“Not much seems to have changed...” Thomas added bitterly.
“Anyway, he got as far as the second seal and was sealed to her in a traditional engagement ceremony. Not much detail was told to me by my father, except that he died an extremely horrific and painful death.”
“But if your father knows this, why would he use it on me?!” It seemed that her father had found a way to get rid of Thomas after all. Quiet, innocent, and painful.
“I... I don't know.” Alanna was exasperated. “I can't believe my father would give you that knowing that it would kill you. He had to be sure that it wouldn't harm you.”
“But WHY do it at all?!”
“Father.... believes that I am fated to marry the saviour of Alumia. I can only believe that he honestly thinks that's you. If I am fated to really be married to you, then this seal can't hurt you, and the power you would gain would undoubtedly be of great value to this world to protect against the war that is coming.”
“He's risking MY life for a war on this world which I am not even a part of?”
“I'm a part of this world.” Alanna looked hurt.
“That's not what I meant, but Alanna, he didn't even ask me. I mean... he asked me alright, but he didn't TELL me it would kill me.”
“He was desperate Thomas. He was worried about the possibility of losing you, but he would never do anything that would put your life at risk.”
“So he gives me a tattoo that will kill me? How is that not risking my life?!”
Alanna was getting irritated. “That's what I was saying... he wouldn't unless he was sure!”
“And I am supposed to feel comforted by this because he knows it will be okay.”
“Argh! Thomas, you're being impossible!”
“I'm sorry your princess! It's just a little bit much to digest at the moment.”
Thomas started to prance around Alanna preaching to her in a sing-song voice.
“Oh it's fine that you want to marry my daughter, because this tattoo will probably kill you before you have a chance to finish the ceremony anyway. Tra-la-la-la-la.”
Alanna screamed in frustration and stormed off into the woods. Thomas grunted in frustration and stomped off to the tent. Tretchbolt, oblivious to the cataclysmic argument, continued to sleep on ground just inside the flap having not made it to the bedroll before passing out.
*****
It was one of the coldest nights of the winter in recent memory. The stars danced brightly against the deep dark sky. The air was crisp and clean, and even the animals seemed to have hunkered down to wait out the cold of the night. Alanna felt as though she were the only one wandering beneath the forest canopy in the dead of night. It really was quite cold. The trees blotted out most of the sky. Devoid of life, dark and extremely cold, the forest made Alanna feel uneasy. She didn't want to go back yet. That would be too embarrassing, but it wasn't the type of place you wanted to stick around very long. Alanna was just about to go back when she heard something. She held her breath and strained to hear. Nothing. Only the silence of one of the coldest nights ever, greeted her. She was about to turn back when she heard it again. It sounded like a thin and strained cry for help. She turned her head, trying her best to figure out where it was coming from. Somewhere off in the distance, deeper in the forest. Alanna carefully picked her way through the trees, treading deeper in, and farther away from her camp. If someone was really in distress out here, under these conditions, they could be in real peril.
“Help me... someone... please.”
It was definitely faint and weak, but loud enough that it was clear. Alanna started to pick up speed and was setting off now at as close to a full run as she could manage in the dark. When she crested a ridge she saw, lying on his back beside a stream, an old man with a long grey beard in tattered clothing. He weakly reached his hand out toward her.
“Oh thank heavens child. I thought that no one would hear me.”
The old man must be freezing in this cold weather. Alanna quickly ran over to help him to his feet, but as she came upon him, she saw a change in his demeanour. The look of despair and relief was replaced with something else... satisfaction?
“What are you doing out here?” Alanna asked warily.
“Why, waiting for you of course.”
Something was definitely off about this, but before Alanna had a chance to react, tendrils of thick black smoke flew off the man and wrapped around Alanna. Alanna tried to scream, to shout out, but the smoke had already wrapped itself around her mouth. The transparent weaves of immaterial held her as surely as steel. She shifted, trying very hard to change to her Dragon state, but again, something about the unnatural smoke had her trapped. She was as helpless as she had perceived the old man to be only moments before. She watched in horror as the dark Shadow that she had seen on the mountainside ripped out of the old man shell and materialized before her.
