The Lone and Level Sands

by Nyki Blatchley

The ancient ruins in the desert hide more than just scientific interest—evil lurks there from the dawn of history.


Archaeology students Zadith and Musu thought it would give them valuable experience to spend their summer break on an important dig in the desert with their professor. They didn't expect to be menaced by the local military, a rival expedition with unorthodox methods, or an ancient evil from the dawn of history. But this is no ordinary site. An outpost of the city of Kebash, lost for ten thousand years, it holds terrors worse than death for Zadith and Musu.
Set two hundred years after The Treason of Memory, The Lone and Level Sands is a thrilling fantasy tale of adventure and the supernatural.

ebook

First published December 18, 2014

About the author

I'm Nyki Blatchley, fantasy author and poet. I've been writing since I was four - my first "books" were stories about a horse called Stephen Trotter. During childhood, I shared with my brother an invented world inhabited by animals - the chief country was Catland. In my teens, I began haphazardly creating a world that eventually came to be the backdrop for most of my stories, and an immortal character called the Traveller who wanders through it.

I also wrote large amounts of poetry - quite a bit has been published here and there, and I've also performed it with my own musical backing in many venues in London and elsewhere. During the 90s, my spiritual home was the legendary Bunjies Coffee House in London, once a haunt of the likes of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Since the late 90s, I've concentrated more on fiction, writing numerous short stories and novels. Many have been about the Traveller, or else about other characters in his world, and so far about two dozen stories have been published in a variety of magazines, webzines and anthologies. My novel At An Uncertain Hour has been accepted by StoneGarden, and will be published on 15th April 2009. I'm now nearing the end of my trilogy The Winter Legend - which I started in 1969.

Among all this, I found time to graduate from the University of Keele in English and Greek Studies, and work in various jobs, from bookseller to artist's model, though much of my career has been in social care. I currently live just outside London. Interests include (in no particular order) reading, folk music, history (any period, but especially classical Greece and medieval Europe), Doctor Who, cricket (as a viewer only), rock music, historical re-enactment, astronomy, and acquiring general knowledge.