The Lost World: Book 2

By Gaia Lewes

Vere has found sanctuary in Nogaynos, but now the time has come to explore the new world she has found. Little is known about the mysterious land of enchantment. Was anyone left alive after the Caelian invasion? What really happened when the Caelian attacked?

Nor was a child when she was taken from her beloved Granny and made a slave. She is still a child, technically, but when her slaver joins forces with a brute who has with him a young puppy he abuses, she is forced to intervene. And once she has done that, she must take him and the old stable dog who joins them to the only place they may find safety--Nogaynos.

King Marc, in Amadea, struggles to find ways to deal with the Caelian incursions in the south of his country, with only limited success as his sons, Nehl and Freddy, continue to be thorns in his side. Vere's strategies work, but he has few archers and the cavalry support he can give them is sharply limited. And, the question remains at the back of his mind, where is Vere?

Nogaynos yields her secrets only slowly and reluctantly, and only to a chosen few.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796098921

Gaia Lewes

I live in the foothills of Northern California, where I have spent my life with kids and dogs and horses. And on long, rainy, cold winter nights, I read. Some time ago, I read an introduction to an adventure story where the author said she wrote the kind of books she wanted to read. I looked the book she wrote so well, I sat down and started writing the kind of Science fiction fantasy I wanted to read, and so the B bloodlines series was born.

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Copyright © 2020 by Gaia Lewes.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/27/2020

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CONTENTS

Snow

The Aspects Of Elements

In Western Amadea

King Marc, The Palace

Into The Unknown

Cabin Fever

The Towers

Nora- Along The Old Caravan Route

Vere-Blossom

Woods’-Hill

Escape From Woods’-Hill

King Marc

Cypress Hill

Ii

Iii

Nora- The Crossing

Ii

Nora- Nogaynos

Ii

Iii

Vere- Chestnut

King Marc- Council Meeting

Sea Look

Ii

Inland

King Marc

Cold Welcome

On The Road Again

Aspen-Heart

Ii

Iii

Overlook

Ii

Copper Beeches

Ii

The Story Of Mahdi

The Grannies

Nora- Lake Land

Vere-Aspen-Heart

Ii

Gallantry

Ii

Iii

Iv

King Marc

Vere- Rose Dell

Ii

Adorable

Soothsayer

Lake Land

Edaena

Reflections

Bloodlines

Reve

Ruad And Miache

Enid And Nialle

The Towers

Bringing In The Sheaves

SNOW

Snow in Nogaynos looked different to me, magical. I could watch it sift down through the silver stillness forever, its deep, mysterious veil of lace endlessly entrancing. I watched it drift down, sticking delicately to the stiff, dark branches of the trees, drifting ever so slightly against their trunks and dusting the stones in chill white velvet. Nogaynos snow was country snow, I suppose.

I’d seen plenty of snow in Amadea. I’d lived in the north, after all. But that snow was city snow, cold and wet, quickly turning to ice, spotted here and there with ash and soot from the fires of all the houses, stained with mud and layered with dirt from the roads where the plows had turned it up to stack in icy snow-stones along the sides of people’s yards. I knew it came down in lacy veils there, too, but I’d never had time to watch it fall there, I’d always had to turn to work. For a brief moment it would turn everything it covered clean and cold and white, hiding the meanness of the people and their places but the meanness would always win out, in the end, and usually quite quickly.

Here in Nogaynos, I didn’t see the meanness so commonplace in Amadea. But then I’d been surrounded by it there, caught between the harsh, narrow, unloving granite of my adoptive father’s sexism and indifference, and my adoptive mother’s spite and malice and her unending, grasping avarice. There, I might at any time be driven out into that icy, wet, muddy snow to walk miles delivering the wares my adoptive father had made, or forced to fawn over fake aristocrats to curry favor for my forever status seeking adoptive mother. In Amadea, any moment spent in the sanctity of my own mind could bring me a clout on the ear or a brisk slap of the face meant to drive me on to another task meant to enrich one or the other of them at my expense.

