Lands of Daranor: Book 01 - DreamQuest Read online

  DREAMQUEST

  Bill Pottle

  www.billpottle.com

  Book 1 of Lands of Daranor Series (DreamQuest, ProphecyQuest, SwordQuest)

  DreamQuest

  All Rights Reserved © 2013/2003 by William Pottle

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Illustrations by Charles DeGuzman [email protected]

  To Valena, with love

  About This Edition (2013)

  This is the ten year anniversary edition of DreamQuest. I started writing DreamQuest while in 6th grade as a labor of love. After ten years of practice and work with excellent editors, my skill as a writer has increased to the point where I felt it would be worthwhile to go back through the manuscript and rework it. I have added in a new scene and expanded on others. I hope both new and old readers of DreamQuest will enjoy this version.

  Original Acknowledgements:

  I wish to express my sincere thanks to the many people who contributed their time and energy to make this story come alive. First and foremost, Connie Pottle gave invaluable advice on manuscript preparation and helped open the world of publishing in a way that only a librarian could do. Jeri Kladder gave a thorough editing of the first complete draft of the story, and provided many useful suggestions in terms of writing style and story content. Sherry Lai has also been a great help, teaching me to reach for the stars while still keeping both feet on the ground. I am deeply indebted to Charles DeGuzman for his cover art and the interior map. I would also like to thank my family, for always being there and supporting the project, even though it took many long years to complete. Finally, thanks are due to the many other people who helped read and edit the story throughout the years. Each of you has touched it in your own unique way, and helped to add your mark to the final polished version.

  Praise for DreamQuest

  "Splendid" -Lloyd Alexander

  "Your classic fantasy tale" -The Dragon Page Radio Show

  "This imaginative and entertaining fantasy ... is a winning combination of action, romance and magic...A witty tale that will appeal to readers of all ages...Pottle's writing style is a treat. Quick-paced and funny...will keep readers eagerly turning the pages...Characters ...are well done, believable and likeable." -April Chase, The Fiction Forum Review

  “The different non-human cultures interacted with the human cultures in a realistic manner, well plotted and well thought out. These are not just snippets of Tolkien with the names changed and the serial numbers filed off, dropped into the text. No, these are seriously developed, original takes on historical mythology, blended with accurate historical cultures.” -Dan L. Hollifield, Aphelion Webzine

  "Bill Pottle's writing style will delight young and old alike. His imagery and narrative carry seamlessly from one scene to another, carrying the reader along with ease from the unreality of dream into the harsh reality of impending disaster.DreamQuestis a winner."- David Blalock, Author of Thran Reborn.

  "Pottle’sDreamQuestis a tribute to following one’s dreams. Tarthur’s boyish musings remind one of the six-grader that started this work of fiction, but along the way Pottle will broadside you with Tarthur’s simplistic discoveries that are almost profound in their truths."-Ingrid Taylor, Small Press Review

  "A humorous, adventuresome journey... Bill Pottle is a writer to keep your eye on." -Victoria Randall, Author of The Ring of the Dark Elves.

  C O N T E N T S

  ▼

  OF COWS AND CHICKENS

  SUNRISE

  A REALLY MEAN GUY

  BUREAUCRACY

  THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS

  A NEW FRIEND

  A CITY REJOICES

  AND IT ALL CAME FROM A HUG

  ANOTHER SWORD OF POWER AND AN OLD FRIEND

  MORE BAD GUYS

  MORE QUESTIONS

  ESCAPE

  SOMEONE’S IN LOVE…

  THE SURVIVOR

  FREETON FOREVER

  A BATTLE AT NIGHT

  THE PLAN

  THE TRAP

  INTO THE HEART OF EVIL

  THE END OF BRESHEN

  OF COWS AND CHICKENS

  All his life young Tarthur had wanted to be a hero, and now was his chance, he thought as he dove out of the way of an arc of fire that exploded the pillar behind him. He felt pebbles bounce against his back.