The Shadow didn't waste time speaking as the smoke continued to envelope Alanna until she was entirely covered from head to toe. The Shadow then turned to Alanna and uttered the last thing that she would hear from it. “The master wishes to speak to you.”
CHAPTER 33
LEFT IN THE COLD
Anyone who has ever been camping in the late fall or early spring is familiar with the cold that sets in, in the hours before the light starts to nurse in the day. A thick, cold mist sets in and saturates everything. Inevitably even the covers of an arctic sleeping roll are no match for the microscopic pinpricks of cold that stab through the thick material.
Thomas shivered well before the light of the sun crested the horizon. He was cold. Very cold. Laying in his sleeping roll only seemed to succeed in making him colder. The issue with getting up was, of course, freezing, but it always had to start that way. You had to get up and weather the cold to get dressed and move around before you could get warmer again. Thomas groaned and opened his eyes. The tent lay still. Alanna wasn't stirring yet. In his anger and haste the night before, Thomas had removed his pyjamas a good three metres away from where he lay now. Why the heck had he taken them off? People slept in pyjamas didn't they? Even if they were pink girl pyjamas, they would be better than nothing in this cold. Getting them without freezing to death was going to be a challenge.
Keeping the bedroll securely wrapped around him, Thomas started to roll in the direction he believed he had taken them off the night before. As he rolled securely in his cocoon, something occurred to him. He had passed right over Alanna's bedroll, and there was no one in it.
Braving the cold, Thomas ejected a hand from the safety of his roll and felt around the vicinity of where the pyjamas should be. Success! He found the bottoms and shirt in a pile by the flap. He brought them quickly into confines of his bedroll without thinking and screamed. His clothes, he was only slightly irked that he referred to them as his clothes, had turned into ice cubes.
Thomas jumped out of his bedroll and immediately wished that he had not. He started to convulse, wrapped in the cold of the early morning mist. “Gah!!!!” Thomas screamed. His bedroll was now occupied by ice cube pyjamas, and he was in his underwear out in the cold of the early morning mist.
Suddenly the flap of the tent whipped back and a half dressed Tretchbolt burst into the tent with a tin pot on his head and a sword in his hand.
“Romlivandy?! Romlivandy tuet tudy?”
Thomas was prancing around the tent shivering to death, and the blast of air that accompanied Tretchbolt into the tent did nothing to make his situation any better.
“C..C..Cold...” Thomas realized by the blank expression on his face, that nothing that Thomas was saying was getting through to Tretchbolt. Thomas cursed and delved his hand into the bedroll, extracting the frozen outfit. With a sound much like Velcro, Thomas forced his legs through the frosty pants.
Thomas shivered uncontrollably. “I sss...ssaid it's c...c...cold.”
“Of course it's cold you blasted idiot! It's winter!”
Tretchbolt stood
there for a few seconds letting his brain, which was trying hard to shake off the effects of a night of hard drinking, followed by an early winter's morning, work on forming thoughts. It took a few moments before Tretchbolt allowed his mouth to utter the second thought that had passed through his still hazy head.
“You talked!”
“Vv...v...very good. Sh... sh... sharp this morning.”
Tretchbolt gave Thomas a dangerous look. “I wouldn't try to be cute with me in the morning kid. I tend to do things without thinking.” Tretchbolt scratched the tin pot on top of his head and cursed, pulling it off.
Thomas couldn't hide his grin.
Tretchbolt's eyes narrowed and he waved his sword around in front of Thomas. “Bad things.”
Thomas ignored the extremely thinly veiled threats and proceeded to put on the top half to the ice cube.
Tretchbolt was starting to function normally now. Well, normally for him. He looked around and immediately asked, “Where's Alanna?”
Thomas turned to look at Tretchbolt. “I assumed that she would be in your tent.”
“Why would she be with me?!”
