A thunder of monsters, p.1
A Thunder of Monsters, page 1
RETURN TO A WORLD OF DRAGONS, SONG-SPELLS, PIPERS AND BATTLES…
Patch Brightwater and his friend Barver, the dracogriff, are trapped on a mysterious island full of monstrous beasts. Their shapeshifting friend, Wren, is being held prisoner by the Piper of Hamelyn.
Clad in his suit of magical black armour and with dragons and a huge army on his side, the Piper of Hamelyn seems destined to finally take over the world. Can anyone stop him?
Three accidental heroes versus one legendary villain…the epic adventure that began with A Darkness of Dragons comes to a thunderous end.
“All the ingredients of a perfect fantasy adventure.” Kieran Larwood, author of Podkin One-Ear
“A thrilling twist on a classic fairy tale with oodles of adventure, magic and friendship.” Alex Bell, author of The Polar Bear Explorers’ Club
“This stunning book reminds us of the soaring joy of adventure, the captivating danger of magic, and of the delight of finding friends in unexpected places.” Mr Ripley’s Enchanted Books
“S.A. Patrick builds a quite brilliant original tale whilst also creating an unforgettable magical world…” Storgy Kids
“Full of twists and turns and full of non-stop adventure.” Chatterbooks Review
“S.A. Patrick has adapted the traditional fairy tale to create a fearsome character and then filled the plot with action, suspense and magic…” TES
“I loved the characters, the plot and the setting.” Book Murmuration, blogger
This is for Laura –
although, really, everything is.
With all my love
In a world of dragons, song-spells, pipers and battles, three accidental heroes found themselves thrown into an epic quest which began in A Darkness of Dragons and continued in A Vanishing of Griffins.
Now, although they’ve beeen separated, Patch, Wren and Barver continue their hunt for the evil Piper of Hamelyn in a final thunderous adventure.
Ten years after the Hamelyn Piper stole the children of Hamelyn Town – making sure his own twin brother was punished in his place – he escaped justice, and went into hiding. The Pipers’ Council – the highest authority for Pipers – launched their Great Pursuit to track him down.
Patch Brightwater is a trainee Piper who has proved his courage time and again. Barver Knopferkerkle is a dracogriff – part griffin, part dragon. Wren Cobble used to be cursed into the shape of a rat, but her curse has been lifted by the Sorcerer Underath, in gratitude for our heroes’ help in saving the life of his only friend, the griffin Alkeran. Wren now hopes to learn the art of shape-shifting.
But Patch and Wren have discovered the Hamelyn Piper’s hiding place – calling himself the Black Knight, he wears a suit of armour made of the magical substance obsidiac. All he needs is an ancient amulet to complete the armour, and he’ll be immortal. Time is running out!
Helping our heroes thwart the villain’s plans are Alia Corrigan and Tobias Palafox, members of the Eight – the brave group who hunted the Hamelyn Piper all those years before.
Thinking they can catch the Hamelyn Piper by surprise, Tobias sets out to raise an army to help. Alia, seeking the aid of dragons, takes Patch, Wren and Barver to Skamos – the only city where dragons and humans live side by side. When the city is destroyed by the dragon General Kasterkan, they have no choice but to flee, and find help from griffins instead.
But when they meet with the small army of Battle Pipers and soldiers that Tobias has raised, the tables are turned! They discover that the Hamelyn Piper commands a vast army of mercenaries; our heroes are outnumbered and face annihilation!
Wren is captured by the evil Piper! Thanks to her courage, however, the others escape using the magical Leap Device, that lets them travel great distances, only to find themselves trapped in a mysterious land – where they discover Barver’s father, long thought dead. They realize they’re imprisoned in an unknown Sorcerer’s Bestiary – a magical zoo.
That only leaves Rundel Stone, famous officer of the Custodian Pipers, and his apprentice Erner Whitlock, who are heading to Tiviscan Castle, home of the Pipers’ Council. They’re desperate for the Council’s help, yet are uncertain if they can trust them – mindful of a prophecy that suggests the Council could betray them all.
