On the small, lopsided planet Courtimie, there has not been a war for two hundred years. Above all else, the planet's diverse inhabitants value peace. They appreciate the world's rulers for maintaining peace. But this warless calm does not mean everything that happens on Courtimie is honorable. Orno Tremsmel is a modest, elderly man who lives with his young life friend, Shemsmell, in a country where everyone believes that no girls have been born for decades. When Orno is invited to accompany his nation's king to the nation of Thro and visit Princess Zeringe on her wedding day, he is immersed in an influential environment he's never been invited into before. Suddenly this world reveals to him a dark secret and a conniving aristocracy, which bend their own rules to ensure their existence. On a planet that values the preservation of peace above all else, the deception that Orno witnesses unveils new responsibilities to him. He takes on the challenge to combat the manipulation that exists where Courtimie's inhabitants believe there is only serenity.
The Peaceful Queen
By B. A. RothwelliUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 B. A. Rothwell
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-5201-1Chapter One
A Common Man Meets His King Our planet is not so large that everlasting peace is beyond our reach. We have embraced tolerance and acceptance, swallowed our pride and valued the good times. We are eleven nations and we are eleven friends. We are 15 Kings and Queens, we are a million brothers and sisters. Not one person, not one nation has the power to break the peace of our world, not if every one on it wants peace to last till the end of time. King Durrate of Thro Excerpt from The Peace of One for All
On the morning I left my Shemsmell, I found myself boarding a gigantic sea vessel. There were people everywhere all dressed either in tailored suits such as myself or clean and pressed uniforms with the Olum Shell crest on their breast, showing that they were being employed by the king directly. The vessel was called Futura, it was wooden, and as I found out later, made in Mt. Tinga.
Mt. Tinga is a small nation on the southern-most tip of the nation of Court. It's the highest point of our world and covered with rich forest which is Mt. Tinga's most abundant resource. Wood artisans from Mt. Tinga are very much sought after. People from Mt. Tinga are very shy but peaceful when around foreign persons so we do not know a lot about their culture. They are separated from the rest of the world by a mountain range in the north and a sea surrounding the rest of the nation. We know they have bright red hair and pale skin. They are skilled hunters and lumber jacks and favor dressing in dark browns and greens to be in unity with their environment. Their royalty dresses in the same manner to show their pride and solidarity with their people.
When I found my way aboard, I glanced more intensely at the wooden railing and realized it was indeed of high quality: strong and sturdy, the grain dark and in deep contrast with the pulpdeco. The railings were carved in a pattern with bumps to mimic calm waves of the ocean and I could not honestly tell when one plank would end and another would start.
I was so entranced by the wood it took a couple of shoves from passersby to bring me back to reality and show me that I was in the way of the traffic wanting to board and get to their quarters. As I moved to a crevice, captivated by the stylish people passing by, one man who was making his way from behind me tapped my shoulder.
"O. Tremsmel," he said. I turned and saw an Olum man of my age but rather short. He was well dressed in a tightly fitting dark blue uniform, a white braided belt secured with an Olum shell buckle. He knew my name and of me without even seeing my face.
"I am Olson, your guide for the journey, anything you need you just ask me. Now may I show you to your quarters?" He said, guiding me physically, because that was the only way you could guide someone on this loading deck. We pushed our way through the crowd, through a portal, and into the lobby. When were finally out of the way of the people, he asked me, "Am I right in saying we don't have to wait for a companion?"
Here the confusion with me traveling alone, without Shemsmell, continues and it is something I was sure I would have to face for the rest of the journey on the Futura. So now I take a moment to finally explain why it is so important that I take Shemsmell with me on this adventure and everyone's dismay on my breaking the norm:
Three hundred years ago, during a time when most of our world was still at war with each other, and about the time our world was running out of resources to be at war with each other, our world, Courtimie, shivered. It lasted only a half hour our scientists say. It was a sonic wave that started at Courtimie's core and passed through our little planet to the sky. At first, the sonic wave took the form of gigantic waves from the ocean and shaking soil to create mudslides but soon the sonic wave escaped from Courtimie's surface to inflict damage on all the living creatures of the planet. Reports from that era say people just went deaf and lost their wits so they just stood in one place until it was over. But everyone could feel the wave pass over them. It made it hard for them to breath and their hearts had to strive for a pump of fresh blood. After twenty minutes the wave passed into the atmosphere. Some flying birds dropped dead to the ground but that was just the beginning of hell to reign from the sky. Next, there was a lightning storm like no one had seen since and sparing no nation. Clouds all over Courtimie collapsed and dropped all their moisture upon us and floods devastated all that the sonic wave spared.
After all the floods passed, more destruction occurred. You see the sonic brace that held our human hearts was enough to kill the very weak. This included the animals, plants, and humans. Numbers of the very old and the weak young were killed initially just because their hearts failed. All the nations' crops were shattered at this time and everyone was forced to ration their diets on reserves. Women couldn't become pregnant and babies couldn't be born for an entire year. Add to this our own guilt; our entire species had been fighting amongst each other for just about two thousand years nonstop. Our resources where already strained because of the war; then the sonic wave came, and we lost all hope of ever moving on. The very poor were on the brink of starvation before spring came the next year. Then we discovered that the curse was only to last for a year, for our crops came back, along with our young, most of our young that is.
This is where my nation of Olum's curse truly began. You see Olum was hit by the very same sonic wave. It cleared a year later, our crops began to grow and our babies came again and the remnants of a dead creature showed themselves. The Olum shells, which not one person had ever seen, they must have been living at the very depths of our seas, all died during the shock waves and washed up on the beaches of our own, and just the one nation. These shells were beautiful and coveted by the entire world, were swirled with white and rainbowed iridescents and streaks of gold spectaculars. But all know it was through these shells that Olum's curse came, because after that initial year, our babies came—but not our girl babies.
A year of not having any girls was a strange absence. Two years, a strange coincidence. Three years, a dreary doom. After ten years, most of our women of child bearing years lost their fertility. For the next thirty years it was a mad scurry to find one of the remaining Olum women to bare an Olum man's child but in another 10 years even all the women born just before the shock were now infertile through the evilness of time alone.
Our great nation made accommodations. With our depleted population we went out and sought new mothers. Even after leaving Olum, our seeds were still cursed and we could only bring male babies home. Our favorites, for their closeness, were the surrounding island nations: Shelc, TieShel, and Selc, of these Olum was equally in the middle. Finding women to bear our children turned out to be fairly simple especially among the poorest island populations. The Olum shell was highly sought after and soon became a common currency all over the world, enabling Olum men to buy what ever they wanted the most—and that was the next generation.
Paying women to have our babies...