  I’ve got to be more careful next time, he thought, that fire almost hit me. He dodged another blast, and this time came face to face with Darhyn himself, the Death Lord of Daranor, embodiment of all evil and hatred. The Death Lord laughed slowly, and brought his hand up over Tarthur. Tarthur saw a web beginning to form around Darhyn’s fingers, and then grow bigger, coming to ensnare him. Tarthur grabbed his dagger and plunged it straight into the Death Lord’s breast. Tarthur felt nothing as it slid in. The Dark One screamed in agony, and then faded away into nothing.

  If he had been able to think about it, the boy would have been terrified, but as it was, Tarthur was too stunned to think. He began to run away, for already the shapes of other dark things were beginning to form in the mist.

  He ran out of the main chamber, where a massive iron door swung open for him. Another door remained closed ahead, so he took a turn for the right, for on his left, a hideous ogre dripping with blood and slime was hunkering after him. Tarthur ran, and he ran. He didn’t know how far he went in that twisted labyrinth, only that every time he turned he would alternate between right and left turns.

  He knew there were many monsters chasing him now. He didn’t see them, but he saw shadows and heard heavy, panting breathing and almost felt their moist breath and cold claws digging into his back. They had come to destroy the one who had killed their leader.

  Tarthur could think of nothing other than finding a way out. Everywhere he turned, however, seemed to lead him only further down and deeper into the winding catacombs. Suddenly, he felt an even greater urgency to get out alive. The monsters were almost on top of him now. He rounded a corner…

  …And found a dead end. He turned to retrace his steps, but saw that where he had entered was already blocked off. He looked down at the corner to see if there was any way out, but instead his eyes spied a small, beat up old chest. Hurriedly, he jiggled the lock with his dagger, and he breathed a sigh of relief as it popped open.

  Inside was a yellowed scroll.

  Tarthur wondered what magic this might be, but he was only a young kid. He had never used magic before. He reached around frantically in his tunic for his quill and scroll to copy it down, but it was useless, they had been lost in the harrowing flight from the Death Lord’s chamber.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice came, “Here Tarthur, take these,” and placed a quill and scroll in Tarthur’s hands. Never one to question a gift, Tarthur quickly copied down the old scroll on the other one. Now, the monsters were practically on top of him, and he had nothing left to try. Raising the scroll and staring at the characters that he had never before seen, Tarthur began to read out loud.

  Huge waves came crashing down upon everyone in the room without warning. The monsters were completely swept away, but as Tarthur was wondering how it was that he survived, how he stood amidst the maelstrom with a dry tunic, he felt a massive presence take hold of him and begin to shake. He fought it as hard as he could, but try as he might, he couldn’t escape. Tarthur was losing air quickly. His vision was beginning to gray around the edges, and he couldn’t hold his balance…

  * * *

  “Tarthur,
Tarthur wake up!” Tarthur stopped struggling, and found himself far away from the horror, in the small mountain village of Krendon, staring up into the brown eyes of his friend and companion, Derlin. Tarthur breathed in a sigh of relief. “I had a terrible…”

  “Dream, I know.” Derlin finished. The boys had been close ever since they were small, and could often finish each other’s sentences. “When you didn’t show up at breakfast, I wondered where you were. I came back and saw you wildly thrashing around for your quill pen and scroll. So I handed them to you, and you started writing down all these weird symbols. I’ve never seen anything like them before.” Derlin finished the sentence with a hint of worry in his voice.

  Tarthur looked at the scroll, and indeed it did have strange shapes and markings written all over it. Some of the characters were black, and some were in other colors like blue, red, brown, and green. The ink jar on the small table beside his bed was filled only with black ink, and the quill had been dry the night before. Tarthur had never been one to worry a lot about being literate, but as he looked at the scroll, he knew that those letters were nothing like the ones that old wandering bard had attempted to teach him. Tarthur quickly rolled up the scroll, and started to fasten it in place with a tie, but it stayed where it was on its own. Tarthur told Derlin about his dream, at least what he remembered of it, and while they played heroes in the forest with sticks as swords and routinely killed the Death Lord without so much as a hindrance, this somehow seemed different.

