chapter 4 Part 5

It was mid morning when they departed New Aspberg and left the reborn city behind them. Dylan and Cindy were both sad to leave, but that sadness was tempered by the knowledge that in just a little more than a week they would be seeing the walls of Keron, the royal home of King Rigel and the capital of almost all the world.

By late afternoon, the road they traveled on had come along side the wide Caleko river. Gage told them that they would parallel the river for many leagues. In addition to the novelty of cargo laden barges drifting by, the river provided excellent fishing, washing and swimming opportunities and when the road diverged away from the channel, the trio was sad to see it go.

They left the company of the river almost a six days after leaving New Aspberg. That night they stopped to set up their camp along side the trail. As usual Gage set up the protective wards and they bedded down. The night promised to provide a comfortable rest, but late in the evening, Dylan was awaken by a noise that strongly reminded him of numerous pots and pans falling from the kitchen table back on the farm.

Dylan sat upright startled. He glanced to his left and saw that Cindy had also been awakened. Then he looked to his right to locate Gage. The journeyman was on his feet and had a long thin sword in his hand. Dylan did a double take on the sword. He had never seen Gage wield a weapon of any kind nor had he seen a sword in the wagon anywhere. Where Gage had been carrying the weapon was a mystery.

“What’s that?” Cindy asked startled.

“Shh!” Gage hissed. He picked up a bucket of sand with his free hand and tossed it into the fire. The flame was instantly snuffed out. “Stay put,” he whispered in the dark.
The pale moon light showed Cindy and Dylan their guardian’s figure quietly creeping away from the camp.

Dylan felt a twist of fear as it dawned on him that for perhaps the first time in his life, he was in danger. Something was out there in the dark that had tripped Gage’s wards. That meant that it had purposely intruded into an area that normal wild animals would avoid. That meant it was most probably malevolent.

Cindy and Dylan huddled together beneath the wagon. They were wrapped in blankets and peering anxiously into the darkness. They had both heard stories of slavers attacking camps on the trail at night, killing the adults and selling captured children as slaves in some of the other kingdoms or even some of the City States. Dylan and Cindy both knew that their only hope lay in the hands of a journeyman magic user.

Suddenly there was an eruption of noise and the sound of steel clashing. The darkness hid all activity from the two youngsters, who could only imagine what was transpiring.
There were several shouts and another clash of steel followed by a dull thud, the unmistakable sound of a body striking the ground.

Then from the dark gloom a figure sprinted directly towards them. It was not Gage. The moonlight revealed the features of a creature commonly referred to as a half-orc. The figure was defiantly humanoid, but the face was centered around an upturned snout and the lower jaw boasted of two massive tusks. The pink eyes seemed to glow in the shadowy moonlight as the monster ran towards them with a long jagged short sword raised triumphantly high.

Cindy was the first to scream as the thing closed on them. Dylan felt the panic in his own body soar out of control as he scrambled to crawl quickly to get away from the man-beast who grappled at the blanket they were wrapped in.

Somehow in the chaos, Dylan and Cindy managed to elude the attacker’s grasp and scamper our from under the wagon with the structure between them and their assailant.
The illusion of safety, however, disappeared when the half-orc vaulted into the back of the vehicle and roared triumphantly with its weapon raised high.

In the midst of the roar, the voice changed from one of exhilaration to that of pain as the creature was enveloped in a sizzling orange light. The half-orc turned to see Gage emerging from the darkness. The bloody saber he tossed on the ground before him.

The monster wailed and rushed towards the elf. Gage responded by thrusting his left hand in a jab towards the approaching enemy. He uttered a few quick syllables and several pulses of bright orange energy jumped from Gage’s finger tips to slam into the half-orc’s chest. The beast went down in a heap and sighed one last labored breath.

Gage retrieved his weapon and walked over to the corpse. With his boot he rolled the monster over and inspected the hole in its chest. His flaming missiles had blasted through the clothing and rawhide armor and burned a hole deeply into the creature’s breast engulfing its foul heart.

Gage sighed and walked over to his frightened charges. He was deeply saddened that the two children should be exposed to such horror at such an early age.

Dylan and Cindy held each other close as Gage inspected them. The fear of what they had just experienced coupled with the shock of what they had just seen Gage do shook their view of the order of their lives. They had always considered Gage as something between a friend and an elder. They had always treated him with only a little more respect than they treated other initiates and apprentices, and yet here he had just displayed considerable skill with sword and magic and had saved their lives in the process.

