The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3) (16 page)

“Friendly power, please let us make a set of steps up to the roof,” he commanded the energy, and he watched as the stones in the ceiling of his second floor descended and formed the beginning of another stair case, and were supplemented once again by more stones that came waddling up from the main staircase in the tower.  Within minutes he had another staircase, and he climbed up it to reach the roof.

He would have some rain falling into his suite, he belatedly thought with a grin as he climbed up to the top of the tower and looked around.  The view from the roof was outstanding.  He could see nearly all the palace grounds, and what’s more, he could see wide swaths of the city spread out in every direction. 

It was a lovely landscape, an inspiring view.  And in the evening, he would once again have a wide open view of his beloved stars overhead.  And the city would have a view of his pyrotechnic displays of power, when he engaged in them, as he expected to do.  That would satisfy Jenniline by giving a demonstration of his abilities.

That would be the easy part, in some respects, he told himself, as he lay down on the roof and looked up at the sky.  There were innumerable other challenges and activities he apparently faced which he could not conceive of a way to address.  He was supposed to play peacemaker among warring factions in a country that he knew nothing about, and he was supposed to marry a girl from the court, and he seemed destined to be a ruler.  Aside from the unimaginable prospect of living in a palace and becoming a member of the royal family – indeed, perhaps becoming the king himself someday! – there was little that appealed to him about the notion.

He imagined himself living long lazy days in the tropical northern climes of Kilau, or at worst, Palmland.  They were not the place he had been born in, but they were the places that he now thought of as home, where he was comfortable and felt accepted among friends.  He thought of the pleasure he would have if he could just raise his flute and play music with Guy’s band, or even perform with Grace to help crowds of listeners heal.

He suddenly thought of his flute, and wondered where it was.  He had called for his sword and knife and wand to come to him, but he had forgotten to summon the flute.  “Power friend, please deliver my flute to me,” he called.  He heard the sound of something rattling around in the rooms below, and then his flute quickly appeared.  He didn’t play it; he merely let his fingers caress it thoughtfully as he tried to grasp what his immediate future held.

Grange lay upon the tower roof, and looked up at the sky, and thought about all that confused him, and all that frustrated him, and all that he wished he had.  Most of all, he wished he had a wizard advisor, a friend, with him.  He could tell that his ability to use the power was enhanced; it had grown significantly thanks to Acton’s gift.  But he had little idea of ways to use it best.  He suspected he needed to produce amulets, tools and weapons that he could use when the time of battle descended upon Southgar.

What he needed most was his wand to be fully functional.  He wanted it to be a true wand, one that he could use and control and rely upon.  He wished there was a way to reach out to Brieed, to speak to him and ask his master for advice about the use of the energy.  Otherwise, Grange would have to experiment, slowly going through a trial and error method of discovering what tools were practical and would be at his disposal when needed.  That seemed time-consuming, and unproductive.

Was there a way, he wondered, to skip such a laborious use of time?  Could the energy itself provide a means of speaking to Brieed so that he could learn tried-and-true methods of exercising the power, and undoubtedly be taught things he would never conceive of on his own?

He could ask the energy, he supposed.  Or, more likely to succeed, he could go to the temple and ask Acton if it was possible, and how to do it if so.  It was worth the effort, he decided.  Acton would be able to tell him if he could converse with Brieed – Acton might even act as his mentor instead of Brieed, making the task even easier.

There were streaks of red beginning to rise from the western sky.  The sun was setting, and evening was approaching.  That meant that he would soon have to go to dinner with Jenniline.  But afterwards, once night had fallen, he would be able to go to the temple and speak to the god, he felt certain.  And he might, if the visit went well, even tell Acton about the behavior of Hockis, as Grange knew him.

Of course, Hockis might already be telling Acton about Grange’s own unsavory past as a pickpocket, but Grange could justify his thefts, in his own mind.  He had wanted to give money to his orphanage.  Plus, he had been ready to stop the pilfering, and would have stopped, if Hockis hadn’t insisted on one more round of larceny, which had turned out to be a set up that had led to Grange’s ironic arrest, he recollected.

