by A. J. Ponder
Sylvalla watched for a few more moments. There was something amazing about the way the creature circled the sky, its gem-hide flashing.
Sylvalla raised an arm to her friend and turned away from the wizards. She wasn’t much of a wizard. More a warrior. Soon she’d be fighting side by side with Dirk, free to chose her own battles and live the life she always wanted.
Freddie
As for me, I helped with the rebuilding of Bairnsley University and its grounds. I helped write the charter all wizards must live by, and the law books for the new courtrooms that Potsie and Amarinda had championed.
The final book of this trilogy was written in the memory of my good and dear friend Capro, the hero and father of modern wizardry. He ran so far ahead of us all we rarely saw anything but his backside, so perhaps it is not surprising that he wasn’t properly respected until Potsie set up a new pilgrimage for our young wizards, a pilgrimage that ran between the rift outside Scotch Mist and his gravestone by the university.
Potsie insisted the words, “Should Bairnsley University fall, I will rebuild these halls brick by brick” be engraved there so that each young wizard would understand actions have consequences[107]. Later, much later, Jonathan added the famous words: “When all the heroes are gone, someone will take their place.”
THE END
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Appendix
Bibliography
Bad Girls, Bad Money, Bad Idea
F. Fraderghast
Bairnsley Press
A Brief History of the Origin of Magic
F. Fraderghast
Bairnsley Press
Chaos Theory
By Uf Izzy Cyst
Discover Books
Emz’rial’s Fundamental Theory of Chaos
Random Publishers Inc
Emz’rial
Dothie: The Man, the Myth, the Magician and the Monster
Professor G. L. Bull
Fairly University Press
Dungeons and Morpholags Weekly
Day Guyson
Piazo Tsar Books
Eye of the Eagle
By Professor Orasmus Vivaldi
Dalmatian House
The Great Gyger’s Book of Yllusions
Cornelis Steiwai
One Stone Books
Heroism in the Age of Chivalry
A P Ocrypha
Ersatz Fancees
The Little Book of Gnomic Utterences
Dwin Jones
Tough Guide, an imprint of Fantasyland Press
Make your own Medieval Devices, fun for nine years and older
Unknown
Ancient Text
The Natural Habitat of the Thurgle
Erasmus Stylo
Discover Books
In the Nature of Magic
Hugh Write
Bairnsley Press
Philosophies and Principles of Relativity
F. Fraderghast
Bairnsley Press
The Princess Diaries
Sylvalla, Queen of Avondale
Unpublished
The Secret Child
A.J. Ponder
Phantom Feather Press
A Short Précis of all the Important People in the World.
S. Nobb
Thurghue: Everything You Need to Know and More
MacKenzie Quinn
Bairnsley Press
Trials and Court Proceedings TYL 300-310
Bairnsley University Press
The True Nature of Chaos
Ian Malcolm
Butterfly Press
Prophecies
Maretta Prophecy 42: A Moment
When reality is cut asunder
And made anew
When the world cries out for Heroes
And Death awakens
When Evil slithers through
The cracks of Truth
Then comes a moment,
A call
Then comes a simple illusion that breaks its bonds
And becomes.
Maretta Prophecy 37: Word to the Hero:
Seek ye the Morpholag and destroy it
But beware the mother who succours it
Flee the tempest when it finds thee
& bound to paths that cannot win free
Lose all there is to lose
From your victory will come ashes
The ashes hold the sword.
Mighty are the fallen three
Death stalks, evil walks,
My words,
My gift to thee.
Tishke’s Prophecy: Beware
Ruler’s robes in the dust
Crown upon the ground.
Heed the death of a country…
Beware the ruler that will tread
Down dark alleyways
Of dread
To seek salvation
And find only death.
The Forbidden Prophecy—The Hero
I am the daylight to the night,
The sun where no shadows fall
Though the moon shall die
It shall be but the beginning,
Though the world shall break asunder
It must be mended,
Though a thousand stars tumble from the sky
None shall see their passing,
Though I should fall, I shall rise again,
And so all that is prophesied will come to pass
‘Till the final shadow flees the dawn.
Gods Worshiped:
The God of Death: A Blood Oath is sworn to this god who is supposedly directly connected to the Realm of Death.
The God of Disease: The least said, the better.
The Harvester: Not associated with death, but life, food, celebrations and luck.
The God of Pestilence: The least said, the better.
The Maiden: The God of Beauty and Love and Compassion.
The Mother: The God of Fertility.
