THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 2 by Charles E.J. Moulton (amazing books to read .txt) 📖

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