The Foreshadow of Balance Read online



  The Book of Five Worlds

  Book I

  The Foreshadow of Balance

  ‘Dangerous’ Walker

 

  Copyright Grahame Walker 2013

  CONTENTS

  Books by Author

  Prologue

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Epilogue

  Walkerverse (learn more and connect with the author)

  More books by the author:

  Adventures in Space

  The Trimedian (book 1)

  Tears of War (book 2)

  Strangers (book 3)

  Pray for Rain (Parts 1-3)

  The Book of Five Worlds

  Five Tasks (book 2)

  The Road between Gods and Monsters (book 3)

  Southern Hunter

  The Haunting of Berkeley Square

  The Library of the Universes (and other tales of the King Imminent)

  In the Valley of Elah

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  Some of the ebook sellers cannot have blank lines between text and so to delineate a scene change I have used the following %%%. Though this may seem weird I chose it because in the font I am writing in (but not necessarily the font you’re reading in) the percentage symbol looks a lot like this symbol:

  Why I have made this choice will become clearer in Book 3, but also if you read the short story collection, ‘The Library of the Universes’.

  The Black Queen stood on the balcony of her planning room and looked out over the expanse of her castle and beyond over her lands. It was a room she spent a lot of time in even though there had not been a use for it in many a year. She had conquered all that there was and there was no one left who could stand against her.

  Or at least she had thought.

  There was a saying that knowledge was power and she had all the knowledge here in the room behind her. Except up until a year ago she had not fully immersed herself in it. Now she realized that there was more knowledge to have and so more power. What she was now trying to work out was how to gain that power, something she was sure she could do. Nothing and no one could stand before her and like so many powerful people, it was that belief that was her greatest weakness.

  She was no fool, she knew she had to understand more, but she didn’t realize quite how much she didn’t know. And it was that, along with the ego that comes with power, which left her blind to what was happening three worlds away…

  PROLOGUE

  “No, it’s mine!”

  “No, it’s mine. Geez, Dylan, do you need to learn it again?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “No.”

  “Good, so give me my lunch money.”

  “Maybe he could go and tell his Mummy.”

  “He doesn’t have one, dummy,” laughter as they walk away. Tears on a cold winter’s day.

  He’s starving by the time he gets home from school and so he sneaks into the kitchen to grab a biscuit or two. Dad is working in his study so he has to be quiet or he’ll get told off for spoiling his appetite. Two or three times a week now he has to do this; grab a secret snack and then finish his dinner even after he is stuffed. His Dad can’t know he’s being bullied. He has enough to worry about.

  And so Dylan James hides under his bed covers and eats two biscuits and a lump of smelly cheese and wishes again that his Mother were still here. She’d understand; she’d hug him and brush away the tears on his cheeks. She would go down to the school and…

  The covers are whipped off!

  “Ah ha!” his Dad cries. “Found you!”

  Dylan looks down trying to hide his mouthful of food.

  “Eating before dinner again?”

  Dylan shakes his head and swallows; the biscuit ball scrapes down his throat. “No.”

  “You think I haven’t noticed?” his Dad sits down on the bed. “Are you being bullied? Someone taking your lunch money?”

  “No,” he mumbles.

  “You can’t stand up to them?”

  “They’d beat me up again,” and now the tears really come, but his Dad pulls him into his arms.

  “Well then, until that day you need to eat lunch.”

  “I told you they’d beat me up,” he wails.

  “Ahh, but let them take your money for now and we’ll keep a secret stash in your sock or something.”

  “But, but, that’s just more money.”

  “It is, but you have to beat them somehow and this is good enough for now. I think I have a secret money belt somewhere from my travelling days, I’ll go look while you find some water to wash down that snack.”

  And Dylan James loved his Dad.

