Epic Fantasy Adventure: The Sands of Time: Holy Paladin's Quest: Book 2 (Sword and Sorcery Epic Fantasy Adventure Book With Angels and Magic)
Page 1
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Any names, businesses, characters, events, incidents and places are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or actual events or occurrences is purely coincidental.
Epic Fantasy Adventure
The Sands of Time
Holy Paladin’s Quest
Book 2
By Blaine Hart
Copyright © 2016
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Communion
Chapter 2: Selivanova
Chapter 3: Evil Waters
Chapter 4: Cheaters
Chapter 5: Chronis
Chapter 6: All We Could Carry
Chapter 7: Damned
Sneak Preview of The Bard’s Tale
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Chapter 1: Communion
My Master did not become the great warrior that he is by being soft and indecisive. While he was a man prone to thought and considering, moving slow like a master general on the battlefield, always pondering his next move, he could also be quick as a cobra when needs pressed.
But that night on the island, when we were with the Angel of Glory, I saw in Kell a slow and burning anger as the woman in the cistern’s mist took the form of our beloved Anna, mocking him, and threatening the world with ninety-nine days and nights of rain, floods, and a slow but very real destruction.
She was a power that we could not know, and she did a good job of driving fear into us… at least into me, my master seemed to be immune to fear as far as I could tell.
I know that I was afraid. Her visage in the likeness of my young friend that she had abducted was a horror. Her sweetly venomous words were like a knife in my soul. Looking so much like the innocent girl, the demon’s mockery goaded us and fed in me the flames of real hate, the likes of which I had never known before.
As she laughed and vanished down the Angel’s cistern, I cried out in a rage and threw a knife at the fading ghostly image. The simple steel blade clattered off a wall and then fell silently into the nothingness.
“Well that was a waste,” Wendfala said.
“I know,” I said. “But I just – I have to –“
“You have to conserve,” she said. “The power that you are facing could crush you as quick as look at you and foolish acts can come back to haunt. Curse the power, but do not give in to that power.”
“It was just a knife,” I said.
“So you say,” Wendfala said in a stern voice, looking so much like a serious but beautiful teacher.
Wendfala was a witch and so I knew that she had charms that would make me see her as she pleased. But I did not believe that she was charming me. She was a lovely witch, all on her own. When she had saved me and my master from a watery grave, she had appeared as a mermaid. She was naked and her long locks of hair had kept her form just that side of hidden… most the time. She had kissed me below the waves and her kiss bathed me in air so that I could hold my breath as long as I wanted, and so we swam as happy as fishes all the way to the Angel’s island where we had left the twins Anna and the other Anna with the Angel Gavial. There we found the Angle’s shrine in ruins, Gavial and Anna prisoners of some demonic power and the other Anna mysteriously vanished.
It was as though our great victory over the Bone Dragon had counted for almost nothing. All of our toil and stress, all of my master’s cunning and magic had been just a single battle in a greater war. The realms of the Nine were safe from Visalth, the Undead Bone Dragon who my master had laid to waste, but the world was slowly being attacked by a powerful force and most didn’t even know of it. They were feeling the first falling raindrops of a mighty hurricane and only we three knew just how dangerous our enemy truly was.
I could see the people of the Barnacle Atoll going about their daily lives, thinking that the spring rains were lingering. I thought about people on the fertile islands of Wan and Mirth thinking it a blessing for their fields as their low rice patties filled with the precious waters of March. None of them knew of the demon’s curse, but as time passed, they would be the ones who would be overwhelmed.
After the evil thing had taunted us and bragged about her grand scheme, a very grave, almost painful look fell over my master’s face. He let Ashrune slip from his fingers, the iron head thudding dully on the stone stair. As if one possessed from within, he turned and walked slowly to the shore of the cave and stared out to the gathering storm,
I looked at him standing there like a large heroic statue on the broken shell shore of the grotto. I wondered how we three, we stranded three, could ever fight such a curse against such a fearsome foe. To battle a bone dragon was one thing. Even as an undead creature it had a physical form and my master had special powers against creatures such as that. It had a head and wings and a tail that could be cut or crushed or severed. It could be faced and challenged, and defeated.
But what about the rain? Who could stop the rain? Who could conquer the clouds?
“We must see to the ship,” Wendfala said.
“What?” I said shaking my head and focusing my brain.
“We must see to the repair of the ship,” she said. “This place is a waste and there is nothing that we can do here. We must repair the ship so that we can go.”
