by Peter Plasse
They all had a good laugh. “Sorry, Your Highness,” said Gracie. “I didn’t mean that.”
Erik smiled. “You’ll have to remember that when you appear before the high court,” then, “Only kidding.”
They all smiled again. Once their eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the inside of the house, they could see that, while spartan, it had a neatness about it that spoke to the pride of the two who had been staying there.
“Come,” said Daria, “We have much to talk about.”
“Ya think?” commented Ryan. Gracie smiled.
“First things first,” said Ryan. “I’m going to go cover the horse’s hoof prints in the back yard. Excuse me.”
He went out back to the woods where the horses were waiting, grazing on odd bits and pieces of ground cover. “Hey, guys,” he said softly. “We won’t forget you. We’ll try and get you some hay and some decent grain as soon as we can.” They paid him no mind, but continued to graze.
He selected a stout branch and swept clean any trace of their approach to the back of the house with one hand, while in the other he carried the food bags with the remains of the dried venison, trout, and ground tubers, and the backpacks containing the maps.
“Orie would be proud of you,” said Gracie. “You’ve turned into a regular woods guy.”
Turning to face Daria and Erik, he handed her off the bags, saying, “Here is all we have in the way of food. I wish it could be more.”
“I thought I smelled food,” said Erik. “This is our lucky day.”
Daria extracted a large piece of venison and said, “Thank you,” to both of them. Ryan nodded. Gracie said, “You’re welcome. Pardon him. He has no manners. Poor parenting.”
She handed one of the bags to Erik, who tore into it. “Careful,” said Grace. “If you haven’t eaten in a while, you’ll get sick.”
“I see you have learned something on this great adventure,” said Ryan.
Gracie grunted, the expression on her face telling everyone present precisely what she thought of this great adventure.
“Well, all right,” said Ryan. “I don’t know where to start. It’s too bizarre to believe. Let me put it this way. We are not from here. From this world, I mean. We are from a place called Earth … ”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Erik. “Are you Stephanie’s brother?”
“You know Stephanie?” cried Gracie.
“Yes,” said Erik. “I do. Or … I did.” He lowered his eyes and had a staring contest with the floor until Gracie said, “What do you mean, you did?”
“Well,” said Erik. “I first met her on your world. I was somehow transported there months ago by a wizard, or someone claiming to be a wizard … ”
“Hemlock Simpleton,” interrupted Ryan. “This is incredible … ”
“Is she okay?” asked Gracie, unable to contain the anxiety that clutched at her throat, causing it to tighten alarmingly. She shot a look at Ryan, saying, “Ryan, let Erik tell us the entire story start to finish. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to make any sense out of this.”
“Sorry,” said Ryan. “Erik, please continue.”
He told them of his inexplicable visit to their world and how he had met Stephanie in the home of the Strong family, saying that the wizard, Pinus Porphyrius, a.k.a. Hemlock Simpleton, had told him that she was only being transported for a brief visit.
He went on to tell them that Pinus was well known on their world and how he had done amazing things for years, always in the interests of helping children fare better: building schools, health centers, places of refuge, those sorts of things. “In a world that has forever been at war,” he said, “to have someone looking out for the children was always viewed as a blessing straight from the Old One.”
He added that there was not a household in Ravenwild that would not give him sanctuary.
Continuing, he told them how he and Stephanie had been forced to run for their very lives as soon as they left the confines of the gardens, chased by a marauding band of Troll soldiers, how they had both been knocked unconscious during their capture, and their escape from the fortress in Ghasten.
“But it was terrible,” he said. “After her accident, she had totally forgotten who she was. She remembered me, but nothing before that. She had even taken a new name. Doreen.”
“Doreen is her middle name,” said Gracie.
Ryan shushed her and said, “Go on Erik.”
“Well,” he said, “We flew from the top of the cliffs up by the castle and soared for the longest time far out into the middle of the Slovan Plains. There were four of us: Stephanie, or Doreen as she is now called, Daria,” he gestured towards her, “the doctor who cared for her in the fortress in Ghasten, and me. We thought we had escaped, but we ran into a battalion of Trolls while we were in search of water and had to flee again. The doctor was killed, and we had become separated from Daria, so Stephanie and I took off and tried to make it to the Ravenwild border, but the horses gave out. We thought that they had died, but apparently they did not. I was captured. Daria rescued me, and we made it here. Daria, why don’t you take it from there.”
Daria wiped a tear from her eye, and said, “Stephanie, or Doreen as she now calls herself, was injured very badly when she and the Prince were captured. She required an operation on her head to keep her from dying. As the Prince says, when she did awaken, she could remember nothing beyond the point when she ended up here on Inam'Ra. The doctor,” she paused as she struggled to find her voice, “felt that this was a normal reaction to the injury that she had sustained, and that she would eventually regain her memory, but as the Prince says, we escaped before she had time to.”
“I’m afraid to tell you,” said Erik, “I don’t think she survived. She would have had to run for days without stopping across the remainder of the Slovan Plains in order to make it to the Ravenwild border, and nobody has ever outrun a Troll for anywhere near that distance. I’m sorry.”
