Dreams and Shadows (The Aylosian Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One: The Dream

  Chapter Two: Seeking

  Chapter Three: Rebirth

  Chapter Four: New Beginnings

  Chapter Five: Among Friends?

  Chapter Six: Weaving

  Chapter Seven: Shosa

  Chapter Eight: Revelations

  Chapter Nine: Soul Weaving

  Chapter Ten: Parting

  Chapter Eleven: Fleeing Traitor

  Chapter Twelve: The Guardian

  Chapter Thirteen: Mother

  Chapter Fourteen: Child

  Chapter Fifteen: Warning

  Chapter Sixteen: Trusted

  Chapter Seventeen: Farewell

  Chapter Eighteen: Escape

  Chapter Nineteen: Choices

  Chapter Twenty: Alone

  Chapter Twenty-One: Delay

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Race In Time

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Folly

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Necessary

  Epilogue

  For More Information

  The characters, events and locations portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Dreams and Shadows, Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2015 Jeffrey Collyer

  All rights reserved. Unauthorised distribution or reproduction is strictly prohibited without express written permission of the author.

  ASIN: B00WWWYN16

  Introduction

  Thanks for downloading Dreams and Shadows. I hope you enjoy it.

  The idea for the story began with a scene that is in Chapter three of this book, where Michael sees a woman in the town centre. The rest of the story grew from there, expanding within my head until the day came that I knew I had to write it down. Although this is the first book in a planned series, I’ve tried to avoid it ending on too much of a cliff-hanger. Personally, I hate books that do that, so my hope is that you’ll find the conclusion satisfying, even if there remain some unanswered questions.

  There are a number of themes that I’ve woven through the book; themes that relate to the society in which we live, and the human condition that we all experience. If you enjoy a story that contains those sorts of things, then I hope I’ve managed to include them in a way that you find satisfying; while if you don’t, then I hope they are unintrusive, subtle enough for you to be able to enjoy the story without distraction.

  After all, this is first and foremost a story of a young man drawn into a magical world where he must discover the truth for himself, and then overcome his fears to save the people he has come to love. And that, ultimately, is the story of each one of us, as we journey through our lives on this earth.

  Occasionally, I’ll write a short story that provides more background on the world of Aylosia, and these are or will be available for free on my web-site. If I think such a story may provide spoilers for one of the novels, I’ll say so. But if you enjoy this book, then you may like to head on over to www.jeffreycollyer.com, where I’ll post them. There, you can also ask me questions, and sign up to receive news.

  I’d love to get your feedback – whether you love it or hate it. Is there a part of the story that felt just right, or a section that didn’t work? Is there a part of the book or a character you’d like to know more about, that perhaps I can write a short story on? Please tell me.

  Once again, thank you. In an age where time is so precious, I’m truly grateful that you’ve chosen to use some of yours to read Dreams and Shadows.

  Please note that I have used British English (spelling, grammar, and terminology) throughout.

  www.jeffreycollyer.com

  Acknowledgements

  Even in this day where anyone can self-publish a book, so many people have been important in my journey writing Dreams and Shadows. Advice and guidance from on-line forums, including some good folk in the Goodreads community has been invaluable. My editor, Kelly Barina, was fantastic, offering great suggestions from start to finish. A number of friends and family offered helpful feedback.

  Above all, however, my thanks go to my wife. She has not once called me mad for embarking on this journey (though she must have thought it), and has been supportive in every way. I couldn’t have done it without her.

  CHAPTER ONE:

  The Dream

  What are dreams? Are they visions, messages, prophecies, or warnings? Are they the imparting of our unconscious wisdom, or tales of mere foolishness? Do dreams tell us of truths otherwise hidden, or are they lies sent to mislead us towards dangerous paths? Are they all of these things, or none of these things?

  The answer to these questions lies in the wise heart of the woman who seeks to comprehend; who seeks to sift the meaningful from the distracting or harmful. Though she may not have certainty in the origins or purpose of her dreams, by seeking understanding she will nevertheless find they aid her in life’s journey.

  From the Wisdom of Ashael

  ***

  The pull in his chest was intense, drawing him towards his destiny. He had left his flat five minutes or so beforehand, knowing precisely what he needed to do – where he needed to go. Despite the torrential rain that almost blinded him, it didn’t even occur to him that he should go back to his flat for an umbrella, or even a raincoat. Only one thing was on his mind: one place, and he was determined to get there.

  Within minutes, he had been soaked through – large drops of water falling from his ears and nose. His dark brown hair had been flattened against his head by the pounding rain, and his dark eyes blurred as the water droplets streamed from his eyebrows.

  But the rain clouding his eyes didn’t matter. He didn’t need to see where he was going. He walked this way every day when he journeyed in to work at the library, and had done so for more than six months now. The Victorian redbrick buildings – old factories and offices – that he passed were familiar. He would often amble in to work, stopping to examine the buildings. He was fascinated by the intricate patterns placed around windows; the ornamentations that lined the roofs; able to see through a hundred and more years of dirt and grime that covered the buildings’ surfaces.

