Little Orphan Anvil: The Complete Trilogy by Joseph Beekman (good beach reads .txt) 📗

Land of Darkness, in thewilds of the far north. It was once the land known asthe Land of Stars—before the legendary shower ofdoom had laid waste to it, destroying the dark sorcerythat had existed there in secrecy among the ancient,dark sorceresses. That is where we’ll find the twoothers…the two surviving dark witches.”

“You are quite right, Miss Aleeria!” Will statedfirmly. “With their witching brew, the one they’re usingto control the witch-lady’s soul, they plan to finish whatthe witch-lady had planned from the beginning: to putthe realm into an eternal sleep. Going into the Land ofIron and Anvil, as it now stands, would be mostunwise.”

He paused, looking over to the teens. “As thekids here have said, the destruction has already justbegun; the sleeping spell has been cast—ignitedthrough the witch’s soul by those others…”

Aleeria nodded. “I say we go to the Land ofDarkness and crush those two witches. We mustdestroy the evil they stir within that cauldron! Thewitch-lady should then be without the added power shenow possesses under the control of those others.”

“But her soul, and that monster that she hasbecome—they’d still exist, right?” Tabitha askedhesitantly.

“You’re correct, Tabitha,” Aleeria said bitterly.“But first things, first, my dear; we deal with her andthe monster she has become, only after the power of theothers has been squashed.”

When everyone had finished speaking, theythought upon it very carefully, finally deciding to gowith what Aleeria had suggested. Going north into thedark of the wilds would be their one real chance ofrescuing anyone still trapped in the mines…and ofsaving the realm.

~ CHAPTERVII~ INTO the DARK WILDS

“This sure is a funny looking place,” Tabithastated, sniffing the cold, crisp air and gazing about atthe hundreds of giant stones that jutted upwards alongboth sides of the river’s embankments. She and theothers were now upon a large, makeshift raft thatmoved them along on a wide and steadily flowing, redriver.

Tinspar had taken up the position of maneuveringthe raft, while Will and Jonathon sat near the front ofthe raft throwing fishing lines off into the water—theywere hoping for a bit of luck at catching some freshfish. Aleeria and Tabitha were over to one side of theraft, practicing some sorcery; they were using Anvil asa prop of sorts. The little robot hovered patiently bytheir sides, zooming its electric eyes around to view thewild surroundings.

Five days had passed since they had departed thedark canyon of the hollow root, and set out for thenorthern reaches of the realm.

They had been traveling by foot through somerather wicked parts of the wilds, stopping briefly to eatand rest. Having to wear their breathing headgear hadno longer been necessary, since the dark spell cloudswere far from reaching the party. The iron headgearremained with them, nonetheless—the threat of thewitch’s sleeping spell could drop in from the sky at anytime, and they wanted to be prepared.

Anvil, who had been repaired far better than evenWill had hoped, had been the one leading their way.The robot would often use its eye-lights to help guidethe party through the more gloomier parts of the fieldsand forests that they had been traveling through.

Tabitha had been quite joyful seeing the littlerobot back among the living—or as Aleeria wouldsay—among the dead. She remained always fascinatedby Aleeria’s belief’s that when a body died the spiritwas released, and only then was it truly alive and free.

To Aleeria, that meant that the robot’s own soul,which was now back inside its iron body, would be asone dead.

Strange philosophy

, Tabitha had pondered, butone that she had never dismissed, either.

Tabitha had always had an open mind: it was oneof the reasons the few remaining, elder sorceresses backhome had believed in her, and had taken her under theirwings in the practices of ancient sorcery.

It was on the fifth day of their travel that the wideriver had appeared before them. Tinspar said it wouldbe the quickest way for them to get to the north, due tohis knowledge of traveling the realm in his early daysof life. He claimed that the river was an ancient onethat wormed its way for many miles to the very edges ofthe great and mysterious, frozen glacier. There theparty would have to cross the glacier’s icy wasteland,taking them to the Land of Darkness.

The party had acquired the rickety wooden raftfrom a small village, near the edges of the river. Thevillagers looked as if they had been rooted to that areaof the river for many centuries. They had leathery,wilted skin and oddly-shaped skulls stretching outwardsfrom their flesh. The language they spoke was like noother the party had ever heard before, but Tinspar hadfinally been able to trade with them for the raft. He hadtraded in exchange for a few magic gems he had withhim; gems that were used for healing purposes.

Now they were traveling along the river intosome strange, war-torn areas of the realm. They had afew bits of food rations they’d collected along the wayand had stored aboard the raft in small crates. Theyalso had the body of the spider that Tinspar had seizedfor Aleeria’s own keeping. The body was stored safelyinside an old iron box acquired from a trading post atthe river’s village. The strange landscape that theywere now floating through had been one that had seenmuch chaos, many years earlier.

A brutal war had erupted over land ownership,and had involved many of the lands throughout therealm. It had finally fizzled out when it had been seenas a bad omen. The lands had feared that the increasingshadows and violent storms within the realm were adirect result of fighting over such nonsense and fuss ofwho owned what, and so on, and so forth.

Many of the elders that had gone off to the northern war, and never returned, had left behind manychildren that had become orphans.

“Now pay close attention, Tabitha,” Aleeria saidfirmly to the young teen who seemed lost in a daydream—she was gazing off at the giant stones that passedthem by.

Tabitha shook her head and turned her attentionto the sorceress. “Oops,” she giggled. “Sorry.”

Aleeria stared into Tabitha’s eyes. “Sometimeseven the slightest things, like those stones on the banksof this river,