there, feeling sweat dripping from his nose and forehead. His breath was frantic, but as he was calming down he realized that he his clothes were wet from all this excitement.
Expecting to see them jump out from any corner he rode away fast, entering the avenue and wondering who these two were, their wounded faces distraught and haunting his mind.
For around five minutes he guessed he rode down this straight road when he arrived at what seemed to be a downhill slope leading to some kind of village.
He stood there for a while and watched the village, not sure if he wanted to ride down.
He rode for a little bit, Mercutio’s hooves clip-clopping solemnly, criss-crossing the road.
Alex was still shook up by these two youngsters that had appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast. He expected them to appear at any moment again and scare him.
When he had rode five hundred feet down that road in semi-darkness, he saw a sign. The sign was faded and old, written with black paint on rotting wood, nailed onto a post of ebony.

Riúzarly Village this way
Visit “The Ides of March” when you are there

He sat there on his horse for a couple of minutes thinking of Julius Caesar being stabbed by Brutus exactly 1474 years back, or 1469, whatever one wanted to believe about illusions. He felt himself wondering who these youngsters had been and if they had been Adnicul’s servants and if they had murdered Adnicul just like Caesar was killed by his closest friends.
He gathered that “The Ides of March” was a pub.
But would he find someone there?
Or was it another inn of a lost ghost town?
Something told him his life would change drastically down there.
His story, at least, would change in a major way once he entered the place.
He looked ahead. Ahead lay an avenue again. A downhill path then lead down to Riúzarly Village, a village with a suspiciously Nocturanian kind of name, with the emphasis on the ú.
Four statues of vultures surrounded the sign and behind it he could only see a few lights in what he supposed was the pub.
A light here and there shone in the semi-blackness of the village, so he supposed he was in for another visit in a place that was a figment of his own Lucindic imagination.
He saw the hill ahead and began riding to it through the darkness of the avenue.
Alexander knew then and there that he was back in Lucinda’s illusion now.
When he had woken up by the tree he had been transported to a safe haven where the angels worked as tutors. That had ended with the emergence from the tower. The difference was that now there were real friends in the illusion. But was this an illusion? It seemed so different. Maybe the worlds were starting to mingle. Maybe the answer was closer at hand and he was approaching the zenith of the power that was being presented. There were friends here, good friends. But also darker enemies.

§

Adnicul had not slept a wink since Eric had told him why Lucifer had wanted to expel him. That had been four days ago. Adnicul was still in his cell, but on the rare occasions that he spent outside of that small room with the twelve crosses he walked with Eric who told him of heaven and hell and what they really were and how Adnicul must change in order to save his soul.
He was a mutant. Something created out of a forbidden tree.
So he was actually a forbidden culprit, an object of sin and lust on the run.
When Eric told him what actually had happened when Eric and Rebecca had been forced to scare the wits of Alex just moments previous to this conversation, Adnicul felt impelled to ask Eric a question that popped up in his mind instinctively.
“You mean that certain events in a life trigger a thought process that leads to salvation?”
“Yes, they can, Adnicul. But they only will trigger such a process on your own terms and if you want it. You must want it. The time is ripe for that. Now you have to decide what to do with this.”
“The time is ripe for what?”
”The time is ripe for change.”
“Raphael told you that?”
“I am only a sub angel, but I do know that you must go to Riúsarly.”
“Why?”
”We will tell you once you are there.”
”Alexander is there, Adnicul. If you want to save your soul, then go to Riúsarly and visit Alex.
He needs you.”
“Alex needs me? You have got to be joking.”
”I never joke about serious matters.”
With that the conversation was finished.
Adnicul at once realized that his life had changed completely. He was no longer an independent man. He was fighting for a higher cause.
But he was very confused.

§

There was an interesting glow here. This small road had a glow about it. It was as if this road was a transition between what had been over in Misar Rularia and what was coming afterwards the trees had black stems with dark green leaves. The only light he really could see was the light from the moon on the other side of the opening before the hill to the village.
Behind the trees, however, was a glow. Small glittery sparks of lights seemed to fly back