Heart of the Staff: Complete Series

Carol Marrs Phipps & Tom Phipps

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Chapter 1

“Happy birthday!” cried Wizard Razzmorten with a grand whirl of his cape, leaving a round wooden box with a gawking baby parrot sitting on the board by the cake.

 
“What is that thing, Father?”

 
“Why a popinjay, dear. They're almost impossible to come by…”

 
“It's all pinfeathers. You surely don't intend for it to actually be my gift, do you?”

 
“Well it's right young, Leeuh,” he said. “When you start with them at that age, they can actually be talking to you before they're quite a year old.”

 
“Not if I drown it first…”

 
“Lee-Lee!” cried her sister. “You don't mean that! What an awful way to treat your Father…”

 
“Oh go on! He surely knows better. Here I am, still waiting for you to serve me, and he runs up and plops down this dirty box full of muslin, fowl and green poop, right where I was expecting my cake. And by the way, dearest Minuet, just how long are you going to stand there with my saucer in your hand? It is my birthday, don't you know. And since that thing in the box is my birthday gift, I certainly get to drown it.”

 
“Don't you dare!” said Minuet. “I'll take it if you don't want it…”

 
“Please!” said Razzmorten, throwing up his hands. “Let's you and I take the morning tomorrow and find you something special in the market, or if you know of something better just…”

 
Ugleeuh wasn't listening. “You can have the stinking popinjay, Minuet, if you give me my cake before it slides off the saucer.”

 
“You mean it?”

 
“Sure sister dear. The cake now, and it's yours, but you'll still owe me.”

 
“So how would that be, Leeuh?” said Razzmorten as he slowly sat on the bench beside her.

 
“What?” she said, suddenly peering sweetly at him.

 
“The market, dear. What do you say?”A lost look passed across her face as she hooked her raven black hair behind an ear.

 
“We spend the morning tomorrow and find you something.”

 
She tapped at a tooth with her finger. “Maybe,” she said, “so long as it's not something else stupid.”

 
“Now,” he said with a nod of resolution, “shall we finally have this wonderful cake that Minuet baked for your birthday supper?”

 
At that moment there came a knock at the open dining room door. “I regret the intrusion, sir,” said the hired man, “but there's a Captain Strong here from Castle Niarg with something urgent. Shall I…?”

 
“By all means,” said Razzmorten, yanking his napkin from his collar as he got to his feet. By the time he had turned about, the captain was in the room.

 
“Good evening, Karlton. So what's up at the castle?”

 
“A matter, sir, that needs to be discussed in private, I'm afraid.”

 
Alarmed by the captain's haunted look, Razzmorten quickly showed him to a sitting room at the far end of the hall, leaving Minuet and Ugleeuh to eat their cake.

Heart of the Staff: Complete Series Description:

Book 1
Minuet Dewin, eldest daughter of the wizard Razzmorten, practically raised her half sister Leeuh. For many years, Minuet is Leeuh’s passionate champion. As time passes, Leeuh grows awful and impossible to defend. Whilst undoing her dangerous pranks, Minuet finds herself the target of her hatred and jealousy. And when they fall for the same prince, it looks like war.

Suddenly Leeuh vanishes. She returns years later, compliant and sweet as she always should have been. Should Minuet trust her, or will it be the very death of her?

 

Book 2

 

Frantic to find out if she really is the daughter of an evil sorceress, Rose makes a rash departure on a quest to the Chokewoods, a forest of horrors which no one in her kingdom dares enter.

Her brother Lukus blackmails her into traveling with him. Together they discover that trolls, Elves and cyclopses really do exist as do the perilous visions in the Valley of Illusions.

In the Chokewoods, they survive a horde of flesh eating devils, the fruit of the choke oak and a village of beasts who prepare to eat them. A hag crashes through the treetops and takes them away to a mad forest of her own where she turns them into thralls and taunts them with threats before they manage to escape and return home.

Book 3

 

A great evil awakens to shatter Niarg’s peaceful world.

In her remote island keep off the shores of Head, the fearsome sorceress Demonica at last learns that her granddaughter Spitemorta has come by the long lost Staff of Power.

She leaves immediately for Goll and offers to teach Spitemorta how to develop her considerable powers. Spitemorta accepts at once, thereby uniting the two most dangerous sorceresses of the age, determined to conquer the world. When they find the Stone Heart, making the Staff the most powerful tool of all time, it seems that nothing can stop them from crushing Niarg and conquering the entire world. King Hebraun of Niarg is dead and not a single Elf is left alive in the Jutwoods.

Book 4

Spitemorta’s husband, King James, tries to ride out of Castle Goll with her Great Staff of Power, but is tortured by Demonica and her and locked away to die in the the dungeon. He escapes across the Great Barrier Mountains, just as Spitemorta and Demonica destroy Castle Niarg, sending Queen Minuet and Wizard Razzmorten and the people of Niarg fleeing to the Pitmaster’s Kettles.
Book 5
Niarg has fallen. The dragons have fled from their caves. Confident that Queen Minuet and Wizard Razzmorten are dead, and that the trolls have eaten every last Elf, Spitemorta brings down the last hamlets of the Northern Continent as she prepares to conquer the rest of the world.

But Queen Minuet and Wizard Razzmorten do live and are hiding in the crater of Mount Bedd with the Fairy guardians of the Forest Primeval, where they wait for what remains of their army before fleeing to the Black Desert to live beneath its burning sands with the dragons and all of the Elves who escaped Demonica’s great troll raid, down their hidden river.

Book 6

With the murder of her husband, King Artamus of Gwael, Queen Spitemorta at last rules the world. She declares herself Omnipotent Empress and moves into her monstrous new castle in Niarg. And with her tools of power, the Great Staff and Crystal Heart, she believes she is invincible.

But then come tidings that four Elves have appeared in Niarg. These Elves should have been killed and eaten by her trolls, twenty years ago. And with these Elves returns the threat that the ancient Elven Prophecy predicting her downfall and death could still come to pass.

And somewhere far away, Ariel and Daniel, the very twins foretold in the Prophecy have become more powerful than any sorceress or wizard ever known. Together they could be invincible.

But can they destroy Spitemorta and her tools of power? The time has come and one thing is certain. Either the twins and the rebellion will meet their doom, or Spitemorta and her minions will.

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