I might not be loved here in Nogaynos, but I was accepted, and, as much as a young girl my age could be, respected, if only for what I could do. From Shade I had a fond affectionate friendship, which was more than I had ever known before, and no one snatched the book out of my hand when I curled up in a warm chair before the fire to read and study. Here, I could stare out the windows at the falling snow and let my mind wander out into the lacy, white mystery at will, and no one would scream at me for it, or shake my shoulder with a painful clasp to demand I serve them. I might find profound discomfort in it when others offered to serve me, but I reveled in the freedom from being forced to serve others.

Feeding the horses morning and evening, doing turn-outs and cleaning stalls—those were no hardship. Doing my share of the cooking, I enjoyed. Adding my cleaning spells to the household mix as I learned them gave me something very close to delight, and expanding my repertoire of mending and cleaning spells for clothing gave me a greater competence that pleased me. And adding my power to the maintenance and protection spells and wards surrounding the Towers and all its walls and outbuildings, stables, byres, stys, folds, milk and carriage houses brought me enormous satisfaction. The more and better I could care for those around me, the more and better I liked it.

But none of that was demanded of me. None of it was forced upon me with pain and threats and denigration. No one called me a useless dreamer for the moments I stared out into the falling snow. No one labelled me an idle lay-about for reading a book. I could think over an idea, sketch out (however clumsily) a construct, diagram a spell, or calculate the parameters of an enchantment. I could plot out a week’s worth of meals and even list the components needed to feed everyone without having the list snatched out of my hands and ripped to shreds before my face while being told in shrill words that attacked my ears and my mind that my adoptive mother would do such things; my task was simply to do whatever she told me to do whenever she told me to do it. Which would have worked, I suppose, if she had bothered to do it, but she would get too busy, or too entangled in her social climbing to speak to me and come home to a cold fire and uncooked meal only to slap me around and shriek at me for what I hadn’t done in her absence while I worked at the forge.

Well, I thought, staring out into the sifting snow, that was over and done with. Here in Nogaynos I sat snuggled round about in soft woolens and cradled by cushions in a comfortable window-seat, books scattered all around me, with another open in my lap and instead of hard words and harsh slaps, a mug of sweet, spiced tea steamed at my elbow while a fire snapped on the hearth. Across from me, his back propped up on the opposite side of the window upon cushions of his own, Shade pored over his own stack of tomes searching through histories of knights and mages for spells of his own. And if those spells held the magic of courage and valor, kindness, devotion and good, stout commonsense, well, I knew those talismans held plenty of value of their own and well-suited they were to the boy who studied them.

His sock-clad toe poked mine gently.

What do you see out there? he asked me, as I transferred my gaze from the sifting snow to his face.

I shrugged.

New falling snow, I told him.

You look as if it was telling you secrets, he informed me.

Nothing so simple, I assured him, glancing back into the lace veil. Oh, I added, there are secrets in the snow surely enough, but the snow does not tell them for the asking. The snowflakes are like a secret recipe that you have to watch a cook make over and over again until you’ve gathered up all the bits and pieces of it and put them together so you can make the perfect whole of it.

Ah, he said, shifting around to sit behind me. Let me look, too. He gathered me up, wrapping me up in his long arms and legs and his own woolen blanket, dropping his chin to my shoulder so he could follow the line of my gaze with his.

See the secret trail? I asked him, feeling the warmth of his cheek on mine. Through the spaces between the sifting flakes?

Umm, Shade responded.

I didn’t know whether that meant that he did or didn’t. I fell silent, allowing my own gaze to sink into those spaces, to follow that trail towards the heart of the snow’s mystery. The hushed silence of the falling snow surrounded us, until I lost all awareness of everything else and only saw the lacy veil and the spaces between the snowflake threads.

Reve’s voice called me back, and I became aware that Shade had fallen asleep, his chin heavy on my shoulder, the soft susurration of his breathing in my ear testifying to it. I smiled, just to myself, and turned my gaze to Shade’s mother’s summons. She met my gaze, and drew a quick breath. Shade drew one as well, awakening to his mother’s presence. He blinked.

Food?

I couldn’t help it. I laughed a little.

Bottomless pit, I told Reve.