  Architects didn’t bother with such things on their buildings in the modern world; they were designed with the expectation that they would be torn down in a few decades, when their function was considered no longer relevant. It would not be ‘cost-effective’ to erect such structures with the idea of permanence. Beauty was an irrelevance. But not with these Victorian edifices, born in an age when beauty was a necessary companion to function.

  The day would come when a developer would spy these near-derelict buildings and transform them into expensive flats, making this part of town the trendy place to be. But that time had not yet arrived. Michael was glad, because when it did he would have to move, no longer able to afford to live here – not on the salary he earned at the library.

  Such considerations weren’t on his mind today, however, as his purposeful march continued through the pouring rain. He ignored the buildings’ attempts to impede his progress as they spewed forth gallons of water from their drainpipes, feeding a series of streams running across the pavement. His trainers had filled with water, rubbing against his saturated socks that were now almost glued to his feet. But Michael didn’t notice. The only thing taking his attention was his knowledge that he needed to get there – the intense pull not permitting him to slow his pace.

  The only time he glanced up was when he pass
ed the Church of St Peter. The old Saxon stone building was blackened by centuries of soot. Although Michael hadn’t yet decided whether or not he believed in God, he would sometimes go inside and just sit in the pews. His short life hadn’t been a happy one, but in this place he felt he could sense countless generations of worship. It gave him a sort of peace, as if somehow the comfort that so many others had felt here could vicariously atone for the misfortunes of his own life.

  As he walked by, he looked through his rain-soaked eyes at the window on the approaching corner of the building. The air around him brightened suddenly just before the first crack of thunder was heard. With the flash from the sheet lightning he could make out the image on the stained glass of the window – the baby Jesus on his mother’s lap; both mother and child seemingly staring directly into Michael’s eyes. For some reason, he didn’t think it strange that he could see the image so clearly from the building’s exterior, but it was as bright and defined for him through the sheets of water falling from the skies as it would have been had he been inside the old church and standing directly before it.

  He looked away quickly and involuntary heightened his pace at seeing the image. Of all of the stained glass within the Church, this was the one that he thought most about – the one that didn’t give him peace. The Christians believed that Jesus suffered more than anyone else in the history of the world. But at least he had a mother who loved him.

  Michael hadn’t known his mother. He had been given to a young couple when he was only one or two years old – or so the story went. He wasn’t even legally adopted, just given away; and no-one could tell him when his birthday was. Even now he didn’t know whether he was seventeen years old or nineteen.

  As if that wasn’t enough, his ‘adopted’ mother had died in a car accident shortly thereafter. That had left only Rob to raise him, and Rob had been struck with grief for the next sixteen years. He had made sure Michael was fed and clothed, but there was little else he had done for him, absorbed in his own pity and despair.

  Michael had always felt a pang of jealousy when seeing the other children at school whose mothers came to school plays, and to parent evenings. As he got older, he heard other youths complain about their parents and the rules they imposed in their households. Inside of him a knot of sadness and anger would well up, and though he never did, he wanted to shout: “At least you have a mother! At least you have someone who cares!”

  Many children in Michael’s situation would have become street urchins, getting into mischief while young, and then more serious trouble as teenage years approached, but not Michael. He had never felt comfortable mixing with other people, and the absence of any kind of parental guidance or love had led him into his bedroom rather than to the streets, where from the time he could read his first words he had immersed himself in books. There he escaped the reality of his life, and became a knight, sailor, or adventurer; exploring beautiful and exciting lands.

  Today as he walked, he tried to shake away the thoughts of Jesus’ mother and all that resulted from them, but the stained glass image stayed near the surface of his mind as he neared his destination.

  The heavy rain had emptied the streets of pedestrians and vehicles, and so Michael didn’t need to look as he crossed the roads, finally arriving at the paved shopping precinct. His clothes now heavy with water, he continued for another hundred yards or so, past the closed shops that sold mobile phones, cheap clothing or other discount merchandise.

  And then suddenly the urge that had inexorably pulled him here forced him to stop. Motionless, he looked down at his feet and saw that he had halted directly on top of the golden centre-point of a clock. Looking behind him, he noticed that he had walked across the number three of the clock-face, the twelve lying immediately to his right. It had been commissioned by the local Council the previous year, and was made up of a range of different coloured and shaped bricks and tiles placed into the pavement. It wasn’t a functional clock, of course, but it included a very clever optical illusion in that the clock minute hand appeared to point in different directions depending on where and at what angle a person was standing when looking at it – the hour hand always pointing to twelve. During the daytime, children would run around it, laughing at how the time on the clock appeared to change as they did so.

  Standing in the middle as he now was, Michael looked at the hands of the clock and saw that they were showing twelve o’clock. Michael blinked when he thought he saw a small movement from one of the hands, knowing it wasn’t possible.

