Introduction

Once upon a time, long, long ago--wait, we shouldn't begin that way, or you will think that this is a fairy story, and it's not. This is a true tale of heroic deeds, of great knights, beautiful and intelligent princesses, and powerful magic. So how shall we begin? Ah, yes...

In the kingdom of Fazul, during the reign of the good king Altos the Usurper, a son was born to Jory, the woodcutter who lived outside the village of Heiros. They named him Nathan, but by the time he was six years old, everyone called him Fox, even his father. He was called Fox because of his small size and quick movements. He was also called Fox because he liked mischief, and got in a lot of trouble as he was growing.

Fox's best friend was Birch, the blacksmith's son. Birch was not as intelligent as Fox, nor was he as quick, but he had a heart of gold and was the best friend a boy could have had. Birch was always ready to on another one of Fox's adventures, even when he got into trouble andhad to go to bed without any dinner. Oh, and what adventures Birch had with Fox!

When they were only eight, the boys got lost deep in the dark heart of the forest, where the grown-ups in the village said that wicked gnomes and fire-breathing serpents lived alongside giant spiders and evil goblins. But Fox had assured Birch that his father the woodcutter walked all through the forest looking for good trees to cut for firewood for the village. So on Birch's belt he strapped the dagger that his father had made for him, along with a heavy hammer from his father's forge. Into his satchel he placed a loaf of bread from his mother's kitchen, a rolled up blanket, and a small piece of flint to build a campfire. Birch was a very big eight year old!

Fox met Birch at the big willow tree under which they had built a fort of rotting logs and sticks which they had gathered from the forest floor. In Fox's pack, with his blanket, he had some apples he had managed to snitch from the kitchen of his house, and a wedge of cheese from the wheel which his father had gotten from William, the dairy farmer, for two bundles of wood. The apples were partly dry and a little wrinkly, since they had been in the cupboard since last fall, and it was just now early spring, but the boys ate them quickly, saving the cheese and bread for sandwiches later.

Fox also had stuck a small hatchet from his father's tool cabinet through his belt, and carried his little bow which his father had fashioned for him from a sturdy ash sapling. Fox made his own arrows from finger-thick twigs he gathered, and which weren't very straight, as the only tool he had to try to straighten them was one of his father's hatchets (he had been using one of his mother's kitchen knives, with fair success, until she had caught him using it). He fletched his arrows with whatever feather he could find lying in the forest. Despite the twistedness of the arrows and inconsistency in the fletchings, however, Fox was already a pretty good shot. Practicing his archery was one of his favorite things to do, and he had quite a bit of free time, since his father would leave their cottage to gather wood when the sun came up, and often wouldn't return until after dark, with a huge bundle of wood strapped to his back. Fox's mother would gather wild herbs and fruits, and work in their small garden, adn make clothes for them from fabric and furs for which his father traded wood. She was often nearly as busy as his father!

The air was still a little chilly under the trees, even on a sunny day like the one on which Fox and Birch began this adventure. Birch pulled his cloak a little tighter as the wind whistled between the dark trunks. They had been hiking since before noon, and it was starting to get dark. Neither of the boys was very worried, though. Birch had told his mother that he was spending the night at Fox's house, and Fox had told his mother that they were going camping. The boys had been camping together several times since the beginning of last summer, so their parents shouldn't worry about them.

"Fox," said Birch, "don't the trees seem strange here? I mean, all of the trees around the village have started growing leaves and flowers, but these are all dark and look dead."

"Yeah, it does seem a little strange," Fox replied, "but it's still early in the spring. Maybe these trees are just being sleepy-heads."

"I guess you're right. They just seem unhappy to me," said Birch.

Fox started to tease Birch, to tell him that trees couldn't bee unhappy because they were just plants, as his father had told him when he had asked if it hurt the trees for him to cut firewood. But sometimes Birch could feel what other people were feeling, and maybe he could do the same thing for trees. Besides, Fox had never been in this part of the forest before, and it did feel a little creepy to him, as well.