You spoil him, she commented, lightly.

Keeping me warm while I study the snow, I returned, just as lightly.

And did you learn anything? she wanted to know, a hint of sharpness under her words.

I hesitated.

Nothing I could put into words, I finally returned.

Secrets, Shade said, unwinding himself from around me.

Reve shivered.

I can believe it, she told him.

Shade turned to look at me, drew in a sharp breath and nodded.

There is so very much to learn, I almost complained.

Reve glanced over at the books surrounding me.

You cannot remedy the lack of years in a day, she advised me, trying to make the words come out kindly.

I got lost in the snow, I admitted. I had a feeling that without Shade’s warmth anchoring me, that my enthrallment might very well have been dangerous.

Come eat lunch, Reve advised. You can go back to studying the snow after-wards, if you want to.

I glanced back towards the window. Perhaps not just yet, I told myself. I might just have traveled far enough through the secret spaces in the snow for one day. It might be better to spend the rest of the afternoon in more mundane studies. I certainly had enough of those to do. I might not be able to remedy the dearth of years of study in a single day, or even a single winter, but I could certainly try. I thought I might start back in the library and see what I could find in the books there about snow.

I glanced back at the pile of books I had already assembled. This felt like such a disorganized way of going about things, but something inside me felt as if the snow had left something within me, given me some kind of a gift, a guide, perhaps, of some kind, that I ought not to ignore. I had so much to learn, so much to catch up with, and without any kind of teacher or guide, or mentor of any kind, I couldn’t afford to turn away from any sort of guidance I might come by, however mysteriously received.

Shade stood up from the hearth, where he’d been adding fuel to the fire. He reset the wards that protected from sparks and errant embers without thinking before turning away from the flames, and I thought how quickly he had come to using the wards, almost as if he took them for granted. I turned to Reve, wondering if she had noted what he had done, but she was not watching him, and she turned quickly away from me as if she had been watching me a bit too closely. I wondered what that was all about.

Then I wondered if she could even see the wards Shade had manipulated so easily. I thought I remembered that Reve or Wraith had said that male Mahdi didn’t have magic, or didn’t wield magic, or something like that. But clearly, Shade wielded magic, if only in opening and closing the wards that guarded the hearth-fire. And if he could do that, what else might he be able to do?

I waited until we had all gathered around the table in the dining hall to build our sandwiches to remark upon it. Fort, mouth already full, simply shrugged, though his father stopped and stared. Rheet seemed undisturbed.

THE ASPECTS OF ELEMENTS

He’s linked to you, she said, as if making the most natural of observations.

And that means—? I wondered, collecting a couple of slices of bread upon which to assemble meat and condiments, salad greens and tomatoes.

It means that he will be able to manipulate your magic, Rheet told us, moving about the table with the tea pot and filling our mugs, as if speaking to a simpleton. The deeper the link, the more the magic flows, she added. How did you think a man became a master? she wondered.

I had no idea how, I admitted, slathering red sauce over my meat.

As if explaining things to an imbecile, Rheet assured me,

A master is the consort of a queen, a magister, she explained as if I ought to know these things. He has students who come to learn from him about what it takes to be the consort of a Mage with a controlling mastery of all the elements. He will teach the martial arts to be used for their protection, he will teach the defensive and offensive use of whichever of the elements he has gained control over in his protection of his consort, he will teach of the bond from the man’s side, and perhaps communication arts as well, if he has them.

Shade’s head came up from his sandwich as she spoke. He watched her with close attention. I wondered what he was thinking.

Really? he only half asked.

Such things have not been known for a very long time, Reve warned him.

Yes, but— and then Shade shut his mouth sharply. I thought him wise to do it. Better that he didn’t mention the way he manipulated the wards before the hearth, I thought. Those wards might not have been exclusively mine, but the wards here in the house were increasingly taking on my signature as I infused them with my magic under Rheet’s guidance, and from what Rheet said, Shade’s ability to work with them had connotations better not broached. At least, not yet.

Rheet paid no attention to his interpolation.

