“One of these days I’ll get around to writing something new.”
Once again I have found myself short on time and short on material, so instead of letting a week quietly slip by without any new material, instead I intend to upload another chapter of my novel. Maybe I’ll get some traction once enough of these are out there, and maybe someone will buy my book. Or maybe not. Anyway, I have a better plan from now on for what to do when I run out of time, so it’ll be a bit different in the future. Maybe. If you want to see more of Spectral Crown, let me know in the “Contact Me” portion of the page, or leave a comment.
Anyway, here’s the preceding chapter.
Spectral Crown, by Andy Sima: Chapter One.
At that time, I lived with my mother in Chateau Uradel, the antique home of the Uradel family and rulers of the Uradel nation. The Uradel nation, of course, was small when compared to its neighbors, both old and new, as the nation contained just one valley and some of the surrounding mountains, though this was typical of the time. This valley, the Stalpert valley, was not special in any way, but it was rich in natural resources and was the place where I had been born and raised, as an attendant to Prince Maynard Uradel, heir apparent to King Adalbert and Queen Annalise of Uradel. My mother, Josefa Bergmann, was the chief handmaiden to Queen Annalise. My father, the old attendant to the king, was dead.
Stalpert valley may not have been a large tract of land, but it was land nonetheless, and a land rich in wood, stone, fish, boar, and similar necessities. It provided the kingdom of Uradel enough to get by, and what extra there was could be sold to neighboring kingdoms for fine goods and luxuries, of which the Uradel nobility had many. It would seem, that Uradel was a land fit for the taking, a space that any larger power would pound into oblivion without batting an eye before draining it of valuables. There are numerous historical reasons this did not happen until much later. But the primary reason for this was a curse. Or at least the fear of one.
Stalpert Valley and the Uradel lineage had been considered cursed for hundreds of years by the time that I was born, and no realm was willing to push their luck and take over the small valley. It would risk ruin over their entire sphere of influence, and all knew of curses at this time. Although many of the era’s wiser men were beginning to doubt the existence of curses, there was no doubting that something strange was afoot in the kingdom of Uradel. It manifested itself quite obviously in the royal family.
Curses are born from death, from one’s dying breaths. Whether this curse was from the oppressed masses, as many ancient Uradel scholars believed, or from one single individual, tortured and killed by the tyranny of the dictatorial kings and queens of old, no one would ever know. And it really did not matter to anyone, as there are very few ways to break a curse. Though it appears simple, the intricacies of it are manifold.
Where this curse came from, who placed it, and what the actual curse entailed may never be known, but ever since that time immemorial specters of pain have fallen over the Uradel family. Slowly, over generations, they have wasted away to almost nothing. The ruling King, Adalbert, and his Queen, Annalise, were some of the palest, malnourished people I had met. They were more like skeletons than monarchs that we were supposed to honor with our lives. Their skin was thin and blue-hued, like rotten cloth. And their son, Maynard, was so sickly that he could barely stay attentive during his father’s courts. I was his de facto nurse as much as his attendant. I once overheard their family doctor saying that it would be impossible for Maynard to produce an heir. Perhaps this was one of the triggers for what would become their downfall.
So, sick and weak and visually frightening as the Uradel family was, they did not easily attract suitors. Just as no one would conquer the valley, no one would marry into it, either. There had been whispers for as long as I can remember that the King and Queen were really cousins, or even siblings, and that the Queen’s foreign name is a ruse. If it were true, it would explain their son’s sickening appearance. If that sort of depraved behavior had been happening for generations, perhaps their current state had little to do with a curse. But it didn’t matter. No one came to Stalpert except to trade goods.
In this way, Chateau Uradel became an isolated fortress, far removed from the individuals living in the valley below and far removed from the individuals that were supposed to be governed by the king. That windswept manor, on the side of the valley, loomed out over the villages below like an evil eye, and everyone knew to avoid its gaze if they could. The nobility were people to be feared, not loved.
My family, the Bergmanns, had a long history of serving the Uradel nobles. We moved freely between the chateau on the side of the mountains and the valley below. This is a trait that was necessary for the royalty’s attendants, as it was our job to retrieve the necessary supplies from the valley in order to keep the chateau running.
Though I resided in the chateau, I was no different from those in the valley. My mother and I live in squalor in the lower levels of the chateau, with all the other servants. There were mice in our rooms, and our beds were composed of molded over hay. The food we all ate, if it is not the leftovers from the royal court, was whatever we scavenged from the chateau’s stores. The clothes we wore, while regal, were patched hand-me-downs from the Uradels. I wore the clothing of my ward, as did my mother. This giving of clothing is maybe the only act of charity that I had ever seen the Uradel family perform. As it was, servants to royalty and valley-dwellers alike looked upon the Uradel family in envy and disgust.
Their royal corpse bodies were clothed in the most resplendent hues of silk available, coming from the far east over the mountains. Sometimes I wondered to myself how much those clothes must have cost. The food they ate, when it is not taken as tax from the peasants in the valley or traded for by myself, was from countries far away and beyond the reach of anything I knew. We had received shipments of that great luxury sugar, we had received fishes of a kind that I had never seen in the Arch River, and we had received single cuts of meat, salted and spiced, bigger than my body. It is funny, when I think about it, that these royals and their court of flaky family members could eat so much. The rooms in which the King, Queen, Prince, and courtly members slept in retained some of the most fantastic beds I had ever seen, filled with what I could only imagine as being the essence of clouds or a hawk’s wing. I do not know where they received such materials, as I never saw traders carrying those things. They may very well be leftovers from the King’s grandfather’s grandfather’s time. It would not surprise me. At any rate, the Chateau and the courtroom itself were a squat wooden building, its’ foundations carved into the side of the mountain many years ago. It was large, but architecturally far from impressive.
And this is how it was in Uradel. The various villages below the Chateau would look up and decry the power of the King and Queen to live in such luxury while the royalty did nothing of use. But there was nothing to be done about it, really. What could have been done? My mother and I had to be careful not to have the skin flayed from our backs for saying something out of turn in the castle, us and all the other servants and handmaids and attendants in the castle. The members of the court held the power of their own little world, and they were content to remain separate. For a time, at least…
To be continued when I run out of stuff to talk about…?
1 thought on “Spectral Crown: Chapter One”
Comments are closed.