  Then again.

  Yes, the minute hand was definitely now past the twelve.

  With a mixture of curiosity and anxiety, Michael stared at the clock minute hand, and was startled when he saw it begin to move more quickly. It shouldn’t be able to do that, he thought; they only appeared to change position when your viewing angle of the clock changed – and Michael hadn’t moved. It shouldn’t be doing that! he thought again, as the hand passed the one.

  The minute hand moved around the clock slowly at first, but continued to quicken, and Michael turned with it to watch until it had made a full circle, and was surprised again when the hour hand then moved also, the clock now marking one o’clock. Still the hands continued to move and Michael turned with them, the coloured tiles around him glistening through the constant stream of water that attacked them. Two o’clock… five o’clock… nine o’clock.

  The minute hand began to slow its pace after eleven o’clock, and as Michael watched it pass the six, marking eleven-thirty, he began to hear a deep rumbling from the clouds above him. The rumble continued as the hand slowed further, now passing the nine. Underneath his soaking clothes he could feel the hairs on his arms stand on end; the goose bumps arise across his body’s surface – the expectation of a return to twelve o’clock unexpectedly heightening the tension in him. The growing electricity in the air surrounding him became palpable as the clock minute hand passed the eleven. An invisible bubble of something powerful was growing within the confines of the clock-face – Michael now paralysed in the centre of it. He watched with a growing anxiety, his skin feeling as if it would be sucked from the surface of his body, as the minute hand finally crept to its starting position at twelve, once again perfectly aligned with the hour hand.

  CRACK!

  The noise was deafening as the lightning struck, and it was a few seconds before Michael realised he had been thrown from his position and was now lying in a large puddle of water. The sound of the rain was gone, replaced by ringing in his ears. Light seemed to flash in his eyes – the aftereffects of the brilliant light from the bolt of some god’s wrath.

  Michael lay back in the puddle, breathing heavily, and closed his eyes. He had never been so close to a lightning strike; never before felt its immense power, and he was overwhelmed at its focussed intensity.

  After a short while, the ringing in his ears began to subside, and it was only then that he realised he still could no longer hear the rain, nor could he feel it falling on him. He opened his eyes to the heavens, and while the sky was still filled with dark clouds, the rain had stopped – as if the lightning bolt itself had given its orders, the subservient clouds instantly obeying.

  As he sat up, he realised he had been thrown perhaps four or five feet towards the number six on the clock face and saw immediately that the bolt had hit precisely the twelve on the clock; the end of the minute hand had blackened: time pinned forever at mid-night… or noon.

  Looking towards the blackened clock hand from where he sat, he noticed black gates in the distance – an entrance to a park and gardens. He didn’t remember the gardens being there, but then he had never stood in this spot and looked that way before. Although he had walked through this shopping precinct countless times on his way to the library, he had never paused to examine the surroundings. To Michael these shops represented people’s insatiable desire to follow the latest fashion and obtain the newest gadgets – to slavishly worship at the feet of the trendsetting gods of soci
ety.

  He couldn’t understand why so many people fell into such mindless consumerism, but he constantly saw people doing precisely that, and it appalled him. And so he would hurry through this part of his morning and evening walk, head down and never glancing up the alleyways that led away from the shops. Now though he was staring at the open gates perhaps fifty yards away, and he immediately knew that the garden was his next destination, feeling the same pull that had already compelled him to walk through the pouring rain today.

  He rose to his feet, the flashing now gone from his eyes, and began the next stage of his journey, towards the gates, passing the top of the ground clock now showing time frozen forever.

  By the time he was a handful of paces away, he had forgotten completely the clock, his eyes now focussed on the gates. As he approached, he noticed a distinct chill creep into the air – the temperature appeared to be dropping – and he felt his body quiver for a brief second. He ignored it, however, as he came closer, noticing that the gates were ajar. The wrought iron columns were typical of gates into public gardens, but Michael noticed that these gates had a large decorative triangular shape along their inner edges, half of the design on either side of the gate’s edges so that when closed the shapes from both gates would overlap with each other. The lines on each side of the triangles were perhaps eighteen inches in length and were not straight, but rather curved back and forth. And instead of making a point at each place where one side of the triangle became the next, the line looped around on itself forming a kind of simple Celtic knot, before heading along the next side of the triangle.

  Michael had passed through the gates and taken a few steps into the gardens when he heard the clang of the gates as they closed behind him. The sound startled him, and with a flash of fear he turned quickly, knowing instinctively that he was trapped in the garden. But his fear inexplicably departed, the patterns on the gates piquing his interest instead. He saw how the triangles had overlaid each other and now formed what he could only describe as a type of Woodland Star, with intertwining branches or vines where the lines of each triangle crossed each other. The Celtic knots in place of points now looked more like six evenly spaced flowers, each with three petals.