A true queen may have arms-men as well as her consort who are able to manipulate the elements, particularly within the protective arts, Rheet continued her lesson. It would be unusual for more than her Consort to rise to the level of a Master, but not unknown. As the queen ages and gains in majesty, she may have a second arms-man who is elevated in his mastery of the elements, or even a third, but such things do not happen in a few mere years, they happen over decades as the queen builds her power and her bonds with her arms-men deepen in such mutual devotion that the link between them has strengthened beyond the usual degree.

Huh. Shade flashed a quick glance at me, but said no more. Both Fort and Wraith had stopped eating, their minds too caught up in their thoughts for their jaws to keep chewing. Even Reve’s glance had been arrested as she assessed what Rheet had told her. I supposed from her introspection that such things did not happen in Mahdi.

Snow, she murmured, more to herself than to one of us.

One of the aspects of Water element, Rheet nodded.

In combination with air, I thought aloud, adding to the equation. Or better perhaps to say in collaboration with air.

Rheet looked at me knowingly.

Of course, she said. You are known to be a healer.

A-a-and that means—what? I inquired.

A healer has all the elements, including spirit, Rheet returned, a little mystified by my question, apparently. Healers have the advantage that they are very highly prized and tend to be identified very early, and thus locked into healing before they have the opportunity to explore the other aspects of the elements they use in healing.

Whereas I worked the forge with fire and air, and, to a lesser extent, water, I murmured, thinking aloud. And came to healing late. Well, comparatively.

Most mages start with the little spells, the hearth wards, the cleaning and mending spells, Rheet pointed out. They try this of earth, that of fire, something else of air, another spell of water, all basic things, to see if they can do it, to see where their mastery will lie. Some they will come to early, some late, some not at all. Everyone, she concluded, with conscious generosity, comes to their abilities at a different time in different ways.

While what little I learned, I learned late, slowly and laboriously, I mused. Backwards. Upside down. Inside out. That’s how I’ve learned what little I’ve learned. No foundation, I considered morosely. It was always tripping me up. I had so little frame of reference in which to put what I studied.

Reve regarded me thoughtfully over her apple tea.

How old are you? she wanted to know.

Nineteen, I groused. Best guess, anyway.

Rheet’s gaze stopped, turned inwards.

Hardly old enough to even be considered as an apprentice, she pointed out. And already doing complex healing and wards. She frowned. Most healers do very little studying of wards and hardly more cleaning spells, though they do practice some with mending spells. And fire is not usually one of their stronger abilities. Why, some healers hardly have fire at all. Barely enough to get by.

That seemed odd to me. Why not wards? Couldn’t wards be used to keep Contagion away? And fire—wouldn’t there be some application to fevers in fire? Any why couldn’t a good cleaning spell clean out infection? Well, the mending spells. Those made sense. Some of the simple mending spells might work relatively well for surface scrapes and cuts, even some broken bones. They might even have been useful for some of the systems, the nerves, muscles and small blood vessels, for instance, that I’d so struggled to heal in Shade’s leg. It still seemed a miracle to me that he had the mobility and the strength in that leg that he did have. He didn’t seem to favor it at all.

Shade looked up from the remnants of the sandwich he’d just plowed through.

I’m going to be an arms-man, he declared, matter-of-factly, reaching out for the bread so he could make another sandwich.

Fort narrowed his eyes at his younger brother, frowned.

I am too, he insisted. If you can, I can. It must be in the blood. Because we’re Smoke wolves.

I eyed him thoughtfully. I wasn’t so sure. I thought that the devotion and the commitment might have more to do with it than the blood. Or at least as much. And then another thought hit me.

Wait a minute. Aspects of an element. Snow as an aspect of water. Then Ice would be as well. And—cold?

It can be. Usually cold is an aspect of air. Rheet nodded impatiently. Her attitude told me that this was basic stuff. Things perhaps young children were taught with their abc’s?

And so heat is an aspect of fire, and light another, I reasoned. And aspects of each element interact to create— I left it hanging in hopes that she would provide the term.

But this is basic elemental education, Rheet protested.

Then in which books may I find it? I asked her, point-blank.

