Berlien Corfia: V R Books - Australasian Dreaming

By Roy Spurns

Following on from the Invasion and then Hildar Civil War this book takes you to the little valley of Corfia where only one family is left that wields the old magic. Problem is the two who wield it, a wizard and his daughter, are possibly the stupidest people in Berlien.
Unknown to them and their family a Yowie, Moggio and his companions need them to use their magic to fix a little problem they have with Death personified and his offsider Pestilence, a very annoyed gunya.
Getting the assistance of a wizard who is powerful and stupid was always going to be tricky but when the Braille gunya Snog sticks his nose in things go very wrong. But all Snog wanted to do was return home. Having a daughter who knew she was a man trapped in a womans body was just another thing he didnt need.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Oct 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514441459

Roy Spurns

Roy Spurns resides in a small country town of NSW Australia; close to the Great Dividing Range of Australia From here he can weave the magic of stories and tales of strange happenings in a world that never was but maybe should have been. Roy has read Australian history and legend and while this series of Australasian Dreaming is not directly related to any of them it owes its beginnings to all of them. The author does not aim to produce great literature; instead he aims to amuse, to entertain and to take the imagination on a journey different to any journey you have taken before but also perhaps with a ring of strong familiarity. Some families do have them might be the theme of this tale.

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Copyright © 2015 by Roy Spurns.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5144-4146-6

               eBook           978-1-5144-4145-9

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/23/2015

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CONTENTS

The Klarty Family Get A Surprise

In The Barn

The Mystery Deepens

Braille Gunyas Arrive

A Gecko Causes A Lot Of Trouble

Collateral Damage

A Night Meeting –

A New Dawn

The Epilogue

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The Klarty Family Get A Surprise

The main problem with Klarty Mandrake, apart from being a wizard with an obviously wizard name, was that he was very stupid. His actual name was Klarty but since his childhood nickname was farty Klarty he didn’t like it much. Therefore he changed it but since he wasn’t all that smart he just added a new name to the original. He didn’t get rid of the original name and so he became Klarty Mandrake.

He didn’t even choose the name Mandrake since that was what all wizards were called. He just thought it hid him from notoriety. There was nothing Klarty Mandrake liked less than notoriety (even if he couldn’t spell it). A wizard took a name to hide his real name. If you called him by his real name the words gave the user power over the wizard, well so he believed but it was all bunkum (bunkum means rubbish, nonsense, twiddle faddle) really. It was having a piece of your body like a hair that could enable the right wizard or witch in the right place at the right time with the right moon and the right herbs and the right words to harm you if you weren’t protected. Given all of the problems it wasn’t a very big risk. In fact it had not happened in centuries but that it could was Klarty Mandrake’s fear.

Klarty Mandrake also was protected because nobody knew where he was or cared that he was still alive and nobody outside his valley remembered him any more or rather those that did hoped they would never meet him again. He was like that really, once met best forgotten just ask the Magister of Wilmark, her experience as a cockroach still doesn’t bring back happy memories. Well she wasn’t Magister then or as fat as she is now but she was powerful but not powerful enough. Those who remembered him wanted him to stay out of harm’s way, their harm and in his way was their thinking.

Nobody was looking for him as a consequence and nobody wanted to look for him. He held the reputation as the stupidest wizard who ever studied at Wilmark but there were those who remembered that he was also the most powerful wizard in the world. If he thought a thing it became a thing of power. If he thought you were a frog then you were. If he thought you were dead than you were. It was fortunate Klarty Mandrake wasn’t good at thinking.

It was not that he might wish you to be dead but if he believed it was so then it was so. That made him the most dangerous pupil the wizard hall at Wilmark ever had and also made them extremely relieved when he left, never to return. If the Grand Magister thought of him at all it was only to hope that he never remembered her in order to think anything about her. Thinking in Klarty Mandrake’s case was not a good thing but by now you get that point or you are even slower than he is.

Being a natural born wizard meant he had to eventually learn how to control his powers, to moderate them as it were. This he did by not thinking about anyone else or anything else much. He did think about his gastric reflux, including the effects of that condition on his anterior posterior or is that just, never mind. Which ever end it was or should be he controlled it by thinking he didn’t have a farting problem anymore as a result of which he didn’t. Therefore he never, well, you get the idea.

It was probably good that he did cure himself else as some believe he may otherwise never have married. To some others however a wizard getting married is not a wise action in any case. Members of a profession believing in the need to alter their real name to hide their identity so that nobody can know who their parents or siblings are should not have families after all. The best means to an end to get a wizard to do what you want is the old fashioned get the family and you get the man. In Klarty Mandrake’s case however, it could be a fatal move and those who knew his powers never made such an attempt. He could just wish they were safe and secure and they would be whereas you the kidnapper might be beyond thinking and that means beyond you thinking.

Choosing a name such as Klarty Mandrake was somewhat useful as there were hundreds of wizards called Mandrake. Most of them chose it to confuse potential enemies (well you have that point by now surely. No? Well here it is again) who couldn’t invoke the name, or so they believed whereas Klarty Mandrake, as said, simply lacked imagination.