“Go where?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But we cannot stay here. You are a sailor. Help me see to the ship.”
“My master will know what to do.” I said. “Kell will know.”
I started walking over the crushed and crumbled gravestone to Kell standing on the shore. He stood there, looking up into the dark and stormy sky as if entranced.
“No,” Wendfala said. “Leave him be. You and I should—“
“We should do nothing without my master!” I shouted.
I started to run but the woman was on me in an instant, like an owl snatching a mouse. She grabbed my arm hard but I twisted sharply and flung her off with all my strength. I dashed across the debris toward my master, but before I knew what was happening, something hit me and stopped me cold. It was as if I had run into an invisible wall. I looked up and Wendfala stood between me and my master holding out her arm. Kell still stood quietly at the shore.
“Your master,” she said, “is in a state of communion. I should have thought that you would have recognized that. We ought not to disturb him. We ought to look to the ship.”
“What . . .what did you do?” I said, probing the invisible force in front of me.
“I’m a witch,” she said, strolling to me and taking my hand. “I can do a lot of things. Leave your master be and come with me.”
The Annas small boat had been driven up and onto a place against the cave wall where the water met the rock. Its prow was well ashore and the anchor and the rest of the ship wallowed in the rolling swells of the cove. The boat bumped and rocked even as we boarded. Her mainmast was snapped and her jib lay in twisted pieces on the rocky shore. We stood surveying the wreck.
“Well?” she said. “Do you think that the two of us can repair the thing?”
“The mast will take some time,” I said. “But it can be d
one. What worries me is that part of the prow edged onto those rocks. It looks to be stuck fast and if there is a hole, well it all depends on what kind of hole.”
“It’s still floating.” Wendfala said in an encouraging tone.
“That’s something on our side.” I admitted. But the rigging is a mess.”
“Are there any tools we can use?” Wendfala asked.
“Tools and some wood for repair,” I said nodding. “But we will need to be very creative.”
There was a double block swing at just about head height. I reached to grab for it but as I did a large wave swell rolled aft and crashed into the boat, causing me to lose my balance. I reached to break my fall and my right arm plunged into the broken mast half.
“Longo!” Wendfala screamed.
I cried out in pain. There was a four inch gouge from my wrist all the way up my arm. I clutched my arm to stem the bleeding and started cursing aloud. Wendfala grabbed my hand and sang a quick chant. My arm tingled and the blood slowed, but didn’t stop. She looked at me somewhat puzzled. She clutched my hand tighter and sang her charm louder. Again there was a tingling and a sense of ease but the bleeding still trickled. Wendfala spat out a long string of cusses in a strange tongue while she looked wildly about her.
“This place,” she said. “The evil of that damned demon lingers, tainting this once holy place. My powers are waning.”
“There are medic supplies below,” I said. “It’s nothing really. I’ve had worse. I am sure I’ll be ok. Your magic helped a good amount.”
In the crew’s quarters she found bandages and healing salves. The boat listed and we sat at an angle rocking gently in the grotto’s low swells.
“Good news,” Wendfala said as she saw to my cut. “You’re going to live. Bad news; you’re going to live.”
“What about my master?” I asked. “What did you mean? What is a state of communion?”
“Kell is a Paladin,” she said, spinning the silky gauze around my wrist. “He is holy and he has spiritual guides who watch his life and his time on this planet. I know little of these things, but I do know that when a Paladin seeks help from his guides that it is a very dangerous thing for him.”
“Dangerous?” I asked. “How?”
“His very soul is vulnerable,” she answered. “He casts it to the windy spheres and so meets with his mentors in a place beyond. But if the communal link would be in any way broken, for instance, by a well-meaning fool rushing up to him and shaking him, well that would be a very, very bad thing. His soul might never find his body again. The spirit winds are so fickle.”
I stared at her absorbing her words.
“Back home,” she said, putting the final knot on my arm dressing. “Kell could never think to seek to commune. You islanders were always popping in and out of his life. But here, here in the solitude and isolation of an Angel’s shrine, where the power is at its strongest, he is seeking guidance, asking for help. I just hope the evil of this place doesn’t taint his attempts.”
“So,” I said thinking it through. “My master’s soul is meeting his own masters?”
“No,” she said. “Unlike witches or wizards, a Paladin has no master. He is part of a communal whole. That’s why his communion can take so long. I suspect that there is a lot of debate going on in the winds of the souls.”
“Debate?” I asked. “What is there to debate? The world is in peril.”