"It'll be alright," said Fox, to make himself less nervous as well as his friend. "My father hikes all through these woods, and he's never seen anything scarier than a deer."

So the two boys continued their adventure. About an hour later it was almost dark, so they decided to find a nice comfortable place to lie down and eat their supper so they could get some sleep. Just as they found a nice level place under a spreading cedar tree from which all of the needles had fallen to form a soft, fragrant bed, Fox noticed what appeared to be an opening of some sort in the trees toward which they had been marching. Being a naturally curious creature--that is, a young boy--Fox dropped his pack and began to walk toward the clearing. Birch followed close behind.

As Fox got close to the clearing, he could see that it was obviously not made by nature. At first, he began to see large rocks lying around between the trees. Then, he noticd that the rocks seemed to have been arranged into patterns--squares, rectangles, and circles. A closer look at the rocks revealed to his sharp eyes gouges that seemed to have been made by tools of some sort.

Both boys stopped in awe as they reached the edge of the clearing. In the center of an overgrown lawn of some sort stood an old stone tower!

"Will you look at that?" said Fox in amazement, and growing excitement.

"Yeah, it's creepy," replied Birch. "No wonder the trees around it are sad. Something bad happened here, a long time ago, Fox. Maybe we should head back and find somewhere closer to home to sleep.

"Nah--you're just being a scaredy-cat!" teased Fox. "There's nothing here but mossy old rocks and mold. Let's take a look! I'll bet an evil wizard built it!"

"That's what I'm afraid of!" mumbled Birch. But when Fox started cautiously across the overgrown lawn, Birch followed right behind, with his dagger in one hand and his father's big heavy hammer in the other.

As they got closer to the tower, they could see that it had once had very large doors, but they were now gone. The opening where they had stood was big enough for two elephants to walk in side by side! "Fox!" hissed Birch. "It looks like a monster's big mouth ready to swallow us whole if we wake it up!"

"Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat!" teased Fox. But his voice was trembling a little. Even though he was a very brave boy, he was only eight years old, and the doorway did look a little bit like a giant's mouth, especially with the arrow-slits above it on either side looking like scary eyes!

Birch didn't pay any attention to Fox's teasing. He was too busy noticing more unusual things about the tower. For example, the bushes and weeds around them in the yard were swaying slightly back and forth, as if the wind were blowing them, but the air was still. Also, Birch noticed that the air was starting to smell funny, kind of like the coal that his father had bought from a traveling peddler one time, and then had had to use to heat the house because he said it had too much sulfur for the forge. The whole house had smelled like rotten eggs all winter that year!

But Birch didn't say anything to Fox about the moving bushes or the smell, because he knew his friend well enough to know that the would be rewarded for his observations by more teasing, and they would still go into the tower. So he kept quiet and looked harder for danger as he followed Fox. But maybe his warnings had gotten the other boy's attention, for when Birch glanced back at him, he noticed that he had taken an arrow out of his quiver and had fitted it to his bowstring as they walked.

Soon the two boys reached the yawning mouth of a doorway. They could see six large stone steps that went out from that doorway, which had previously been obscured by the tall weeds around the base of the tower, and cautiously climbed them. As soon as they reached the top, they peered into the opening, but at first they couldn't see anything--it was too dark inside. So they crossed the wide porch at the top of the stairs and leaned into the opening, looking and listening as best they could.

Soon Fox's sharp eyes spotted a torch in a holder on the wall next to the door. Birch slid slowly around the corner of the wall and grabbed it, since it was too high for Fox to reach. When he had brought the torch out onto the porch, Fox made some sparks and lit the torch by hitting the back of his hatchet with the small piece of flint rock he always carried in a pouch tied to his belt, with other small odds and ends a boy finds necessary. Turning back towards the doorway the boys could now see that the bottom level of the tower was one large empty room, with stairs spiraling up through the middle of the tower, and down into a dark hole in the ground!