“Yes.”
“Do you know Geoffrey’s plans now?”
“In a way.” I knew everything that would be happening to him for the next several months, despite his plans.
“Why don’t you go ahead and tell us the future?”
Could she read my mind? But the crowd, which had quieted down during my conversation with the old woman, wanted only to know who to look to, what to expect in their own topsy-turvy world.
“Well, I don’t think you all can hear me.”
“Don’t worry, dearie, we’ll pass it along. Just speak up a bit there.”
I stood up straight, almost hitting Annie who dodged out of my way. This made the growing crowd titter nervously and I had to wait until they had quieted down. I laid a hand on Annie’s neck as I waited, drawing strength from the baby who had to be much more frightened than I. And as I looked over the crowd I saw that I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t a crowd of strangers looking up to me. My friends were all there.
Ko, standing back a ways waving at me, asking with his beautiful, clear, expressive eyes if I was okay. I smiled at him. Closer to the balcony I saw the would-be healer Shelagh with her arm in a sling and a bandage wrapped over one eye. Girard leaning on a crutch, was helping her drink from a winesac. I didn’t see dTella anywhere, but Yenay was helping old Elitzabenn from Sapproach hold up a little boy so he could see. And Yay’s father, if I remembered him right, was drinking from a fountain about ten yards in front of the boy. The new, good five were back near the gates, Wyckham crumpled between Krt and Toss who tried to hold her up. Stiles watched Tren who stared at me impassively. Elder Boush had found himself a seat on the front porch of a house not far from the southern entrance. He was attended by Curshe, the healer from Phelat.
I looked over the rest of the crowd of questioning faces. “Hi.”
For some reason, this elicited guffaws of laughter and I couldn’t speak for a good ten minutes while my greeting was passed back through the ranks and each wave farther back had its laugh. I looked at Deeva for some explanation, but she just laughed up at me, “Can see why he likes you.”
When the majority of the crowd had regained control of themselves and stopped wiping the tears from their eyes I continued, avoiding any salutations. “Geoffrey isn’t done with his quest. He’s gone off to finish it.”
I paused for the brief wave of dismay that ran back through the crowd. Wyckham picked her head up out of her grief and looked at me. Kierri, pushing through the crowd, reached Ko and put her arms around her father.
“I know how you feel.” That got a titter from those nearest the balcony who overheard my private comment. “Um, until he gets back, well. . . Oh! For those of you who don’t know me-” This comment was considered almost as funny as ‘hi’ had been and I waited again. “I’m Nanda and if you agree I guess he wants me to act as queen,” they were all attentive now, “with Ko and Kierri as acting partners until,” I choked up a bit, stupid, “until Geoffrey returns.” I raised my eyebrows at Ko and Kierri and they nodded their assent. “Does that sound good to you?”
The cheer of approval lasted for fifteen minutes. Ko and Kierri were buffeted with the enthusiastic encouragement of those around them. I tried to maintain my composure and looked down at Deeva to see how I was doing.
She waved both of her hands at me. “Normally we call for a show of markers, but it sounds like we can wave that tradition.”
“Thank you.”
I thanked everyone in the crowd and relaxed enough to smile at some of the familiar faces I couldn’t put with names. Many put up a hand, palm facing me. As personal greeting or approval, I couldn’t tell. Wyckham and Tren each raised a palm to me. So many people in the crowd looked as stricken as they. I assumed they had found Wolf’s body. I didn’t find out till later how many of our friends had died defending their prince and their way of life. Boush gifted me with the staff Kivern had fought with to the end. Scademann taled for a full sunspan of Kemberling’s heroic passing until he himself died of smoke damage to his lungs received in fighting the western forest fire.
I looked around at the Landers and I played with the chain on my wrist which had saved our lives in the Sapproach river and tried to think what Geoffrey would say. I was silent so long that Annie laid her great head back down on her tail and shut her eyes. I pulled myself out of the speculation and thought a little about what he wouldn’t say and realized that some of those facing me were no more Lander than I was.