About the Author
A.J. Ponder has a head full of monsters, and recklessly spills them out onto the written page. Beware dragons, dreadbeasts, taniwha, and small children—all are equally dangerous, and capable of treading on your heart—or tearing it, still beating, from your chest.
A.J.’s notable and award-winning stories include; Quest, Dying for the Record, Frankie and the Netball Clone, BlindSight & Ahi Kā. Books for younger readers include The Frankie Files, Attack of the Giant Bugs—You Choose Adventure, The Great Weta Robbery and Save the Moa.
A.J. Ponder
Find me at ponderbooks.com. I’d love to hear from you.
And of course I cannot forget Freddie, see his bio below…
Also by A.J. Ponder
The Secret Child
The Secret Child must be rescued from slavers tonight—or the consequences will be dire.
Young Jonathan Goodfellow and his father set out to rescue children from slavers with the help of the Bairnsley University underground. Things go from bad to impossible when a raiding party of thurgles - huge giant-like creatures - and their hellhounds get there first. Then the Bairnsley University wizards fail to arrive. Will the Goodfellows save the children? Or will Jonathan become a slave himself?
Get your FREE copy today or join my mailing list to find out more.
YA
Miss Lionheart and the Laboratory of Death
Childrens
Wizard’s Guide to Wellington
The Frankie Files
Attack of the Giant Bugs—You Choose a Science & Spies Adventure
Miss Lionheart and the Laboratory of Death
The offer: Get into the car or I'll blow your brains out,” was made with such eloquence and conviction Lilly couldn't exactly refuse...
...And you can't either. Yes, Miss Lionheart and the Laboratory of Death is here, so hijack yourselves into mad scientists' territory, duck the gelignite, avoid
the Acme fuses. Do whatever you need to, just don't miss out — it's more than your life is worth! Get your copy today.
P.S. I love reviews, they make my day!
Footnotes
* * *
[1] According to the text this was not a lizard. The ancient gobbledegook appeared to explain that a tuatara was in fact, a very small and wingless dragon.
[2] Dothie’s farewell ceremony is remembered by some as the best Fairly University send-off ever. Strangely enough, Dothie didn’t recall it in that light at all, and the senior staff were less than overjoyed. “What happened to the policy?” they whispered to each other, secretly pleased that Dothie was gone, but terrified as to what he might do now that he’d escaped. “Next time,” they vowed, “we will be better prepared. After all, it is the Fairly University mission to protect the world from magicians such as Dothie.”
[3] You will notice some words like this are embellished to better express the full reverence of the ideas for which they stand.
[4] Everyone knows time is a reality, so therefore it must be a particle. This knowledge has allowed wizards from various schools to play with the fabric of time itself – using the particulate nature of the weft and exploiting its warped nature.
[5] Turning your classmates, or even attempting to turn your classmates, into flies using the Drosophila spell is a class three felony and will result in criminal proceedings. Consider yourself warned.
[6] To Sylvalla, it had all been terribly boring. But perhaps that was because she’d never progressed to the more advanced topics of Political Diplomacy: lying by telling the truth; and the favourite of her mother, the queen, Manipulative Diplomacy: telling the truth by lying. Sylvalla was beginning to realise these were things she’d have to improve at if she was to continue to get her own way.
[7] Of course, it was a lie. Sylvalla’s father had never even ordered a slave be flogged, and was hardly likely to forego his lifelong pursuit of tolerance and leniency. It was a scandalous dereliction of duty that Sylvalla’s mother encouraged. Although the queen did set in place a brilliant public campaign of—completely false—terror to ensure the secret never got out.
[8] Retire Overly Young And Live like a TYrant
[9] Although his father, Capro, had, and was quite good at doing so.
[10] A blood oath need only contain the words “by my blood,” to be bound by the Realm of Death. Ignore the rumours that people who have broken such an oath are pulled into fiery underground chasms to be tortured forever. They are unlikely to be true. More a pleasant and wishful-thinking alternative to the real fate in store for such oath-breakers.
[11] NB. This list, as compiled by the famous MacKenzie Quinn, left out the most important rule, known as the secret seventh: Breaking rules is okay so long as you don’t get caught. To be fair, a rule like don’t get caught works far better if you don’t go around blabbing it to people – most especially scholars who can blab on a scale that travels across continents.
[12] Which, of course, Dothie hadn’t. Coming from a continent Thurghue have never set foot upon tends to disadvantage a person if they suddenly happen to capture one while travelling in exotic places.
