The Dark and Forbidding Land

by Wesley Allison

  THE DARK AND FORBIDDING LAND

  By Wesley Allison

  Smashwords Edition

  The Dark and Forbidding Land

  Copyright © 2010 by Wesley Allison

  Revision: 11-26-15

  All Rights Reserved. This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If sold, shared, or given away it is a violation of the copyright of this work. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual people, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Wesley Allison

  Cover Image Copyright © 201 Siegi232 | Dreamstime.com

  ISBN 978-1-4523-2011-3

  * * * * *

  For Ann, My Mother

  Senta and the Steel Dragon

  Book Two

  The Dark and Forbidding Land

  By Wesley Allison

  Chapter One: Winter

  The snow was falling from the sky in great clumpy bunches. They dropped like feathers through the still, cold air to form great piles on the ground. The snow had been coming down steadily for four hours. The huckleberry and azalea bushes were covered over with a thick blanket. The little walkway of stepping-stones that led to the road and the road itself were just memories, covered by billowy white. Spruces and maples dipped their bare branches forlornly and even the mighty redwoods struggled under the weight of the gathering snow. But the snow didn’t care. It continued on, relentlessly smothering the world. It completely surrounded the strange five-story home nestled in the Birmisian woods. Not too far away a tremendous roar echoed through the trees.

  “Monster,” said the steel dragon, peeking out the door from between Graham Dokkin’s legs.

  “Tyrannosaurus,” corrected Senta Bly. “I guess he doesn’t like the snow too much.”

  “Well who does?” wondered Graham, looking down at the dragon. “And get your head away from there. That’s all I need, to have my goolies bit.”

  “He hasn’t bitten anyone in almost a year,” countered Senta. “Has he Hero?”

  Hero Hertling didn’t answer. At the mention of goolies, she had covered her face with both hands, though one could still spot the spreading blush around its edges. She and her brother Hertzal, along with Graham, were spending the day at Senta’s house. They had been delivered just before the snow started by Graham’s Da to the five-story structure set well away from the rest of Port Dechantagne. Although Senta and her guardian, Zurfina the Magnificent, had been living here for almost a year, it had taken quite a while to convince Graham’s parents and Hero and Hertzal’s older sister to let them spend the day there. This was the first time that all three had visited together.

  “Why don’t you close the door?” said Hero from between her fingers. “Who knows what might run out of the forest and into here.”

  Her brother, who never said anything, nodded.

  “Alright then. Move over dragon.” Graham scooted the steel beastie with his boot while shutting the door.

  “Call him by his name,” said Senta.

  “Bessemer,” said the dragon, and then made his way to the far wall to curl up on a single large pillow next to the cast iron stove.

  Though more than eight feet from tip of whiskered snout to the barbed tip of his tail, Bessemer was not much taller at the shoulder than a medium sized dog. Scales the color of polished steel covered him from his nose all the way to the clawed tips of his fingers. Even his eyes were steel colored, so much so that it was difficult to see just where he was looking. So lithe and agile was he when he moved, it was rather like watching a river flow across the room.

  “Bessemer,” said Graham, still looking at the dragon. “It just doesn’t fit. I’d have gone with Whiskers or Peetie.”

  “Zurfina says that dragons are born knowing their own names,” said Senta. “It’s just another sign that they are so much smarter than people.”

  “Fina,” said the dragon.

  “When is Zurfina getting home,” wondered Hero, at last uncovering her face. “I can’t believe she left you all alone out here in the wilderness.”

  “This isn’t the wilderness. This is our house.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s not any farther away from the wall than your new house is.”

  “No, but there are other houses around ours.”

  Hero and Hertzal lived in a small but sturdy house that was part of a new neighborhood on the east side of the growing colony. Though their house had been the first one built in that area, there were now more than a dozen similar structures, all occupied by ethnic Zaeri, who had fled persecution in Freedonia.

  “Zurfina is very busy lately,” explained Senta. “With no wizards in the colony, she has to do all the magic stuff herself—at least until I get good enough to help out. Besides I’m used to taking care of myself.”

  “It’s on account of her being a orphan,” offered Graham.

  The three other children all stared mutely at him.

  “What?” he asked, having forgotten that of the four, he was the only one who was not an orphan.

  Graham, who although he had recently hit a growth spurt was still decidedly chunky, had brown hair, freckles, and very large teeth. He was dressed in a long-sleeved flannel shirt and dungarees rolled up around the leather boots that had once been his father’s. Graham always wore his dungarees rolled up at the ankles, as his mother was in the habit of buying them to fit him sometime in the distant future. Still the fact that all his clothes, save the boots, were new, spoke to the Dokkins family’s growing prosperity. Hero and Hertzal, who were twins, both with thick dark hair, though Hertzal kept his cut short around the ears, and beautiful dark eyes, wore neat and well-maintained, but obviously home-sewn clothes. Following the Freedonian Zaeri custom, which eschewed color, Hertzal wore a white shirt with brown trousers while his sister wore a brown dress with a white linen overdress.