  “This is definitely strange,” Derlin wondered out loud. “I think we should go see Zelin.”

  Tarthur nodded his head in agreement. “I think we should go right away.”

  “Wait,” Derlin said, putting a restraining hand on his shoulder. “We still have to take care of our punishment. I think we should do that first, since you know we’ll just get into more trouble if we don’t do it quickly. Not to mention, we have to do the rest of our chores too. I’m already finished with mine, but what do you have to do? It’s a Saturday in August, you know.”

  Tarthur thought for a moment. “Well, I have to feed the chickens, and…”

  “I already fed them,” Derlin cut him short. “They were clucking like mad when I walked by, so I took care of it myself.”

  “Well, I guess then there’s always Old Betsy.”

  Derlin grimaced with visible pain. “Yeah, it’s better that we get it over with.”

  The barn was close to Tarthur’s quarters, so they were there in a matter of minutes. The two walked slowly inside, with the look of two who wished that they were coming out, their task already completed. Most of the cows mooed softly when they walked by, but one snorted her disgust. Old Betsy was the meanest of the entire herd. She had one brown patch on her left side, and two black ones on her right. Everyone in Krendon knew that to be saddled with the task of milking Old Betsy required the performance of some dastardly and heinous crime. She could claim no particular owner, as no one would take her, but her milk always went to Baron Ercrilla, the landlord who owned the town.

  Tarthur cautiously approached from the left flank, and then reached down and began to milk. Meanwhile, Derlin gave her flowers to distract her. As usual, the boys recounted the adventure that had resulted in their punishment.

  “We’re so unlucky,” Tarthur mused. “What are the odds that that cranky old knight…what was his name again?”

  “Erso,” Derlin returned.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Tarthur remembered. “Yeah, what are the odds that he just happened to come upon us in that abandoned part of the forest, just when we were reenacting old battles? Sword fighting is a skill we need to know.”

  Derlin nodded in agreement, dodging one of Betsy’s vicious hooves. “Maybe next time we should ask the baron before we borrow his swords.”

  “Oh, come on, Derlin. You know better than that. You know how adults are. You sneak into their house, take their things, and then break them a few times and they’ll never trust you again.”

  “You’re right, Tarthur,” Derlin nodded again. “You know, I guess it must be that the baron is jealous because we’re training to become the greatest heroes the land of Daranor has ever seen, and he probably couldn’t even become a Royal Knight.”

  “This darn cow is as stubborn as a mule!” Tarthur uttered as he was sent sprawling into the hay by one of Betsy’s patented kicks.

  Derlin looked on the bright side. “Well, at least we got a half pail.” Derlin was always an optimist. Tarthur usually was too, but it’s hard to be optimistic when you’ve just gotten kicked into a pile of hay by a stubborn milk cow.

  They were all set to leave the barn and head straight for Zelin’s chambers, but suddenly Tarthur remembered how hungry he was. Since the punishment included being sent to bed the previous night without dinner, it was almost twenty-four hours since Tarthur had last eaten. Surely, the cooks had already cleaned up breakfast, and while they might make an exception for that snotty baron’s son, as sure as the cow Betsy was stubborn, there would be no breakfast for Tarthur—unless, as he put it, he and Derlin “permanently borrowed” some.

  “Derlin, what are they cooking for lunch today?”

  “Oh I don’t know, some of that thin gruel-like soup I think. But Tarthur, why do you ask…” Derlin trailed off, and then he turned to his friend. “Tarthur, oh no you don’t…you know that Baron Ercrilla always likes his mincemeat pies right when he returns from his hunting trips…”

  “Well, that’s illogical,” Tarthur countered. “He should eat what he catches, if he’s any good at hunting. And it’s our job to encourage him in that behavior. Besides, it’ll only take a few minutes.”