Proof of that was the fact he called his first born son Klarty Junior, Farty Klarty the second being a lot more intelligent than his father did not really like the choice once he grew up enough to know about it and think about it. He called himself Wilson as encouraged by his mother, on the basis he was not the least bit like a Wilson and there were no other persons called Wilson in the area. Therefore he became known as Klarty Wilson. Well actually he was known in the village as KW and his father as KM; it was easier that way although his mother called him Wilson as she had from the day he was born.

One thing KW never did was to upset his father as the consequences could be unthinkable, for him not for his father. A boy never forgets flying through the air into a very hot bath when he told his father pigs would fly before he would take a bath. The pigs did fly and he was the pig who flew with little pink wings. After that he did not argue with his father nor did he make suggestions. He took the wise precaution of thinking before he said anything and before he did anything which usually meant he shut up. In time his father recognised and accepted he had a smart son and was even proud of it, since he got that from his mother.

His sister Martha was much less endowed in just about everything, beauty, good looking legs, slim waist all were absent, including intelligence. KM resembled his mother Martha whereas his sister Martha resembled her father, in looks, build and intelligence. It was not a good turnout of providence for a young woman in that sense. However in another sense it was extremely fortunate for her. She was named after her mother whom she resembled only in name. She was her father’s daughter as her brother was her mother’s son. That’s how it can go in families and certainly how it went with the Klarty family.

KM chose both names for the children but I suppose that’s obvious. Some women love dumb men, maybe because they (the women) can make all the decisions. Martha the elder generally did make all the decisions but on the odd occasion KM would insist on having his way. There was never a means to dissuade him when he did though fortunately such occasions were rare. Besides she encouraged both her children to use their own names. KW did whilst Martha Junior didn’t know what the fuss was about. She was called MJ just the same at her mother’s insistence since she hated the name Julie her mother wanted for her.

Having a family being such a liability for a wizard, Martha (the elder but we’ll just say Martha from now on) moved the family higher up their valley into the deepest part of the Eldrien Mountains where they could live in a small village in the valley they grew up in and KM could be seen as a powerful wizard, as indeed he was, but forgotten in the wider world as indeed he was, for most people and creatures.

On that however she miscalculated slightly as even mountain villagers know a dunce when they meet one or in this case remember one from his childhood but in deference to her (they also know enough not to annoy a very smart woman who controls a powerful if stupid wizard or maybe especially because of that) they did not openly act as if they knew. As children the other villagers had been unkind to KM but they were very, very polite these days. There were some unfortunate reminders over the years to teach them not to let KM get ideas.

Old Hendrid the cobbler found himself head down in the village privy after one night when he got very drunk and said some nasty words to KM. He didn’t remember what they were but it was something in the way of suggesting that the wizard had a head full of shit to which the wizard said his head belonged in a dunny (that’s toilet to you, privy, a big hole for certain natural occurrences dug in a village and with a wooden seat down which goes some natural produce of effluent character, dunny is shorter don’t you think?).

Hendrid was not found for two days and as the hole was very deep (villagers never like to dig another if they don’t have to) it took another full day to get him out. He stayed sober for a long time after that and even to this day only drinks when he knows someone will bar all the doors to the inn and keep both KM out and him in. He’s a good customer of the inn so they lock him in an unused cellar with some companions and lower the beer down a trap door for them. Only when they wake up in the morning do they get let out. It’s easier that way.

Any the howsiwhatsit KW was possessed of great intelligence but no skill in magic. MJ being even dumber than her father or as stupid (really it is hard to tell) was possessed of a great deal of magical ability, more perhaps (again it is hard to know). Local villagers were never very respectful to KW on his own until he learnt to use a sword and that changed things considerably but were very polite to MJ who took offence at any slight on any member of the family.

Her powers were discovered when the local brewer was found hopping in his cellar after calling KM a loose lipped drunk, not to the wizard but to his then 5 year old daughter. Shut up you toad. She said and so he was. Since she was so young it took a while to teach her how to think to change him back (and to get her to agree to change him back) with the result he still had a very unnerving tendency to lick his lips when he saw flies. A shake of his head and he would forget it but every now and then his wife could be seen smacking him over the head to knock ’im out o’ what that little witch done to ’im.

The brewer, Ollie Temoshen was a temperate man, fortunately for him; as if he did drink he would never make money and he might end up in the dunny (that’s privy remember or toilet or outhouse – pick your word, mine is dunny, just get used to it). His wife, Hilda, also ran the local inn and he spent most of his time out of it. It also kept him away from her and, as they say, trouble, which was not a bad thing really apart from insulting the wizard, although he was telling the truth. No secret was safe if KM knew it and got drunk. Fortunately Martha didn’t let him drink, mainly because a drunken wizard got thoughts and that was never good in his case.

Ollie knew better than to speak