The Duke In His Castle Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PRAISE FOR… 2

  Copyright Page 4

  Other Books by Vera Nazarian 6

  Dedication 7

  Illustration: “The Duke” 8

  I: Starting On A Lighter Note 10

  II: Things Somewhat More Serious 24

  III: Deepening 43

  IV: A Dream of Falling 57

  V: Following A Nondescript Sunrise 64

  VI: Sacrifice 79

  VII: Parting Gift 84

  Author’s Note 88

  Acknowledgements 89

  About the Author 90

  PRAISE FOR…

  The Duke in His Castle

  The Duke in His Castle by Nebula Award-nominated author and award-winning artist Vera Nazarian is a dark, lush, erotic fantasy novella in the vein of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, with interior illustrations by the author.

  It has been selected a 2008 Nebula Award Finalist.

  Rossian, the young Duke of Violet, wastes away in mad solitude, unable to leave the confines of his decadent castle grounds because of a mysterious invisible barrier . . . until a strange female intruder arrives at the castle bearing a box of bones.

  “Vera Nazarian combines the wry and poignant charm of Hans Christian Andersen with the subversive wallop of Angela Carter in crafting this gem of a fairy tale. No longer merely a promising writer, Nazarian has arrived.”

  —Paul Witcover

  “Vera Nazarian is a writer seemingly so full of story that it just comes bubbling uncontrollably out of her... The Duke in his Castle shows her at the peak of her form in a deceptively simple tale that probes the nature of life and death, of power and succumbing, and ultimately of good and both the evils-active evil and the evil born from apathy.”

  —John Grant, Co-Editor of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

  “Vera Nazarian’s superb novella The Duke in His Castle uses the form of a classic fairy tale or fable to explore the psychology of good, evil, ennui, and despair in terms that are anything but black and white. . . . a sequence of moving, disturbing, sensual dialogs and encounters that change the very concept of power, from the acts of gods or great mages to something more subtle that may lie within human grasp.”

  —Faren Miller, Locus

  “The Duke in His Castle is philosophy couched in a fairy tale couched in a murder mystery tinged with children’s games. It’s a kaleidoscope of thought and emotion, the howling winds of despair, and the sometimes soft, sometimes fierce flow of life. Not only is it quickly absorbing and a quick read, but it sits up and begs for repeat visits . . .”

  —The Green Man Review

  Copyright Page

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

  THE DUKE IN HIS CASTLE

  Vera Nazarian

  Copyright © 2008 by Vera Nazarian

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover Paintings:

  “Portrait of a Gentleman in his Study” c.1527, “Christ Taking Leave of his Mother (detail)” 1521 by Lorenzo Lotto.

  Interior Illustration: “The Duke” by Vera Nazarian, © 2008

  Cover Design Copyright © 2008 by Vera Nazarian

  (with Erzebet YellowBoy)

  Electronic Edition

  April 15, 2010

  (Associated with: Hardcover First Edition: ISBN: 978-1-934648-42-1)

  A Publication of

  Norilana Books

  P. O. Box 2188

  Winnetka, CA 91396

  www.norilana.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  THE DUKE IN HIS CASTLE

  Norilana Books

  Fantasy

  www.norilana.com

  Other Books by Vera Nazarian

  Mansfield Park and Mummies:

  Monster Mayhem, Matrimony, Ancient Curses,

  True Love, and Other Dire Delights

  Dreams of the Compass Rose

  Lords of Rainbow

  Salt of the Air

  The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass

  Mayhem at Grant-Williams High (YA)

  (Forthcoming in 2010)

  Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons

  Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret

  Dedication

  In Memory of My Father

  For Wendi who read it first

  For Stella who shared her home

  For Giles who gave advice

  For Erzebet who loved it

  Illustration: “The Duke”

  

  The Duke In

  His Castle

  

  A Novella

  Vera Nazarian

  I: Starting On A Lighter Note

  The Duke stands outside in the courtyard of his castle. In his mind he is at the bottom of a well, within a funnel of wind and air. He is withstanding an onslaught, buffeted by a formless influence—neither a being nor disembodied reflex—a pressure of something that has the texture of infinite crystalline facets. No breeze touches his skin, yet the tiny blond hairs along his arms covered with shirtsleeves are raised, bristling at the invisible something, or nothing, bristling in futility.

  The Duke is young and pleasing in a primeval way; he evokes an instinctive attraction. He is replete with proportional flow of line and surface, one giving way to the other in a perpetual continuation, with smooth plateaus of skin covering a delicate facial bone structure, with curving wisps of gilded wheat hair combed back in a queue, or sometimes lying loose and wanton about his shoulders. Wanton is not something of which he is aware and yet it is a property of his self, together with smooth and silken and virile and decadent.