“Our world is in danger.” Wendfala corrected. “There are hundreds of thousands of other worlds out there in the great whole.”
I gasped. “So many? Will he be able to find a way to defeat this demon?”
“He is finding,” she said. “Though I don’t know what the finding will be. I do know that whatever way he discovers will not be on this island. We need to see to this battered ship and get away from this place before it becomes totally cursed.”
“She’s called the Chaos,” I said, pointing at the tattered pink sails.
“Appropriate.” Wendfalla chuckled. “And I do believe that she has some charms of her own,” as she admired the yellow rigging.
But if the Chaos had any charms of healing or repair, she gave none of those up to us.
The first task was to free the ship from its rocky clutch using gaffs and poles, pushing and prying. Once she was adrift we needed to drag the skipjack ashore so that we could see the damage. We rigged blocks and tackle around stones and heaved. I was surprised at Wendfala’s strength. The slender witch pulled her weight and more. We were helped by a few larger swells and I wondered about the witch’s powers.
There was a buckle along the starboard prow, but the frame pieces were sound. We had to remove and replace the outer planking. The Anna’s stores had some usable bits, but those weren’t enough. I made pieces from the galley table. It wasn’t the prettiest patch against the baby-blue hull, but it was a patch.
All the while Kell stood at the shore of the grotto looking out to sea.
The main mast had snapped like a matchstick, all splinters and fuzz. It took me three days to detach the snapped half, then cut and carve the two ends into interlocking shapes while Wendfala saw to the broken jib boom. During that time, we would both receive random injuries and be confronted with a variety of dark thoughts in our heads. It took us two more days to rig a gantry that would nestle the two halves of the mainmast together. My puzzle pieces fit and Wendfala and I joyfully hammered down the seven hoop-rings that fused the joint, then we whooped as the mast stood straight and tall in the Angel’s cave. After that we rested, my arm was sore.
All the while Kell stood at the shore of the grotto looking out to sea.
“Surely he must eat,” I said.”
“Surely he must,” Wendfala answered. “But we cannot feed him. How is your wrist?”
“Just fine,” I said.
“I see that the bandages are pussing again.”
“It’s all this sea water.” I said.
“I hope that’s what it is,” she said. “I hope there is no infection festering. Come, I must change them again.”
“Right. After we shorten the rigging and stay the mast.”
Wendfala was a worker and the work was hard. She knew what she knew and she listened to what she didn’t know to do and between the two of us we had the Chaos afloat in a total of ten torturous and nightmare ridden days. We cheered and celebrated her launch when we finally pushed her back into the grotto waters.
All the while Kell stood staring out to sea with a crazy expression on his face, as if he was looking upon the ultimate glory of a God.
During those ten days my wound ached terribly. I tried to keep that from the witch, but she was no fool. She chanted her charms, but the curse of the place got stronger every day. And all this time Kell stood at the shore of the grotto. I wanted to approach him, just to see if he was alright, but Wendfala kept me away.
“He is still with his guides,” she said.
While my master lingered in commune and while Wendfala and I saw to the ship, precious time passed. The demon in the Angel’s well had spoken of ninety-nine days. We had already spent more than ten in the grotto. My arm felt as if it were on fire and as if tiny little demons where prodding me with little flaming tridents.
Not long after that a fever took me. Wendfala was never far from my side, only leaving to collect cool rainwater to soothe me as she sang her weakened charms. The bunk that I had taken to below in the Chaos became too close and warm, so Wendfala made a bed for me on deck, where sometimes a small eddy of wind would waft in through the entrance. Wendfala looked tired, haggard, and distressed. Occasionally I would still feel a vestige of the angel’s holy presence about me, and in those moments I would rejoice and relish in every second of it. But they were getting scarcer and scarcer.
On the twelfth day and the second day of fever, my head began to spin terribly. I was always dizzy, even though I lay flat on my back. I began to hallucinate. Looking out into the storm outside, I started seeing lightning, not as
bolts or streaks, but as weaving filaments of green and blue and gold. They whirled about as if in some sort of crazy aerial dance. They would clash together and the colors would blend and look like surreal flowers. I saw my master sometimes silhouetted, sometimes engulfed by the weird lights.
Even now, so many years later, the image of my master just sitting on the beach amidst the lightning is seared into my brain. Something I will never forget.
At the time, my body was awash in sweat and I was shivering uncontrollably. I could feel Wendfala trying to sooth my brow with cool wet rags, but in my state, it was as though they burned.