“And, um, one more thing. This,” I put my hand on Annie’s head to encourage her to look up again, “is Annie.”
Instant silence except for excited chattering among the five.
“She’s also a friend of Geoffrey’s. In dragon seasons she’s just a baby and she doesn’t know English very well yet, but I hope that each and every one of you gets to meet her personally sometime. She’s all alone in the Dormounts so I hope that you who are local Voferen Kahogoans won’t mind if she stays here sometimes. And I hope that you who are dTelfur will come out of your hidden existence and move either here or back to the Dormounts to help Annie grow up a proper dTelfur dragon and to help us understand your way of life.
“I think everyone regrets what happened at Battlescar and it’s time you got back to living normal lives. That’s what Geoffrey wanted—wants.”
The hushed murmuring had begun as soon as I suggested a personal introduction to their vicious dragon. It increased when I revealed the existence of dTelfur. I stared at the distracted crowd, wondering if I was supposed to dismiss them or say more or what.
But Deeva spoke quietly up to me. I was amazed that I could hear her so clearly over the din. “If you have more to say, just raise your poor hands. They’ll quiet down.”
“No, I’m done.”
“Then why don’t you go on in and get some rest. You look like you’re going to fall where you stand. I’ll get some help and we’ll open up the family rooms for you. They’re around to the east as you go back inside.”
“Thank you. I’ll be there in a little while. Hey. Do you think you could find someone willing to sit with Annie, for protection, until dTella from Nouiebos is found?”
“Chaon!” Deeva hollered at a young woman standing quietly near the front. She turned and made her way through the crowd towards Deeva who kept hollering in that direction, “Shillar! I’m borrowing your daughter. She’ll be here at Kahago if you need her.” Deeva nodded to me and then took the girl by the arm and disappeared under the balcony.
One last glance over the crowd showed Boush urgently arguing with the villagers around his porch. The five were spreading out to share their experience with meeting Annie. Ko was dragging a harried looking man, Tahnt I assumed, towards the entrance beneath my balcony perch. Kierri followed them, signaling up to me that they were coming to take care of my hands whether I liked it or not. I smiled at her. Annie was scanning the crowd as well. I don’t know if she recognized anyone or if she had understood any of the events that had just passed. I looked up at her happy face then took a deep breath and went inside to take my daughter back.
The carpeted entryway was empty. Nobody was in sight. I rushed down the short stairway to the stone overlooking the cavernous southern entry. A young man in ripped and bloody clothes with his arm in a sling was slowly, painfully climbing the carved stairwell sucking at a cut on his hand. I stared at him for a moment and looked around the rest of the entryway, seeing only Deeva and Chaon giving orders to men and women I did not recognize but for the black-haired woman who had first given me directions to Mobious. I turned and climbed back to the carpeted room inside from the balcony. I looked briefly down each hallway that led from the foyer, screaming his name.
“Lady Nanda?”
I spun to find the wounded boy standing at the top of the stairs.
“Lady. Mobious left me with the message that he had to go.”
I stared at him. “He’s gone?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the baby?”
<
br /> “He took her with him.”
My legs gave out. The bastard. I fell in a heap to the intricately woven carpet just inside the three balcony doorways. He took my love. He took my daughter. I heard some mournful cry cutting through the air far away. Why did I ever let him take her from my arms? I heard a loud commotion and the air around me filled with dust and a tingling. Annie pushed her head through the opening she’d broken into the stone wall and sniffed at me, calling my name. I know Ko lifted me and I know Kierri ran off to satisfy my demand that a search be raised for Mobious. And I know that he has not yet been found. I know that he will not be found. I know that I have to pull out of this funk and help to heal my new kingdom, because I know that we’re all paying Mobious’ bloodprice.
Thirty
∞ Edling Geoffrey of Kaveg’s journal ∞
Nov. 17
Denver, CO America
I was lying in bed, fuming over Mobious. Furious for what he’s done to me, to Nanda, to Kaveg. And furious that he’d abandoned Kelly. It was clear to me that he wasn’t coming back for her. And she has nothing to do with any of this. She’s just an American caught up in his machinations.
