Riding their horses at a walk through the crowded city streets, it takes them a little over an hour to reach the gate in the eastern wall. The sun is almost to the horizon as they draw near the gate. Just before they reach the eastern wall, they can see the guards beginning the process of closing the gates for the night. “Let’s hurry!” Illan says to the others as he kicks his horse into a trot.
“Hold the gate!” he hollers to the guards there. One of them looks their way and cries, “Hold!” to his fellows. They wait for them to ride through the gate before closing it.
“That was close!” Jorry exclaims.
“Yeah!” agrees Uther.
Riding along the road through the outlying buildings, they eventually leave the edge of town. Another hour and they find a spot to make camp.
During the night, James is awakened by Uther who’s on watch. The box is again glowing as someone seeks to find the Fire contained within. James immediately casts out his senses to aid the crystal but finds the power behind the search is lessened quite a bit.
The others are awakened by Uther while James is concentrating on the box. He glances to them and says, “It isn’t nearly as strong as it had been the last time. It almost feels fainter, like it’s only the fringe of the spell.”
“Maybe it’s being directed elsewhere,” suggests Illan.
“That’s possible,” agrees James. “If so, it looks like this might actually work. You guys go ahead and get some rest, I’m going to keep an eye on this until whoever is trying to find it stops.”
Though they lay back down, none of them are able to return to sleep as long as the crystals on the box glowed. When a half hour later, the crystals finally subside back to their normal glow, everyone relaxes and begins drifting off to sleep.
The following morning, after a quick meal, they resume their way east to Trademeet. The travelers they meet are mainly merchants, with the few odd travelers thrown in. They ride quickly with only short breaks to give the horses a rest before continuing on.
By the end of the day, they come to a crossroads where they learn from a fellow traveler that the north road will take them to Osgrin and then on to Trendle. An inn and a couple other buildings have been constructed here and they decide to stop for the night.
The inn is of good quality and has a stable with a stableboy who lives in a small room in the back to keep an eye on things. A quick supper and James hits the bed, he’s still not completely over the ordeal of the day before. The night goes by quickly and he wakes up almost feeling back to normal.
They have a quick meal in the common room before heading out on the road, the box again secured behind James’ saddle. They take it quick, really wanting this whole thing over.
An hour or so after they start, they come to a fair sized town sitting at a crossroads. They discover it’s called Guellin, a town whose main source of trade is wool and wool products. James could’ve figured that out by the number of sheep farms they came across along the road as they drew near.
The road heading south would take them to Willimet if they were going in that direction. Willimet! Just hearing the name makes him seethe after the way that woman treated him. If he wasn’t in such a hurry, he’d go down there and demand his money back. Not to mention that she begin telling the truth about what happened and stop all this demon possession talk. That’s probably what’s driving the curious out to The Ranch.
Leaving Guellin behind, he comes to the realization that this may be a good place to procure some wool stuffing for Tersa’s teddy bears she’s making. Have to talk to Delia about that.
The road ahead of them begins to have fewer and fewer travelers as they progress until it’s just the odd caravan coming to or from Trademeet. From what one caravan master said, Trademeet is still over a day away unless they want to kill their horses getting there, which they don’t.
By the time the sun begins to dip below the horizon, they’re still out in the middle of nowhere. James says he’s not that exhausted and that he could go another couple hours in the hopes of finding an inn. So they press on and two hours after night had fallen, they begin to see the lights from a small town ahead of them.
Finding an inn, they get settled in and after a meal in the common room, head to their rooms for the night.
The next morning, clouds can be seen coming in from the west. James sees the approaching storm as a blessing which will hopefully give him some relief from the hot summer sun beating down upon them. By noon, the clouds have blanketed the sky and a short while after that a drizzling rain begins falling, making everyone uncomfortable. Except James, who finds this a welcome relief to the sun. Since coming here, he’s managed to get quite a tan. They plod on through the rain the rest of the day until they see Trademeet appear on the horizon ahead of them.
Chapter Fourteen
Upon reaching the outskirts, James announces, “Fifer and Yern should be here somewhere.”
“So this is where they went to?” Uther asks.
Nodding, James continues, “I had them come ahead of us to procure some things we’ll need, as well as scout around.”
“I would think they’ll be in a tavern somewhere getting drunk,” Jorry says.
“This place is pretty big, may take us awhile to find them,” Illan tells him.
“I realize that,” says James. “If I would have known of a place here, they could’ve met us there, but I didn’t.”
They begin searching the taverns and inns along their way. Finally, after searching in over ten places, they find them sitting at a table, each with a buxom young woman on their knee.
When Fifer sees them walk through the front door, he has the girl get off his knee as he says to Yern, “Looks like the fun is over.” Seeing Yern’s confused look he indicates the door.
“Damn,” Yern curses under his breath. “Sorry my lovely, but duty calls,” he tells the girl in his lap as he gently removes her from his knee.
“There you layabouts are!” Uther exclaims at them as he comes to their table.
Giving him a grin, Fifer says, “You have poor timing my friend. Couldn’t you have waited an hour more?”
“An hour?” Jorry asks laughing. “It wouldn’t have taken you that long.”
James comes forward and asks, “Did you get everything?”
“Yes we did,” replies Fifer. “It’s out back in the wagon.”
“Wagon?” asks Uther.
James turns to Uther and says, “See if there are a couple more rooms available for the night.” When he nods and moves to find the innkeeper, James says to the others, “Let’s talk about this somewhere more private.”
Uther returns shortly with two keys and says they’ve got stall space for their horses. Illan has him and Jorry take the horses out to the stables while the rest of them go up to their rooms with the box.
Once the horses are taken care of, and everyone is crammed into one room with the door shut, James asks them, “Is the Pass open?”
Shaking his head, Yern says, “No. From what we’ve been told, the area on the other side is still too volatile and they’re not allowing anyone to cross over.”
“But, we may have arranged a way for us to be allowed up the mountain, though,” adds Fifer.
“How?” James asks.
“The last few days we sort of made friends with the guard in charge of this side of the Pass,” he explains. “We told him that we come here every year to fish up in the Pass, along with some friends of ours. I believe we convinced him we don’t plan on crossing over so he said as long as we give him our word to stay on this side of the way stop at the summit, we can proceed up the Pass.”
“Excellent!” exclaims James. “That’s better than I was hoping for. And you definitely got everything I asked for?”
“Yep,” Fifer says, nodding. “It’s all in the back of the wagon. Most of the stuff we got real cheap, seems the merchant’s around here are having a bad time now that no more traffic is coming through the Pass.” He hands James a coin filled pouch, what’s left of the coins he gave them when they left The Ranch.