Ryan and Gracie exchanged a meaningful look. He reached into his backpack and withdrew the maps. He selected one and spread it out on the table between them. “These are maps,” he said, “that another guy gave to us who told us that he was a wizard too. Minus Artery, or something like that.”
“Minos Arterios,” said Gracie.
“Right,” said Ryan. “Anyway, these dots, see, here, and here, and here, are the dots that represent the seven of us that were transported here. Mr. and Mrs. Strong here, these two are Me and Gracie, Stephanie, and this one we figure has to be Orie and Stephanie’s younger sister, Jacqueline. There should be two more: The one for Stephanie’s brother, Orie, and another one for this Troll that we met soon after we arrived. His name was Forrester Ragamund.”
“So you are not Stephanie’s brother?” asked Daria.
“No,” said Ryan. “I’m Orie’s best friend. And Gracie is Stephanie’s best friend. Anyway, this dot,” he pointed to the map, “has to be Stephanie. It fits with the story you just told us. You know, location-wise. Hey, look Grace, it looks like she has moved a lot further north than the last time we checked.”
They all stared at the map. Nobody spoke for a while as they tried to get a grip on the significance of all of this.
Erik broke the silence by asking, “Do you think that Orie and the Troll are dead?”
“Don’t say that!” cried Gracie sharply. “Don’t even think that!”
Ryan put his hand over Gracie’s. Her eyes were on fire.
“Not necessarily,” said Ryan, on the exhale of a deep breath. “We have seen one dot, Forrester Ragamund’s, disappear and reappear a couple of times, so maybe they’re okay. For now, anyway, we’re going to assume they are.” He shot Erik a nasty look.
“I’m sorry,” said the Prince. “I was careless with my words.”
“You’re right about that,” snapped Grace. “Please don’t let it happen again.”
“I won’t,” said the Prince.
There was another long silence.
&
nbsp; “More venison, anyone?” asked Ryan, then, “Anyone have any ideas?”
Doreen wrapped her buckskin cloak around her as tightly as she could with one hand as the vicious winter wind tried to rip it off of her. With the other she held on tightly to the cloak of Diana, who trudged steadily ahead. They were coming up on the border of the Northland, and it was as though the weather was being commanded to remind them of the mistake it was to be as close to it as they were.
“We must be getting close,” yelled Jared from the head of their struggling line. “I’m not sure we’re going to be able to get much closer.”
Despite the fact that she was only a few feet behind him, Doreen could barely hear him over the howling of the wind. Intense gusts began to rage at them, driving the snow wildly about and into their faces, rendering them temporarily blind every time one of the arctic blasts found its mark. At one point Jared was blown right off his feet and would have been blown right away from them had Diana not been holding on tightly to his cloak, which tore open, leaving them all sprawled out on their faces in a large drift.
“Well never make it,” Diana yelled, trying to right herself. “We need to find some shelter.”
Then, as violent as the storm was, in an instant it went deathly quiet.
There was not a sound except for that of the three bedraggled Humans struggling to pick themselves up and dust off the snow that stuck to them like wet marshmallow. They all stood up.
A woman’s voice, which seemed to come from all around them, broke the stillness. The tone of it seemed sweet, yet the words were uncompromising.
“Only the girl may come forward. The one who wears the stone. Follow her and the two of you will die before you have taken twenty steps.
“Go back the way you came and you will be spared. This will be your only warning.”
Nobody said a word as they all stood looking from one to the other.
Finally, Doreen spoke. “What do we do now?”
“That’s up to you, Doreen,” said Jared. “This part was not in any of my father’s books. I can’t advise you.”
Doreen looked at Diana, who shrugged and said, “Neither of us will blame you for a second if you turn around and come with us. You’d have to be … out of your mind to keep going. Come on, let’s go.” She reached out, took Doreen by the arm, and began to lead her away from this pathway to almost certain disaster. “Come now,” she said softly. “We need to be going. Jared, tell her we have to get moving while we all still have a chance to get out of this alive. We’re no good to anybody dead. Jared?”
Jared was staring deep into Doreen’s eyes, and she into his.
“No,” she said to him, gently disengaging from Diana’s grasp, her voice steady. “I have to go.
“Your father lived his entire life in danger for this day. For this moment. I’m going.”
Doreen turned and faced Diana.
“You are the warrior Princess of Ravenwild. And this man,” she nodded at Jared, “has discovered a weapon of unbelievable power. But it needs more work. Without you, he’ll never perfect it to the degree that it needs to be perfected in order that it might be used against those horrible Trolls that are trying to eliminate every race other than their own on this world. Any other race that would live in freedom.
“You need to go with him.
“He needs you. You need each other. You love each other. And you’re right; you’re no good to anybody dead. Go now … Go.”
Her tone of voice changed, becoming lighthearted. “Besides, it looks like the weather has let up a bit.”
Jared and Diana both smiled. Tired smiles to be sure, but their eyes shone brightly. They all exchanged hugs.
Doreen turned to continue on her way alone. Before she disappeared into a thick mist that seemed to have suddenly sprung up out of the ground, she turned her head back over her shoulder and called out, “Take care of each other.” They never heard her. The mist took care of that.