She just woke up, frightened, wondering where she was and then how she’d gotten back to Emerson Court. I left my new journal, this blank one that ‘Faite’ gave Nanda for her birth day, here on the bed and went out to calm her.
“Hey Kelly. Welcome back. Was it nice visiting your mother?”
She crawled up into my lap and lay her head heavily against my chest. “We didn’t see her. Where’s Faite?”
“He’s gone away. You get to stay here, with me.” I stroked her wild red hair, watching it crackle in the dry air as mine does, wondering how she would feel about her guardian’s unannounced departure.
“He always goes away.” She tilted her wide green eyes up at me. Spectacular eyes. “I’m glad I get to stay with you this time.”
“Aw, you just love me for my dumplings.”
She giggled and I just had to tickle her to get more of that joyous laughter. My heart almost stung to think that I might never have heard that sound again. My heart did sting remembering that I would never hear Nanda’s laughter again.
“Okay, to bed with you. It’s late.” I laid her back down on the air mattress and pulled the covers up to her chin, tucking her tightly in her cocoon. I kissed her cheek and brushed a lock of red hair off her odd brown skin which not for the first time reminded me of the unusual shade of Nanda’s skin. As the hair fell back to the pillow, it brushed her ear. A small ear with two irregular bumps near the elven peak of the rim.
Just like my ear.
I sat back. Her hair is as the fire of sunset, like Nanda’s hair. Her eyes are spectacular, so like my eyes. And her laughter is a joy that raises in my heart a passionate and overwhelming sorrow that I might ever be denied such a beautiful sound. I said it myself, wrote it in earlier pages of this journal when she left, ‘it felt like my very heart was being taken away.’
Kelly is the queen with my own heart.
The object of my quest was yawning there before me on a used air mattress in Denver, Colorado, America. And she would not exist if I were not here. If I had not fallen in love with Nanda.
The object of my great quest is my own daughter, Donja, Kelly.
Which means that one day, she will be my queen. Which means that one day I will return to Kaveg!
Unaware of my revelation, unaware of her destiny Keldonja curled up around her stuffed dragon and with her eyes closed tight she hollered at the back room, “Good night, Nanda!”
Good night, Nanda. I will see you again.
∞
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For a sneak peak of Hardt’s Tale, another Mobious’ Quest novel, read on.
Hardt’s Tale
A Mobious' Quest Novel
∞
By
Gwendolyn Druyor
gwendolyndruyor.com
Text Copyright © 2017 by Gwendolyn Druyor
All Rights Reserved
The Landers
88 through 90 years after the hike
∞
Hardt was an unlucky baby. He was born in a rainstorm with no midwife to a mother who cursed him for her pain.
The hard winds had begun early on his birth day and his granddam had said aloud, “We should send for the healer. Nadi is near her time and the winds speak of a great event today.” But her superstition was ignored.
And so to sound of howling winds and banging shutters, with hard rain spitting in through the broken roof, Hardt’s mother went into labor. Her younger sister ran for the healer, stumbling against the great winds that would push her back to the house. Through the roof the family could see the lightning flashing in the sky. No thunderclaps followed.
“This is a bad sign, “ Hardt’s grandsire spoke from where he crouched by the fireplace, “when nature will not speak.”
“Hush Father and build the fire. It’s only a storm. And all nature says is that we should have listened to Mother earlier.” Vyck admonished him and then turned back to her sweaty panting little sister.
And so, as his younger aunt rushed in with the birth healer, blowing through the door with the rain, wind, and debris of the storm, Hardt came into the world and his weak cry of protest went unheard under the shock of an enormous thunderclap which shook the cottage to its foundation.
Hardt was a quiet baby, mild and unprotesting when he went unfed. He never cried nor ever cooed. He watched his grandparents, his two aunts, his young uncle, and his mother with great big curious eyes. But he never made a sound.