  “Hungry,” said Bessemer from the corner.

  “Yes, it’s about time for tea,” agreed Senta.

  Senta stood out from the other three children like day stands out from night. Her straight, light blond hair seemed the exact opposite of Hero's thick, curly, raven waves. Senta's skin, which in the summer had taken on a bit of tan as she played around town, had gone back to its natural alabaster white. And though she was only an inch taller than the twins, she seemed far more so because she was very thin. Today she wore one more in a series of bizarre creations that Zurfina provided for her on a daily basis. Zurfina, her guardian and a powerful sorceress, was of the opinion that she and her ward should appear mysterious. To Senta's mind, the clothing that usually resulted from this idea was too often just plain weird. This particular outfit, a black dress made of luxurious Mirsannan silk, looked far too much like a dressing gown for her taste. It draped down to her ankles with no decoration or flourish while the long sleeves and neck exploded with black lace. Still, it had one great redeeming feature. It was warm.

  Graham and Hertzal sat down at the table, while Senta and Hero gathered fruit and cheese, butter and jam, scones that Graham’s mother had sent along, and a pot of tea.

  “Still, it is dangerous out here in the woods so far from the protective wall,” continued Hero, who seemed to relish having something of which to be frightened. “Honor said that four grown men were attacked by a large group of Deinonychus when they were cutting firewood.”

  “My Da says ‘this is Birmisia and you’ve just got to keep your wits about you’,” said Graham. “It won’t be long before we’re all living outside the wall and nobody will think anything about it. Besides this tower is ace.”

  Senta had already given her three friends the three-pfennig tour of her new home. It wasn’t really a tower
. It was just a small building, no larger in floor area than most homes, but rising to five stories. The ground floor was a kitchen, dining area, and storage rooms. The first floor up was the living room and Bessemer’s chamber. The second floor up was a bedroom and playroom for Senta. Above that was Zurfina’s bedroom and boudoir. The very top story was the sorceress’s private study, which had not been on the tour, and which in fact Senta herself had never seen.

  “I do love your room,” said Hero. “All that space just for you. You’re like a princess.”

  “Mind you I don’t know why the dragon needs his own room,” said Graham. “All he does is sit down here by the stove anyway. And what do you need a bathtub in your bedroom for?”

  Senta’s bedroom did indeed feature, in addition to a large four poster bed, a floor chest, a pair of small nightstands, an oak wardrobe, a five shelf bookcase, and a cheval glass; a large claw-foot bathtub with fully modern plumbing, which had only just been connected.

  “I bathe every single day in my tub and I love it.”

  “That’s just not healthy.” Graham raised a finger as if he was tutoring philosophy. “My Da says you’ll wash off the protective layer of dirt and oil.”

  Moments after this bit of philosophizing, Graham had turned quiet as he tucked into the afternoon repast. Senta let the others begin while she continued around the kitchen area, the most wonderful feature of which was a froredor. The froredor was a magical icebox. It didn’t look too different from any other icebox, most of which were simply heavily insulated cabinetry. But where iceboxes had two small doors, one for the food storage area and one in which to put the ice, the froredor had only one large door. It never needed ice. Magic kept it at thirty-eight degrees. Of course one could simply have placed the food outside the door in a snow bank, but that would probably only invite more deinonychus or their smaller cousins the velociraptors, who needed precious little invitation.

  Placing two large sausages on a plate, along with a crumpet, Senta carried it over to Bessemer and set it down beside him before returning to the table and sitting down.

  “Say thank you,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” said the dragon, his voice not too different than that of a small child.

  “You keep training him to talk and pretty soon you won’t be able to shut him up,” warned Graham, a bit of masticated crumpet flying from his mouth to land beside his plate.

  “Thank you for never talking with your mouth full,” Senta told Hertzal pointedly. The dark haired boy nodded happily, while Graham looked appropriately chastened.

  The roar of the tyrannosaurus echoed through the forest outside once again. Hero shivered and Graham carefully swallowed before speaking.

  “If I had a rifle right now, I’d go out and shoot that thing.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Senta. “How do you think we’d feel if all we had of you was one foot?”

  “Father Ian didn’t have a gun and he wasn’t hunting. I’d have my wits about me.”

  Father Ian, the priest who had arrived on the H.M.S. Minotaur along with Senta, Graham, and the first group of colonists, had been killed and almost completely eaten by a tyrannosaurus, though his single shoe-clad foot had been given an appropriate burial.

  The small group finished their meal and then gathered around the stove, wrapping up in large fluffy blankets as Hero read The Pale Sun by Geert Resnick. The twin's older sister Honor, who served as their tutor and guardian, required the book for their lessons. Zurfina had taken on Senta’s instruction and could not possibly care less whether she read any novels at all. And Graham had only been induced to listen by the revelation that the book had been banned in Freedonia, however as he would later discover much to his unhappiness, this was because of an indictment of Freedonian politics and not for any lurid sexual content. They had just gotten comfortably settled when they realized that the light coming in through the shuttered windows from outside had become too dim for reading. Without getting up, Senta pointed her finger and said “Uuthanum,” magicing some candles to life.

