Lost and Bound

By E. K. Hall

This wizard's spell has spectacularly backfired. Tied together with a high-minded king's daughter and a swellheaded old knight, will they ever break free?

Balthazar's attempts to become a masterful magician aren't going well. So with every troublesome conjuring ending in disappointment or disaster, he resorts to kidnapping a princess for ransom. But when his efforts to defend his prize accidentally summon a dangerous succubus, his struggle to undo the chaos only entwines his fate with an aged knight and the uppity royal.

As Balthazar finds himself permanently roped to two disgruntled companions, the hapless trio is forced to traverse the realm in search of a cure. And confronted by each other's misfortune as they battle daring trials and fearsome enemies, survival will depend on the tortuous triangle becoming a single pillar of strength…

Can Balthazar and his reluctant allies claim their freedom before their tangled ordeal destroys them all?

Transport yourself along with a cast of subversive characters as they navigate the unexpected depth of themselves, each other, and a unique world. And as author E. K. Hall breathes fresh air into classic fantasy elements and innovates typical tropes, you'll laugh, cry, and emerge with a brand new perspective.

Lost and Bound is a witty fantasy novel with extraordinary vision. If you like atypical heroes, tongue-in-cheek humor, and gripping quests, then you'll love E. K. Hall's genre-twisting tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nightingale North
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985384604

Book preview

1

KNIGHT IN THE NIGHT

The lightning cracked. The rain lashed. And the wind blew through the broken window. He was constantly relighting his candles and the few still lit cast bounding outlines against the tower’s stone walls. The numbers on the papers before him now made little sense. The costs of the kidnapping were far too high and it had drawn on for far too long. Nothing was working as he had planned.

The young man closed his eyes and drove his forehead into the table. This upset the inkwell and its contents flowed out across the pages and welled around his forehead. He lifted his head to lament, but lightning again cleft the sky and thunder drowned out a wail of anguish.

With his head raised and eyes blinking, for the ink had begun to drip from his dark tousled hair into his eyes, something brief and bright flashed outside his window. It sparkled. But only for a moment and far away in the darkness, somewhere in his field of cows beyond the river at his tower’s base.

He strained to see into the night but all was again dark. Seeing nothing, he rose and waited. Unblinking and with attentive stillness, he approached the window. Crack. Once more the night lit up like midday. Now much closer, he saw the metal glint of a charging horse and rider in the fields below.

He released in full a worthy groan, flung himself at the door of the room, and bounded up the stairs to the top of the tower. Wrenching back the great latch at the top, he raced in.

This top room was alight like a summer noon. Too many surfaces were covered with lit candles and a heavy treacle of perfumes, none of which should have been combined within such a confined space, knocked his senses. Between choked breaths he pushed through the rich brocades and past the draped poster bed.

I had hardly gotten off to sleep in this racket, Balthazar, you romping failure of a man! boomed a mostly not effeminate alto from within the drapes. Afford me the privacy I am due or I shall pen more messages to my father!

The young man had become too accustomed to ignoring this young woman and he did so now, racing across the room to throw himself onto the balcony and into the fresh air and the savage wind and rain. Balthazar peered down through the storm. The horseman came at a gallop, racing across the fields below and riding almost impossibly fast in the darkness and deluge.

Harder, harder, like the very fiend himself, the rider drove his horse harder still. He flogged the beast until abruptly colliding with the haunch of a cow, an unfortunately dark Holstein, and here the horseman’s mad charge halted. A crash of metal, horse, and cow clamored into night, breaking through the storm’s reckless torrents of sound. Spent and likely concussed, the horse sank to the ground in a sad collapse.

Having taken flight if ever so briefly, and almost immediately reunited with earth, the rider slowly awoke from his soggy puddle. Particularly hopeless, hollow gasps escaped his helmet as he struggled to rise in the heavy, poorly fit armor, for he lacked what future descendants of mankind would call strength in his core. But with the resolution common to the meanest of intellects and the dampest torches determined to not even dimly catch flame, he rose and stumbled impressively onward toward the tower’s base.

On the tower’s balcony, high above, Balthazar stared aghast. He released his hair and reentered the tower’s top room. Water poured off the sleeves of his embroidered robes, creating a dark caldera of wet candles about him.

My dearest Princess, your knight and savior have arrived, he hissed in a rage.

The immodest form sitting now at the edge of the bed blinked, but for a moment remained impressively silent. She stared at Balthazar before responding, as if vacantly awaiting some artist to first finish her portraiture in oils.

Be clear. How many have come? she finally asked, imperially.

You have rated but a single man. But rest easily, I am sure your father has sent his fiercest. He grinned sharply back at her.

Has arrived.

I beg your pardon, Balthazar flashed through gritted teeth.

"My knight and savior has arrived."

