James Dreadful and the Tomb of Forgotten Secrets (The Dreadful Series Book 2)
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James Dreadful’s Epic Adventure Continues in Book Two of the Dreadful Series
After narrowly escaping a contract with his father’s evil servant Rekenhowler, James reluctantly decides to return home to the Cades Isles to live out the rest of his youth training to become a sorcerer. The only problem: James and his companions are adrift on the boat Persephone in the Realm of Shadows without a crew.
When a stowaway aboard Persephone informs James that his father—the Dark Lord—might have been mind-slaved by the mysterious, evil Cowl, James is shocked. The only proof that he will accept is the soul of his father, which he learns is lodged deep in the Tomb of Forgotten Secrets. In confronting his father’s soul, James can learn the truth about the Dark Lord—and if he is destined to become one himself.
But before he can reach the Tomb, James must travel to Sarvelok, an island protected by raiders, to retrieve the key his uncle Oskar stole from him. Attacking the island would be suicide—but possible with the help of Rekenhowler. The price James will have to pay, however, is too high, but without it, will he ever learn the truth of his father—and his own fate?
From the Publisher
In the Pirate-Wizard’s Lair
Chapter 11: And into the Mouth
Something moaned. Vibrations shivered through the planks beneath their feet. James looked up and saw what appeared to be a murder-hole opening in the ceiling where the hard palate would be. That part was made of wooden beams and rusted iron frameworks, which dripped dirty, coppery water. He didn’t see a face, but he heard rumbling noises overhead mingling with the crash of water flooding off the boat from the bow.
“What’s up there?” Cat shouted.
James could not answer him. Ahead, all they could see was darkness, though it was possible to make out the silhouettes of catwalks and a canal that led farther inside from the outside light.
Suddenly, they heard clink-clink-clink, and James looked around to the side. The colossal, russet chain links were beginning to move, lifting against the pressure of the sea rushing over it.
“We’re not going to make it!” Cat cried, clutching the gunwale close to James. “Look, they’re closing the door already!”
Laboriously, the chains were reaving through hawseholes one link at a time, and they could feel the deck shifting beneath their feet. Deep inside, a groan wailed, like a prehistoric creature. James felt his skin bristle beneath a frigid layer of goosebumps from the cold. He looked at Igvard, fighting to hold on, and saw that the stern of the Persephone was rising out of the water, her boards moaning strenuously under the strain. The teeth were clamped firmly into her keel. One of the masts touched the top of the mouth’s door and cracked.
“It’ll snap us in half!” Igvard shouted.
James felt they had reached forty-five degrees by now; the sea behind them was crashing violently into the lower jaw, splashing water through the sides of it.
“Oh my,” Hadwin cried. “I just got my bones back together. Now I’m gonna get crushed. I’d jump overboard, but I can’t swim!”
Quest for a Goddess
Chapter 26: The Tomb of Forgotten Secrets
As they went down the stairs, they saw hundreds of them. No doubt this is the place my father found his book—Galajitar, he thought. Of course, that book only talked inside his head.
There were not just bookshelves, though. There were piles of…stuff. That was what he called the treasures they passed as they strolled down towering aisles while ducking the flapping tomes. There was so much, he could not even hope to list all of it: A breastplate engraved with glimmering runes. An enchanted ax burning with green fire. A brass globe of the world the size of a bedchamber on a plinth. A life-size gold elephant breathing smoke out of its trunk. Large, beautiful, rolled-up carpets. Stacks of extraordinary paintings. A cage with a giant squawking skeleton bird. Glass jars with exotic colorful insects trying to get out. A crystal dove that flew into the air fell shattering on the floor, pieced itself together, and flew off again. A locked casket that glowed from within. A crystal ball sitting on a fancy cushion with a frightening laughing face encased within.
And much, much more.
The place was large, but the area they were exploring was where most of the treasures were. Beyond it, the bookshelves seemed to stretch farther into the hall.
Finally, they came to the end of it and a clearing in the large assortment of treasures that had been stashed on tables, shelves, and cabinets. Cat stopped and, folding his arms, leaned against a table with an open coffer full of old coins that stood in the middle of in the space.
“What do you think?” James asked, having stopped to take in his surroundings. “This place is huge. We could search for hours.”
“But most of the rest seems to be bookshelves,” Cat said, examining the coins spilled across the table. “We could go another way, but this is where all the stuff’s at.”
James set the lamp on the table and walked around. “OK, but don’t touch anything.”
Sarvelok
Chapter 17: Ogres Gathered around a Table
James had gotten Cat up from the ground and sat down in the chairs at the table, his hand still holding his side. He glared at Formandible now. “Where’s the stone? Where’s Roseheart?” The last he’d seen of the magical gemstone his mother had given to Oskar was in the hand of Gunter.