“Grange?” Jenniline’s voice called.

“Up here,” Grange replied, opening his eyes and sitting up, as he heard the sound of Jenniline’s shoes climbing the steps.

The steps were softer than they had been before, due to some change in the quality of the stones in the new stairs, Grange realized.

“Grange, is this your new home?” Jenniline asked from just behind him.

He turned and rose in one motion to face his designated counsel, then stopped in astonishment.

Her steps had sounded soft because she no longer wore the solid, dependable riding boots that Grange had seen her in; instead, she was wearing dainty shoes, virtually slippers.

Had he not heard the difference in her footsteps, he might not have noticed the shoes though, because the rest of her appearance had changed by an amount at least equally astonishing.  She wore a sleek gown of light blue material, with silver trim, the heraldic colors of Magnus’s line.  The clothing revealed how slender she was, other than a slight swelling in her muscular shoulders, and it removed the vaguely mannish appearance she had cultivated with her usual attire.  The replacement was a figure that was more one of a youthful girl, one hovering on womanhood, without having reached maturity yet.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she commanded in a voice that was still just as domineering as it had ever been.

“You look so much younger,” Grange marveled.  “And,” he paused, then decided not to offer any further description, sure that it would be a venture into dangerous waters.

“I know,” she bit off her answer.  “That’s why I don’t dress this way often.”

“Why are you dressed that way now?” Grange asked.

“I thought I needed to look more like a court person if I’m going to help you in the court,” she answered.  “But every male I’ve passed in the past ten minutes has looked at me with the same expression you had thirty seconds ago.”

“Well, tonight, stay that way; it’s good to keep people off-guard,” Grange suggested.

“But after dinner, I’m going back to my usual style,” Jenniline said.  “And there’s no room for discussion.”

“I wasn’t going to ask for any,” Grange smile.  He turned and waved his arm in a wide circle.  “Do you like the view?” he asked.

“It’s tremendous,” Jenniline said with more enthusiasm in her voice.  “You turned rooms at the top of the tower from a burden to an asset,” she smiled.

“There’s my room down there,” she pointed at a building in the palace complex.

“Which one?” Grange asked.

“There, the one with the blue curtains.  The curtains that are moving!” she said in alarm.  “Why are my curtains moving?  Someone’s in my room!” she grew agitated.

Her comments immediately triggered agitation on Grange as well – regret that he didn’t know how to use the power to prevent the invasion of Jenniline’s space.  It was all the more reason to receive instruction on the use of his wand and energy.

“Let’s go see if we can stop them,” Grange insisted.

“By the time we go down, through the palace grounds, and then into my building, they’ll be gone,” she said angrily.

“But let’s go anyway,” she changed her mind.

“I’ll come back and admire your home some other time,” she promised, as she lifted her gown and ran freely down the stairs to the top floor of Grange’s tower apartment.

Minutes later they crossed a garden and entered the hall where Jenniline and several other members of the court lived.   When the princess opened the door to her rooms, there was no one else present, but her belongings had clearly been rifled through, as someone had searched for something.

“What’s missing?” Grange asked, as Jenniline angrily lifted and dropped items, looking among her clothes and furniture.

She opened a partially open drawer and looked inside.

“They took the lingerie I was wearing to distract the guards the night we got you out of the prison,” she said with a disgusted expression on her face.  “And I don’t want to hear a word about it from you.”

“Oh, and they took my letters; I had letters I shouldn’t have saved in the first place,” she said bitterly.  “Now they’re gone.”

“Do you think you should move into my suite now?” Grange asked.

“Absolutely not,” Jenniline answered emphatically.  “I will not be run out of my own home.”

Grange stood silently, as Jenniline wandered about, stewing over the invasion of her rooms.

“Enough of this; we’ll go get something to eat,” she told Grange, as the sun continued to set and the room began to grow gloomy.

“The king doesn’t eat with the court, but there is an open table set for anyone at court to eat a meal this time of day – it’s a whole room of tables, actually,” Jenniline told him, as they left her room and went through halls and open spaces of the palace, on a path that left Grange turned around and confused.

