Rock Haulter

Stephen Hayes

Description

The second instalment in the Magic Crystals series, immediately following the events of 'The Seventh Sorcerer'.

The original villain is back, only this time he is on a different mission, taking orders from the evil and cunning Hammerson Sorcerers, and his path will intersect those of John Playman and his friends on Rock Haulter.

A desperate race must ensue, Moran and the powers of the Hammersons against the Chopville teens. The prize will be the most powerful of all the Magic Crystals and a control over the balance of life, but such extraordinary power is heavily protected. There is no guarantee that all will live to see the end.

The danger faced this week will be greater than anything faced in 'The Seventh Sorcerer', but that won't stop the teens from having a good time, as only teenagers can. But beneath all that, a far more serious situation is simmering.

It is only those closest to the Sorcerers who understand how delicate the peace between the Woodwards and Hammersons is, and how quickly that could change.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 27 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780987133922
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Magic Crystals
 
 
Rock Haulter
 
 
by
 
Stephen Hayes

 
 
Rock Haulter
 
Book 2 in the Magic Crystals series
 
Written by Stephen Hayes
 
Published 2013 by Stephen Hayes, Australia
 
www.themagiccrystals.com
 
Copyright © Stephen Hayes 2013
 
Published in eBook format by Stephen Hayes
 
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon, Facebook or similar organisations) in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
 