His luck improved when he was weaned from his disenchanted mother’s breast and could be fed more timely by his watchful Aunt Vyck. His mother protested loudly that she loved the quiet baby, but carried him around as more of an accessory than a son. He provided amusement as her many lovers vied to know whose child he was. Her coy answer was always the same, “He’s my child.” But the village also knew what Hardt’s granddam believed, “He is Nature’s child.”
Hardt learned to walk early. No one noticed. Because Vyck had moved out to live with a man so that he could break her heart more quickly, Hardt had to learn how to walk to get his own water and food. He learned to get to the wastehouse on his own. He learned to follow his mother when she left him in town. He walked silently because he had learned not to be a bother.
By the time he had lived through ten seasons, Hardt had disappeared almost completely from everyone’s notice. And one bright autumn afternoon when he saw his mother leaving the gaming yard laughing arm in arm with a girlfriend, he didn’t follow her. He waited for a while, in case she came back, and then toddled out to find his aunt Vyck’s cottage. A metalscrafter noticed him as he wandered by the smith, but she was busy and assumed he was being watched. Hardt knew that Aunt Vyck lived across the moving water because they always took a boat to go see her. He could hear the water from the center of town so he followed his ears. But where he got to the water there was no boat as by his granddam’s cottage.
He sat and he thought for a while. He thought that he was hungry. So he found a berry bush and some fallen crushnuts. He pulled up some lace roots as he walked along the river towards the dead fish smell. He smelled something stinkier too, a heavy musky deep forest smell. But that smell he didn’t know as food like the fish. When he got there, the big musky smell had already claimed the beached fish and was gobbling it down.
Hardt watched the bear without rancor. The nuts and berries and roots had been enough to fill his little tummy. He just liked the t
aste of fish.
When she was done eating, the bear dropped to all fours and stared at the quiet human cub for just a moment before ambling on across the river.
Hardt recognized a mother and he followed her into the rushing water.
One moon later, after a fever and recriminations from the family, after long arguments and accusations, Hardt was woken in the silence of night and spirited away from his mother and his grandparents and his younger aunt and his uncle. He traveled for five suns by boat, by cart, by horse, and by foot during all of which he was held and cuddled and tickled and smothered in kisses. And after five suns he was laid to bed in the tiny cottage which became a happy home where he was loved and treasured by his aunt Vyck. And where his mother never bothered to look for him.
The dTelfur
143rd year of Konifer Vize (105ath lander reckoning)
∞
Deg slowly lifted his great head and looked up into the cloudless sky. A good day for flying he thought. He turned his neck a few times to get the cricks out and looked over the village. Well he hadn’t been asleep too long. There was Dorat still mending her pants. And Tcoa still crying over her broken wing despite the telf healer Nyah’s attentions. Just asleep long enough to stiffen his neck. He shifted his body on the eggs and reached his nose again into the air. Yes, there it was, the faint smell of some great fire. It hadn’t been just in his dream. He could smell it, though he could see no smoke in the sky. But then his eyes were failing him. He was an old old dragon.
He himself couldn’t fathom why he was still breathing the sweet air of the dTelfur mountain but lived he did and breathed. And grew. The other dTelfur went off to shed in the privacy of the deep woods or to ease the itch of sloughing skin in the rivers, lakes, and oceans. But Deg was too big now to go flying off willy nilly. He shed where he was and the others of the village, dtur and telf alike, would scratch him and scrub him and rake the old hide into the hatching sands, marveling as they did at his new hide’s luster and resilience. Everyone was kind to Deg, the oldest and thus largest of all the dTelfur dragons. The two-legged telf hatchlings would beg him to tell them stories of the ancient times as they climbed between his toes and got those hard to scratch recesses. They believed the adults who told them Deg had been alive when the winged dTur and two-legged Telfs were separate species warring for dominance in these lands. But that had been generations before even Deg had cracked shell on these very grounds.
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