Jessica let out a sigh of disgust as she scraped the foul-smelling, steaming waste from the four remaining Gnomes, off of the shingle that Blake had whittled for her, and onto the pile that they had been using for the last few weeks. Despite their best efforts, the rest had died from simple exposure. They both suspected that Jebwickett had had something to do with it, but since they couldn’t prove anything, they had been forced to let him live. The others who had thus far survived were: Captain Pilrick, Oddwaddle, and Gall.
Blake came up behind her, dragging the body of Biliar, the last one to have died.
“And so there were four,” he said softly.
“Mmmm,” said Jessica. Something deep within her told her she should be sad, but she wasn’t in the least. She remembered how ugly he had been to her when they had been prisoners and now, frankly, couldn’t find it within herself to feel a shred of remorse at his passing. She was also sick and tired of taking care of all of them; hunting daily to provide them with food, tending to the shed to prevent the ever-developing air leaks, the endless gathering of wood to keep the fire going, cleaning up their waste. It was beginning to overwhelm her, and she was starting to get very angry about it all.
Blake covered the body with snow and they stood together, looking at his crude attempt at a gravesite. It was hard to know what to say. They each felt something should be said, but then again this was a Gnome that would have probably enjoyed seeing them boiled alive, so they remained there for a while with not a word spoken.
“Say something, and I’ll try to put aside these feelings of loathing.”
Blake said a few words while they both bowed their heads.
“How much longer do we have to stay here?” she asked. “I don’t think I can handle it anymore.”
“Nor I,” he agreed. “I have to keep thinking that, without these Gnomes, we have no chance of ever finding Stephanie. Now, I’ll admit that our chances with them are slim. They are. But slim is better than none. So we have to hang in there. For Stephanie, you know?”
“Mmmm,” was her only answer. They turned and started to walk back to the shed.
The wind blew, and the snow fell, and it was a thoroughly depressing day all around.
It was the end of their stay at Elsie’s. Well, for most of the adults anyway. It had been decided that Saviar Murlis’s wife, Kerlix, and three children, Miano, Fabindora, and Jori, would be staying behind while their father left with the important business of seeing to it that the shipbuilding project was proceeding on schedule. Rolan, under protest from Borok, had dispatched Duane and Wayne of the King’s Guard to recall the entire Ravenwild army from the eastern front, half of which would be used for an assault on the Troll troops occupying King’s Port, and half of which would be used to strong-arm the northern Vulturan clansmen into adopting the wisdom of joining with the Ravenwild forces for the fight against their, now, common enemy. For hours they had argued about the strategy, but in the end, Borok backed his King.
Turman Pandieth would be traveling to Queen’s Port, accompanied by Mandel Ott, Ettan Cooke, and Seth Queslian, as the personal guard for their Emperor by birthright, Singular Barb’rus Night. It was hoped that his presence there would help to convince those in the area that the revolution was not only real, it was winnable, because of the newly formed union with Ravenwild. He expected less resistance there, since the shoreline population did not have the history of border disputes with Vultura’s eastern neighbors. And what they did have in abundance was food to feed the soldiers, who would desperately need it to wage their joint campaign against the Trolls. Dried fish was not only easy to harvest and preserve by either salting or smoking, it was easy to pack and transport to those who would need it come spring, now less than a month away. Singular Night would order their compliance, and the citizenry would respond. From there, he and Turman Pandieth would then proceed straight away to the city of Stihl. There was no question but that the troops stationed there would need some persuading to throw in with the Ravenwild forces with whom they had warred for centuries
. And there was no doubt that a faction of them would fall on their own swords before they would join up with them, but Singular was prepared to do whatever he had to do in order to gain the allegiance of as many of them as he could for the insurrection that was coming as surely as the spring moons.
He would start by meeting directly with the local leadership, of course. Hopefully that would be enough, but he didn’t think so. Meanwhile, a show of overwhelming force by Ravenwild troops encircling their entire local militia was his backup plan. “How odd,” he would later remember thinking, “to have to use foreign armed forces to convince my fellow Gnomes to rise up with their own countrymen and throw off the shackles put upon us under my father’s rule.”
Queen Isabella and Borok Dodson would travel back to Ravenwild a day behind Wayne and Duane to organize the troop movements east. They only had a couple of weeks left to utilize the solitary winter moon in order that such a vast amount of soldiers might travel unnoticed to the eastern border of Vultura, the likelihood of which was probably next to nil, but if anyone could make this happen, it was Borok. This was his forte, and his physical presence was requisite if there was any chance of pulling this off.
“You talked to the girl,” she said.
“I did,” he answered, “which was … taxing.
“And getting the spirits to attend was not easy, either. You must know that they did not want to participate. It was a plea that took far too long.
“Dear friend, I slept for hours afterwards, recovering.”
Elsie smiled. “Well, it was good that you did it. She is the one, you know.”
“I wish I were as confident as you,” said Iqbal. “We both know that the prophecy mentions nothing about her entire family showing up. I remain unconvinced. Hopeful, but unconvinced. I am tired now. I need to check the wardings to make sure they are all in place. Then,” he yawned a great yawn, “I will sleep.”