Another howl tore afresh into the night, this one mostly human, and Balthazar began to move frantically about the room.

My dearest captor, the Princess continued, can you communicate in nothing other than curses and moans?

Ignoring her again, Balthazar spun around to the ornate lectern at his side. Atop it lay an impossibly old book. This top room had been his before the kidnapping and many of his books still resided here, pushed into corners by the room’s new inhabitant Princess. While some had caught fire from unsettled candles, most remained untouched. Perhaps the Princess had been frightened of this particular tome on the lectern, perhaps she had never afforded it attention, but it remained there untouched and un-torched. Balthazar feverishly searched pages until he found what he sought and, silently, began to scour it. He was a wanting student of Latin, but his efforts were always sadly genuine.

A door far beneath them creaked open and heavy bootsteps began to ascend the stairs. The base of the tower was, of course, dark, and one might imagine those boots quite wet. So it was not unexpected to hear the owner of the boots suddenly slip, slide, and tumble loudly backward down some portion of the stairway. Curses were heard, much like what one would expect from an overly damp and disadvantaged Sisyphus. Though the Princess cocked her head to listen, the noises did not interrupt Balthazar. He had found what he wanted in the old book and began to incant in his best, although hardly grammatically precise, Latin.

To readers more inclined toward a scientific tradition, the art of magic, particularly in older books describing its more complex practices, often lacks the more formal rigor of didactic clarity. Magic, after all, is an art, one shrouded in a degree of mystery and even greater hubris. However this young man might have come to possess such an old book, it was evidently one of the greater articles of the mystical canon. As such, the ancient text before him assumed a level of expertise that few truly achieved. Many of its pages, and particularly those toward the end of the volume, were written with most details res ipsa loquitur. Or, as a philosopher said, It speaks for itself.

It was almost as if the authors of such a text found it deeply beneath themselves to record the more obvious and important dicta of the high art. The book lacked complete coverage of important points and its challenges were thus even more dangerous. Like all great knowledge and power, here lay the true hazard of such writings: its contents were prone to great errors of sophistry in life’s lesser artisans.

Its contents were also prone to simple mistakes and gross errors in judgment. But this book’s history must await another chronicle, for the owner of the wet boots, ascendant now beyond the mortal coils of colliding domesticated quadrupeds and stairs of slick masonry, pushed open the door to the tower’s top chamber.

The knight wavered in the doorway to the room, stunned by the Princess’s heavy and cloy collections of rose hips, fermented bergamot, and tonka beans. Once the stranger regained his senses, the two wet men locked eyes for a moment and the Princess on the bed looked between them.

Speak, fool!

Neither man was certain if he was the object of the command. Balthazar believed it must be directed toward the newcomer, as he was obviously already speaking the incantations. But frankly he wasn’t certain and he simply continued his Latin.

The visitor shook off the arresting sights and scents of the candles, perfumes, and must, and regained what limited senses recent events had left a man of his advancing age. His armor, more easily seen now in the glare of a hundred candles, was wet and undersized for his figure. Dents, some sizable and likely fresh, were visible in the breastplate and helmet.

Behold, devilish cur, I am Sir Idyldown, retained with deep humility and great honor by the fair and just Father of this land, enjoined to restore to His Body his most beloved daughter, said the knight in a run-on sentence, pausing briefly to take a breath, and to return her to her holy seat beside our Great Ruler. Resist not and comply.

His pronouncement delivered with the nobility he had been practicing, and with what gravity recent events allowed him to summon, Sir Idyldown waited for the response.

Balthazar kept incanting.

Although this kidnapping had its share of troubles, both logistic and financial, Balthazar had not undertaken this delicate effort on his own. Even the most minor of rogues can find believers and he had Tonk and Bryan, his cowherds. Tonk and Bryan were not nearby and it was this very problem the wizard was seeking to presently address. The pair had traveled into town that afternoon to wait out the storm at a pub named The Happy Piggie.

Given Balthazar’s long fascination with the book before him, he knew that at its end lay magical spells whose purposes were to open gates between the here and the elsewhere. Or at least he believed so—again his Latin had its limitations. And so Balthazar was now trying to open a mystical doorway to The Happy Piggie. He would magically wrench his hearty cowherds back from the pub and this whole evening would end to his advantage. Brutish stupidity would triumph age and honor. He was, however, admittedly underprepared, and there remained some technical-slash-magical questions he had never yet answered for himself.

The knight began to cross the room, for he now felt insulted that there was no clear response to his long-practiced speech. Expecting a good fight, and never one to miss a conflict, the Princess grabbed a weighty bronzed candelabra from her nightstand and stood up to do her best in the coming melee.

