Epic Fantasy Adventure: The Sands of Time: Holy Paladin's Quest: Book 2 (Sword and Sorcery Epic Fantasy Adventure Book With Angels and Magic)

by Blaine Hart

  “Cast your mind back,” he said, “and make you remember. Remember the woman in the water.”

  “Master no!”

  “Selivanova,” he said softly. “See her, Longo.”

  “Master please!”

  “Kell!” Wendfala cried. “Why do you torment the boy?”

  “See her Longo. See that fair and sorrowful face. Remember how she begged you. Remember how she pleaded. Remember how she wailed in her horrible doom.”

  I tried to tear away but his grip was like iron. I shut my eyes and turned my head as the angst welled in my soul. I did see her. I saw her as if she were real and I felt her misery. I remembered the longing to help the pitiful girl and the feeling of hopeless regret welled in my soul even as the tears welled in my eyes.

  As if from far away I heard my master call for the witch, and then Wendfala gasped. Then something touched my cheek, dabbed and then my master embraced me as a father would comfort a child. I felt his warmth and I felt his love. I looked up at him with blurry eyes.

  “Master why?”

  Kell smiled sadly and looked to the boy. He stood stunned. Wendfala held the corner of the handkerchief to him.

  “I see seven, no eight grains,” Wendfala said. “Motes of the sands of time trapped by his tears and captured by sorrow. It was all that we could carry.”

  Chapter 7: Damned

  The boy was true to his word, begrudging as he was about it. He carefully picked the tiny grains from Wendfala’s handkerchief and dropped them in his palm. He breathed a gentle breath on them and a small ball began to glow. It was a slow warm glow and the boy kept blowing gently as if fanning kindling, and as he did the light brightened. At first it was a soft white light, but as it grew in size it began to swirl with pale hues. The colors rose up a little, but the boy kept his hand where it was. The light hung in the air a moment and the colors became crisper. Thin tendrils appeared. Eight of them seemed to be probing the air like insect feelers. They reached toward us and I took a step back. The filaments stretched and reached for us, and as they did they grew thicker. The air shuddered before me and as I tried to take another step away I couldn’t move.

  The air became thick and it was hard to breathe. The colorful strings were all about me and I was awash in their changing light. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe but – but I didn’t need to breathe. I couldn’t move but I didn’t need to move. I thought that I should be afraid but I could not find any fear inside of me. I felt as if I were nestled and snug, almost as if I were adrift in warmth and comfort. My eyes were fixed forward and all I could see was the whirlwind of those threads of ever changing colors.

  Then something beyond the colors stirred, as if the air beyond my cocoon of light had been shaken. It seemed to tremble all about me, but I knew that I was safe. Then the swirling colors began to spin faster and faster. I thought that I should have felt the speed of the wind that they would have made, but there was none. It was silent. As fast as they came, the threads and their colors washed away and I was gazing into the purest white I had ever seen. The white seemed to be infinite in its depth, and looking into it gave me the sense that I was falling.

  “Fear not,” a voice said from everywhere and nowhere.

  It was an indescribable sound. It was light and somehow harsh, melodic and yet discordant, soothing and at the same time terrible, and in those two simple words my soul seemed filled with a well of conflicting emotions and I was at once joyful and in despair, calm and anxious, soothed and excited.

  “What is life but a trial of contradictions?” the voice from everywhere said. “There can be no hope without fear. To be happy one must know sorrow. To know love is to know hate and to live is to die.”

  I gaped into the brilliant void as the words flew around me. A form began to appear in the distance. It was the form of a cherub angel gleefully flying and playing, but even as I stared, the cherub turned into a winged skeleton and then turned into an angel bathed in blue that was pouring silver water from a golden vase. Then that angel became draped in darkness and clutched a long scythe.

  “You seek a Blessing from Gavreel, the Angel of Life, but I say to you that the Angel has already blessed you with life. What more can I bestow? You would beg advantage over the demon who I will not name, but what would that boon be? Wisdom? Fortitude? Power? Courage? Strength? You would need all of these and more, for truly the Steed spoke true and the one who will not be named cannot now be stopped.”

  Wrapped as I was in the comfort of the Angel, my heart quailed. The shifting form in the void was now the cherub and the little child looked at me with a tear in its eye.

  “There is wisdom in that thought,” the voice said. “And there is also wisdom in knowing that your foe is so much like you. You have the Strength of the Paladin Ancestors, but you would have that tenfold were you to head into the storm. Your power and fortitude lies in your unity, as does your courage.

  “Your challenge is great and your goal is good. So take this small token of Gavreel’s love and trust, and face your foe knowing that my blessing is in my words, and remember that the shadow of my sister still lies in you. Vade in pace, revertar in pace, et pacis erit vobiscum.”

  With those words the bright white void began to crack. Fissures appeared, splitting the image with many shifting colors, and then it was as though I was hurled a thousand miles away.