In the children’s books, upstairs in the nursery, I suppose, Rheet returned. You can’t mean to tell me you were never taught such things! she objected.

Amadeans do not study magic, I informed her. Amadeans barely admit of its existence. They certainly do not refer to the elements as points of study, never mind have a vocabulary with which to discuss them. To an Amadean, the earth is merely the dirt under their feet, the fire something which heats their homes and the air something they breathe, not something about which they think. And don’t get me started on water.

Rheet stared at me.

How very, very— she found it difficult finding the right word, finally settled upon, incomprehensible.

Perhaps to her it was. After lunch I took myself up the stairs to the nursery under the eaves and started looking through the children’s picture books there. It might be lowering to find myself studying toddlers’ picture books, in search of education, but if that’s where the information I needed was to be found, then I would study the toddlers’ picture books.

They weren’t difficult to find. Flames on one cover, and water on another provided me with clues, while a wind blowing through trees gave me a notion about air. Wind, I thought, as an aspect of air! I had a feeling not all aspects of air would prove to be so easy of discovery. I grabbed up the books and headed for the library and my desk and notebook. I couldn’t wait to see the terminology they used to elucidate the phenomenon of steam.

The heat aspect of fire applied to water to transpose water into heated air, which in its turn created power by which wheels could be turned? And which, when the aspect of cold was applied, returned the steam back into water yet again? And how did magic apply to that? I wondered. Or use it, might perhaps be the better question. Was there a point at which science and magic met? Or even overlapped?

IN WESTERN AMADEA

Nora cowered against the wall, the pup in her arms, both of them shivering with fear. Her owner and his were arguing. Pup’s owner was assuring her owner that he could beat Pup into changing, and the picture that formed in her mind from his thoughts made it clear to her what he meant by beating and what he meant by ‘changing’ and what he meant my owner to do to Pup. In his mind, Nora saw a naked, helpless child with soft, injured brown eyes and a thatch of soft, medium brown hair, standing defenseless before this monster, looking maybe eight years old. Possibly.

Pup’s owner towered over the slimy, weaselly monster that ‘owned’ Nora. Both men had beer bellies hanging over their belts, and she rather suspected that when Pup’s owner took his belt off to beat Pup with it, that his pants would fall down and he wouldn’t care because he meant to take them off anyway before he did what he intended to do to her. He was trying to convince her owner that Pup would be a good trade. That her owner could ‘enjoy’ doing to Pup what he’d wanted to do to her for years, but which she’d always managed to prevent, until she’d finally succeeded in implanting a solid antipathy in his mind that kept him away from her —mostly.

It didn’t, unfortunately, stop him from beating her whenever he took the notion, nor from wanting to do it, and periodically getting up his nerve to the point of trying to do it. Nor did it prevent him from selling her to other men so that they could try to do it. So far, she’d always managed to blank their minds before they could, and to scramble them so they thought that they had but that they’d been drunk—too drunk to remember any details. And to set some of her own revulsion into their minds, trying to make it seem theirs, so that they found what they’d wanted to do, what they thought they’d done, both reprehensible and revolting, but it wasn’t a permanent cure. Sometimes they’d come back again, needing another ‘fix’ for their wicked perversions, other times they just found other, more helpless little girls to destroy.

Slavery was illegal in Amadea. Selling little girls to men to be raped was illegal. Neither of those facts meant anything. No one in any of the towns that she’d been dragged into or out of so far had ever bothered to enforce the laws. She’d learned the hard way that nobody was going to stop her owner and nobody was going to punish him and nobody was going to help her.

She wasn’t even allowed to help herself. Any attempt to protect herself, defend herself, would bring the law and all its minions down upon her head. No matter what she did to try to stop grown men from raping her, it would be excessive force. Oh, men would say that what other men was doing to her was wrong, but they would never let her stop those men from doing it and they would never stop the men from doing it themselves. According to them, any punishment at all for the evil inflicted upon her was too much, excessive.

