Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (71 page)

“I’m thinking that Cirrhus knew that one of the first things you would do if you got here, if she had already passed on, would be to go to her bedroom and look for the tell-all. She knew you had seen her use it, and she knew that you would want to use it as well. So she preprogrammed a command into it that was activated once you sat on the bed. I would bet you a million dollars that there’s a switch of some sort in this bed, and I would bet that it would only be activated by someone as large as you. You know, a pressure-activated switch. A weight-biased switch.”

“Now I am really confused,” said Forrester. “What is a ‘switch’?”

Orie didn’t answer him for a few seconds. “Never mind that right now. The point is, this was a
onetime
command meant for you alone. Once you activated it for the very first time, it was meant to
not
ever repeat itself, as a safeguard, to protect the location of the portal in case the tell-all ever fell into the wrong hands.”

Forrester held his head. “This is giving me a headache.”

“Sorry,” said Orie. “When we first met you, and we were in Slova for the very first time, you had this little trick of appearing and disappearing. Remember?”

“I didn’t think you had noticed,” said Forrester, “but yes, I was able to do that.”

“We did. All of us did. Now how were you able to do
that?
You didn’t have the tell-all with you then, right?”

“Correct.”

“Then how did you do it?”

“I used this,” said Forrester. He reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of flat black rock about the size of the face of a large wristwatch.

“I made sure I always carried it on me with the holes facing me. It’s what Cirrhus told me to do.” He held it up in front of him.

“May I see that?”

Forrester handed the rock to Orie, who inspected it. One side was completely smooth. Looking deep into it, he noticed several subtle but unmistakable flashes of light that seemed to pass intermittently between the lighter and darker areas of the crystal matrix. It looked like some sort of electrical discharge. The other side was plain, and was otherwise pierced with small holes, much like those of a telephone receiver.

“Oh man,” said Orie, “this is going to be
so
easy.”

“Go on,” said Forrester.

“And Cirrhus instructed you to always position it with the holes facing you. Don’t you see? This is a simple, well not simple, audio-visual transmitter that somehow allows for the same magic that spells this place to encircle you, on-demand. So, wherever you were, Cirrhus sat here watching you with the tell-all, which is somehow linked to it. It’s a fancy one, no question about that, capable of both audio and visual transmission, as well as some sort of flow of the magic to wherever you’re standing. Anyway, real-time images of you were transmitted back to Cirrhus; to the tell-all. See? In other words, she was able to
see
your need to be invisible, and first activate, then transmit, the magic to cloak you.

“Wow, the data transmission in this thing must be incredible.”

“Now I’m completely lost,” said Forrester.

Orie seemed to not hear him as he passed back to him the odd, fenestrated stone, which Forrester replaced in his pocket with the holes facing him. Orie also handed him the tell-all.

“Can you stand, please?” he asked.

Forrester stood. “Over there,” said Orie, pointing away from the bed.

He knelt down and inspected the bed carefully. “What are you looking for?” asked Forrester. Orie held up his hand, his face set in deep concentration. First he inspected the headboard. It was made of five brass rods, three inner straight ones and two bent ones on the sides that met at the top in the middle. It looked like they had been welded together.

“See here,” said Orie. “These rods are brass. They’ve been brazed. Good work, too. My Dad has one in his shop, a brazing unit. There is no way that this bed came from this time period. No way. This bed came from the time period when they had the technology to do brazing.”

“What is this brazing of which you speak?”

“It’s a way to melt metal and join it together. I don’t know much about it except that you need electricity.”

He continued to inspect the bed, carefully sliding the mattress and coverlet off, under which he found an ordinary metal frame with suspension springs.

“Here,” he said, “Help me to flip this over.”

They flipped the small frame upside down.

“Bingo,” said Orie, then, “Wait a minute. We need to flip it back over again.”

They turned the bed upside right again and he continued to inspect it down at the foot. It appeared to be basically the same as the head, but wrapped around the center post, in its middle, was a piece of round stock with a diameter slightly larger than the post itself. Orie had Forrester hand the tell-all back to him and shooed him back away from the bed.

Holding the tell-all in one hand, with the other he reached for the piece of round stock that was wrapped around the middle of the center post, sliding it upwards. There was a distinct “click.” He sat on the bed and held the tell-all up in front of him. The image of Forrester appeared in the tell-all; it was identical to what Orie saw in front of him in Cirrhus’s small room. Orie smiled.

“Walk that way,” he pointed.

Forrester began to walk. His image in the tell-all moved across the room.

“That’s it,” he said.

“That’s what?” asked Forrester.

“The bed thinks I’m Cirrhus,” said Orie.

“What do you mean?”

In answer, Orie handed
Forrester
the tell-all and took from him the strange, fenestrated stone, which he put in
his
pocket with the fenestrations facing him, saying, “Forrester, now
you
sit on the bed. Please.”

Orie reached down to the foot again and slid the same piece of round stock, on the center post, back down. Once again, there was the same audible, “click”. Now Orie’s image appeared in the tell-all, causing Forrester to frown.

“Lad,” said Forrester, “I’m not getting any of this.”

Orie smiled again.

“Completely understandable. Fortunately, I am.”