Can Patch and his friends escape their strange prison? Will Wren survive the terrible wrath of the Hamelyn Piper? Can Rundel and Erner find help at Tiviscan, or does only betrayal await them?
And can the Hamelyn Piper be stopped, before he finds the amulet he seeks – and becomes impossible to defeat…?
Contents
About this Book
Dedication
Title Page
The Story So Far
Chapter 1: The Lost Army
Chapter 2: In the Camp of the Black Knight
Chapter 3: Master and Apprentice
Chapter 4: The Tentacle
Chapter 5: The River Crossing
Chapter 6: The Bone Trees
Chapter 7: Rundel Stone, Gentleman Thief
Chapter 8: The Island
Chapter 9: The Black Knight Speaks
Chapter 10: Forward March!
Chapter 11: Questions, Questions
Chapter 12: Out of Time
Chapter 13: Hedgehog of Horror
Chapter 14: The Eternal King
Chapter 15: Island of Monsters
Chapter 16: The Wheelhouse
Chapter 17: Quarastus
Chapter 18: Lar-Sennen
Chapter 19: The Witch
Chapter 20: Guardian of Massarken
Chapter 21: Rescue of the Pipers
Chapter 22: The Fugitives
Chapter 23: As the Crow Flies
Chapter 24: The Prison
Chapter 25: The Unmasking
Chapter 26: Massarken Arrives
Chapter 27: Tiviscan Prepares
Chapter 28: A Lullaby
Chapter 29: The Siege Begins
Chapter 30: The Tables Turn
Chapter 31: No Way Back
Chapter 32: A Cunning Plan
Chapter 33: Plucked and Shorn
Chapter 34: Monsters and Onions
Chapter 35: Victory?
Chapter 36: Not Quite Dead
Chapter 37: A Final Breath
Chapter 38: One Last Hope
Chapter 39: The Dispersal
Chapter 40: In Hamelyn Town
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
Patch Brightwater sat near the cliff’s edge, watching the sun rise over an unknown sea. From a cord around his neck hung the cross-eyed owl, Wren’s favourite Fox and Owls playing piece. Every morning since they’d arrived in this mysterious place, he’d done the same thing: look out to sea, and think of Wren.
This was the third morning.
Nearby was the cave where Barver slept. Patch missed his dracogriff friend during the night, of course, but it was right that Barver spend time with his father. Patch made sure to send him off in the evenings, reassuring Barver that he’d be perfectly fine here in the camp.
In truth, he wasn’t fine. He didn’t feel unsafe, though. Alia was there, and Tobias; both were formidable Pipers, and Alia had the added bonus of being a powerful Sorcerer. There was also the small army they’d brought with them, with forty Battle Pipers and two hundred and thirty soldiers – as well as the three griffins who’d helped them in their doomed quest to track down the Hamelyn Piper, two of whom were still seriously wounded.
So, no, he didn’t feel unsafe, but he did feel miserable, and strangely alone.
Last night, Patch had noticed Merta Strife, one of the griffins, sitting awake by the fire near where the two injured griffins lay sleeping. He went over to join her.
“You can’t sleep?” he said.
Merta shook her head, and nodded to the slumbering griffins, Cramber and Wintel. “Cramber is healing well, Tobias tells me,” she said. “But until he regains consciousness, his life remains in the balance.”
Cramber was laid stretched out with one wing tied to his side, allowing the dressings on his chest wound to be changed without having to move him. Wintel was beside him, curled up with her head under her wing. Cramber’s breathing was ragged; Wintel’s was regular and peaceful, but she’d taken a severe blow to the head.
“How’s Wintel doing?” asked Patch.
“She spends most of her time asleep,” said Merta. “When she wakes, she’s confused, and can’t see anything but a blur. The next few days will be key to how well she recovers.”
Patch thought back.
They’d been so sure of their plan.
