I had to cover my mouth with my white silk glove that covered my scars and my missing finger, to stop from snorting when I saw Bitsy, Misty's little Rockhopper standing on its long hind legs grasping her chestnut brown locks as the cute little rodent chittered a reprimand at the girls, my hand leaving wispy afterimages from the magiks of the people that leaked from me at all times.
Ranelle's grin turned mischievous again and she silently slipped her dagger out and flipped it so the blade wouldn't strike first and flicked it toward my wife.
The three girls exploded into swift graceful motion as my red-headed warrior caught the blade without looking as she rolled to her feet, her sword drawn toward the enemy, just as my girls spun toward us in the water, Misty's blade, Anadelea, a mirror of my Anadele, drawn.
I had to blink at Shan, who had what appeared to be Celeste's short parrying blade, looking almost like a long-sword in her small hands as she plucked Bitsy off of Misty's shoulder to pocket her and give her older sister room to fight.
Celeste looked up toward us and then rolled her eyes when she saw us above them on the hill and lowered her blade. She flung the dagger back and Ranelle deftly caught it as the girls excitedly sheathed their blades. My wife chastising, “Shan, how did you get my blade? What did I tell you about procuring other people's belongings?”
I could see the blush on her cheeks, even on her ebony skin, a contrast to her sister's pale ivory complexion. “Umm... don't get caught?”
“No, the other thing.”
“Oh! Don't do it!”
Celeste touched her nose and then pointed at our daughter. I sighed, I would have to discipline her again, my wife, for being one of the most terrifying people on a field of battle, was a pushover with our daughters.
I cocked my head to regard the softie as the girls squealed and ran up to us to get hugs from their Mountain Gypsy grandmother who looked more like my older sister than a woman over fifty. Her magic slowed her aging as it is apt to do the more powerful you are.
The knight of my heart kept eye contact with me as she gathered her things, anticipating that we were needed for something since Rain was here. This woman who was so gentle with our children and loving toward me was a woman forged in battle, adept in warfare. Called the Harbinger of Wexbury by those who have shared a field of battle with her, and the Lightbringer by the Gypsies who watched her magic ignite in her for the first time. I thought it amazing that she was these two diametrically opposed people in one body, and she was mine.
“What is it, Laney?”
I shrugged, feeling bashful as I rasped out, “Nothing, I was just thinking about how lucky I am to have you. I...”
The girls started making gagging sounds as Rain chuckled. “You two can give cavities at fifty yards. How is it you are still in your sweet honeymoon phase?”
Shan said, “We should go to the wagon before they start kissing again.” She mimed kissing the air.
Misty looked about to join in the teasing, but then her large brown eyes widened, making her look almost innocent as she made a realization, blurting, “Is Ingr h...”
“Yes... at the wagon.”
With that, my girl was gone without a goodbye, dashing up the path making excited sounds, Shanicia hot on her trail, but not before handing Celeste's parrying blade back to her.
We turned to Ranelle, who was looking at the girls wistfully. “They grow up too fast. Shanny has to have grown four hands since you first fostered her. And Misty? I think she'll wind up almost as tall as you Celeste. She's already taller than our Great Mother Laney here.”
My wife, tongue in cheek, perpetuated the running joke about my diminutive height. “Just a little.”
Then before I could kick her butt with a cross-kick behind my back, she asked point-blank, “What fresh hell do you bring on your heels for us this time, woman?”
With that, Rain tilted her head back again for another hearty laugh.
Celeste winced. “That bad huh?”
“Come up to the wagon, we must talk.”
Mother Luna, I was screwed, wasn't I?
Chapter 1 – Templar Hall
The news that the former Great Mother brought us, was to our surprise, not doom and gloom as we had expected, rather it was quite exciting instead. That's how we ended up in Templar Hall three days later; I refuse to call it Templarville.