In the time Nora had been with her owner, he’d found it politic to leave three other towns, but he’d never been arrested for what he did to her, he’d never even been threatened with arrest, and the money he’d made selling her to the rapists allowed him to drink all he wanted and to buy and sell the small inns he operated whenever he pulled up stakes and moved again. He always blamed her for his having to do it and that was probably fair, since the revulsion she’d planted in the minds of the men he’d sold her to so they could rape her was probably responsible for people turning against him. Well, that and the way he treated her and everyone else he came into contact with, lying and cheating and stealing every chance he got, keeping Nora in rags and beating her whenever she didn’t duck quick enough and wipe his mind of his intention to hurt her.

This time she knew the problem was going to have to be resolved permanently. First, because somebody was going to figure out sooner or later what she was doing, and second, because now there was Pup to be protected, and third because the two of them together were more than she could handle. She’d been doing what she could to ‘heal’ Pup these last couple of days and to protect him from his owner, but she couldn’t be around always, and sooner or later the brute who owned him was going to break something in him that she couldn’t fix, if he hadn’t already.

Nora wasn’t a real healer, she just had a few tricks an old hedge witch had taught her at the last town where they had stayed a couple of years. So far she’d been managing, but Pup had several broken bones and though she’d fixed them as best as she could, he needed a long time to recover, and with either one of these two around, he wasn’t going to get it.

Pup’s owner, the brute, started to take off his belt, and though her slimy weasel of an owner was starting to shake his head, Nora knew from the way that he was doing it that he was giving in. She couldn’t let the brute hurt Pup any more. So she blanked the weasel’s mind—she could do it in the blink of an eye, these days, she had done it so often, and then the brute’s, though his mind was harder to blank and took longer. But finally his fingers loosened on the leather of his belt and the buckle dropped towards his knee. Nora knew she had to work fast.

She couldn’t say that the brute had a tough mind—he didn’t—but he was single minded. He liked hurting Pup. Nora saw that, even as she went to work to tear his mind to shreds, ripping at him as quickly as she could work, tearing out the connections between his mind and his body, until he could neither see, nor move, nor breathe. And, as soon as his breath started to falter, she lowered her attention to his chest and started to tear at his heart. She knew what to do. She’d had to do this before. Once. When a man had wanted to hang Granny, and burn her cottage to the ground because she was what he called a ‘hedge witch’. Whatever that was.

Nora had loved Granny. Granny had taught her things. Useful things. Cleaning spells, how to light the kitchen fire, how to mend her clothing, how to read and write, how to cook. She’d even given Nora books. She couldn’t let that man kill Granny. But the weasel had taken her away anyway. Nora supposed he was afraid that Granny would find a way to help her. Well, she had.

As soon as the brute had stopped breathing, and his heart had stopped beating, Nora turned to the weasel, and did the same thing to him. It got very quiet in the dugout. Pup kept trying to swallow his whimpers, and Nora snuggled him and kissed his nose and stroked his silky soft head and ears and after a long time, he stopped shaking. He didn’t relax. He couldn’t. He didn’t know what had happened, what she’d done. How could he? He was just a pup, whatever the brute had said about him.

You couldn’t call the hole dug into the ground under the kitchen, a cellar. The cellars had been situated in front of it, deliberately, so this small space would be hard to find. The weasel liked it that way, liked hiding Nora in it so no one could see what he did to her and no one would find her to know what he was. It wasn’t even really a room, but the door, such as it was, could be locked from the outside, and there were chains on the bed so her owner could chain her to it if he took the notion. There wasn’t much of anything in the room except the bed. No rugs on the floor, no tables or chairs or lamps or chests or anything like that. One bucket for water, and another for, well, everything else.

There were a couple of candle holders stuck into the dirt of the walls, for light. Sometimes the weasel liked to punish Nora by chaining her to the bed and blowing out the lights and then locking her in the room without food or water and some-times it seemed even the air started to give out before he finally came and opened the door up again. Nora had known she wasn’t going to be able to stay much longer. She’d known something was going to have to be done. Well, now she’d done it.

She’d hoped to put it off for a little while. They’d gotten past Bitter, and into Thaw, but not very far. She’d hoped to put it off all the way to Bud, if possible. At least Mud. But time had run out. Well, if she wanted to save Pup.