  When my breath came back it was dark. Bright stars shone above but the land on which I stood was not the Island of the Tree of Life. It was a harsh place full of scraggly dead trees with the smell of decay. I breathed deeply and felt a surging inside of me, as if there was something pent up, charged and waiting to be let loose. There was an energy in me, and it was as if I shared that energy with the others.

  Kell stood confident and knowing. His mighty Warhammer Ashrune had been healed and my master’s face was set with a grave look. Somehow I knew, as certain as I knew my name, that the Angel had granted him wisdom.

  Wendfala seemed to glow from within and her eyes sparkled. She looked as if she could beat down the gates of hell, even if it took her a hundred years to do so.

  What I saw in Anna should have shocked me, but in that same instant I understood. She was clothed in a flowing blue gown like the Angel in my vision. She was at once beautiful, regal, and proud, and yet her face was forlorn and she looked like one doomed.

  The others turned to me and for a moment I felt almost as if the Angel had neglected me. But then Anna pointed to my hand. I wore a fingerless leather gauntlet trimmed and decked with silver that wrapped up to my forearm. I moved my withered arm with ease and flexed my fingers. I felt powerful energy flowing in my hand and I instinctively pointed my arm upwards, a bolt of lightning blasting forth from my fingertips. I gaped in amazement.

  “The Angel thinks highly of you lad,” Kell smiled. “Our virtues are in our character, while yours lies in your arm.”

  “I suspect then,” Wendfala said with a smirk, “that his inner qualities need no help.”

  “Longo can be simplicity itself,” Anna said. “Yet he has a soul that is, if not pure… righteous.”

  “My soul would rest easier,” I said, “if I knew where we were and why. What is this place?”

  “This is Mortui-horas.” Kell said. “The Land of the Dead Hours.”

  “What hours?”

  “The hours of our life Gavreel wants us to be in. Look.”

  He pointed to the sky and it was like I was looking down. It was as if we were birds in flight, who saw sunshine gleaming on a harsh desert landscape. The winds swept over shifting dunes that had no shadow. I saw two figures huddling in the sand and then a little ways away a bone-dragon flew by.

  “Visalth?” I gasped. “The dragon lives?”

  “In these hours he does,” Kell chuckled. “Look, see the two people shaking the dust from their clothes? That is you and I.”

  “Indeed, we are seeing our own dead hours. But pay attention.”

  The scene flew by over a vast oce
an and for a while we saw nothing but water. And then a small island came into view. We soared down and through an open cave and it was Gavial’s sacred grotto. As we wheeled past we saw the Angel of Glory singing to two children. Anna shut her eyes and turned away.

  But then we flew beyond the shrine and soon we were deep in jagged mountains. One mountain was like a volcano but belched no fire. From its cone there erupted dark clouds that gathered in the sky whirling and forming, taking the shape of a monster with storms for legs and arms alive with lightening.

  “Anna!” I cried.

  The girl looked and gasped.

  “That’s her,” she said. “That’s the thing that attacked Gavial!”

  “The Angel of Life spoke true,” Kell said. “When finally we met her we were too late to stop the demon’s destruction. But here and now we might prevent her curse from ever beginning.”

  “But how?” I asked. “We are where we were in the beginning, but the puzzle still remains; how do we battle a storm? How do you stop the rain?”

  “Gavreel’s words,” Kell mulled. “She said . . . she said your foe is much like you.” His brow furrowed a moment, then relaxed as a smile crept across his face. “How is a storm like a human?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” I said.

  “It grows!” Anna said.

  “And in order to grow?”

  “It must feed,” Wendfala said. “And it feeds on the ocean, so we must stop it from reaching the ocean.”

  “It will be a war of attrition,” Kell said. “We must outlast it until its energy is so drained that it must feed on itself and so die.”

  “And in that death all will be undone,” Anna said softly.

  “That is why the Angel gave you courage child,” Kell said softly.

  That’s when I understood why she seemed so sad. There was a battle drawing neigh and Anna knew that she had no hope, no matter the outcome. The death of Moanmalla would change the course of time and the Anna that stood with us would never have been. She was doomed.

  “But,” Wendfala said, “how do we get there?”

  “Men are much like an Angel with only one wing,” I said, quoting Gavial’s blessing.

  “Huh?” Wendfala said, then she gasped and squealed as Kell took her under his arm and they launched into the sky.

  “Anna,” I said offering her my left arm.

  She shut her eyes, clutched me tight, and in a moment she was squealing too.

  Reaching into the sky became like falling to the earth as we soared over the ocean and across the wide plains to the cursed mountains of shadow. Through tall jagged tors and over steep crags we flew as the mountain of thunder and clouds approached. The creature hovered, standing over the cone of the volcano as lightning shot up and into its gloomy form.

  It might have been two hundred feet tall, maybe more. Its face was like an ape; its skull sloped with a strong dark ridge for a brow. Its arms pulsed with throbbing veins of bright blue that lit its muscled torso in constant flashes. One tornado like leg hung dangling while the other was sucking noxious vapors from the volcano. But the monster seemed asleep. Its eyes were clouded over and its arms hung limply by its side.

