Keeper of the Realms: The Dark Army (Book 2)

MARCUS ALEXANDER

PUFFIN

Contents

1. Rusty Manacles

2. An Introduction and a Deal

3. The Song and the Stone

4. The Courtyard

5. An Unwelcome Surprise

6. A Clash of Arms

7. A Journey Underground

8. The Pendant’s Secret

9. Planning Ahead

10. A Challenge of Will

11. A Lawyer’s Touch

12. The Stubborn Citadel

13. Dark Forces

14. The Descent

15. Bounty Hunters

16. Final Preparations

17. Hell

18. The Hard Sell

19. A Sword of Swords

20. The Daemon Kindred

21. Sting in the Tale

22. A Devilish Betrayal

23. Greed

24. Lightning

25. The Darkness

26. A New Arrival

27. Doubts and Decisions

28. Dark Tidings

29. Shatterstone

30. The Proclamation

31. The Golden Touch

32. Brimstone and Fire

33. Thornwood

34. The Bookseller

35. Gone Fishing

36. The First of War

37. Fe-fi

38. Fo Fum

39. Fist, Rock and Water

40. Reunited

41. From Another Realm

42. The Great Plains

43. Mud

44. Vengeance

45. Pigtails

46. The Dark Army

47. Return to Sylvaris

48. E’Jaaz Keeper

49. Marsila the Fierce

50. Harsh Realities

51. Triad

52. Battle for Sylvaris

53. Return of the Hunter

54. Panic

55. Burial at Sea

56. A Fallen General

57. The Emperor’s Gift

58. Friends

59. The Beginning of the End

After several incident-filled years of travelling the world, Marcus Alexander decided to pack in all serious attempts at reaching maturity, and instead embraced the much more suitable world of parchment scribbling for a living.

Marcus has a fondness for causing mischief, knows how to run really, really fast when he’s in trouble and knows how to duck out of sight when someone points the long, bony finger of blame.

Find out more about him and Charlie’s adventures at

www.keeperoftherealms.com

Books by Marcus Alexander

The
Keeper of the Realms
series:

CROW’S REVENGE

THE DARK ARMY

For the awesome Moll who decided to fly,
for A & J and their heart-warming faith
in their bad-boy son,
for all my peeps and their constant support
(OMG, look-look! Tommy, Mac, Leafy & Dan-I,
your names are in a book!
With pages, a front cover and all. Whoop-whoop!)
… and of course for my gorgeous wife
(and her Puerto Rican va-va-vooOOooom x),
my love,
Your Boy
M

1

Rusty Manacles

Charlie Keeper was not happy. Not by any means.

It had been two days since the Stoman army had killed the Treman guards assigned to protect her. Two days since they’d separated her from her friends and two days since they’d left her in a rotten, rat-infested cell.

‘If you chumps don’t let me out of here this instant,’ she screamed, ‘I’m going to get really upset and, trust me, you don’t want to deal with me when I’m angry!’

To underline her determination Charlie kicked her heels against the wall. (She would have preferred to stamp her feet, but the spiteful guards had left her hanging two metres above the floor.) For the hundredth time she screwed her eyes shut and tried to focus her Will, but nothing happened. Since she’d crossed the divide from Earth to the realm of Bellania, life had been nothing more than one hard lesson after another. Now with her magical ability refusing to materialize, it appeared she was undergoing yet another painful and inconvenient lesson.

‘Why don’t things ever work like they’re supposed to?’ she muttered irritably to herself.

It felt like a lifetime ago that she had been living in
London, but in reality it had only been several weeks. And in those short turbulent weeks she had discovered that her house was a Gateway between realms, that her parents had passed on a secret to her that people were more than willing to kill for, and that her family name was more than just a name; it was a title. With that title came a genetic talent known as the Will and the Way that granted her the power to open portals to travel through and to increase her own strength to the point where she could hold her own against foes who were bigger, badder and more vicious than her.

But the Will and the Way had not been an easy thing to study. It had taken long days of gruelling practice before Charlie had been able to wield the writhing golden energy that burst from her hands … But now, when she needed it most, it refused to appear.

Dull weariness and a constant, throbbing headache pounded at the inside of her head, making it impossible to summon the concentration that her Will required. The fatigue from opening a Portal to the University of Dust in Alavis, the beating she’d suffered at the hands of the Stoman soldiers and having to endure hanging by her wrists for so long had all taken their toll upon her body. All she could muster were little bursts of yellow light that frittered and fizzed from her fingertips. And without the power of her Will to tear the manacles from her wrists or open a Portal back to Sylvaris she knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

She felt drained and useless.

Why had she been left for so long and what had happened to her friends Jenson, Kelko and Nibbler? Why hadn’t
anyone come to see her or even interrogate her? And why did prison cells always have to have creepy-crawlies and mouldy straw strewn across the floor?

‘I hate stereotypes,’ she grumbled.

Muttering to herself she began to grind her heels against the rotten brickwork so that mortar and small shards of plaster crumbled to the floor. The rats scurrying beneath her feet squeaked as they dodged the downfall.