Tandori: Book 1 in Tandori Series

By Robert Hill

Five thousand years ago, five Creatures were imprisoned in the temple of Tandori, hidden away in the woods and banished by the Four Safe-Keepers, with no way of escape until now.
The Man with No Name seeks power for himself, and he has made it his mission to free the Creatures and become the Master of Chaos. Only the Four Safe-Keepers can stop him from destroying the known world.
Zach Smith and Verity Phillips must now embark on a quest to find the other members of the Four. Theyre young and scared and they have to rely solely on their instincts to win this war

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jan 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469146256

Robert Hill

Robert Hill grew up in South Wales, United Kingdom. He had a happy childhood, carefree and safe, a childhood which seems vanishingly rare in today’s world; it was a time when children left the house along with the rest of their siblings early in the morning and were given the instruction ‘don’t come home till teatime’. This allowed him and the rest of the kids in the street the whole world – well, the local world – to be his playground. This is where his stories come from: a keen sense of adventure with an inquisitive mind and a willingness to meet and accept others for all their differences.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Robert Hill.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012900093

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-4624-9

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-4623-2

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-4625-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0-800-644-6988

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

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303433

Contents

One  Freedom

Two  Oddities

Three  Gifts and Predictions

Four  Rebellion and Departure

Five  New Recruits

Six  Running with the Trolls

Seven  Ignoramus

Eight  Northward Bound

Nine  The Perfect Bait

Ten  The Wand Emporium

Eleven  Recovery

Twelve  Rochelle

Thirteen  Plotting

Fourteen  A Glimpse of Golden Sand

Fifteen  The Island

Sixteen  Dearly Departed

Seventeen  Maybe It is the End

Acknowledgement

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my parents,

Sandy and Colin, Mom and Dad to me,

for all the support and love, the patience and the encouragement.

None of this would have happened without you,

and for that I am eternally grateful. Thank you!

One

Freedom

The night was dark. Darker than anything the Man had ever experienced before. It was barely midnight, but the moon had hidden behind the clouds and was refusing to show its face, which meant that he had to traverse the forest in near darkness.

He knew why he was there—it was something that he had been waiting to do for years. It had taken much meticulous planning and plotting, but everything had come to a point that night.

The trees had grown in thick clumps, hindering his progress through the forest, but he knew where he was headed—right to the very centre of the forest.

He moved with the agility of a much younger man and he manoeuvred his way through the gnarled tree trunks, stepping with a sure-footed certainty towards his goal.

He knew what he wanted to do.

He knew where he wanted to go.

All that was left was to find his destination.

Legends had told the story of five Creatures that had been locked up five thousand years before, five Creatures that, when released, would help to take over the world.

The Man with No Name knew all the legends and stories concerning the five Creatures and he had spent many years studying their origins and how they had been locked up.

Five thousand years before, a group of children… children, no less… had imprisoned the Creatures in a temple that they would never be able to get out of themselves.

Since that fateful day, there had never been mention of any more children who would take up the positions of the Four Safe-Keepers, so the Man was confident that his plan would succeed. He was sure that he would make it through to the temple and free the Creatures.

And seeing as there were no children that were even hinted to be the Four Safe-Keepers, he would succeed in his ultimate plan to rule the Earth as the Master of Chaos.

He had waited eighty-seven years for this moment and now everything was coming together.

He walked on in silence. He was looking around him, keeping his eyes and ears peeled for the slightest movement, the slightest sound. Nothing was moving this deep in the forest except for the odd rustling of leaves in the breeze.

The birds and the animals would have long retired to bed, and it was unlikely that anybody else would be walking through the same woods at this time of night, but it always paid to be cautious.

The Man continued quietly, looking up and down, left and right, looking and looking for the smallest glimpse of the temple.

He knew that Tandori Temple was hidden in the centre of the forest he was in, but he had yet to lay his own eyes on it. He had seen renderings in books and journals, but none of those pictures came from actually seeing the temple in person. The Man knew that the temple had been hidden with any number of protective enchantments and he was sure that those spells would have made it incredibly difficult for any normal mythologist to discover the temple. Therefore the Man was sure that he would be the first person in over five thousand years to lay eyes on the majesty of the Tandori Temple.

He continued on his path through the undergrowth for a full ten minutes before he felt the hum of magic in his ears. He could feel it pulsing and vibrating, causing the air to stir around him—that was the sign of the most powerful magic.

He moved forward carefully and felt the buzzing in his ears intensify. He smiled: he knew he was getting closer.

Another few steps revealed a clearing in the forest, and the Man knew that this was what he had been searching for—an inconspicuous clearing in the centre of the forest was definitely the place for the temple to have been hidden.

There would be incredible magic at work to keep it away from the prying eyes of explorers or hikers, but it was not impossible to break. The Man had been training and learning how to get rid of the magic fields for years now, and he felt he was ready.

He moved into the clearing and his knees buckled: the magic at work was obviously stronger than he had expected… but no matter—he would get through the barrier just as he had planned.

The Man placed his satchel down on the ground next to him, leaning it against a tree trunk nearby. He opened it and removed his wand. He stroked it up and down and a few sparks flew out of the tip.

Good, he thought. That meant that his wand was ready for action—primed and prepared.