“Are you hurt?” the elf asked quietly as he embraced the children together.

“We’re fine,” Dylan assured him. “How about you?”

“I seem to be altogether well enough,” Gage answered. He released the youths and sat on the back of the wagon. He pulled aside his cloak and revealed a long nasty cut. “I did not escape unscathed,” he admitted, “but the wound is not serious and I do not feel the effects of any poison.”

“Was that a spell you used on the bad guy?” Cindy asked.

“Yes,” Gage answered. “It is a good spell for emergencies.”

“How many of them were they?” Dylan wondered.

“There were two of them,” Gage told him. The elf began to use a clean cloth and some water to wash the cut on his arm.

“Why didn’t you use the spell on the other one instead of your sword? Then you wouldn’t have gotten cut.”

“The other one surprised me,” the journeyman replied. “That spell does not work very well against an enemy within an arm’s reach. The backlash will hurt the spell caster.”

“Was he a slaver?” Cindy asked fearfully.

“Perhaps,” Gage answered. “Dylan, would you please rebuild the fire?”

Dylan hurried to comply. He could see Cindy assisting Gage in the dressing of his wound. By the time he got the kindling wood aflame, Gage was soaking the wrapping with liquid from the wine flask.

Gage and Cindy joined Dylan at the fire. “They may have been slavers,” Gage answered Cindy’s question. “It is also possible that they may have been just hungry.”

“If all they wanted was something to eat,” Cindy asked, “then why’d they attack?”

“If the reason they attacked was because they were hungry,” Gage responded, “then it was because they wanted to eat you and Dylan here.”

Cindy gagged and Dylan gasped in response. Their reactions made Gage chuckle briefly.

“Do not worry” he assured them. “I will not let you be eaten. I have no intention of returning to Master Tesron without you.”

They did not sleep again that night. When morning came, they had a quick breakfast and then resumed their trip. The next night Dylan and Cindy slept uneasily, but they did sleep unmolested, and when the next morning arrived, they felt much better. Only once or twice did either of them awake in the middle of the night sweating or with racing heart only to find the cheerfully crackling fire waiting to soothe their fears with its warm light.

As the week drew to an end, Dylan’s dreams began to veer away from the frightful experience and he began to dream about his visit to the Sandy Hollow. He began to dream about haystacks and a girl by the name of Sharon.

They were still about two days out from Keron when Dylan noted that Cindy was once again ignoring him and in a very bad mood. He tried on several occasion to talk to her, but in each case, she would make it a very solid point of ignoring him.

“I don’t understand,” Dylan complained to Gage. “What have I done that would make her so mad at me?”

Gage chuckled as he attended the cleaning and redressing of his wound. “You talk in your sleep,” he told the boy. “And worse, you talk about another woman. By the way, who is Sharon?”

Dylan immediately understood the problem. In addition to dreaming about Sharon, he had talked in his sleep and Cindy had heard. Well, he had better smooth it over with her, but how?

“Gage,” he asked cautiously, “what’d I say?”

“Not much, really,” Gage told him. “You muttered some things that we could not understand. Cindy thought it was very funny until you mentioned Sharon.”

“Sharon’s a girl who kept chasing after me when I went home to visit,” Dylan explained. “I tried to get away from her, but she’s not easy to avoid.”

“Do not tell me,” Gage directed the troubled boy, “tell Cindy.”

Dylan cautiously went over to where Cindy was cleaning a pot. “How was your night?” he asked.

“Very entertaining,” she replied with an icy edge. “And yours?”

“I had a very bad dream,” he lied. He hated doing it, but Cindy’s irritating and obstinate insistence on getting mad at him for the most mundane things required that he do so to restore the peace between them.

“I dreamed that a girl I used to know back at the plantation kept chasing me with a bamboo stick.” He shuddered visibly. “She’s almost as ugly as that half-orc.”

“Oh, she was ugly was she?” Cindy asked curiously. “What’s her name?”

Dylan held his breath and counted to ten silently. “Sharon,” he told her. “She was older than most of us kids and she’d bully us around badly. I think she hated me.”

Cindy did not answer or comment, but she did smile. And though it was through the efforts of a lie, Dylan knew that the storm was over.

Two days later they crested a ridge and saw the city of Keron stretching out below them. Beyond the city was the deep blue of the Eastern Sea. Excitedly, Dylan and Cindy struggled to be patient and ride the wagon with excruciating slowness towards the city. As they drew closer, they could see the well kept walls and the shiny gates in great detail. The sleek towers rose majestically above them and was capped by tile shingles.