We could have traveled the distance in just a couple hours in the Outrider, but when I go to Father Stone, I insist on traveling on horseback. So I always decline when Sir Bexington offers to fly us in his airship, the fastest and most agile courier dirigible in the Sparo fleet.
The transformation of the area since the excavation of the city from the Before Times never ceases to amaze me. Back when I was scavenging metals and technology from the Before to pay for mother's medicines, I had discovered this buried settlement originally thought to be a village called Gus Davis Ford. It was discovered later that it was called Cedar Ridge and was a sprawling metropolis the size of Highland or Solomon keeps, or bigger.
What had started as a small excavation, in what the people of Wexbury Keep had nicknamed, the Dig, was now over a square mile of pre-Impact structures and technology unearthed and a constantly growing, huge village expanding from Templar Hall, one of my family's main residences.
Since I was tricked into becoming the Great Mother of Sparo, I'm expected to have a residence in Highland being half Altii, and as the other half of my heritage was Mountain Gypsy, and I represented that half of the new blending of cultures, I also traveled the Whispering Walls in my wagon.
So we had three residences... well four if you count the fortress guarding the Gateway at the Ribbon of Life in the Westlands, where the rim of the impact crater that circles the habitable lands there had collapsed in ancient times, giving access to the paradise inside. One of the many titles I hold now is the Duchess of New Home there.
How had my life become so complex? I find myself longing for the simplicity of my life before all of the titles and responsibilities associated. Where I had but one home, in Cheap Quarter, tending our chickens. I had been at peace then, knowing my place, and not worrying that any decisions I made would affect anyone but me, mother, and my brother Jace.
Then again... I looked over at the woman who held my heart as she rode on her new paint mare, Spirit. I would never have known joy, or love, or met or married Celeste, or fostered two beautiful daughters. If my new positions were payment for the wonder of my family and the joys they bring me, then so be it, I would pay it a thousand times.
I patted Goliath's neck as we hit the outskirts of the swelling village at Templar Hall, where yet another ring of defensive walls was going up to contain the village as it grew. My Percheron stallion, black as midnight with a blaze of white on his muzzle was showing no signs of aging like Celeste's old stallion, Canter.
I have thought of that often, just as I have pondered the fact that Misty's little rockhopper, Bitsy, has lived multiple times the average eighteen months to two years of the species she had discovered in the uninhabitable lands.
Researching in the Cedar Ridge Library; I refuse to call it the Penny Library; and discussing it with scholars such as Celeste's father, Prime Techromancer Donovan, we think we know what is going on. Animals who are exposed to nature elementals like my mother and Misty tend to be healthier, lay bigger eggs, have sweeter milk, and gardens bloom bigger. The animals seem to live much longer lives.
I always assumed our chickens outlived the others because of the breed, which lay blue eggs. But now I know they lived two or three times longer than the other chickens in Wexbury because my mother lived in our little stone cottage.
Misty, being orders of magnitude more powerful than mom, likely is responsible for the longevity of the little rodent. But Goliath? He seems just as powerful and surefooted as the day I won him as spoils of battle. He is still the swiftest horse in all the realms.
Ranelle has a theory on that, and tha
t theory is... me. After I was scarred for life in the Battle of the Monolith, where I had to use myself as a conduit to channel so much magic and electricity, there are... cracks in me. I spill magic from those cracks, my scars, at all times, and even with great effort, I can't completely stem the white wispy magic that falls from me.
Rain believes that Goliath and those around me are constantly bathed in the mists of magic that pour out of me and she thinks that it is somehow soaking into my big beautiful boy and affecting him much the same as Misty's magic is affecting Bitsy. Whatever the reason, I thank whatever powers that be, because I saw the pain in Celeste's eyes a couple of months back when she had to put her old mount to pasture as a reward for a long life serving as her mount in battle. I don't know if I could bear to part with Goliath that way.
Celeste caught the melancholy look on me, and she looked about to ask what I was thinking of when a short and long blast from the war horns in Templar Keep sounded announcing my arrival in the area. I spat out in a hiss, “Mother Luna.” I hated this part.