The Hamelyn Piper had been vulnerable, they’d thought – hiding out in the forests of the Ortings with a small group of his own soldiers. They’d known he’d created a suit of magical armour, one that would make him an even more powerful Piper than before; they’d known that he was looking for an ancient amulet that would grant him immortality.
Even so, they’d believed they would easily outmatch him with the army they’d brought. At last they would bring the evil Piper to justice!
Instead, it had been the Hamelyn Piper who had outmatched them, ambushing them in Gossamer Valley with a huge army of mercenaries. They’d not stood a chance.
“Wintel was so brave,” said Patch. “You all were.”
“We did what had to be done,” said Merta. She gave Patch a kindly smile. “But it’s Wren we all owe our lives to.”
Patch clutched the cross-eyed owl, feeling tears prick at his eyes. Wren. She’d come up
Unable to speak, Patch simply nodded.
He felt like everyone in the camp had said it, or something like it, in the last few days. Every Piper, every soldier, seeing Patch’s heartbroken face, would put a hand on his shoulder and say, “She will always be remembered.”
And he wanted to scream at them to shut up. Because they all thought the same thing – even Alia, and Tobias, and Merta too. That Wren was gone for ever.
Dead.
And that was why he felt so alone at night, once Barver had gone to his father’s cave – because Barver was the only other person who hadn’t given up hope.
So here sat Patch, looking at the sunrise, and waiting for his friend to wake up. At last, he heard the sounds of movement from the cave, and a few seconds later Barver sat down beside him.
“Morning,” said Barver.
“Morning,” said Patch.
“Can I?” asked Barver.
Patch nodded. He took the precious owl from around his neck, and set it in Barver’s hand; Barver held it tightly. They sat in silence and, together, thought of Wren.
Hoping.
The smell of smoke, and of meat cooking, made Patch realize he was hungry. They headed back towards camp.
“Did your dad say much last night?” asked Patch as they walked. Barver’s father had been a prisoner here for over twelve years, utterly alone, not even knowing why he’d been captured. The sudden arrival of others, and of his own son especially, had seemed so strange to him that he didn’t think it was real most of the time.
Barver smiled. “He talked and talked as usual, like he had a decade’s worth of words to get out, yet I didn’t mind. Just hearing his voice is a gift I never thought I’d get again. His eyes shone when I told him about my adventures – although there’s a lot to tell! I had to cover the Hamelyn Piper and the quest of the Eight before I could even start, because when he was captured none of that had happened yet.” His smiled faded. “He made little sense most of the time, though,” he said. “He claims he’s never seen a single ship, or even a bird, out to sea. He warned me that sometimes dense mist rolls in and ‘everything changes’. He wouldn’t explain what that meant, but the idea seems to really upset him. If we’re going to find a way out of here, we need anything he can tell us, though until he starts making sense I’m not sure how useful it is.”
“Did you sleep at all?” said Patch.
“No,” said Barver. “I came out as soon as he nodded off. I’ll get some sleep later.” He sighed. “It’s so strange, talking to him. One moment he seems like my dad, and the next he’s distant, talking aloud to himself, or speaking like a child. Although I still haven’t told him about Mum. When he asks about her, I just tell him she’s well, and missing him.” He looked at Patch with sorrowful eyes. “I don’t know if he could take it, knowing she died. Or that we’d fallen out beforehand.”
As they walked through the sycamores, the smell of cooking grew stronger, and now they could hear the sound of axes on wood. Of all the oddities in this curious prison, the strangest surely had to be the way the vegetation regrew overnight. Much of the plant life was edible – wild carrots, derdily tubers, apples and berries. Yet whatever they picked, the bushes were laden with fruit again by morning; whatever they dug up, a replacement appeared by sunrise. Even the trees, their trunks cut down for firewood (or for the various projects Alia had thought up) would regrow as if an axe had never touched them.
It was the same, they suspected, with the rabbits and pigeons, the only animals they’d found so far – their numbers seemed the same each morning, however many they’d caught the day before.