  As they walked from the barn to the kitchen, Tarthur watched the children of Krendon. Most of them were joyful, and Tarthur loved them. Maybe being an orphan had made Tarthur want a family more than other children his age. His parents had given him life, his name, and little else. His mother had died during childbirth, and his father had died soon after in a hunting accident. But some said that he had died from grief in losing his beloved. Tarthur’s mother had had long, flowing, golden hair, and his father’s was brown. Tarthur himself had sandy blond hair and his mother’s sky blue eyes. Most of the village children looked up to Tarthur and admired him, in spite of vehement objections from their own mothers. Yet, strolling down the walk came the one village youth that Tarthur despised over all other life forms. It was the dreaded Mortimer, the only son of Baron Ercrilla.

  Morty, as Tarthur called him simply because he hated it, approached, and began to speak in a sarcastic tone. “Tarthur, being as though your presence was lacking when we broke our fast this morning, I was inclined to think that you so much enjoyed milking Betsy the cow that you endeavored at it for hours.” That was the way educated people talked, and Morty had plenty of education. He had a tutor, who would come a few times a week, sometimes staying the whole day, making Morty sit there and recite useless facts, and perform strange feats like the diagramming of sentences. Tarthur couldn’t imagine anything worse than that.

  They started out as friends, since they were almost the same age. Over time, however, they had grown into rivals—they had too much in common. Both could command the interest of the other members of the town, especially the children and the females, although it was for very different reasons. Morty captivated for his money and power, and Tarthur for his recklessness and audacity. Eventually, most had come to like Tarthur better than Morty. Competition had blossomed into jealousy, and then Morty played the first of the ongoing war’s cruel jokes.

  A herd of sheep grazing in a small pasture just outside of town had been spooked by some small monster, probably a griffin or snake or such. The herd had charged off of the edge of a cliff, taking their shepherd with them as they fell. Tarthur was nearby, and had heard the man’s cries for help. He had dragged the man back to town, only to find that he had already died. Morty met him at the gate, and then acting as judge, jury, and executioner, he had Tarthur beaten and made to
go for two days without food on the charge of spooking the sheep. Tarthur, of course, retaliated. He wasn’t able to get back at Morty with methods such as these, but he did quite well in his own way.

  Derlin stepped forward and shoved Morty while Tarthur stepped on his foot. “Why don’t you keep your big, ugly nose out of our business?” Derlin didn’t like Morty either, and besides, his nose was big and ugly. It jutted out from his face like a lone mountain peak, with two gigantic caves in it.

  Morty came forward to strike, but checked himself. Tarthur saw Morty’s face contort and hand tense into a fist and knew he was calculating whether to punch or not. Morty was no match for Tarthur in physical combat, and Tarthur had Derlin to help him too. Morty was exposed with his dad’s bodyguards away with the hunting party. His fist relaxed and Morty abruptly turned and walked off.

  “I don’t like it, Tarthur, he’s planning something.”

  Tarthur nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I know that look in his face. But who cares? The hunting party is gone today, and tomorrow—well, things will be different with this whole dream business.”

  Soon the kitchen was in view. Derlin went around the front to deliver the milk from Old Betsy and provide a distraction while Tarthur skirted the front by fifty meters so he could approach under the cover of the woods. The trees were just beginning to turn into a vast array of bursting colors. In a month or so the leaves would reach their peak, falling to give a spectacular carpet to anyone who would take the time to notice.

  Walking quietly, Tarthur soon arrived at the side of the kitchen, and stared up at the windowsill. The sill was old and wanted repainting; it was yellowing and cracking around the edges. But it was on top of the sill where the prize rested. A beautiful mincemeat pie wafted its succulent aroma toward Tarthur, calling out to him. Tarthur felt his mouth water and his stomach start to turn. Several fine animals had died for that pie. It certainly was a pity that they didn’t serve the likes of this to Tarthur and Derlin more often. The pudgy head cook Judith had been infuriated at them ever since that unfortunate pastry incident a few years back.