Fear started to eke into Thomas heart. “We had sort of an argument last night. She went storming off into the woods, I went off to the tent. I thought she was just blowing off steam! When I woke up this morning and she wasn't there, I thought she must have gone to your tent out of anger.”
“Thomas, she's not in my tent.”
Thomas' heart dropped. “She couldn't have been out in this all night!”
Tretchbolt and Thomas both ran out of the tent oblivious to the cold. The camp lay in silence as it had been left. The fire no longer burned in the pit, having gone out long before Thomas had fallen asleep. The remnants of the previous night's meal still sat among the logs, and Thomas' journal sat where it had been since he last wrote in it. There was nothing here to suggest that Alanna had come back the night before. Then he saw it. Stuck into the log on the other side of the fire pit was a long black dagger. In a heartbeat Thomas was running barefoot across the clearing to the the dagger. The dagger wasn't any of theirs, he was sure about that. There was something distinctly dark about it, and it wasn't just the colour. The blade was a shiny deep ebony black. The hilt, which looked to be carved from dark stone, took the form of a skeleton being squeezed by the wielder of the dagger. Diamond gemstones were set in the eyes of the skull that made up the end of the hilt, but it wasn't the dagger that held his attention, it was what the dagger was holding affixed to the log. Beneath the dagger was a note addressed to 'The Boy Wizard.'
Dear Boy Wizard,
First, I would like to congratulate you on your engagement to this enchanting young dragon. She is certainly a catch, unfortunately for you, she is now my catch. I would like to assure you that no harm will come to her as long as you follow some simple instructions.
I commend you on your abilities. Not too many beings have faced a Shadow and survived, let alone fought and banished one. It is for this reason, you have my attention whether you wish it or not.
I have a very important engagement coming up, and I simply can not have you interfering with plans that I have worked years, decades to set into motion. Thus, I request that in the coming days you neither interfere nor aid my enemies in any form. Should you follow these simple instructions, the girl dragon will be returned to you unharmed. If not, well... I don't think I have to explain to you what a Shadow is capable of doing to such an innocent creature.
Respects.
Victor Toralnikov
Thomas cursed as he passed the note to Tretchbolt. How could he have let Alanna run off like that, and not even check on her. He felt like a heel. This was all his fault.
Tretchbolt finished reading the note, and stood in silence thinking to himself.
“I'm going after her.” Thomas snatched the dagger and turned to start packing.
“That's not a good idea kid.”
“What do you expect me to do? Just sit idly by while Alanna is imprisoned by, what every person I have come across to date, has described as the most evil entity to cross these plains in thousands of years?”
Tretchbolt's voice was hard and serious. “You can't storm off to face Victor. He has armies of dark beings at his command. He lives in a well defended fortress on the side of a precarious mountain. He will see you coming a league away.”
“I'm not just about to leave her there! You want me to simply step aside? Do as he asks? I'm not stupid you know. No matter what happens, he will never hand her over.” Thomas stood in silent rage. Anger directed mostly at himself was seeping out into his voice.
“Going up there would be stupid. If you die, who is going to rescue her?”
“If I don't go up there, how am I going to rescue her?”
The first rays of true sunlight were breaking over the top of the clearing now. Thomas and Tretchbolt stood glued to the spot uncertain of what to do next. They stood there in silence, unmoving, for what seemed like hours until Tretchbolt finally spoke. “I must go inform the king.”
“He said we couldn't interfere.”
“He said you couldn't interfere. He didn't say anything about me.”
Thomas snatched the note from Tretchbolt's hands and waved it in front of his face. “Do you really think that's going to matter to him?”
“It's the only thing we can do Thomas. As you said, no matter what happens, he will not let Alanna go. If we do something, she may die, but if we do nothing, everyone, including her, may die. This decision is too big for us. I need to see the king.”
“And me?” Thomas added.
“You will have to figure that out on your own Thomas. I'm sorry kid. Whatever you do, his attention is going to be on you. Be careful.”
Tretchbolt turned to leave, and then turned halfway back. “It's the pyjamas, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
Tretchbolt nodded to himself. “Then you know....”