[13] Avondale had been dubbed the city of sights by its king three years earlier as a promotional gimmick. The term was only officially dropped when the title city of sites became popular, usually with the word empty used in conjunction with the word site.
[14] Truth is she was a superb horse, but her welfare had been so horribly overlooked over the last few days that it was beginning to show.
[15] Certainly very little happened over Fergus’ shoulders.
[16] See rule 4 A thurgle is no longer Beholden when abandoned in battle. See, the rules are not so very complex.
It should be noted that, after abandonment, a thurgle will often disappear without a trace. Alternatively, where there is some advantage to them, they may remain with their master until he dies in a terrible, horrible, brutal accident – either immediately, or after a more profitable avenue of employment lures the thurgle away.
[17] Thought to be an extract from an obscure version of Prophecy 37: Word To the Hero:
Seek ye the Morpholag and destroy it
But beware the mother who succours it
Flee the tempest when it finds thee
& bound to paths that cannot win free
Lose all there is to lose
From your victory will come ashes
The ashes hold the sword.
[18] Dirk’s father had died young, even before the birth of his first (and only) son, Dirk. This should be no surprise. Heroes brave enough to stand in front of a lizard that breathes fire, is over five metres long, and likes to eat people for breakfast, tend to have a shortened life expectancy.
[19] No, that’s right, importynous is not a word, but from context I think we all know what Rufus meant.
[20] It would have perhaps been more truthful to use the more aspirational, dreamt. But the king wasn’t exactly a stickler for truth, grammar or any other such pernickety things.
[21]In the past, the king had found she could be made more amenable with Calmalot Potion. Fortunately for her, unlike many such drugs, it was non-addictive.
[22] This might have been because the king’s idea of reason was of the I’m right because I’m king variety. In diplomacy, the approach the King used is termed By Way of Right. And yet both came down to the same thing–I am king. The king was good at diplomacy. He could use it to his heart’s content, but subtle nuances like this were quite lost on his wife, as she recognised them for what they were–pigheadedness.
[23] Mega = large, fauna = animals. Please take note, especially students of Grosse Kreaturen 101
[24] Apparently other law enforcers don’t like it and will hunt you down. This revelation came to Fergus relatively quickly given only half a dozen men died to prove the rule.
[25] Fergus noticed thieving was a thriving occupation in the cities he’d seen. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t get away with it. For some reason, Thurghue don’t disappear into crowds very well, and because of that, they do make excellent stooges.
[26] The innkeeper was picturing the word hostage in the distinctive Wanted, Dead or Alive lettering. She wondered what would happen to the inn once all this was over. And, more importantly, what would happen to her. Suddenly she was picturing the Wanted Dead or Alive caption with an unwarranted picture underneath. Her own.
[27] Safely is always a relative thing. For example, safely home in bed is suddenly not so safe if you have a rampaging killer coming up the stairs. It is, however, a little safer if your bedroom is protected by a solid oak door with a good strong lock, so the raging killer is prevented from entering said room–however temporarily.
[28] Dirk didn’t snigger, but the thought was there. This little escapade was proving to be decidedly amusing, if a tad ill-conceived. So long as the king didn’t mention that gods-blighted, revolting, plague-carrying—
[29] —rodent. Of course, he had to go and mention the more-thingy Whatever fancy name you gave it, in Dirk’s opinion, the creature was that it was nothing more than an overgrown rat.
[30] Its inhabitants call it the More Beer, Less Pork, University, due to its ordinance outlawing pork in the year of 011–ten years after the porcine plague.
[31] Dirk’s fondest memory of a crowd was the epic battle of Shellybeach in the 292nd Year of Our Lady. For all that it was problematic, at least it was a crowd that thinned out quickly.
[32] For consistency I’ll keep to the male pronoun for the hermaphrodite. It’s supposed to cover for both sexes, one small step toward the ascent of man, etc. (Actually, I lie, I’m going to switch between both whenever I feel like it, as is the current practice. In addition, sometimes the creature’s behaviour is feminine, and at other times it’s masculine. I’m sexist enough to go with the one I think fits best.)
[33] He had thrown
the axe away in favour of the sword Excalibur about a year ago. He wouldn’t even miss it, except for the possibility of fighting a dragon. Rule four hundred and fifty-six: Never fight a dragon with a sword. Dragons have had far too much practise against this weapon.
[34] Still failing to notice Dothie and his band chasing after them. It is understandable. She had other, larger things on her mind.
[35] Not with actual roots, you understand. Although that is a very useful spell, and well worth learning.
[36] Peter Cowldice, the Ancient attrib.