I looked back at our little group. Shan and Misty's mustangs were tethered to the beautiful pentagonal gypsy wagon that Rain and Sylvia called home. The girls were inside but Eli wasn't with them, as he was a lookout for our band of the Lupei family now on the cusp of manhood like Jace. Rain and Syl rode in the driver's seat of the wagon. Then there were the six guards I could see.
How I hated the lack of privacy in our lives now. Two were from the Great Mother's Own to guard me, and two more who were assigned to Rain, as a former Great Mother she would always have the protection of the guard.
We all thought that ludicrous, as she was easily the most powerful magic-user in all the habitable lands and infinitely deadly with both her magic and blade. I even saw her take out three men who tried to ambush her during the war against Avalon, with her bare hands, in the blink of an eye. She had snapped one man's neck, crushed another's trachea, and the last one, I still don't know what she did, but she struck him three times in different parts of his body with her fingers and he just fell over... dead.
Then there were the two royal guards, accomplished knights who protected the two royal families. It was as if I couldn't go anywhere without an entourage, except into the garden of the Great Mother where nobody but a Great Mother and her family could tread.
I don't know how the magic worked at the cave entrance, but it somehow knew who was family and who was not. I first thought the guards were simply giving us privacy by waiting outside the cave, but I found it was simply that they could not pass, the illusion of solid rock was in truth, solid to them.
Glancing around the gathering crowds of people, I knew that another eight or ten guards hid or blended in out there somewhere. It was the same whenever King George and Queen Everly traveled.
I caught sight of the last person of our group for an instant in my peripheral vision and was proud I had actually glimpsed her as she sailed from rooftop to rooftop in the village, keeping the wagon in sight. My pseudo-sister, Sarafine, was assigned as Garda Personala to my daughters.
Sighing heavily, I resigned myself to it as it started while we moved toward the Hall. People bowing or taking a knee as we passed, calling out, “Highness,” or “Great Mother,” others who looked to be Outsiders or even Marauders looked around at the others then followed suit.
I no longer saw that as odd, since Cedar Ridge is one of only three “neutral territories” in all of Sparo. Anyone is free to seek knowledge in the Public Library of Cedar Ridge. Marauders were arrested on sight except if they are on a pilgrimage to Cedar Ridge or were within the borders of the lands set aside for it.
I believe that those who seek knowledge would hopefully spread that knowledge and eventually seek another way of life instead of pillaging, plundering, and killing.
And many Outsiders gravitate to Cedar Ridge, being people without a realm who travel through the world, seeking odd jobs here and there to feed their families and abiding by the rules of whatever realm they are in. They see Cedar Ridge as a Utopia, a respite from the governance of others, and I have made sure that any who wish, can find work in the massive excavations of the ancient city for a fair wage and food in their family's bellies.
The other two locations that are neutral ground are the Mountain Gypsy Meeting Spot at Father Stone, and a similar one being constructed in Highland that everyone has already taken to calling Mother Stone.
Though, as many a criminal has discovered, neutral doesn't mean sanctuary, as anyone who is wanted for a violent crime is handed over to the knights of whatever realm the offense was committed in to deal with as the laws dictate. There are only five people who are immune to the laws or governance of the habitable lands.
The three Templars, Celeste, Bex, and me, then Rain as a retired co-ruler and Great Mother... the fifth? Well, the fifth is a little fuzzy. Nobody can tell if he jests or not. George, when he bestowed the mantle of Templar upon us, also playfully bestowed Templar status on Misty as leader of her imaginary Junior Regiment of children.
Whenever pressed on the subject, the cagey ruler just grins like a loon and asks, “Is my word not law and beyond contestation?”
I always point out, “That isn't an answer, you surly old fart.”
And his Royal Smartass simply shrugs.
“Isn't it?” he asks before ignoring my attempts at clarification and a request for a simple yes or no. Needless to say, all of Sparo seems to treat my daughter as if it were true since she is a Sora of the Great Mother... essentially a princess.
