the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (best detective novels of all time .TXT) 📖

/> Belinda was lead to a door that was opened before her far away from the screams. She sat down by a table in a posh waiting room next to the stairs filled with food that no one would eat. Silvia spoke softly to the twins as Mormidar and Cretan held a subdued conversation with Ulfaas while the Great Danes listened and wrote. Everyone tried to convince Belinda to cool down, to let professional questioners take over. Inside the tower watch room, Nina was getting weaker and weaker, refusing to speak all along.

The night of Thursday, May 14th, 1422

Belinda Winsletenna had been sitting cross-legged on the comfortable couch for two hours now, a blanket over her and a glass in one hand, a bottle of the families white wine in the other. This room was her Thinking Room. In this Alexander Room, named after her father’s great-grandfather, Alexander II, there were paintings everywhere and floral decorations and richly dark brown furniture. The Persian rugs, woollen carpets and tapestries gave the whole room an air of solitude. The four fireplaces in here were lit, their large crackling fire and the sound of the rain against the windows making her thoughts melancholy and puzzling.
Belinda’s eyes had been fixed on the fireplace in front of her so long; she had to look away, out upon the moon, hid behind the clouds, her emotional life a mix of shame and relief, anger and pain. Rolf had checked on her ten minutes ago and tended all the fires, asked her if she needed anything and left with a sombre smile on his face. Belinda could not need anything else but peace right now. This day had been hard. That much was sure, only because she had surprised herself.
Remembering being tied to a rack and having hot wax poured over her whilst hearing Nina Ray’s name came back to her when she realized that it was not her imagination. Nina Ray existed. That had brought a monster she did not know existed. For eight full hours they had “worked” on the messenger. All the anger she had ever felt for Nocturania had come out on Nina Ray for the simple reason that her name, now synonymous with the country, had appeared first in that dark dungeon of Rigor Mortis in 1411. But every time they came back into that room, the girl looking worse, the grin seeming wider, Lindy’s fear inched up another notch.
Every time Nina Ray told her: “You are meddling with powers beyond your control!” There were scars on every part of her young body and red spots from the wax. There was water on her face from water torture and her muscles were literally throbbing. But she had only said that she was a messenger and indeed a part of the attacks, that there were two hundred attackers hired by the forest queen, but she had been asked to by an unnamed source, which had also provided the capes.
Eleven nations had experienced attacks, Nocturania not. Now they knew there were two hundred of them around and that the capes had been sown by the source that had hired them. It was obvious. She had looked at the craftsmanship. The insignia sown on the capes were obviously done by someone not unfamiliar to the weapon itself. Lucinda had been gone for many years now. Her father would say thirty, because he wanted to forget 1411 and its hellish experience. But Belinda was sure that she was somehow involved, maybe as advisor of some kind.
But that was just icing on the cake. What really scared her was how diabolical she had become. Ruthlessly asking Marcus and Philip to keep on torturing Nina Ray to squeeze out locations and dates and people from her. Queen Silvia had her own questions, of course, as did the Great Danes, who all received their fair share of information.
But Marcus and Philip had been sweaty and almost crying by evening and on the way back Mormidar and Ulfaas said nothing to Belinda. They had gotten to know a new person. Not just the happy, sweet, frilly Belinda with charming features. But a hardnosed heir that would slap a nose bloody to get secrets out of the enemy. Hell, it even surprised Belinda herself. What surprised her, as well, was that she felt guilty for what she had done. What surprised her even more was that this clever girl had let herself be caught at all. It was way too much like a trap, she was trapping them, not them herself.
The flames glittered in her eyes.
She took another sip of wine and remembered that fateful day of 1411.
A little later, Belinda sat with a book in her hand that she had written before the time at Rigor Mortis, when she had been just a child. She had been a girl full of childish trust back then. “God, grant me a life full of family. God, grant me to look at the stars. Lord, grant me to run with father in the garden again like I once used to, catching fireflies in giant jars:” She had to smile at all that, remembering catching fireflies with her father in the fields. She looked at her comments about having received the nomination and smiled.
“I will be a good queen. I will rooule well. She had not learned to write the word “rule” yet. Then she looked at the book a few pages back and read the words “Fraytollah Pirate Harbour”. She shook her head and quickly turned the page. The flames threw topsy-turvy reflections on her face and sang in unison with the rain on the window. She had lost herself and someone was trying to make her keep losing herself. Someone was always trying to put a leg in front of her as soon as she wanted to find herself again. She was happy, no doubt.
