The Last King: Part One - The Witch of Kirandaw

By Rob Eric

Deep in the English countryside, Seth is a 16-year-old farmer’s son who likes to spend his spring afternoons sitting lazily under a willow tree named Nicholas. So how is it that, on this particular spring afternoon, Seth has become the unwitting assistant to a dangerous witch? She’s brought with her an infant boy from another world. Why is it that Seth feels so bonded to him, despite not even knowing the child's name? ...And what is it fate expects from him next?

Seth’s once-unexceptional life will never be the same. Teeming with magical enchantments, curious riddles, supernatural creatures, and one very angry, very large beast, THE WITCH OF KIRANDAW introduces our world - the so-called “Top World” - to a deadly war of magic between multiple realms and mythologies.

This is part one in a six-part episodic novel called THE LAST KING; it represents the beginning of a war that will span centuries, from 1639 to the present day and beyond — and it also represents the arrival to the battlefield of two very important individuals: the forgotten Last King... and the king’s soon-to-be sworn enemy.

Lead the people. Follow the magic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rob Eric
• Release date: Oct 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311687739

Rob Eric

Rob Eric is an Emmy Award-winning television producer, film producer, music producer, and author. For years, he has created stories, worlds, and experiences that are rich with detail, rife with conflict, and full of wonder, most recently on ABC with the groundbreaking DGA-nominated series THE QUEST, which Rob created alongside the producers of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, THE AMAZING RACE, and THE FOG OF WAR.Rob grew up in the tiny town of North Smithfield, Rhode Island, where he began to construct the made-up mythologies that would become the building blocks for the stories he would one day commit to paper (or a Microsoft Word doc). He currently resides in Los Angeles, California – a world filled with its own fiction and fantasy.

Book preview

The Last King: Part One – The Witch of Kirandaw

Rob Eric

Copyright 2015 by Rob Eric

Illustrations by Anthony Leonardi III

Edited by Trent Johnson

This book is dedicated to my loving mother who was the first to teach me the power of the words ‘once upon a time.’ Thanks ma.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One – The Top World

Chapter Two – The Ruination of Certainty

Chapter Three – The Beast

Chapter Four – The Danse Macabre

Chapter Five – The Infinite Nothing

Chapter Six – The Downward Spiral

Chapter Seven – The Upside Down

Chapter Eight – What Lies Beneath

Chapter Nine – The Great Tilliam of Kirandaw

Chapter Ten – The Sarcophagus of the Last King

Chapter Eleven – Metamorphosis

Chapter Twelve – Ascension

Chapter Thirteen – The Blind Fool

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

The Top World

Herefordshire, Kingdom of England

Fourth of May 1639

Seth exhaled an exhausted and slightly exaggerated huff of breath as he collapsed beneath the great, old willow tree. The climb to the tree was a tedious and precarious journey up the steep and rocky hill and, as usual, it had taken the wind out of him. But now, as he looked upon the fields below, he knew once again that the effort was well worth it. From this vantage he could easily watch his grazing flock of sheep, and for an hour or two, he could relax without the worry of losing any of them. It had taken him more than an hour to make the slow and tiresome walk from the farm, through the thick woods and across the vast field, but this had become his favourite place to take them and as he lacked any actual travel experience in his life, it had also become his favourite place to be in the entire world.

Sitting with his legs comfortably crossed in front of him, he pulled a few small stones from the ground and piled them into little towers, balancing the stones one on top of the other, seeing just how high he could stack them before they toppled over. Sometimes, if his hands were steady enough, he managed to get five or even six stones stacked. Seven, however, always seemed to escape him, but perhaps today he would accomplish the unthinkable.

He played this game whenever he sat in this particular spot, and though it had been several months since he had last been able to make the climb up to the tree, his stockpile of stones had remained exactly where he had last placed them. It comforted him to know his sanctuary had remained uninhabited in his absence.

Stacking the stones helped pass the time and kept him occupied while the sheep filled their bellies with grass. It also served as a way for him to clear his mind if he was frustrated, and on this morning, that was exactly what he needed.

It had been an exhausting several months confined to the cottage with his father. As winter can often do to even the closest of families, it had turned them against each other, chipping away at nerves so that even the most innocuous situations of everyday life could easily ignite an argument. That morning, before Seth had stormed off in a huff, he and his father had gotten into a scuffle about breakfast, and the sheer ridiculousness of their argument now made Seth laugh out loud as he placed a fifth stone atop his tiny tower. He knew when he returned to the cottage, he would make peace with his poor father, who truly had no fault in Seth’s burnt egg.

The willow that Seth sat beneath was a wonder to behold. It was much more than just a simple tree; it was an anomaly of nature. First, there was its mammoth size, stretching up to the sky at least fifty-some-odd feet, much taller than any other willow Seth had ever seen. Then, there were its long, weeping branches filled with clusters of thick, lush, green leaves that, for some particular reason, never ever shed, not even in the coldest of winters. However, what made it a true wonder was where it was. It had somehow managed to grow right out of the side of a very steep, rocky incline that resembled more cliffside than hill. As far as Seth knew, no other tree had ever managed such an accomplishment, at least not a tree of this size.

Seth imagined that many decades, perhaps even a century ago, a tiny sapling clung to the side of the hill, planted its roots, and decided to defy the laws of nature, managing against all odds to grow where it should not. For this reason and this reason alone, Seth loved this tree.

He had claimed the great willow, and the small spot of grass underneath, as his very own just a few years ago when he became old enough to take the flock this far into the countryside all by himself, and for once, not under the watchful eye of his father. He had even gone so far as to name the tree, carving that name deep into its bark with a small knife his father had given to him as a birthday gift when he turned ten years old. He named the tree Nicholas, which Seth thought was a good, strong name. After all, Nicholas was the name of the most legendary man to have ever lived in his village.

As the fable went, nearly two hundred years before Seth had been born, a man named Nicholas, who by varying accounts stood nearly seven feet tall, saved his village from a dragon by single-handedly killing the beast in its lair while it slept. Seth thought the story was rather mundane and senseless. Even if there were such a thing as a dragon, which Seth knew very well that there was not, how hard would it have been to kill one while it slept? Anyone could have done that, which made him also wonder why the person who had conceived this poorly fabricated tale would need to make the hero of the story seven feet tall. A rather odd height when all he did was sneak up on a sleeping dragon and slit its throat. It was not exactly the most thrilling of legends, but it was the one legend his village had, and because of it, over the years, the name Nicholas had become synonymous with being mighty and strong. Half of the men in his village were named Nicholas in his honor, and Seth found it amusing that none were mighty or strong, just pudgy and boring. Despite all this, Seth named the tree Nicholas anyway, because at least this willow had lived up to the symbolic nature of the name.

Seth was very happy that his parents had not named him Nicholas. Seven of his cousins, his father’s brother, both the village butchers, the blind metalsmith who made horribly crooked nails, the fat village Lord, all three of the Lord’s obnoxious, chubby triplet sons, and Seth’s