He stood up and looked at the blank air in front of him. He waved his wand and suddenly the air began to pulse with blue light. There was a dome-shaped barrier over the temple, one that had just been revealed by the man’s spell. The light was glowing electric blue and pulsing with charge. The Man knew better than to touch the barrier—he would be killed instantly.

Rummaging through his satchel again, he removed a book and some supplies that he had brought along. The book detailed the spell that would have to be cast in order to break a magical barrier and the supplies were there in order to strengthen the spell itself.

The herbs and spices unpacked, the Man began to prime himself for the task at hand: he closed his eyes and sent a request to the gods of magic that he would be successful.

Then he opened his eyes and turned to the glowing barrier that stood between him and incomprehensible power.

Behind the barrier, the same blue light that the Man was seeing was washing over the walls of Tandori Temple. The humming sound of the magic was louder and stronger inside the dome than it was behind, and it had warranted the Five Creatures to come up to the temple door to see what was happening.

There had been no change in the monotonous hum of magic over the last five thousand years and now they wanted to know what had happened that had changed the dynamic so drastically—something was happening and they did not know what.

‘What do you think is happening?’ asked one of the Creatures.

‘I cannot say,’ said another, turning his bright white eyes on his fellow. ‘I really do not know, but if I know anything about magic, I would say that the barrier is being tempered with. I think, little brother, that before the night is over, we will be free.’

On the other side of the barrier, there was a crack forming in the light—a tiny little imperfection in the glowing blue light, but a small imperfection nonetheless. The Man knew he was succeeding.

From his pack of supplies, the Man drew a medallion that was fashioned from gold in the shape of a pentagram, the five points of the star touching the inside of a gold ring. The medallion was the size of the Man’s hand and as soon as he picked it up it began to glow with a fiery light.

The crack that had appeared in the dome began to grow, starting a spider-web of cracks all traversing across the dome. They snaked their way across the entire dome and began to eat it away, slowly and surely, the dome dissolving into the air little by little, leaving no trace that the barrier had ever been there in the first place.

The Man smiled. Tandori Temple was appearing from behind the blue light, and the Man knew his success was so close he could almost touch it.

He was mere moments away from being the controller of the Five Creatures: Dark, Death, Hatred, Revenge and Carnage. Every single piece of the barrier that dissolved in a burning blitz into the sky was a small step closer to the immense power the Man had come seeking.

The medallion was starting to glow even hotter, as more and more magic was pumped from it, the fiery star glowing brighter and brighter, the gold itself beginning to move and flicker as if it was a true fire.

The Man smiled as he saw the first sandstone bricks that comprised the Tandori Temple came into view.

‘Ah ha!’ said the Man and began to chuckle to himself.

The Five Creatures watched as shard after shard of their five thousand year prison dissolved into thin air. They watched as small parts of the barrier that had held them prisoner in the temple for so long dissolved and flew off into space, never to be seen gain.

One of the Creatures looked forwards, out of the temple doors and saw the silhouette of a man standing there, holding a wand pointed straight at the last remaining shreds of the barrier that were still standing. He was also holding a gold medallion that looked as if it were burning brightly.

The medallion, the Creature noticed, was in the same shape as that carved above the front door to the temple—the symbol of the Creatures. The other four Creatures turned to see the man standing out in front of them too.

The first Creature took a step out towards the man standing on the other side of where the barrier had been. He looked back and saw that the temple was beginning to crack and crumble—five thousand years of wear and tear taking their toll where they had previously not been allowed to, stuck in a timeless prison.

He saw his brothers take the same tentative steps forward that he had and then he smiled, the grimace spreading across his face.

‘Well, my brothers,’ he said. ‘We’re free.’

Two

Oddities

It was three o’ clock in the morning when Zach woke up. He was drenched in cold sweat, something that hadn’t really happened much before. There had been a dream though…

Zach rubbed his eyes vigorously with the base of his palms. He couldn’t seem to remember much of the dream, except that it had had something to do with some ruins…

There had been a glowing star…

And an old man…

Zach opened his eyes and looked around at his bedroom, hoping to see something that might help him remember… remember anything about the dream he had just had.

The odd thing was that it hadn’t felt like a dream: it had felt too real to be a figment of Zach’s imagination. Instead, it felt as if he was having a vision of something that was happening in another part of the world, or even in another world.

That, however, seemed virtually impossible. Having premonitions and visions was something that Zach associated with the supernatural; something he certainly didn’t believe in.

He went into the bathroom and stood in front of his mirror. His face was pale. The beads of sweat were starting to look like bumps under his skin and that, mingled with his ghostly pallor, made him think he resembled Frankenstein’s monster.

Zach dampened a facecloth while standing in front of the basin. While he mopped his face, he thought of the dream and tried to gather together as many fragments of it as he could, but none would come. The more he tried to remember, the less he could and the more he tried not to forget, the more his mind spited him.

Eventually, after quarter of an hour, Zach gave up and went back to bed. He needed the extra sleep in any case. Sleep did not come easily though: he tossed and turned for what felt like hours before sinking into a deep sleep, in which no dreams could bother him.

The bright sunlight was streaming through the open window when Zach woke up the next morning. He opened his eyes and looked around. He couldn’t remember leaving his window open…

Dismissing it as something along the lines of him opening the window for fresh air the night before and forgetting to close it, Zach got up and began to get dressed.

Going