The camp was spread over several glades in the trees. In one, the horses grazed, each hitched to a ground pole. The Battle Pipers and soldiers camped in a second glade, at the edge of which the injured griffins were tended, Merta keeping a watchful eye.
The other glade in use was where Alia’s “projects” were taking shape. Closest to the cliffs, and to the cave of Barver’s father, this was the one that Patch and Barver reached first. Even though the morning was young, there was already plenty of activity here.
Alia spotted them and waved. She stood in the centre of the glade, while soldiers worked around her. Yesterday, they’d been gathering and preparing logs; today, they were tying those logs together.
“It’s taking shape,” said Barver when they reached Alia. “Whatever it is.”
“They are taking shape,” Alia said, and Patch realized there were three separate groups, lashing wood together with what looked like milkweed stems. “Two rafts and a scaffold. A resourceful lot, these soldiers of Kintner! Most of their equipment was left behind in the camp at Gossamer Valley. Luckily some of the horses were saddled with equipment packs when we leaped, so we have four axes and a variety of knives.”
“Why do we need rafts?” asked Patch.
“And what do you mean by a scaffold?” added Barver. The rafts were easy to spot – a basic rectangle of lashed wood at their core – but the third construction was harder to work out, various sizes of log tied together into triangles several feet across, which were being fastened together into something much longer.
“You’ll see what that’s for later,” said Alia. “First, though…any improvement with your father?”
“It’s hard to tell,” said Barver. “Although he does appreciate having cooked food for the first time since he’s been imprisoned here.”
Patch sniffed the air. The smell of roasting pigeon was making his stomach gurgle. “Speaking of which…”
Alia came with them, and Barver pressed her for an explanation of her rafts and scaffold.
“We have to do everything we can to escape from this prison,” she told them. “The world must be warned of the Hamelyn Piper and his army! But how to escape? We know this is a Bestiary, a magical zoo. It seems to be split into enclosures. This enclosure is bounded mostly by cliffs, and the only way out is the large meadow beyond the sycamores. Past the meadow lie the bone trees. When the griffin Alkeran was also a prisoner here, he must have been in his own enclosure, far enough away that your father never heard him cry out. We have no idea how big this prison is!”
“Indeed,” said Barver. “Everything about it seems wrong. There’s a hill in the distance, but the air shimmers and I can’t tell how far away or even how high it is. If we attempt to fly above the height of the trees, we fall unconscious. And as for the creatures that live in the bone trees…”
Patch shivered, remembering the horse that had panicked soon after they’d found themselves here, all of them disoriented by their magical leap. The poor animal had bolted across the meadow and into the tall trees that looked horribly like leg bones. As soon as it had gone out of sight, it had been attacked by something – its screams had filled the air before suddenly being silenced.
“Exactly,” said Alia. “That’s our neighbouring enclosure, I believe. Many creatures with magical value are dangerous, but whatever lives in those bone trees seems particularly nasty. Your father said they sometimes hunt in the meadow, didn’t he? Yet they never venture into this enclosure.”
“Yes,” said Barver. “They only hunt in the meadow on the darkest nights. Dad said he’d never actually laid eyes on one – that if you heard the sounds they made, you’d not want to see them either…”
Alia nodded gravely. “Well, if they’re as unpleasant as they seem, then something must prevent them coming here. I think those carved posts that run along the edge of the sycamores mark out the enclosure, and act as a barrier.”
Patch thought of the strange posts, with just simple rope between them. “A barrier?” he said. “It wouldn’t stop anything, let alone such vicious creatures.”
“They’re clearly magical,” said Alia. “I imagine similar posts and ropes mark out all the enclosures in the Bestiary. They didn’t stop us crossing them, so perhaps they’re specific to the creatures being kept imprisoned.”
“My father is chained,” said Barver. “He can’t travel far from his cave. Why be so cruel, if a magical barrier would stop him leaving anyway?”