“This is it,” Jenniline told him when she stopped momentarily in front of a large set of double doors.  “Are you ready?” she asked.

“For dinner?  Sure,” Grange replied cavalierly.

“For, dinner in Southgar,” Jenniline answered.  “They tell us that other countries think we’re crude.  I thought you might think that, but if you do, don’t show it,” she warned.

Grange recollected the reputation he had heard in Fortune, of the ill-mannered style of Southgar.  “It won’t bother me,” he told her.  “Let’s go.  I’m hungry.”

Jenniline shrugged her shoulders, then grabbed the handle of the door and jerked it open, before walking directly into an antechamber, a small room that was awash with the sounds of people in the main room that waited beyond the next set of doors.

“Now, you’ll have to stand up for yourself in here, you know,” she advised him with one last warning.  “Don’t look weak, whatever you have to do,” she said emphatically.

She pulled the second door open and strolled in, ahead of Grange.

The hall was a series of five long tables, running parallel to one another in a brightly lit room, where a musician played tunes on a fiddle, ignored in the corner where he stood sawing his bow across the strings of his instrument.  Servants scurried in and out of a pair of doors on the far side of the room, carrying plates and glasses and platters of food to the crowd of two dozen loud and rowdy people scattered among the tables in small groups.

Jenniline walked in towards a small group of people who were eating at a nearby table, seven or eight together, laughing and speaking loudly as they ate.  Grange stopped just inside the doorway, watching and trying to get his bearings, to catch a sense of the atmosphere and dynamics of the room.  He had a momentary flashback, a recollection of the first time he had followed Grace into the meal room for the wizard staff of Brieed’s quarters in Palmland, but the sense of remembrance quickly disappeared after a second, as the sheer volume of sound and the frenetic level of energy in the room demanded his attention.

“Who is this?” one of the people demanded, standing up and gesturing towards Jenniline, who still wore the elegant and unlikely blue and silver gown she had selected for her attire that evening.  “We must have let someone into the wrong room; you need to be with the civilized folks,” the man spoke loudly.

“Oh, be off with your simple ways and simpler comprehension,” Jenniline shot back.  “Once in a while a girl likes to slum with the lower classes to see how you all live.”

“Don’t be insulting the Counselor now, Tranch,” a girl said to the older man.  “She’s going to marry the god’s own chosen champion now, don’t you know.”

“Ah, let me have two minutes with this champion and we’ll have the God Acton thinking he needs a new champion,” Tranch retorted.  “You go tell your fancy newcomer I said so, Jenny girl.”

“I think you just told him yourself,” Jenniline said calmly as she sat down at the open end of the table and motioned for a waiter.  “There is Acton’s champion right,” she paused to motion, thinking Grange was just steps behind her, then twisted to find his location, still hanging back by the door, “right over there,” she motioned.

There was a simultaneous twisting motion by all those within earshot of her comment, as they all turned to look at Grange, and all ceased talking.  The sudden drop in volume was a clue to the other half of the room that something had occurred, and they all grew suddenly quiet as well, as they looked first at Jenniline’s companions, then at Grange, where all the pairs of eyes were focused.

“What mess did the dog drop now?” a girl’s voice broke the near silence, as the fiddle continued to play while the conversations were silent, and then the fiddler also abruptly stopped his music.  The room was silent for one second, until a nervous waiter dropped a plate of food, which hit the floor with a resounding crash.

It was his first test among the court, Grange realized, happening even more quickly than he had expected, and he didn’t feel ready to stand up to a challenge quite so quickly.

“Who said that?” Grange asked loudly, seeking a moment’s delay to gather his wits.

The legs of a bench scooted loudly across the flagstone floor, and then a petite girl, a pretty one whose hair was cut shorter than any girl Grange had seen before, stood up defiantly.

“It was me,” she said proudly.  “What do you have to say about it?”

Grange paused, then looked over at Jenniline.  “Is this one of the ones I might have to marry?” he asked loudly.  “If it is, could you cross her off the list?”