“Yes,” said Jenn, “it appears that we need to cross a small sea to a port called Hoggensforth. From there it’s only a bit over a week’s ride to Freehold.”
“How are we going to cross the sea?” Edwyrd asked, getting nervous about the answer.
“By boat of course,” Jenn answered somewhat condescendingly.
“Yes, but can we afford that? I don’t have any money.” Edwyrd was actually more concerned about being trapped on in close quarters with a bunch of people when he might lose control at any moment.
“That’s where I came in,” spoke up Gastropé. “We went to the harbormaster and found a ship going to Hoggensforth. After a lot of persuasion on my part,” Gastropé’ said with a proud smile, “I was able to get us a discount rate.”
“A discount rate,” Edwyrd asked suspiciously.
“Well,” Jenn said sourly, “it seems there’s a slight problem with pirates on this sea. By convincing the ship’s master that he’d have three combat trained wizards on board, he was able to make a deal that we could afford.” She looked pointedly at Gastropé with a frown on her face.
“Oh.” Edwyrd said, then his brows furrowed. “Three wizards?”
“Well,” Gastropé said depreciatingly, “I did have to exaggerate a little.”
“A little?” Jenn asked, obviously annoyed. “I am not combat trained, and I doubt you exactly are either.” Gastropé sniffed at this. “And Rupert doesn’t even count as a wizard, he’s just a very junior student at best. Besides who would even take a little kid seriously as a wizard anyway?”
“We don’t have to tell them which three of us are wizards.” Gastropé returned. “We can just let them assume that Edwyrd is the third wizard.”
“Oh, yeah, and what if we run into pirates?” Jenn asked angrily.
“We improvise.” Gastropé threw his hands above his head. “Trust me, it’ll work if you don’t lose your calm.”
“They’ll expect him to be able to cast spells or something if it comes to a fight. I mean...” she suddenly turned her attention to Edwyrd. “What exactly do you do for a living anyway?” she asked.
“Uhm,” Edwyrd was taken unprepared. He thought quickly, trying to come up with a plausible job for an Astlanian. Something he could be sure they had. What was it Rupert had said earlier about Tom? “I’m a, uh, animage.”
“An animage?” Jenn seemed taken aback. She blinked a couple of times. “Really? Why didn’t you say so earlier.” Her eyes narrowed slightly, suddenly, and her head tilted. “Really?” she repeated.
Crap, what have I got myself into, thought Edwyrd, he didn’t even know what an animage was. All he could do to salvage the situation was to try and carry the bluff through. He noted out of the corner of his eye that Rupert was grimacing. “Yeah, really. I mean, I’m not the greatest, but I get by.”
“Hmm,” Jenn acted as if she wasn’t sure. “Well then, we should talk sometime, I’d be very interested in trading some theories of mine with you. Get your perspective on some healing issues.”
“Yeah, sounds good.” Edwyrd said, almost out of the corner of his mouth, trying to keeps his smile from looking too fake.
“Ok,” Jenn said turning back to Gastropé, “then at least it wasn’t a total lie. We’ve got three mana wielders at least.” The tone of her voice was such that Edwyrd could tell she wasn’t totally convinced. He was going to have to ask Rupert exactly what one of these animage guys was, so he wouldn’t say anything too terribly out of place.
“Fine, so,” Gastropé said, seemingly happy that the matter was apparently resolved, “we need to get ready to go. The ship leaves with the second tide, this afternoon.”
“Second tide?” Edwyrd asked, he didn’t know much about tides and such, but that didn’t sound quite right.
“Yeah, second tide.” Gastropé repeated, both him and Jenn were looking at him as if they couldn’t understand his confusion. Edwyrd decided he’d better shut up, before he gave himself completely away.
“Sounds good. Uh, what do we do with the priest?” Edwyrd asked. Gastropé and Jenn both paused in thought. That changed the subject, apparently.
“I don’t know. We can’t leave him tied up forever.” Jenn said after a moment of deliberation.
“Well, we could just put him to sleep for a long time so that we’ll be long gone when he wakes up.” The priest meanwhile was looking at them all with really large eyes. Obviously concerned about his own fate.
“Yeah, and I could bind him magically, so that after the duration of the spell, he would be free to leave,” Jenn added. “OK, let’s do both.”
“Well, let’s get ready, we only have two hours before the boat leaves and there are a couple of other things we should get before we leave.” Gastropé said.
Astlan has two moons. The larger-appearing moon is Uropia and the smaller is Anuropia. Uropia represents the feminine aspect of nature and Anuropia the masculine.