  Hero had read the first two chapters when the door opened and a figure clad from head to toe in black furs stepped inside. The figure brushed the snow off its shoulders and then pulled back its hood to reveal Zurfina the Magnificent. Unbuttoning her heavy fur coat, she let it drop to the floor, stepping out of it to reveal an outfit that exactly matched Senta’s. The outfit was not the only thing about Zurfina that resembled Senta. She had the same color of blond hair, though she had a small bald spot over her right ear, and the same pale complexion. Zurfina was slightly on the tall side, a trait almost always enhanced by high heels, and though slender, possessed an appropriate amount of female curves—something Senta found herself envying more each day.

  “Why is my house infested with children?” the sorceress demanded, though exactly to whom she was speaking was unclear. “Why aren’t you all out playing in the snow? It was my understanding that children adore it.”

  “The tyrannosaurus is out there,” said Senta.

  “Well if it attacks, you simply run in four different directions. That way you have at least a seventy five percent chance of getting away.”

  “Unless he can hop from one to the other of us,” said Senta. “I doubt he would be as hindered by the snow as we would be.”

  “Then perhaps you’ve made a good decision,” said Zurfina and headed up the staircase in the center of the room. “Wake me for dinner, Pet.”

  “Is she serious?” wondered Graham.

  “About dinner?”

  “No. About us playing when the tyrannosaurus is about.”

  Senta shrugged. “You know she almost let me get eaten by velociraptors once.”

  Any further consideration of her mistress's peculiarities was cut short by a knock at the door. Picking up Zurfina’s discarded coat and throwing it onto the coat rack, Senta opened the door to find Honor Hertling and three armed militiamen, one of whom was carrying a lantern.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked the four children. “It’s time to go home now.”

  “I thought my Da was coming to get us,” said Graham.

  “He was needed at the saw mill, so I said that I would come and fetch you. Of course Mayor Korlann wouldn’t let me out of the gate without an armed escort.” She indicated the three men who were glancing cautiously into the dark spaces between the trees. She waited at the door while Graham, Hertzal, and Hero gathered their things.

  Honor Hertling was in many ways an older version of Hero, with a thick mane of raven hair and large, expressive, dark eyes. Her lips were as enchanting as her eyes, but her nose, that feature that so often goes unnoticed in even the most beautiful, was the most striking thing about her. It was perfect; neither too long nor too short: perfectly symmetrical and correctly sized for her face. That nose brought together those lips and those eyes in a symphony of beauty on a face that had once been flawless. But the flawless days had ended in Freedonia, when a soldier’s rifle butt had smashed down on that beautiful face and now a scar ran from her cheekbone to her chin. It was not so horrible a scar that people looked away. It was not so bad that their eyes were constantly drawn to it when they spoke to her. It was noticeable though, and just as though a scratch is more noticeable on a steam carriage that is brand new rather than one that has seen some years of service, it was all the more noticeable and all the more tragic because of the otherwise perfect face that it marred. And in Honor’s eyes, it ruined her.

  After watching her friends start off through the snow, Senta closed the door and sat back down to read. She didn’t continue with The Pale Sun, which Hero had taken anyway. She read from the big book of Argrathian mythology that she had found in one of Zurfina’s unpacked boxes. It was filled with fantastic stories of ancient gods and goddesses, as well as quite a few of the type of lurid details that Graham would have appreciated, had she chosen to share it with him. After a bit more than an hour, she got up and began seeing to dinner. There wasn’t much l
eft in the froredor quite frankly, but she did find the large ocean fish that Graham had brought the day before and she had potatoes. She could make fish and chips. She peeled and sliced the potatoes. Then she cleaned the fish and cut it into large rectangular pieces, after which she had to stoke up the fire in the stove and add several logs. As she mixed the flour, salt, egg, and beer to form the batter, she called to the steel dragon, still sitting on his cushion by the stove.

  “Bessemer, why don’t you go wake Zurfina?”

  “Fina,” responded the dragon, and hopped from his warm spot to the base of the stairs in one bounce and shot up the steps.

  By the time that Zurfina arrived at the foot of the stairs, Bessemer at her heels, Senta had set the table and fried the chips and fish, which she scooped into heaping piles on each of three plates. This time Bessemer climbed up on one of the chairs and picked up a piece of fish with his clawed fingers, examining it before tossing it into his mouth.

  “I hope you didn’t use all of my beer,” said the sorceress.

  “No, of course not,” Senta replied, retrieving a dark beer from the froredor as well as a Billingbow’s Soda Water for herself. “So where have you been all day, anyway?”

  “I’ve been gathering potion ingredients.”

  “Are we going to make more happiness potion?”

  “We have enough Blessudine to last us for months. You must learn to make other potions.”

  “Well I want to, but they’re hard.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll make some Amorazine and you can use it on that chubby boy that you like.”

  “His name is Graham and when he grows up he’s going to love me for me, not because of any love potion.”