Little Orphan Anvil: The Complete Trilogy by Joseph Beekman (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

Aleeria moved back to the raft and saw that Willalready had Anvil set to go and rescue Tinspar.

“Oh, good!” she said. “That buffoon is askingfor the robot’s help! Be quick—this creature is not onefor having any stragglers clinging to itself!”

Will nodded, swiftly pushing Anvil towards theedge of the swerving raft.

“Anvil will do his best!”

Suddenly the creature made a few, very sharp,twisting turns, putting a big scare into everyone.

“Dang!” Will quipped. “Can you cast a spell thatmight calm my nerves?”

Aleeria shook her head. “Not a chance, old man!I am spent as it is from getting this creature up and outof its earthly sleep!”

“Hurry it up!” Tinspar shouted from below. “Mylegs are taking a beating from these ice chunks passingby in the river!”

Will took a deep breath, and then he pressed afew buttons on Anvil’s inside panels.

“Go get him, pal!” he shouted.

Anvil bleeped a reply and extended his metallimbs outwards. He then sped over the edge of the raft,dropping down along the creature’s body to Tinspar’slocation.

Will was lying flat on the raft, looking over itsedge with Aleeria hovering near his side. They couldsee Tinspar being whipped about like a wet rag doll asthe centipede zoomed along through the river.

“Now, stay put!” Will shouted. “Anvil’s gonnasnag hold of ya and lift you outta that mess!”

Tinspar just nodded; he was too tired and wornfrom all the tossing and turning to reply.

~ CHAPTER VIII~ WILDERNESS of ICE

After Anvil had retrieved Tinspar from his ordeal,the party decided to remain huddled in the center of theraft underneath a makeshift tarp. Two iron lanterns hadbeen placed near the front of the raft so they could seewithin the darkness of night, as well as in the dwindlingand dim daylight: they had noticed that the days weregrowing shorter as they approached further into thenorthern wilds.

For the first few days, after the centipede hadmagically surfaced from the river, Jonathon and Haleyhad remained fairly hushed. They kept, for the mostpart, to sleeping or munching on pieces of dried fishand fruits, and sipping on ginger tea from a canteen thatHaley had stashed in his knapsack.

And Anvil had kept watch outside of the tarp,near the front of the raft, where the weather had turnedto harsh, stinging sheets of ice.

Tabitha and Aleeria, however, had stayed closetogether, discussing much of the old ways of sorcery, aswell as the darkness of the witches…

“Aleeria, I do have a very important questionabout the witches,” Tabitha had asked at one point intheir discussions.

“Go ahead, dear,” the sorceress had replied.“Well, since that meteorite shower had broughtabout ruin to all the dark witches in the Land of Stars,why do the two witches we now seek still exist? Whyhave the realm spirits not returned to finish them off?”

“A good question. My feelings are that those twoothers must have somehow masked their own presencewith some spell,” Aleeria had sighed. “They must havedone so in a timely manner, shading their existenceagainst the realm spirits and the shower of doom. Tothis day, they must still be invisible to the spirits of therealm.”

“What of the witch-lady, then? After all, she’sbeen stirring quite the madness in the realm over thepast years—wouldn’t the realm spirits be privy to herways and want to strike her down?”

“To be quite honest…it’s hard to say what therealm spirits are ever really up to,” Aleeria had said,shaking her ghostly red hair about.“Even I am belowtheir own plane of existence!” Tabitha had creased herbrow at this.

“They know of me, yes, just as they know of you,dear Tabitha. But they are the enlightened powers ofthe realm—the ones unseen that see all! In fact, theymay have left the witch-lady’s fate to those in the landsthat have been hunting her down all along…trying torid her soul from the realm.”

“Just as we are attempting to do now,” Tabithahad muttered, nodding her head. “Yes, maybe so; all ofit sounds very possible…”

“Or, the witch-lady may be like the other two,”Aleeria had added, “and had cast some spell upon herown self, shading her soul from the eyes of the realmspirits.”

Tabitha had thought about that for a moment. “Iguess the realm spirits only meddle in affairs that pose avery terrible threat to the fate of the realm. Like thetime in the Land of Stars, when the dark ways ofsorcery were beginning to become too dangerous to theexistence of the realm—”

“—the realm spirits intervened with the showerof doom!” Aleeria agreed, completing Tabitha’sthoughts. “There was no one around—ones like us,anyways—to help rid the dark evil that had crept up inthat land!”

“So, the dark witches of long ago…they weretaken by surprise when the meteorites came down andburned out their souls, huh?”

“Yes, except that the others we are now after hadescaped the fate of that doom; including the witch-lady.As I had said, they had quite possibly used some sort ofshading spell of their own making to hide.”

Tabitha had just nodded, reflecting upon all ofwhat they had said.

“Now then, dear Tabitha, let’s get back to ourdiscussion of the ancient elders, shall we?”

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It was on their tenth day of travel on the backside of the centipede, that the surroundings of the riverpassage had transformed into frozen, towering walls,and jutting shards of ice. The ice walls loomed highinto a blood-grey, clouded sky, and looked as if theyhad been scraped horribly up and down with beastlyclaws. The river itself had frozen over, and the greatcentipede creature was now moving along its glassysurface.

However, the centipede seemed to be wearingdown, as its speed and movement were beginning toslow considerably.

“I don’t understand,” Aleeria said, shaking herhead at the jagged icy surroundings that passed by.“We should have been at that glacier, long ago…”

Will poked his head out from underneath thetattered tarp that he and Tinspar had carefully set up onthe raft days before; it was now withering under theonslaught of a sudden hail storm. He saw the spiritsorceress floating near the front of the raft as the hailstorm passed through her ghostly form