The Flames of Time (Flames of Time Series Book 1)
Read The Flames of Time (Flames of Time Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Peter Knyte
Tags: #Vintage Action Adventure
CHAPTER 2 – CATHEDRAL OF STARS
CHAPTER 17 – DREAMS AND VISIONS
CHAPTER 20 – ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
CHAPTER 21 – COMPLETING THE CIRCLE
About the Author
Peter Knyte was born and grew up in North Staffordshire, England, but now lives in West Yorkshire, where by day he passes himself off as a mild-mannered office worker, while by night he explores whole worlds of imagination as an intrepid writer.
When not tapping away at his computer he spends his time slowly transforming his garden into a Japanese style tea garden, rock climbing, snowboarding and cooking.
The Flames of Time is his first novel.
For more information about Peter and the worlds that he is exploring please visit:
Forthcoming titles by Peter Knyte
The Embers of Time
The Ashes of Time
Through Glass Darkly
The Flames of Time
Peter Knyte
Copyright © 2015 Peter Knyte.
Peter Knyte asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
First paperback edition printed 2015 in the United States and United Kingdom
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9930874-0-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9930874-1-7
No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval
system without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Clandestine Books Limited
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Cover art by Mina Morcos
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The Flames of Time
Clandestine Books Limited
Peter Kynte
DEDICATION
For Richard Bach, J.R.R Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Henry Rider-Haggard, Doris Lessing, Kenneth Grahame, Robert Pirsig, and countless others for changing the way I think.
CONTENTS
Map 1 – Africa, Southern Europe, Mediterranean and near-east
Map 2 – Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt and Turkey
Map 3 – Greece, Crete and Mediterranean islands
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks to everyone who has over the years patiently listened to me ramble on about the creation of this novel, and then somehow still managed to find words of encouragement and enthusiasm.
Also special thanks to Jon and Tasha Williamson, Lisa Bath, Philip Hall, Claire Thompson, Jeanette Clewes, Timothy Payne and Katie Flanders for providing the invaluable feedback and proofreading of this title, which has enabled me to improve it in countless ways.
I hope I can return the favour sometime.
Map 1
East Africa, Southern Europe, Mediterranean and Near East.
Map 2
Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, Red Sea and Turkey
Map 3
Greece, Crete and Mediterranean islands
PREFACE
I have known the man for over sixty years, and I have known his plans for almost all that time. Yet have I waited, yet have I hoped that he was lost or changed or intent upon some other purpose, and yet has some part of me known he was not.
During all that time he has been, and still is my friend. Perhaps it is because of this that I have nurtured the hopes and prayers that his insights and ideas were delusions, an eccentric blemish on an otherwise flawless character.
But now I finally know that those hopes were in fact my own delusion, my own eccentric blemish, for he has left my home not one hour ago looking barely ten years older than when I first met him in 1934.
I almost dared think I had been correct as he arrived. He stepped so slowly out of the car. The falling snow and his careful step deceiving me further, as he picked his way through the ice and slush toward my open door. But as he stepped into the light, plumes of hot breath appearing from that generous smile, I could no longer mistake the steady gaze, the powerful posture and the impossibly young face that I had last seen fifty years previously.
I realised in that moment the extent of my self-deception. That his ideas and the force of will required to manifest them were never just eccentricities, but very real, very terrible goals. Goals that he would not only achieve for his own personal benefit, but also for what he perceived to be the benefit of humanity. The first incredible step toward which was the attainment of his own physical immortality.
If necessary he would plunge the world into an abyss of chaos, that we may claw our way out and in the process be reborn transcendent, irrespective of the suffering and anguish that must surely be endured along the way.
Knowing all this, I still shook the hand that he extended, still led him to my fireside and offered him my hospitality. Still listened to his compliments upon my home and my person.
Knowing all this, I still assured him I was with him, as he told me that the time was now at hand, and that within a few short years he would initiate his plans.
Why I didn’t speak out against him, try once again to dissuade or divert him from his course I cannot say.
That I must oppose him I have no doubt. Though it take more will and more life than I have left I must stop him.
I must expose his plans to the world, and in so doing expose them to the full light of day in order to unleash the horror, shock and refusal that must follow.
But to expose his plans I must expose the man, my friend. I must cause him to be known, to be hunted and finally to be destroyed.
I may already be too late.
May God forgive me for waiting so long.
Suffolk 2001
CHAPTER 1 – AFRICA
His name is Robert Marlow and we first met while I was travelling through Africa in 1934.
I was twenty-two years old in body, but I fancy, considerably more so in spirit, and although I’m told I was always a serious, or ‘adult’ child, my maturity had become all the more pronounced with the death of my father eighteen months previous.
My father was the only family I’d ever really known, my mother dying while I was still very young, and the Great War removing the only other faint traces of a family tree. So I grew up with him on the outskirts of a remote village in Shropshire, a day-pupil at the local boarding school, forever leaving my friends and travelling through the evening twilight back to the empty family home and my often distant, reclusive and resented parent.
I felt like I’d barely escaped for my university studies when he eventually died. And while I’d known his health was failing, I was still completely unprepared. With no idea what I should do with my life, and enough money not to have to think about it for a while.
The house I’d spent my whole life hating seemed bigger and emptier without my father, but I rattled around inside it for months, just going through the motions, until one day I stopped. It was as though I had no idea where I was. The house, so familiar to me, simply made no sense anymore. I knew what everything was, but didn’t understand what it was doing there or what it was for, and then gradually, I came to realise it was my own self that I didn’t understand, it was me that had no purpose or use.