  It had been a good day, he had avoided Brandon Cole and his bully friends and when he had tried to give his Dad back the extra money he had told him to keep it, a reward for out foxing his nemes- nemasees, nema-something, his Dad always used big words. He thought he had a pretty good vocabulary for a ten-year-old boy. Nearly eleven! He knew words like ‘vocabulary’ and that you could shorten it to ‘vocab’ and it meant ‘all the words you know’. But his Dad still used words he didn’t really understand.

  But still he was happy that night, sitting in his Dad’s study reading a book about knights in Medy-evil times. Knights were cool. His Dad was working on his computer writing something about Medy-evil times, that was what his Dad did. He taught Archaeology and History at the University. That was another long word he knew, Archaeology. It meant digging up people’s stuff from a long time ago. Dylan thought that was pretty neat.

  The news was on the small TV in the study and it was talking about countries not having enough money and something bad the banks had done. Sometimes his Dad would look up and grunt at what was going on in the news and then go back to typing. Someone was talking about how people didn’t trust their Governments anymore, Dylan wasn’t sure what a Government was exactly, but his Dad had told him they were the people who ran the countries. That seemed like a big job. The person on the news was saying that people didn’t believe in 20th Century ideals anymore, and that there was a steady rise in the interest in spirituality and his Dad listened to that bit, grunted and nodded and then went back to his work.

  Dylan didn’t know what 20th Century ideals were, but had an idea spirituality meant magic. He liked magic and wizards. There didn’t seem to be any magic around anymore, not like in his books, but he believed that it was still around, it was just hidden now. Maybe that was what the news person meant. He would love to find magic and use it against Brandon Cole. Make him fly in the air, or turn him into a frog and then everyone would laugh at him and not Dylan.

  “Time for bed, young man; a scholar needs his sleep,” his Dad said as he stood and stretched.

  A scholar was someone who studies. Dylan didn’t like studying much, but he tried because it made his Dad happy.

  %%%

  The sand pit was empty. It was really for the little kids, but Dylan had been reading about the pyramids of Egypt and he wanted to see if he cou
ld build one. He looked again. There was no one around so he sat down in the sand and started to build. It wasn’t as easy as he had thought; the dry sand kept sliding down the sides before he got very high. He was so intent in his building that he hadn’t heard them arrive.

  “Ahh, look at the little baby,” Brandon Cole said.

  “Building sandcastles,” another boy said.

  Dylan stood up and looked at them, then down at his unfinished pyramid.

  “It’s a pyramid,” he said.

  “I don’t care what it is; the sand pit is for babies. Are you a baby?” Brandon asked.

  “No.”

  “Well you must be if you’re in the sand pit.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron Sharp snorted, “a baby.”

  “I’m not a baby,” Dylan protested and stepped out of the pit.

  “Aaron said you were; are you calling him a liar?” Brandon asked.

  “No. Yes, I’m not a baby, I was building a pyramid,” he said, but Brandon pushed him and he fell on his back in the sand.

  “You’re in the sand pit, so you must be a baby,” Brandon laughed. “Are you going to cry like a baby?”

  “No,” but he did, he couldn’t help it, the fall had hurt.

  The bullies laughed and walked away. They didn’t want anything but to spoil his day. He hated them.

  %%%

  That evening he was wrapped up against the cold in the back garden. He had his plastic toy knights, but he was thinking about the shed. It sat just behind the house by the fence. It was just a normal garden shed, just big enough to fit their bikes, a lawnmower and the other things Dad kept for the garden that he wasn’t allowed to play with. But to him it was the portal. Once that door opened he could step through and into another world, a world where he was the hero and Brandon and his friends were the baddies. They would kidnap the princess and he would defeat them. He was the hero that all the villagers loved because he defeated the dragon and the evil wizards. He rode a horse called Flax and lived in a small house in the forest even though the king wanted to build a castle for him.

  He picked up his plastic knight on horseback and charged it through the grass chasing a giant snake that was heading for a school. He would have to catch it and cut off its head before it got to the school and ate the children and then his teacher, Miss Ann, would tell him how she loved him and would kiss and hug him.

  “Dylan,” his Dad called from the kitchen. “Time for dinner, big man.”