“about the tattoo... yes.”
Thomas closed his eyes, trying hard not to let emotion take control of his voice. “That's what we were arguing about last night. It's why... this is my fault.”
Tretchbolt placed his heavy hand on Thomas' shoulder.
“We'll get her back.”
*****
Tretchbolt hastily packed up and began his trek back to BlueShift leaving Thomas sitting in the middle of a deserted camp. The now midday sun was failing to warm the forest clearing, and Thomas was starting to feel thoroughly cold. Whenever he had been cold before, he just walked a little bit closer to Alanna, and he wouldn't feel as bad. Thomas let out a laugh as cold as the day. Even the warmth of her company had been stolen away from him.
The feeling of indecision was overwhelming. Thomas could understand Tretchbolt's decision, and he was right about attacking Victor's stronghold. That did sound like suicide the more that he thought about it. His best bet still lay in getting to Westminster. It was the only place he knew, BlueShift aside, that he might be able to find someone to help him.
Tretchbolt had packed up the entire camp, even Thomas' things were neatly stacked and ready to be carried. Thomas appreciated Tretchbolt's help. He may be a bit pushy, a little belligerent, but he could be genuine and nice as well.
Thomas stood up from the log and trudged over to his pack. Picking it up he started to think about the journey that he was about to attempt on his own in this strange land. He knew the general direction he was supposed to go, but not the exact way. This worried him somewhat. It would be easy to get lost in this forest. He wondered if the pyjamas had enough power to help him to get him to where he needed to go.
“Pyjamas that are on this whiz,
Point me to where Westminster is.”
Immediately it felt like someone had grabbed the front of his shirt and was pulling him in a southern direction. Thomas awkwardly followed the pyjama's prodding, walking a little stiffly, trying to stave off the imminent feeling he was about to fall over each time the pyjamas yanked hi
m around when he strayed from their path.
Thomas walked through the woods for a good portion of the day. There was a dandelion hue to the light now, and it was starting to build into a much nastier cold that was always promised by the coming night. Thomas was standing on a hillside in a open expanse in the middle of the forest, trying to decide where to setup his camp when he saw it. Down the hill, tucked in the trees, there was a small cabin. It was the whiffs of smoke coming up from the cabin's chimney that caught his attention. To spend the night in a heated cabin! Thomas felt rejuvenated at the simple thought of shelter. Still... he had no idea who lived there. Thomas looked up at the sky. It was getting late. If he trekked down to the cabin only to be rejected, then finding shelter and setting up a fire before the worst of the winter's chill set in would be a monumental task. He decided it was worth the risk. Making haste, Thomas started off down the hillside and through the trees at breakneck speed. He had to keep himself steady, as the direction his pyjamas were pulling was directly south, and the cabin was south east, so every once in a while he would stumble sideways. Thomas could only imagine how ridiculous it would look to onlookers. A boy fighting for control of his pink girl pyjamas. He could only hope no one ever saw.
CHAPTER 34
MRS INK
By the time Thomas had made it down the hillside to the cottage, almost all light from the sun had left the sky. The chill of the evening that approached already threatened to overwhelm him as he came upon the odd building. The cottage was a fair size. Not exactly what one would expect from a house in the middle of the woods. It was at least two stories, with a covered deck that ran the length of the outside. The sheltered portion of the deck was held up by pillars similar to those in ancient Grecian architecture, and gas lanterns on poles lined the walkway around the outside of the building. The cottage was actually more similar to a colonial styled house than a cabin or any type of home you would find in the middle of a forest. Everything about it shouted that it didn't belong here. The oddities didn't end there.
Thomas wandered around the front of the house and up the stone staircase to the front door. Standing beside the door was a bear that was at least two to three metres tall. What struck Thomas immediately was its features. It looked like it had escaped from a kids theme park. Sure it was large and shaggy, but it had humanized features and a whimsically happy look on its face. Thomas had never seen anyone decorate their home with bear sculptures before.