Author's note -- I assure you, when I have this printed up, I will not be heading each section with a number, i.e. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc. This is only for the blog.
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Two miles from the gates of Songless Castle, the road forks. One branch follows the Gateway upstream to Slattern. This is the road traveled when I came to Songless Castle, ten years and a lifetime ago. The other road swings south and below the Eastern Green Forest, then plods northeasterly through the foothills of the Dragon’s Mouth Mountains. This is the road we took for three long, jolting, jouncing days. My main entertainment was Charles, who told me again and again just how badly the last messenger had been treated.
Lord Reinard had only given up, with an angry flip of his hand, that his last messenger had not been treated well and that he had received no response to his inquiries. From Charles’ lips tumbled horrors. The messenger had been given a cold, tiny room to sleep in, one that overlooked the stableyard. Soldiers were posted outside his door, and he was not allowed to leave. His meals arrived cold and half-eaten. When he could leave, he returned to find personal items missing. On the fourth day, he woke to find rats in his room. When he complained about this treatment on the fifth day, he was severely beaten, dumped into a farm wagon, and sent home. At no time did he find anyone who would answer his questions.
My Lord Reinard is such a wise man. To people who will not talk, he send a messenger who cannot speak.
When I wasn’t listening to Charles’ chatter, I was staring at the withered countryside. The fields were stubbly, with harvest leavings scattered across the brown earth, and a cold wind harried the clumps of dead grass. Here and there a rotten apple lay in the dirt. Trees reached bare branches toward the heavy grey sky, pregnant with rain but unable to deliver. The landscape warned of storms raging before the week was through, then bitter cold. Poor omens for my journey.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
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