Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (72 page)

“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.

“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 Prin
cess
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.