  The castle is scattered in crumbling pieces of relic and ruin on all sides of him. Massive faded walls of grey and mauve and violet moss-covered rock, grand fissures straining from the onslaught of creeping vines and insidious grasses, fractal chaos of skyline amid meager patches of open sky—they all press down on him, fill his lungs with sepulchral stagnation and slow his heartbeat to the rhythm of clockwork, ever winding down. Each breath the Duke takes is slower than the last, it seems, each one carries death a moment closer, yet never quite enough. His youth stands as a buffer between the gaping maw. Youth? He would tear it out of himself with all his fierce will, to have this existence end in the next blink.

  Only, he cannot.

  Confined within the bounds of his castle, Rossian, the Duke of Violet, softly wanes.

  

  “My Lord,” says the elderly liveried butler in measured tones, “The man is at the doors again. With the . . . remains. Should I let him in?” The butler wears a starched, impeccable coat of deep plum velvet, near-black, as ancient as the bedrock of the castle, with shirt and cravat of fine threadbare linen washed ten thousand times into a consistency of cobwebs, and cufflinks of antique gold. Beyond the gnarled fingers, his fingernails are buffed and manicured; his mustache trimmed, and the ashen hair gathered in an orderly queue. Not a speck of lint, not a hair out of place. Always deliberate responses; composed and placid, swamp-colored eyes.

  The Duke ponders this interruption while standing near the window. The room he inhabits most often like a native shade, his favorite room, is claustrophobic, with walls of immeasurable thickness closing in on him, crude ancient boulders of granite concealed by dust-drenched tapestries and hangings upon which pastoral and courtly scenes are enacted, populated with stylized figures representing nobility, kings and queens and emperors and hierophants, and occasionally a beast hunted in the woodland thicket.

  Th
ere are other such rooms in the castle, and he samples them over the years. Though, it seems there are always that many more left unexplored, untouched; chambers are endless pristine spaces in a honeycomb, containing whatever ancient dross or treasures the mind can only surmise at, and often as such they go unrecognized. A glimpse in one of them might reveal volumes from the lost library of Alexandria underneath a thick sheeting of dust, or a handful of Atlantean coins found at the bottom of a distant sea and brought here by galleon, their surface luster disguised by encrustation of barnacle and salt. The possibilities skim across the mind, ghostly leftovers of human curiosity, which the Duke finds less and less in himself. . . .

  The moment of dazed abstraction passes and the Duke turns his gaze away from the beckoning daylight, while in back of his mind trying to ignore the pressure of a thousand pounds of stone. “The man?” he says quietly. “What?”

  “Sir. Need I repeat the description? The same one, remotely mercantile in some distasteful manner or another. Definitely vulgar. The one who claims to have the bones and dust of—ahem—Nairis, the Fabled One, and who also claims that Your Grace is the only one who can restore her to life.”

  A startled flicker comes to the young man’s eyes. They are violet-blue places of murk, and now they are agitated. “Life, life . . . bringing to life. Bones and dust . . . Nairis, the Fabled One . . .” he mutters, listening to the sound of words as they drift in the chamber. Then, emerging from the daze, “What, not this nonsense again? Didn’t you tell him once to be gone, and that I’m busy? Remind him, do, that despite my considerable abilities and learning I know of no power in the world—no ritual sorcery, no psychic magic, no blood-letting sacrifice, not even charlatan smoke and mirrors—that can return the dead to this mortal coil with true permanence.”

  The butler clears his throat, swallows phlegm; a chronic habit. “Absolutely, my Lord, I told him, speaking as plainly as possible. But the man is obviously a raving buffoon. He does not appear to believe me. And now, I’m afraid to say, he threatens you with some mischief.”

  “Hah!” the Duke snorts, beginning to pace the room, its floor of creaking ancient wooden timbers. The butler watches a shelf of flimsy bone china bric-a-brac perched precariously near, figurines trembling with each step. The Duke is indifferent to these dubious heirlooms of pasty Dresden pink and gilded white, and yet here they sit—have sat thus for years, dancing in porcelain palsy at his frequent outbursts.

  The Duke raves. Words flow in a stream now; he is unstoppable, and he uses language high and low, an interwoven entity fleshed out of anger, ragged barking elements that echo in the chamber, pound in dull torpor against the fabric insulating the walls and ring in clean violence against the exposed stone of the lofty ceiling.

  “What has the world become? Why, the world’s a pock-marked backside of an ass! Or is it the front of an ass? Nay, a breeding place of dribble-spit idiots and lunatics, insolent upstart commoners daring to threaten blue bloods!”

  “Another thing, my Lord. There is also a young . . . female creature at the doors. Very oddly attired, scandalously, I must add. And with no attendant menservants. She claims to be sent by the Duchess of White.”

  “Hell and Damnation and Pestilence and Pox! Not in the mood for that again, not at all. No more vile cousins-fifty-seats-removed and their minions snooping around, looking for the essence of my secret—their secret, everyone’s secret!—all uselessly. And staying for a fortnight or two, eating out my pantries and emptying my cellars—woe to my ancient wines, my cognac!—not that I care a whit for that filthy piss-sour cognac, blast it to smithereens, but still, they never even offer thanks for it. Instead, endless tedium, broken only by the agony of a myriad questions posed by asses. Jackass braying is what I get, bray, bray, bray. Punctuated by idiotic, meaningless prods into my nature which have nothing to do with anything but succeed in ruining meals.”

