Read The Duke In His Castle Online
Authors: Vera Nazarian
The Duke In His Castle
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Other Books by Vera Nazarian 6
I: Starting On A Lighter Note 10
II: Things Somewhat More Serious 24
V: Following A Nondescript Sunrise 64
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 . . .”
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
T
he 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.
“M
y 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.
There 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?”