Jake, in his seventeenth year of Mindsword training, suffers the death of his father, signaling the onset of pavor nocturnus, horrific night terrors. Night after night, crazy scenes of a nine-foot tall cat and man-sized rats wreck his sleep. Sometimes he gets lucky and dreams of the dark-haired girl. His friends, determined to cheer him up, plan a hike in the woods.
Deep in the forest, the friends discover a dark and ancient path leading to a clearing and a long forgotten well. One discovers part of the well house floating below and drops a rope to pull out the rotten boards. Something grabs the rope and yanks them all under the putrid black water.
The hikers accidentally flush themselves through time and space to a world dominated by the genus rattus; rodents, tall as a man, that walk upright, and breed humans for food and slave labor.
Sluiced to the world of Jake's nightmares, the travelers survive deadly attacks, encounter horse-sized talking canines, and finally meet the dreaded Harvile rat-men horde in battle. The culmination of this moral and physical crusade is Jake’s single-handed duel against the deadly Ix, a nine-foot tall, twelve hundred pound feline predator.
Blade and Arrow is an exciting adventure; an entertaining tale of friendship,
honesty, and loyalty, conjuring up elements of Stephen King's "Stand By Me,"
C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, and J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter.”