Disclaimer: All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-9871339-2-2
Prologue
Saturday, February 6, 2010, Chopville Daily Telegraph.
WEATHER MYSTERY NO LONGER IN THE DARK
Long-time Chopville resident, Bernard Moran, has been taken into police custody and is expected to be formally charged for the events of the last five days.
The world continues to reel in the wake of the two global chills experienced this week. Scientists all over the world are still scrambling to come up with any possible causes of those most irregular weather patterns, but many people have jumped to a different conclusion.
Through interviews with Chopville Police Sergeant Michael Sanders, Melbourne-based magicologist Derik Castle and a brief encounter with the wife of local Sorcerer Frederic Woodward, the Chopville Daily Telegraph has been able to piece together a possible chain of events to explain the overt weather abnormalities.
It has come to our attention that Moran was taken into police custody on Thursday in connection with both the unusual weather patterns and the bizarre feat that befell the Sorcerers, causing them to temporarily lose their magical powers. This was confirmed yesterday morning by Sanders.
“We were called to a scene outside a property on Hag Crescent on Thursday morning, shortly before the second of the global chills,” Sanders told us.
“We found Moran unconscious and, on the advice of young Sorcerer Amelia Woodward, took him into custody.
“Her opposite number in Stella Hammerson was also present at the scene and, based on the story the two teenagers recounted for us, we have come to the conclusion that they were working together in order to regain their magical powers.”
This brief explanation told us very little, but Castle, who has spent more than forty years studying magic, was able to offer us a possible insight into what might have happened.
“Anyone who believes these events were caused by magic would jump to the conclusion that the Hammersons were behind it, but I tend to think that based on the fact that they also lost their magic into the bargain, this Moran character may have been acting alone.
“I wish I knew more about him and his history; what connection he had with the Sorcerers; but what I can tell you is that the evidence seems to point to a transfer of magical powers.
“What a lot of people don’t know is that it is possible for magic to be stolen from a Sorcerer and taken by another person. I won’t go into the details of how this is done, for I’m still unsure of many of them, but what I do know is the Sorcerer losing power also loses consciousness for a brief period.
“We know that this indeed happened, and it may be possible that the imbalance of magical power may have somehow contributed to the unusual weather patterns.
“Based on Amelia Woodward’s testimony, Bernard Moran had made himself a Sorcerer by taking the powers from all six Sorcerers, and it was from this struggle that the man was arrested.”
We also tried to get an inside word from the Sorcerers themselves, as the police do not plan on releasing transcripts of their interrogation of Moran, but it seems that they have skipped town. When we approached the wife of Frederic Woodward, who has remained in Chopville, she kindly asked us to “bugger off” until the Sorcerers return.
As the world begins to put itself back together, save for the countless lives that were already lost during the chills, each of the Woodwards has been sighted in many places around the world. Whether this will be enough to curb the animosity that would be felt by many against magic in general remains to be seen.
As a slight twist, however, there have also been rumours far and wide that the Hammerson Sorcerers are assisting them. According to Castle, this is most unlikely, for what reason would they have for helping now that they have their magic back? Yet the rumours persist.
Moran has not officially been charged yet, partially because the evidence against him is unclear and partially because, according to Sanders, they have never had to charge anyone with something like this before.
However, by talking to an insider who preferred to remain nameless, charges against him will most likely be laid this morning and they will most probably be based both on the story recounted by Amelia Woodward against whatever tale of woe is related by Moran.
Various magicologists from all over the world have stepped forward to offer their own theories of what might have taken place, and we fully expect a statement to be made by one of the Woodward Sorcerers in the coming days.
We will have more on this story as it continues to unfold. In the meantime, Sergeant Sanders has revealed that Moran will be transferred to a top-security prison within the next few days, though he refused to reveal where that would be. He has also revealed that Moran’s two teenage sons have been taken into police custody and will be found new homes in the interim.
Part 1: Hammersons Strike Back
Chapter 1: Separation
The weekend, at last! Don’t you just love that feeling you get when you wake up on a Saturday morning and realise that you have two days ahead of you where you don’t have to do anything—no dangerous stunts, no school acting as an unimportant sideshow, no nothing. I wasn’t sure at first, during the week, if this weekend was really worth looking forward to, but we had all done enough work to deserve a couple of days off.
The usual procedure in our house on the weekend was to be woken up by the sunlight coming through our window. It would usually wake either me or Peter, and whoever woke up first would wake the other. Well, not this morning; the sun had long since risen but it hadn’t woken either of us. Instead, we received a much more ruthless awakening.
“Up and at it, folks!”
“ Harry !”
“Wakey, wakey,” came Simon’s loud voice, “hands off snaky.”
I was sitting up in bed; before I really knew I was awake. It felt like some sort of dream, or more like some sort of nightmare. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, then looked towards the bedroom door. Harry and Simon had come crashing into the room. Peter was already out of bed and looking around for his socks.
“We’re awake,” he snapped. “What are you two doing here?”
“Early morning wake-up call,” said Simon brightly, “not that it’s early or anything.”
“It’s nine o’clock,” yawned Peter, “and what are you so excited about?”
“A warm day,” I suggested. “Can you two leave so we can change, at least?”
“Nah,” said Harry, shutting the door. “You two haven’t got anything we haven’t seen before—or have you?”
The door banged opened again and James walked in. He was dressed, but looked tired and irritable. Perhaps Harry and Simon had already woken him up.
“Thank you, you two,” he said to them. “These two need a lot of room to change. You’d be surprised.”
“What, unleashing the python, eh?" asked Simon.
“Oh go away,” sighed Peter.
James steered the two of them out of the room. Make no mistake, Harry and Simon had never done that before, and we didn’t appreciate it at all. Harry and Simon didn’t even live with us; they were twins who lived several blocks away, on the other side of the river, but they were both in our class at school. James was the next door neighbour, but it was certainly more normal for him to wake us up.
We had a weird setup at home. Numbers 15 and 16 in Lopher Lane were a little closer to each other than what met the eye from the street. The Playmans lived one side and the Thomases lived on the other, and the two families had built an underground link between the houses, hidden in cupboards under the stairs in each house. That, people called weird, but people who lived in our little country town of Chopville always did strange and very individual things to their houses.
Both our families were quite welcome to cross the tunnel into the other house whenever they liked, so long as it was at an appropriate hour and wasn’t going to wake anyone up. But then again, almost all the bedrooms in both houses were upstairs. On the Playman side, my parents had the closest bedroom to the stairs, then my sister, Nicole. My brother Peter and I shared the next room along the hall. In the Thomas house, the parents of the family, Marge and Charlie, were again closest to the stairs. Felicity and Jessica, who also shared a room, were directly opposite, and James’s room was the next along.
Anyway, Peter and I changed for the day, which was supposed to be quite warm, and went downstairs to meet James and the twins in the family room.
“Should go wake up the girls,” said Simon. “Nicole’s still asleep—I looked in on her on our way to your room.”
“She had her door open,” said Harry. “She’d closed it by the time we were coming back down.”
“You must have woken her as you went past,” said Peter. “No wonder, with your big feet.”
“So what’s doing today, boys?” asked Dad, who was reading the paper at the kitchen table.
“Day at the stretch,” said Simon, “should go down well.”
“And you’re that eager to get yourself wet?” asked Hilda.
Oh, I forgot to mention Hilda and Violet; our grandmother and James’s grandmother respe