But Balthazar continued to speak and, as he began to near the end of the incantation, a feeling in the room began to change. It was subtle at first. And though it is difficult to remark minor alterations in rooms so heavily lacquered in expensive candle perfumes, it was something sensed by all three inhabitants.

Next, a visible change occurred in a far corner of the room. A shadow shifted and vanished. Some candles blew out on their own. Then a searing, ruby red light tore apart the very air itself. Sulfur and sound dominated all and the rift widened into some complex, otherworldly polygonal plane.

The Princess and knight spun around to face the light. It unnerved them both and they wanted to distance themselves from it. They began to back away from the corner and toward the wizard.

This strange, blistering, mid-air shape held behind it a heat, a darkness, and a sense of despair that began to overwhelm the three with thoughts of great loss and intergenerational regrets. Nightmarish shapes passed on its other side and cast strange shadows onto the tower’s floor. The shapes were odd and impossible to grasp, like dreadful, haunting thoughts in the cold solitude of night.

Balthazar had, on rare occasions, been forced to attend rural garden parties at The Happy Piggie and had always found them most unremarkable. As if he had taken a wrong turn down a dark road, Balthazar wondered if this portal led to somewhere else.

Oh. Yes. . . .

A feminine voice echoed in the emptiness of the room, profound, lascivious, and carnal. Between and around its spoken syllables wove dark colors beyond the hues of humankind’s worst proclivities.

These words arrested the three and a deep heat and heavy longing developed just below their waists. This feeling was entirely new to Balthazar and thus very curious. To Sir Idyldown it came with a remarkably powerful itch. As for the Princess, well, it would be highly indecent to wonder if the same heat burst alive in her. Although, truth be told, it had.

Oooh. Yes, the voice repeated, sounding now even more convinced.

A long and shockingly beautiful leg stepped out of the polygonal portal and onto the floor.

2

TOO MUCH VISITOR

It was surprising to see a leg step out of thin air. But it was an even greater surprise to witness to whom (or possibly to what) this leg belonged. As stunning and sleek an arm followed the leg. And then, as if stooping down to get through a low doorway, a head, torso, and the remaining limbs followed.

Once through, the being extended to its full height. It was at first glance clearly a woman, an arrestingly beautiful one with a rapacious smirk and piercing eyes circled in shadow. These eyes locked unwaveringly with those of the onlookers. In other ways the figure was clearly not a woman, for there were oddities too alien to a somehow lesser human and womankind. For covering it wore only a short, barely adequate charcoal cloth around its waist. Its skin was moist with sweat and gave forth a luscious, dark, luminous glow. Deep auburn hair was tied back from its head but coursed over the shoulders.

The three stood in awe. They were transfixed in a wonder as deeply distant as those who lose themselves in the heavens painted across the night sky, contemplating worlds impossible distances away. Each struggled with the longings of a young lover for its mate and the submissive servant for its master.

Oooh. Yes, the deep voice again tolled, full of mournful longing. It then shuddered in a sort of completed ecstasy.

Until this point the scene had been far too intoxicating to evoke more than a lulling and drowsy acceptance in the three captivated onlookers. In truth, they had begun to wonder just how unfortunate a hellish afterlife might be. The dreamy image before them felt much like the liminal moment in a summer’s nap, halfway between sleep and waking.

It was thus a jarring interruption when dark wings, having been entirely hidden behind her body, spread outward and upward. These wings towered above the three and swallowed the space in the room. Where there was once soft candlelight and sensual shadow, there was now only darkness. Candles were obscured and some knocked sideways, toppling onto themselves and nearby objects. The being’s grin widened with dark and amorous intent.

Succubus, Balthazar’s voice scratched weakly.

It was Balthazar who first broke from his stunned reverie. Far from a display of strength, it may have been only his inexperience in matters of love that allowed him to wrench away, for the hellish longing was great. The young man lacked any past recognition of those seductive visions on which he now looked and these fantasies recalled no past moments in the arms of a lover. Whatever the reason, and while the others remained senseless, Balthazar lifted from the lectern the heavy tome whose contents he had so recently misused.

As was ever more evident, Balthazar was not the most well-rounded student of the arcane. He lacked much knowledge of succubi or any such creature from wherever it was succubi came. His small library of books in the tower had genuine, gaping holes in subject coverage, and at this time mankind had not even begun to discover the societal structures necessary to support the interlibrary loan. Astute readers might very well wonder at the wisdom of dipping a second toe into the particularly deep waters of this remarkable book, even had this toe belonged to a wizard of far greater abilities than those of our dear protagonist. Indeed, some of mankind’s greatest victories, some of its greatest mistakes, have come from such blind and unyielding drives. But who was to know whether fate was truly on his side for better or worse? And so Balthazar persisted.

