Never forget you wallet in the castle! #4

Chapter 7 "Chronicles"

"One sunny summer morning, the king and the queen were supposed to be hunting together, but her Majesty Angelia the first was in her usual monthly indisposition. It was not that the pain was so severe and unbearable, but her melancholic mood had killed the desire to get up and get dressed. The loving and caring husband got the permission from her to go hunting on his own. It was a relief not to be around of his beautiful, lovely, and sensational but currently unmanageable, unpredictable, and moody wife.

Willy headed to his well-kept stables and saddled the best and most favourite horse, Billy the tenth, and started his journey to the farthest forest in the kingdom: he wasn’t planning to be back till late supper time hoping that Angelia would recover by then.

The summer was in full swing: birds were chirping, the sun was caressing Willy’s back gently, the light wind was whispering an unknown song. While he was riding and dreaming about fortunate future hunting, out of the blue he heard a strange creaky voice, “Could you support a poor and sick old man with some spare money, please?” The king looked down to check who the voice belonged to.

The stranger, who raised from the ground amazingly promptly, had a nastily wrinkled face; his eyes were tiny and shifty; his ugly crooked fingers were squeezing his wooden walking stick; he had thin like twigs legs which were disproportionately short to his whole body; his clothes were worn, dirty and nauseating smelly.

But the king was a noble well brought up man and never judged a book by its cover. Willy started clapping his pockets, then he dived into his saddle bag, after he started rummaging in his second bag which was dangling behind his back. But unfortunately, there was no sign of his wallet; therefore, no money.

“What an awkward moment! It’s Angelia’s fault! She wasn’t there to remind me about it!” the king was creaming in his thoughts. Then he murmured apologetically, “I express my deepest regrets but I forgot my wallet in the castle. Please, accept my sincerest apologies.”

The old man winced in disgust and started muttering something.

The king suddenly came up with a brilliant idea how to fix unfixable. “If you follow this road, it will lead you to my castle. You will be given some money and hot dinner, I assure you. Just say that Willy the one hundred and twenty-third, the king of Montyland, has sent you there.”

But the old man was muttering and murmuring as if he didn’t hear the king’s last words, or he didn’t want to. All of a sudden, he started fidgeting and fiddling with his bony crooked fingers which (it seemed to the king) started growing and resembled now eagle’s claws. Only now the king noticed a hump on the old man’s back, but this one started disappearing and the stranger straightened his back briskly. On the contrary his walking stick became shorter reminding a magic wand now.

At this instant the king detected that the sun disappeared behind dark shadows in the sky and the wind started ripping off the leaves from the trembling trees. The ashy leaden clouds were hanging over. One inky cloud was approaching rapidly sounding like a wild furious monster screaming piercingly. It was not a cloud. It was a gigantic flock of huge pitch-black ravens speeding towards the king. At the last moment Willy hurriedly covered his head with his hands to protect himself from the danger; the flock rushed over him... Everything went black; everything disappeared.

When the king regained his consciousness, it was nearly evening. The sun was going down.

“What was it? Was it real? Was it a dream?” the king was trying to order his thoughts.

Willy didn’t notice how he got back to the castle. Still deep in his thoughts, he flopped into his throne and remained there till Angelia found him there and touched his shoulder gently. The king came to his senses.

“Are you alright? What’s happened to you? You look strange.” The queen’s sweet and gentle voice smoothed the king’s darkest thoughts.

He revealed her what had happened to him in the forest.

Angelia sighed deeply, “I know who it was. It was Mortem Deathspell, the evillest, the most merciless sorcerer ever known.”

“Am I going to die?” sobbed the king.

“If you had been supposed to, you would have been dead already. He just cast a spell on you, I believe. But which one?” replied the queen in a subdued voice…"