As they passed through the main gates, Gage passed the gate keeper a couple of coins and the gate keeper stamped the side of the wagon with an ink design bearing the royal seal of the king.

“One of the ways that they keep the city in such good repair is by charging visitors a fee to enter,” Gage told his charges. “It is not much, but when it is done enough the small fees add up considerably.”

Gage wasted no time in delivering his cargo. He pulled up to the loading dock of a rather large complex which reminded Dylan of parts of the Academy by its architecture. Then leaving the kids to watch the wagon, Gage entered the building. After several long moments, he re-emerged with a master sorcerer and two other journeymen.

The master directed his aides to carry the chests inside, and then appraised Gage’s traveling partners. “Aren’t they a little young for Tesron to be sending them out?”

“Sir these are Master Tesron’s newest pupils,” Gage answered. “They are both very bright and he felt they were ready for the task.”

The sorcerer nodded. “Very well, thank you for your service, Gage. Feel free to lodge here at the guild while you are in town.”

Gage directed several of the guild servants to unload the wagon and then he registered himself and his charges as guests at the guild. “Many mages who are involved in politics dwell here in Keron,” Gage told the youngsters as they dined in the cafeteria. “You will find that thought they have all gone through the Academy, the older mages do not recall the experience very well because it was so long ago. It is best to avoid them in general.” He drank his wine and held the empty cup up to signal that he wanted a refill.

“With the exception of your studies, you have permission to see the rest of the guild. Be sure to wear your initiate’s tunic so that you are recognized and not ejected from the building. I would ask that if you wish to see the rest of the city, though, that you let me accompany you. I would not want you to get into any trouble.”

Dylan and Cindy spent most of the day investigating the guild halls. They visited the Eastern Archives, a smaller version of the library in Allentown, and not as thorough. It seemed that most of the books were on history and philosophy, and although history had become a subject of interest, the limited time that they had in the royal city vetoed any opportunity in reading for the two initiates.

They also visited a museum where a wide variety of unusual items ranging from the original copy of the Pact of Quatar to a piece of a shattered magical sword. Dylan and Cindy found themselves quite taken by the variety of attractions. They were even more pleased when the curator who had noted their interest suggested that they should visit the zoo which the guild maintained.

After completing their tour of the museum, Cindy was hungry, so she and Dylan stopped at the cafeteria for a snack. Afterward they went to their room and discovered Gage sitting at a table reading a book. After a few moments of coaxing, they managed to convince their guardian to take them to the zoo and then to see the palace.

Gage was reluctant at first, but he knew that he would get no rest until the kids had seen the sights of Keron, and he recalled how exciting it had been for him on his first visit. So putting away his journal, Gage donned his cloak and the trio left he guild hall.

The streets in that part of the city were made of sandstone slabs and very smooth to ride on, but hard on the feet. Nevertheless, they meandered up the way pausing occasionally to review a street merchant’s wares.

At one point Cindy and Dylan both showed considerable interest in a peddler’s supply of hard rock candy and Gage judged it a harmless distraction. For the price of a copper coin, he gave the kids a treat.

When they reached the zoo, Gage paid their admission and the three tourists entered the well kept gardens. A sign near the path indicated the section housing animals lay off to one side whereas the section housing intelligent creatures lay to the other.
“I thought keeping intelligent beings in captivity was slavery,” Dylan stated.

“Isn’t it cruel to do that?” Cindy added.

“Oh, it is not what you think,” Gage informed them. “In this case that part of the zoo is really like a small village. Representatives from various races all live and work there together. You can go up to them and talk to them. They are actually paid a modest salary to do nothing more than live here. If they wish they can leave.”

“I think it’d be degrading to be a zoo exhibit,” Cindy decided.

“What kinds of people live there?” Dylan wondered.

“Well the last time I was there,” Gage recalled, “there were two unicorns, an elderly and feeble dragon, several humanoid races, and even a Cicera.”

“What is a Cicera?” Cindy asked.

“Ciceras are a shy but very wise and smart race from the far south. They dwell in the swamplands and look sort of like winged snakes except instead of scales they have feathers.” Gage ushered his students toward the conventional animal exhibits. “It is fairly late in the afternoon to be disturbing them, though,” he said. “Maybe you can see them another time.”