  Kell led us closer and Anna gripped me tight. We rose up and approached the giant’s dormant face. It stirred. I tensed as the cloud lids slid open and two dim balls of lightning stared at us stupidly. Kell led us around the massive face and those eyes followed us, but the beast did nothing. Kell wheeled around its head and led us to a small bluff on the side of the mountainous volcano where we landed.

  “It’s as I thought,” he said. “The monster is still growing and Moanmalla has yet to fully possess it. We must strike now while it is still like an infant.”

  “But how do we strike such a creature?” I asked.

  “We will be like dogs nipping at a lion’s feet,” he said. “We will gnaw and bite and upset and annoy. We will aggravate the thing so that it must waste energy, and once the thing is in a storming rage we must destroy the source. That will force it to flee towards the ocean, but we will hound and vex it until it spends itself.

  “Anna, Wendfala, you will begin the assault. Remember that you have the Strength of the Ancestors with you. Longo, come with me.”

  I took my master’s arm and we flew to the creature, and even as we did a rock the size of my head broke through its face. There was a small puff and the rock fell into dark cloud. The monster twitched. Another bigger rock caught the thing on the brow. It shook and opened its eyes.

  “Hey you!” Anna cried in a voice that boomed and echoed. “Wake up ape-face!”

  Another stone from the other direction hit him straight in the eye and the creature reared and then roared like thunder.

  “You’re ugly!” Wendfala cried.

  “And your momma dresses you funny!” Anna laughed.

  The beast raged. It looked around, and the moment it spotted Kell and me, I let loose with a bolt from my gauntlet. White lightning crackled about its face and it clutched at in anger. It wailed and flung its arms about, throwing blue lightning out randomly. Cliffs exploded and crumbled. Rocks flew in all directions as Anna and Wendfala kept leaping about.

  I struck the monster in the shoulder with another powerful bolt from my gauntlet while Kell let Ashrune fly swift and true. The hammer whirled and whirled around the skull and the thing snatched and grasped, catching nothing. It kept twisting its head, trying to catch sight of the whirling hammer, and so I let go another bolt that pierced its chest, making a hole through the vapor.

  Ashrune returned to my masters hand, and as soon as he caught it, he flung it away again, cleaving into the monster’s skull. The beast roared, but the clouds simply reformed. He became like a child in a tantrum, flinging his lightning everywhere, and kicking his free leg at us futilely. The tornado roared and sent stones and debris pelting into us. Still we tormented the evil thing until in its rage it tore itself away from the volcano and began stomping across the mountains, desperately seeking to destroy the maddening insects tormenting it.

  The moment the beast was away, Kell smiled and we flew to the edge of the mountain cone.

  “Neither your bolts nor my Ashrune combined can destroy a mountain,” he said. “But that thing can.”

  I knew my master’s mind, and so I let fly streak after streak of white lightning at the creature, peppering it while Ashrune clove into its arms and legs and chest. The monster turned. Wendfala and Anna must have guessed our plan as well, for their rocks stopped coming. I sent a bolt straight into its face so that it could be sure of its aim. Then with almost a gleeful face, it flung both arms at us. We both leapt quickly away, with Kell using the power from his mighty hammer to help propel us away at great speed. Behind us, the top of the volcano was torn asunder by blue lightning and crashed into itself.

  The creature’s wail was almost pitiful as it realized what it had done. But even as it gazed in horror, it shuddered and seemed to collapse from within. We watched from the air in hope. Then it rose up, its maw agape and I expected a blast of thunder. But all that came forth was Moanmalla’s frail voice.

  “You are a fool Kell,” she said. “You may vanquish me, but you will never conquer the power I serve nor will you ever understand what you face. He is not some puny mortal despot who seeks simply to conquer and kill. His cause is beyond your pathetic imaginings. He seeks what you can never fathom and he will not be stopped.

  “But know this Kell, it is now you who will be the hunted. He will find you and he will find everyone who you hold dear. Then you will watch as he slowly tortures and kills everyone and everything you ever cared about. You are now the hunted, Kell . . . you are . . . damned . . .”

  Then the clouds gathered and began to drift to the west. Kell and I gathered Anna and Wendfala and we gave chase, harassing and pestering the thing mercilessly. After several minutes it finally began to drift apart. One whirling leg spun off into vapor. The blue lightning dimmed and slowly started to wink out. The eyeballs roll
ed from their sockets and fell to the earth where they vanished. The monster faded until all that was left was a wisp of dark vapor hovering over a sandy beach. But even there it got no respite as a steady breeze scattered what was left like smoke.

  Suddenly we were bathed in warm white light. The air sparkled and whirled and I felt so serene and calm that I wanted to drift off to sleep . . .

  I woke to the gentle sound of waves lapping the surf and a child gently humming. I looked up. We were back of the Island of the Tree of Life. The little boy deity was playing with his sand-castle. I sat up with the others. All around us the skies were clear, bright and blue. We had done it. Moanmalla’s storm had never happened.

  “So,” the boy said. “I guess you figure that you’re pretty smart.”

  “I guess,” Kell said.

  “Well you’re not.”