The night before his
Coming-of-Age, Ghyll and his two friends escape their castle on a clandestine
boar hunt that will forever change their lives. The hunt proves a disaster, and
with one of them badly wounded, they return just in time to see their island
castle destroyed by macabre warriors from a dragon boat, and by flocks of
fire-breathing birds. Ghyll's eighteenth birthday turns into a nightmare as
they flee into the night.
Now begins an epic
journey to find out who is trying to kill them – and most importantly, why?
Fortunately, they can
count on the help of new friends, including a sometimes overly enthusiastic
fire mage, an inexperienced paladin and a young beastmistress who is also a
ferocious mountain lioness. It soon becomes clear that not one but several
sorcerers want to kill them. Are those blackrobes really followers of a
terrible, long-forgotten organization?
PURCHASE
The Author
Paul E. Horsman (1952) is a Dutch and
International Fantasy Author. Born in the sleepy garden village of Bussum, The
Netherlands, he now lives in Roosendaal, a town on the Dutch-Belgian border.
He has been a soldier, a salesman, a
scoutmaster and from 1995 till his school closed in 2012 a teacher of Dutch as
a Second Language and Integration to refugees from all over the globe.
Being unemployed and economically overage, yet
still some years away from retirement, he is a full-time writer of epic light
fantasy adventures. His books are both published in the Netherlands, and
internationally.
EXCERPT FROM: RHIDAUNA – CHAPTER 14: THE GISTERWOUD
The fog gave no sign of abating. With
a sigh, Olle turned around. He thought he saw something moving in front of
them. ‘Torril.’
‘What?’
‘Do you see anything?’
Torril peered into the mist. ‘Shapes,’
he said with some hesitation. ‘Shapes in long dresses?’
‘That’s where Bo is!’
They ran to the place where they had
spent the night. Three faint white apparitions danced around Bo’s stretcher. ‘Co-me...
Cooome...’ they moaned, with voices full of terrible desire. ‘Cooome.’ One of
the shadows grabbed Bo’s arm with a transparent claw and started pulling at
him.
‘Stop!’ Olle let his sword cut the air
with a humming sound.
‘No-oo... Nooo... Cooome...’ The
shapes crooned, trying to drag Bo off the stretcher. With a cry, Olle fell upon
them, Torril right behind him. To no avail. The weapons of the two Companions
didn’t touch the apparitions, as if their forms were made of the fog
surrounding them. ‘By Helgran, there’s more of them!’
‘N-o-o-o.... C-o-o-o-m-e... ‘
Soon there were twenty of the
apparitions; they swirled around the two who were fighting them in a wild
unholy dance. Even with their impressive muscles, Olle and Torril couldn’t
touch the ethereal forms and soon they began to weaken. Their breathing grew
difficult and their hearts seemed about to burst. Exhausted, Olle sank to his
knees and waited for the end. Torril stood beside him, head bowed, leaning upon
his axe. The apparitions stretched their greedy hands out to the two
Companions. ‘C-o-o-o-m-e.’ The chill of those hands paralyzed their limbs,
touched their hearts.
All at once, a huge flash bathed the
surroundings in light. Olle smelled the pungent odor that sometimes follows a
thunderstorm. When his sight returned, the shapes were gone. In their place,
men and women in gray apparel surrounded them.
One of them, a young man of their own
age, came forward. He wore a black headband and his hair lay in a ponytail on
his back. His lower lip and his ear lobes were pierced with small silver rings,
and his face was white like Uwella’s, with jet-black shadows around iris-less
eyes. His glance met Olle’s and then looked past him, uninterested. ‘Come,’ he
said, cold as an echo of the white shapes.
A woman of middle age, like the young
man dressed in a gray leather uniform, held out her hand. ‘Your weapons please.’
‘Who are you?’ Olle’s heart was
pounding from the past effort and the pain behind his sternum away took his
breath. ‘You saved us.’
‘Hand me your weapons,’ the woman repeated.
Olle hesitated, but the drawn swords
of the six fighters around him left him no choice. He handed her his weapon,
then Torril reluctantly did the same.
Without a word, two of the strangers
took Bo’s stretcher and carried him into the woods. The others surrounded Olle
and Torril, and led them after the young man with the headband, who had walked
away without another glance.
They left the fog behind and soon the
sun was shining, the subdued light reflecting in the dewdrops on the leaves.
Olle had lost all idea of time before he saw, through the trees, a wooden
palisade. A girl in the same armor as their escorts guarded the entrance. She
saluted and exchanged some word with the young man with the headband. Then she
opened the gate and Olle and Torril stepped inside a ring of elongated wooden
huts. One of the buildings stood apart from the others. His bearers carried Bo
inside and the door closed behind them. The young man with the headband walked
away without looking back. Beyond that first ‘come’, he hadn’t spoken. Before
Olle could ask something, hard hands pushed him and Torril into a second,
smaller hut. The door slammed shut and they heard a heavy bar fall into place.
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