The Brute said that Pup was Mahdi. He said that Mahdi could be either a puppy or a boy. That he could choose. And that he preferred to be a puppy because a puppy could run faster and he kept trying to get away from the Brute. (Wonder why?) And that was why he had to be kept on a leading string and why he’d broken Pup’s leg. Bastard.

Nora wasn’t at all sure she believed the Mahdi stuff. But then again a lot of people didn’t believe in hedge witches, either, and what about Granny? So she’d leave her options open on that. For now, anyway. Right now, for what she had to do it didn’t matter what she believed about Mahdi, and whether or not she believed that Pup could be a boy or not. Either way, they couldn’t stay here, pup or boy. Nora wasn’t old enough.

Well, she didn’t know exactly how old she was. She guessed she was more than ten, and she was pretty sure she hadn’t turned twelve yet. So eleven? Maybe? If they stayed here they’d just be found and probably separated, and just sold to new owners for whatever they’d bring and the Sheriff, or the Mayor, or whoever, would pocket whatever money they could get, and that would be the end of that. It would be just more of the same, just new owners separating them and probably worse. Nora had always known that. So they had to leave.

She just hadn’t wanted to have to leave this early in the new year. But, she thought, must needs when the slavers drive. Wasn’t like she didn’t have a plan. She’d been planning what to do for a long while. Well, ever since the weasel had dragged her away from Granny.

The thought of Granny made her heart hurt. They couldn’t go back there. They’d just make trouble for her, and that was if they could get to her, which wasn’t likely. A girl and a puppy traveling alone? With only a couple of horses? If the bandits didn’t get them, then the law would and either way, the outcome would be about equally bad.

No. The only way was to head west. To Nogaynos. Granny had told her all about Nogaynos. She’d said for Nora to get there as soon as she could, as best she could. That she’d never be safe in Amadea. She said it was too late for her to go, that she’d never make it, it would be too long a trip for her. But Nora could, she said. If she took enough food. If she had a horse. If she could figure out ‘travel’. And then she’d given Nora the books, the one that explained how to use ‘travel’, and the book of maps and the other of stories. So she’d know, Granny said, what might be possible.

Nora guessed she’d read those books a hundred times, sitting up in her rag-bag bed at night by mage light, all about how the old Nogaynos Mages had ‘traveled’ all those trading caravans across the plains for hundreds of years. She knew you were supposed to stay on the route and go from rock circle, called cairns, to rock circle, and only camp in the circles. She’d memorized the maps, the ones that said which cairns had water, and which ones hadn’t, so you had to carry water from cairn to cairn, just in case. She knew how much food you had to have, the books said, and how many days it took to get across the plains.

She knew why Granny had said she couldn’t do it. But she had it all planned out how they could do it. Nora had the books hidden, safe, where the weasel wouldn’t find them. Granny had taught her how to make wards, so he couldn’t.

Now she assessed what they would have to do it with while Pup calmed down. The brute’s cart wasn’t really a wagon. At something less than ten feet long and probably no more than four feet wide, if that, it didn’t even have a seat on it, though it did have posts in the back corners where he had tied Pup and his slaves so they could be dragged along after it. It also had small barrels on each side, for water and grain, and the brute had even had a pair of large ponies to pull it. (Not quite big enough to be a horse, but bigger than most ponies, a size Nora could manage, anyway.)

The weasel had a rather nice mare, and he hadn’t sold her last year’s colt, yet, probably because he wasn’t worth much at his age, though he was semi-weaned, so the mare could be packed, and he’d had a pack pony of his own she could take. Nora could tie the mare and the pony to the tie posts, to lead, and pack both of them, and with whatever she could get into the wagon, they ought to be able to get by. But it was going to be cold, she thought.

They’d have to get clear of Amadea and then settle somewhere in one of the cairns for the rest of Thaw and the beginning of Mud, until the grass came up strong enough so they could get back on the trail. They’d need all the warm clothing, all the money, and all the blankets and bedding they could get, with all the hay she could pack in the cart. But hey, Nora told herself, this is an