But looking at the text in this book, the text of a young unworried girl, sipping at the wine and tossing back her hair behind her ear, she realized she had let Lucinda get to her. She had given her power. She wanted to be herself. She wanted to be true to who she was. She walked to the window, a tear running down her cheek, looking out at her home, realizing that she had something to fight for, her soul and her home. She took another sip of her wine, clutching her blanket. Rolf was there outside and smiling.
“Enough rest, Lindy?” She nodded and stroked his cheek. “Not depressed, are you?” She smiled and shook her head.
“Night, Rolf!”
”Night, my dear!”
Soon enough, Belinda, blanket around her shoulders and slightly tipsy, was loafing back to her bedchamber by way of the white corridor. Tears in her eyes, shame in her spirit, confusion in her mind, memories in her soul, Nina Ray in her spirit like a black dove making Lindy-love wonder why she had turned into a monster by the sight of the blonde messenger. She knew why, as she dried away those tears, walking up to the second floor in her slippers. The name had been fictional until this past Wednesday, a symbol for all those things that tormented her and her people. What Nina Ray represented was a story untold, a future unexplored.
How had Lucinda formulated it? “Apocalyptic Nina” What did that mean? She did not want to think of that. She took another sip from her glass and opened the door to her bedroom. Steven was there, sleeping. She went into bed and cuddled up next to him. Belinda, thankfully dreamless this night, was happy soon to be a married woman.
She had fled into lust the last few weeks. They had done everything they could to push their love to its highest measure. She had been a warrior desperately gathering her weapons before going into battle. It was passion beyond passion. It was escapism in order to deny the fact that somewhere at the bottom of she hearts they knew what was about to happen.
The carriage had started to roll. Belinda just hoped that the hill was not to steep for the vehicle to stop before it crashed and was destroyed. She looked at Steven and smiled, the salt-water wells next to her iris spilling over transparent liquid onto her cheeks and then turned away from him.
“I’m afraid of my own rage” Belinda whispered ever so softly to herself, needing to hear her own voice utter these lost words. “I have carried that name around in my mind as a ghoul for ten years. It has been synonymous with fear and apocalypse for a long time. Realizing that she is real is a shock. I know I mustn’t be too harsh on myself, but I tortured her.” Belinda cried. “Wax, punches, water torture, mind games, repugnance. I did not believe I had it in me.” She shivered. “It scares me.”
Steven embraced his love. “You were only protecting yourself.”
She looked to her side. Steven was awake. She embraced him.
“What?” Belinda searched for answers and tried to find them in her fiancé’s love.
“You were just defending your family.”
Belinda sighed. “I was just defending myself. Never in my life have I been so afraid. My kindness left me. Belinda became the dragon. I have never seen myself as a dragon.”
“You are a matron making sure the hens in the den are safe. No man or woman or child shall harm the ones you love. No one shall come past you but the ones that mean to bless the loved people in your temple,” Steven whispered, caressing her cheek. “You are just afraid of becoming hunted, so you learned to hunt. Don’t blame yourself for what you did. Nina Ray scared you. That’s normal.”
“I know I did it for us all.”
“You were protecting the kingdom.”
“I love you, Steven darling,” Belinda sighed. “Calm me down when I grow weary. I need it.”
“I will.”
She lay awake for a bit, realizing what the problem had been for her and why the spiritual scar had been so deep when Lucinda had attacked and imprisoned her as a child. The reason was that the knowledge of her prison in Nocturania had not been visible for six months, that it literally had disappeared off the map, and that it suddenly had appeared just for her father to find her. She saw how Lucinda had just let her go with the words that Nina Ray would one day send of the four apocalyptic horsemen. Accordingly, this entire capture had been one scam from start to finish. It had only been to give her trouble. She was the victim. Why? That meant Lucinda had the power to do anything and that Belinda was completely powerless against this witchery. Belinda had definitely turned more moody, her mood swings almost infamous by now, after age eleven. Maybe that was the reason.
The princess thought about the diaries she had been leafing through. There was something in there that she was missing. Some clue was simply not there yet. She had written the name Fraytollah a few times in the diaries, but she had no idea how it fit in with the other hints of Lucinda’s plan.
Belinda shook her head, tossing and turning in her bed and desperately tried to rest. Steven saw this and embraced her hard. She responded by kissing his lips. They fell asleep, the breeze from the open window caressing their bodies and the moon casting a beam across the two of them, almost as one. They dreamt of the dawn, feeling inside how wonderful it was to live within the reality of good dreams. Belinda hoped for a new future with a hope to be happy. Inside, she