  “I remember, my Lord. The Duke of Blue’s minion inquired once after the color of the spot at the base of our smallest billygoat’s rear left hoof. Something to do with the mark of the devil on livestock. And we don’t even have goats.”

  The younger man gives him a sharp look.

  “My Lord . . . It is my business to recall such things. In any case, what should I do about your callers?”

  The Duke visualizes pouring rain, a deep gully filled with pea-soup mud and his callers dunked in it, all in one tangled mass of limbs and plastered clothing and human tedium.

  “I suppose you must let the wench in,” he says, savoring the word “wench” as though it were a chunk of fresh crusty bread and he sinks his teeth into it. “No use having the White Duchess disgusted by our rudeness—just yet (we’ll be sure to disgust her in excess, later). But the vendor—mischief indeed!—tell him to get out of my castle and off my lands and never to come back if he wants to keep his nose and his precious ancient remains intact!”

  The Duke pauses. “No, wait, that’s too trivial. Nose, precious remains, no. Tell him that he should not return here unless he is prepared to lose a limb of his body and a decanter of blood. I shall ravage him with my teeth.”

  “Yes, m’Lord, as you say.” The butler inclines his head just in time to conceal a little smile of satisfaction, and exits.

  When the thick door shuts behind him, Rossian allows his features to go slack. Longing emerges once again, dredged out of some abysmal repository of raw and half-formed instincts inside. His eyes lose focus, gaze returns to the rectangle of daylight, and he slowly nears the window, its ledge carved into a flat crude fissured shelf of rock, a place to lean with the elbows.

  Once more he strives far ahead, and his thoughts are winged and lustful, crimson and orange-feathered birds; they circle out there in dust-mote specks, where the brilliant sky rises over the gaily colorful countryside with its bucolic fields and meadows, mushroom colonies of tiny thatched roof cottages in the distance, and a curling strip of mirror-brightness where the river winks in and out of being along the horizon. The land, as far as the eye can see, as far as a lustful bird-thought can fly, is all his.

  Yet Rossian, Lord over this domain, has never been outside the grounds of his castle. It is simply that he may not; he cannot.

  The young Duke is virile and hale. He is in full possession of mobility in all his limbs, and he carries inside him a steady heart which (despite the vertigo illusion of slowing clockwork) continues to serve him well. And yet, the Duke never looks up and down the full breadth of sky without its edges framed by crumbling walls. He never takes more than a dozen steps in direct sunlight, never lacks shelter from drenching rain or soaks up fully-formed banks of mist with his skin.

  Only his spirit wanders forth. And his imagination.

  Now, Rossian shivers and looks away, as though coming awake, but as always it is only from one level of dream into another. He inhales dust; he sees disarray, the careless arrangement of the room, the infernal tapestries with dynasties of dead kings, bookcases of abandoned, long-untouched volumes bound in faded brown vellum (after years of obsessive perusal he knows their contents by heart; they never need be opened again), a shelf of flimsy knickknacks that he despises but which supposedly belong to his departed mother and for that he holds on to them as though they were her ashes.

  And now there is the imposition to consider—a half-conscious awareness of immediate reality, a wash of cold existence, a grounding. Truly, he thinks, it is only with the coming of my unwanted guests, that I come to life. Maybe I should be grateful to them for dredging me out of the dreaming swamp.

  For what innumerable time he wonders what a particular relation, in this case, the Duchess of White, is like—for she too is imprisoned and he has never seen her in person and never will. He wonders what kind of pet, acolyte, messenger, spy she sends this time. Of all his noble relations, she is the fifth—maybe sixth—to investigate him thus, leaving only the Dukes of Green and Yellow who haven’t yet bothered to pay him a visit through the necessary proxy. It’s a veritable circus, this Ducal
family circle of theirs. He has seen a half a dozen circuses; knows them well, for they come to the castle to entertain and shock and invoke pity, as they make rounds of the countryside with their wagons and sequins, their caged beasts, grotesque freaks, and acrobatic fire-eating charlatans.

  Circus or not, there is no doubt whatsoever: an ancient curse lies upon the Dukes of this realm—this field and meadow Eden-country sprawling beneath the uncharted infinity of sky. This curse makes his existence what it is, a simmering unending purgatory of suspended being.

  Ages upon centuries upon decades and seasons and days ago, the so-called Just King rules all, and they—the Dukes and Barons and the Knights—having amassed great wealth through valor, accomplishments and power, think themselves equal to him and imagine their veins filled with a liquid the color of heaven. They rise in rebellion. They are bright, fierce, arrogant in their blue blood, and the struggle fills codexes of history. When blue blood is spilled, it flows plebeian red, but the ground is hungry for whatever hue as long as it is thick with the residue of life.