Free The Stair Of Time (Book 2) by William Woodward Page B

travel to the ruins of a church located in a secluded part of Markane Forest, due south of Rogar Keep.
    In these ruins, beneath the dais, you will find a secret door with steps leading down to my crypt.  Between two sarcophagi, behind a loose stone in the wall, there is a registry, its pages containing the births and deaths of those living in that region from the year of the panther, 836, over a thousand years ago, to the year of the owl, 1653, at which time the church closed its doors for the last time, its dwindling congregation dying off and moving away.
    The book was hidden to protect the line of Arden, to keep those of a n overzealous nature from tracking down and destroying all related to me.  Go there, and you will see that I speak the truth.  Go there, and be not afraid, for I am ever with you, and you are precious to me.
     
    ***
     
    Tyler broke out in a cold sweat as he walked around to the front of the church, heart beating hard enough to make him feel lightheaded.  He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been more afraid.  Or, for that matter, had more right to be.  There could be anything in there, from a litter of kittens to a trio of macradons.  Indeed, if his dreams were to be believed, The Lost One himself waited inside. 
    Trying to banish such troubling thoughts, Tyler pulled a torch from his pack, its end wrapped with strips of linen that he’d soaked in the rendered fat of his neighbor’s goat. It was almost dark now, too dark to be traipsing heedlessly into ruins such as these, the collapsing walls of which, if his dreams were to be believed, sheltered the seed of all evil.
    After glancing around to make sure that he was in fact alone, Tyler struck flint to steel and brought the torch blazing to life.  If anyone had been there to see, they would have beheld a pale, freckle-faced boy with a head of unruly red hair peering into the depths of the ruins like a mouse into a cat’s maw.
    The church’s main opening once held two heavy verawood doors, the width of each girded by ornately worked fleurs-de-lis strap-hinges, leaves and vines winding their way around large domed rivets, a meticulous scrollwork harkening back to a more genteel era.  Not surprisingly, within weeks of the church’s dissolution, said doors were looted, soon followed by its statuary and pews.  Time took care of the rest, reducing what had once been a place of particular regard, a place of dignity and quiet worship, to the dilapidated hovel that slouched before him now. 
    Taking a deep breath, he raised the torch before him like a sword and stepped into the ruins, trying to ignore the menacing way in which the wind whistled through the windows.  If his nightmares turned out to be real, he’d find a lever hidden beneath a tile in the floor beside the base of the podium.  He prayed it wasn’t there.  Then he could go home and forget the whole business, go back to worrying about everyday things like school and chores, go back to being an ungainly youth on the brink of manhood.
    He saw that his hand was shaking as he placed the blade of his knife beneath one edge of the tile and the podium.  It was disheartening how easily it pried up.  At first he didn’t look.  Couldn’t look.  Then, brow glistening in the flickering firelight, his curiosity compelled him to do what his good sense would not.
    He stifled a gasp , for there, as plain as the narrow nose on his narrow face, stood a lever.  It was exactly as The Lost One had described, down to the last detail.  I need to get out of here, he thought.  Go back home and forget this ever happened.
    O f course, this is not what he did.  After moving the lever from north to south, he just sat there, quiet and still, waiting.  At first there was no change.  One minute passed.  Two.  Just long enough to give him hope.  And then, from somewhere deep below, there issued a low groaning—the din of ancient machinery reluctantly coming back to life.  Tyler pictured