[Thorn's Blackmoor]Rowena's Crystal Chronicle

[RobJN]

“Surely, they come back.”

“It is not their way,” I said. “Father said as much.”

“He simply hasn’t waited long enough,” Lea said.

Lords, she was stubborn!

“Father’s people are not lived long enough to Wait.” I would have better luck chiseling the words into the stones beneath Castle Blackmoor. Of course, the words would take to Lea’s thick skull just as they would to those rocks, fading after mere moments.

“So now you are the expert on humans?”

“Obviously, I know more of them than you do.”

Lea stood up, reached for my hand. “We’re going,” she said.

“The walls are too far, even with the spirits of the Air to lend their aid.”

“As if we were going to flit among the battlements,” Lea sniffed. She leaned casually aside as another arrow hissed by. “This is no fun anymore. We’ll simply Step into the castle.”

I tugged at her hand as her other was about to draw aside the shadows.

“We will have to leave Father’s gift if we do that.”

Lea’s shoulders slumped, and she blew at a stray lock of hair that fell over her eyes. “That means more running. I grow tired of that, as well.”
At least we could agree on something.

“So we simply walk amongst the throng of thralls?”

Lea wrinkled her nose.

“A Vanishing, then.”

“And leave our clothing as well as Father’s gift behind? You know how Father’s people react to seeing us gowned in moonlight.”
“What was it the Fetch said we lacked?” Lea mused.

“‘Modesty,’” I said. We lost half a day’s light, listening to Master William’s lecture. I was sorely tempted to Vanish, but we’d promised Mother that we would to obey Father in all things, and to be especially mindful of that which made little sense to us. Those were the things, she’d said, that mattered most to Father’s folk. “And you know Master William hates when you call him that.”

Lea shrugged. "Well, it's all he does for Father."

"Aye," came the man's voice from below. "And nine of the ten times, it's one or the other of your pretty little--"

"Fletcher..."

I peeked over the thatch of the roofline, to see Father's chief of securities and the the big-shouldered Regent of the Lakes looking up at us from horseback. Whereas the Fetch sat tall and straight and thin as a dueling blade, the Great Svenny was something more like a woodsman’s axe. Perhaps draped with a bit of gold and finery. Truth be told, it was quite a bit of gold and finery. The number of jewels he wore about the trim of his ermine cloak made my fingers itch.

"Heads," the Fetch said. "I was going to say 'heads.'"