I have to make sure that it doesn't go to her head at times. Shan, on the other hand, takes to being a Sora like a fish to water. Now if we could just break her propensity for pickpocketing. Her prior parents had trained her to be a thief since the day they purchased her, and it has been a chore to break her from all the bad habits they had instilled in her.
I took a deep breath and sat tall in the saddle, I would not bring disgrace to Sparo. I released the hold I had on my magics, and the slight misting I couldn't stop became a billowing white mist pouring from me, causing a blurring effect, leaving ghostly afterimages that I could hide in until we reached the Hall.
Celeste snorted and shot me a cheesy looking grin. She knew what I was trying to do. “Own it, Laney. There is no shame in holding a position you have earned.”
As a ruler, I did as any self-respecting royal would do and I stuck my tongue out at my wife.
She chuckled suggestively, “Oh no, a royal tongue lashing.”
Ok, now I was sure my cheeks were bright red.
I rolled my eyes at the makeshift sign proclaiming the settlement “Templarville” at the protective palisade wall of the stockade, a hundred fifty yards inside the larger one being constructed to include the expanding village. I knew no matter how I complained or snuck out in the dark of night to remove it, it would just reappear. Not that I'd sneak out at night to do that, it is completely just unsubstantiated rumor.
Truthfully a little rebellious part of me smiled at it and the “Dig” signs that were put up around Cedar Ridge. I'm in awe of what my little secret salvage spot had become in just a few short years. In reality, the excavation of the most important find in our modern times, the Cedar Ridge Public Library, started the explosion of exponential growth. The sum total of all the knowledge of the Great Wizards of the Before in one place, free for all to read. With the exception of the tomes and scrolls with the secrets of the magics they possessed in the Before.
Those would have been tightly guarded secrets, and our scholars believe that they were stored in a place called the Library of Congress in a faraway land called the District of Columbia. Many techromancer scholars have been trying to determine just where this place is so they can mount an expedition in a long duration dirigible to seek it out.
Yet others are starting to wonder if the Wizards actually possessed magic at all, that they had possibly used technology in its stead. The more I learn, the more I am start
ing to believe that as well, as impossible as it may sound, I mean a world without magic in it? That couldn't be possible, could it? Water is wet, the sky is blue, Gypsies at the gate bring Carnival, and magic just “is”.
Looking around, I noted, not for the first time, that many people were wearing the bright colors of the Mountain Gypsies along with their Sparinian trousers and footwear. The blending of the two cultures of people was becoming more evident by the day.
I smiled back at the children chasing after our procession. There is no greater joy in this world of ours than children laughing. My smile grew when I saw Misty and Ingr hanging out the back of the wagon, passing out violet penny vouchers to the kids, making sure their families would have full bellies tonight.
To my chagrin, my propensity for handing out penny vouchers to families has earned me the nickname of the Penny Lady, which precipitated to everyone calling the Cedar Ridge Library the Penny Library. The one consolation was now that Misty was my Sora, and she and her Junior Regiment have taken to my habits, I have heard in whispers to her own embarrassment that the people are starting to call her the Penny Princess. Ahh, paybacks for all the mischief she gets into that sometimes causes my heart to skip.
I smiled as we saw the morning patrol from Wexbury Keep trotting through the village. It was led by the new commander of the Mobile Battalion whenever Celeste was escorting me on my diplomatic missions outside of the realm, Sir Tennison, a huge man, Techno Knight, and the best swordsman in Wexbury, not to mention a personal family friend.
Riding behind him and to his left... my heart swelled in pride, was my little brother. Looking so very much a knight in his squire armor. How is it possible that he is nineteen now? The age of consent... a man on the cusp of knighthood, just a few weeks away. I will weep in joy for him the following week when he and Elise Baker are wed. Where does the time go? It was just yesterday he was a scrawny little boy helping me tend the chickens, making me proud to be his sister.
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