Formandible rose and stepped over to him, breathing heavily. For a moment he expected violence. The leader of the freebooters always had an edge before. But now he could practically smell the aversion trickling out of his glands. Yet, the blistering enmity in his eyes regarded him with something different. He knows my value, James thought. But that didn’t matter. Formandible looked capable of murdering the other two just to get at him.
Formandible turned to Grease Mold and signaled him with his thumb. The ogre walked off. “Yer precious stone,” he said, leaning against the table, “broken.”
James looked at him, not turning fully, but unsure if he believed him. He didn’t want to meet that large nefarious gaze. “Whaddya mean?”
Grease Mold had returned from the bookkeeper’s table carrying a padlocked coffer. It was cruder than the one he’d seen in Estyrmor, with a rusted iron hasp, bloodstains, dents, and flecks of tar and sawdust on it. He set it on the table over a leftover card from the Boneheads’ game. Inside, James could hear a peculiar sound—like something was bouncing around. The coffer moved a few inches from the sheer force of it.
Grease Mold pulled a pair of iron cuffs dangling through his belt, and slapped one end over Igvard’s wrist, and the other over Cat’s. The second pair was for James, but Formandible stopped him.
Gunter looked to Grease Mold. “There was a box of whazzits and such over yonder. I’m sure there’s an iron clasp there. Find it; we’ll fit this table with it and reeve their shackles through.”
Grease Mold grunted and went off in search of this, and Formandible reached for his belt and unfastened a ring of keys. There were only three on it.
“What’s wrong with her?” James asked, looking at the coffer. He didn’t understand what kind of problem they’d be having with her; he remembered that Roseheart had gone willingly to Gunter that night in Coven’s Hall.
Eye of the Storm
Chapter 10: Through the Eye
“Look!” Cat suddenly cried.
The clouds, swirling around the storm’s eye, were suddenly closing around the open sunlit sky.
And then it came. A white-gray funnel descending from the clouds that were scraping across the firmament. It struck down in the sea like a crack of lightning, and at once, the wind picked up very turbulently. It howled, sucking at both foresails and mainsails so violently James was thrown off his feet. Quizlow went flying to the deck, as a deluge of water struck the hull, rocking them.
James found himself rolling head over heels as the icy sea engulfed him on all sides. He tumbled toward the quarterdeck as a bubbling, wrathful sea foamed over the gunwale. His mind was numb, as well as his body. He reached out to grab something—anything. It was the gunwale he caught, and he pulled himself up, just as the Persephone dipped forward and he looked down. The four-poster bed danced cartwheels toward the bow before hurtling into the spuming sea along with the cauldron, the mirror, and the nightstand. When the bow came up again, his knees buckled beneath him. The mainsails flapping in the gale had become a roar in his ears as torrential rain—made fluorescent blue from lightning—burst from the sky.
“Grab on to something!” he heard his uncle—who was just a silhouette against a flare of Saint Elmo’s fire—scream.
Gripping the gunwale for his life, James edged his way midship, but stopped as a wave exploded against the hull and suffused him in ice. He opened his mouth to scream and swallowed liquid salt. His eyes stung as though ground glass smothered his sight, and slivers of sunlight passed across his vision, shooting ghost rainbows onto his retina before he went blind.
Hadwin and Digfred
Chapter 8: Moffat the Drunk
Digfred lifted his head. “Us? Oh, you’re mistaken, fetcher. He thought those spectacles worked on us, but we got our orders from Cthalis. ‘Don’t harm the fetcher!’ Well—he didn’t say ‘fetcher,’ but he said it with the inflection, y’see. Anyway, we were to open the Symplegades for him so they could get their boat through into the Forbidden Sea. So, Moffat, he’s all like, ‘Oh, well that’s bloody imbecilic!’ So, he gets all sarcastic with yer old man, and he gets on his knees and he started genuflecting to that ole clot, he did! He wanted to gut him, but noooooo—Jack was the—er—concubine of the ole maggoty king of Under! So, he figured he should genuflect, which he did beautifully.”
“He did genuflect rather beautifully,” allowed Hadwin. “And your father took off his specs like—‘what the bloody hell?’” Digfred laughed, and then stopped. “He didn’t actually say ‘what the bloody hell.’ It was just like the way he was,” he explained, tickling his chin.
“Anyway, Moffat was being such a marrow, Jack caught on—what with him genuflectin’ everywhere yer old man went. ‘Oh yes, Your Majesty,’” Hadwin said. “‘I’ll delightedly break all two hundred of my bones in conscientious effort to serve you, Your Majesty.’ I think Jack realized that he was being sardonic then, and that we weren’t a litter of silly whelps. He realized then we were dangerous, cursed us, and made us afraid of violence, which was just about the meanest thing a man can do to undead marrows like us.”
ASIN : B09JWY1PQ5
Publisher : (October 19, 2021)
Publication date : October 19, 2021
Language : English
File size : 3115 KB
Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
Print length : 334 pages
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