The horses led them through the woods all night. The sun was peeking its way over the horizon when they came to a small clearing across from which was a small, rundown house. It appeared empty. They stopped. Dead-tired, and cold to the bone, they napped while they were standing. The both knew they were waiting for something, but what? Once they had awakened from their brief nap, Ryan made the mistake of stepping into the edge of the clearing. Fury roughly shoved him back into the woods, back under the cover of the trees and bramble, with a look that said in no uncertain terms, “No. We wait.”

Gracie beckoned Ryan close and whispered into his ear, “What are we waiting for, do you suppose?”

Ryan shrugged.

So they waited.

In a few hours the sun was high in the sky, and they were starting to warm up when Fury started across the clearing towards the house, Ryan and Gracie following, while Thunder and Lightning held back. He approached the back door and gently kicked at it with his hoof. The face of a Troll appeared, and Ryan cried, “Run, Grace! It’s an ambush!”

They raced back away from the house towards the woods, but were headed off by Thunder and Lightning who shepherded them back to the rear door. The Troll who opened it said, “Hello. My Name is Daria.” The horses all nodded up and down several times. Thunder gently pushed Grace in the small of her back towards the door, nodding, “Yes.”

“Are you telling me it’s safe?” she asked the horse.

Again Thunder nodded, “Yes.”

Ryan said, “My name is Ryan. This is Gracie.”

The children went inside, and the horses walked back across the clearing and into the woods.

Inside the small house it was dark. What were left of any of the shades, since it had been abandoned, were drawn, and where there were none, rags, and pieces of rotting, moldy blankets, and even some branches, covered the rest. A young man stepped out of the shadows with his hand extended. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Erik Elijah Fairman. I am the Prince of Ravenwild.”

Ryan and Gracie introduced themselves, and Gracie said, “You’re a prince? You don’t look like a prince. You look like a bum.”

They all had a good laugh. “Sorry, Your Highness,” said Gracie. “I didn’t mean that.”

Erik smiled. “You’ll have to remember that when you appear before the high court,” then, “Only kidding.”

They all smiled again. Once their eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the inside of the house, they could see that, while spartan, it had a neatness about it that spoke to the pride of the two who had been staying there.

“Come,” said Daria, “We have much to talk about.”

“Ya think?” commented Ryan. Gracie smiled.

“First things first,” said Ryan. “I’m going to go cover the horse’s hoof prints in the back yard. Excuse me.”

He went out back to the woods where the horses were waiting, grazing on odd bits and pieces of ground cover. “Hey, guys,” he said softly. “We won’t forget you. We’ll try and get you some hay and some decent grain as soon as we can.” They paid him no mind, but continued to graze.

He selected a stout branch and swept clean any trace of their approach to the back of the house with one hand, while in the other he carried the food bags with the remains of the dried venison, trout, and ground tubers, and the backpacks containing the maps.

“Orie would be proud of you,” said Gracie. “You’ve turned into a regular woods guy.”

Turning to face Daria and Erik, he handed her off the bags, saying, “Here is all we have in the way of food. I wish it could be more.”

“I thought I smelled food,” said Erik. “This is our lucky day.”

Daria extracted a large piece of venison and said, “Thank you,” to both of them. Ryan nodded. Gracie said, “You’re welcome. Pardon him. He has no manners. Poor parenting.”

She handed one of the bags to Erik, who tore into it. “Careful,” said Grace. “If you haven’t eaten in a while, you’ll get sick.”

“I see you
have
learned something on this great adventure,” said Ryan.

Gracie grunted, the expression on her face telling everyone present precisely what she thought of this great adventure.

“Well, all right,” said Ryan. “I don’t know where to start. It’s too bizarre to believe. Let me put it this way. We are not from here. From this world, I mean. We are from a place called Earth … ”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Erik. “Are you Stephanie’s brother?”

“You know Stephanie
?” cried Gracie.

“Yes,” said Erik. “I do. Or … I did.” He lowered his eyes and had a staring contest with the floor until Gracie said, “What do you mean, you did?”

“Well,” said Erik. “I first met her on your world. I was somehow transported there months ago by a wizard, or someone claiming to be a wizard … ”

“Hemlock Simpleton,” interrupted Ryan. “This is incredible … ”

“Is she okay?
” asked Gracie, unable to contain the anxiety that clutched at her throat, causing it to tighten alarmingly. She shot a look at Ryan, saying, “Ryan, let Erik tell us the entire story start to finish. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to make any sense out of this.”

“Sorry,” said Ryan. “Erik, please continue.”

He told them of his inexplicable visit to their world and how he had met Stephanie in the home of the Strong family, saying that the wizard, Pinus Porphyrius, a.k.a. Hemlock Simpleton, had told him that she was only being transported for a brief visit.

He went on to tell them that Pinus was well known on their world and how he had done amazing things for years, always in the interests of helping children fare better: building schools, health centers, places of refuge, those sorts of things. “In a world that has forever been at war,” he said, “to have someone looking out for the children was always viewed as a blessing straight from the Old One.”

He added that there was not a household in Ravenwild that would not give him sanctuary.

Continuing, he told them how he and Stephanie had been forced to run for their very lives as soon as they left the confines of the gardens, chased by a marauding band of Troll soldiers, how they had both been knocked unconscious during their capture, and their escape from the fortress in Ghasten.