Wrenching away his gaze from the luscious monster, Balthazar turned pages even deeper into the book, scanning the titles in the growing darkness. He hastily turned from those labelled ostium and introitus and stopped once he found the pages labelled funis caelesti.

In prior moments of study, he had thought this page represented a method of binding or securing something, understanding these pages to describe an astral binding, or at least a really fancy cord. Shaking and exhausted, somehow both uncomfortably cold and feverishly hot, this was the only idea he presently had and he was ever willing to improvise. Far more carefully, he began speaking the words scribbled on that vellum from some age long gone.

The succubus began striding toward them, visibly delighting in her cornered prey. Sir Idyldown awoke with a startle and pulled the Princess backward. To his detriment, and perhaps without truly considering the optics of the noblesse oblige, he kept her between himself and this devil. The three retreated, the eyes of Balthazar on the book and those of his guests on the being.

The group fled past the bed, through the candles, toward the storm-tossed balcony behind. The succubus followed them step for step. As they tread across the doorway, out onto the balcony and into the storm, the night dress of the Princess caught alight with candle flame.

Reaching the edge of the balcony, Balthazar finished speaking as glistening, gossamer bands of the brightest blue formed and extended from somewhere around his hands. The bands pulsated and floated in the space before the group, as if the cords themselves were now the only things comfortably breathing. The wizard smiled in delight, daring to hope that despite it all he might be up to this task. Holding aloft his free arm, and with a flair of growing confidence, his hand completed a quick motion in the air and the bands leapt into action.

But the glistening ropes did not fly away from the group and into the room where the succubus followed. Instead, they flung themselves almost angrily back toward the three on the balcony. They wove about their bodies quickly, without pause, and despite their struggles. Later scholars of this seminal tale would come to believe this unfortunate occurrence most likely due to a final hand gesture of the wizard that was clockwise when it was much preferred to have been counter. This is, of course, just the sort of debate in which self-important scholars will endlessly delight, leaving aside more relevant postmortem discussions of team performance and errors in judgement.

Crying out in delight as she approached, the succubus marveled at how effortlessly its prey was trapping itself without any hard labor on her part. Four startled screams fused into an awful harmony.

The three retreated still farther until Balthazar’s waist pressed up against the balcony’s railing and the book dropped from his hands. The other two kept mindlessly backing into him, and the three then heaved against the historic, sagging railing. The old and noble wood creaked, groaned briefly, and then snapped.

Knotted now tightly together, the three tumbled off the balcony. They fell for some time.

3

A WET AWAKENING

Wound in the brilliant, glistening ropes they dropped into lashing rain and darkness, a shining teardrop against the storming night sky. The fall took an age. They expected to collide with hard ground or be consumed in the nightgown’s gathering flames. Neither occurred, for in a rare bit of luck, they fell past the cliff’s edge and plunged into the cold river at the tower’s base.

The plunge should have been their end. Given the weight of the knight’s armor and how tightly they were wound, they should have perished in the river’s depths. But they did not. And it was here they made a curious and thus far unknown discovery in the magical arts: astral bindings were highly buoyant. In future years this would turn out to be a significant field of study and an area that supplied many an academic ample opportunity for career-advancing publications. Sadly, and as is often the case, many of these would end up being quite mediocre and unread. But that is another, less binding tale for a different time.

Deep within those dark waters, their descent vertiginously reversed. They were wrenched back to the surface where, twice shocked and gasping at the edges of consciousness, they bobbed up and down.

Simultaneously and far atop the tower, candlelight and errant flame danced within red shadows and smoke. The succubus stood on the balcony, its attention drawn now to the book in her hands. She flipped curiously through its pages, occasionally, but quite regularly, moaning in ecstasy.

The ecstasy was not, however, shared by those now floating in the water. Quite the opposite. Before their collective gasps for air finished, a stream of curses suddenly erupted from the Princess’s mouth.

Princess Belle! the knight wheezed, Your language!

Though the storm still raged about them, the Princess was silent once more. A tired peace returned as they slowly bobbed downriver. At some point, perhaps while collectively gazing through the darkness at the burning tower, they all fell into an exhausted sleep.

---

Sometime later Balthazar woke. He felt a great ache in his limbs and was cold everywhere he still could feel, which didn’t include his legs. Something hard and grassy was wedged into his mouth. As he slowly opened an eye, the pains of his current reality returned. He lay on the edge of a riverbank, stuck in river reeds with his legs still submerged. Pushing himself into a sitting position, shivering and sore, he pulled the reeds out of his mouth and dusted sand and earth from his face. Balthazar believed he lay some number of miles downriver, possibly at the edge of a town he vaguely remembered from years ago. He stood to better look around. Dawn was about to break. He felt a warm tug at his waist.

The astral binding remained, still pulsing a soft blue, though now more gentle and sleepy.