The Lost Crown

The Guard Tower

Walliam’s bleakness filled him and he couldn’t sleep.  The utter darkness of the room deepened his sadness and misery.  How could he fail Eperna so completely?  Maybe he would just open the door and sound their alarm.  He could run and be on his way before they found him.  He thought about that.  They were Magians and had powers he knew little about, even after the few months he had spent in their academy.

Something blue caught his eye.  It was like a blue point of light, where he thought the wall of the room was.  Blue light.  He heard a whisper.  “Seeds become flowers.  Flowers become seeds.”

A small, leather pouch hung from a cord around his neck.  He had put the beans in that so that they would always be near him.  He pulled the pouch out from under his nightshirt in the dark.  He opened it and saw that the blue pattern on the beans was glowing.  It looked like a handful of tiny, blue eyes collected together in the pouch.

He carefully got out of bed and set one of the beans on the stand next to his bed.  It cast a very faint light, but just enough for him to see.  He dressed in his old clothes and left his nightshirt on the bed.  Had Eperna heard his prayer?

His bag was barely discernible in the deep gloom of the room.  But how was he to get out?  He slung the bag over his shoulder and picked up the bean from the stand by his bed.  He held the pouch with the beans in his hand.  He took a deep breath and concentrated on them.  He walked slowly through the darkness to the door.  They were not locked in, but the Magian had cast a spell of some kind on the door so that an alarm would sound if he walked through.  He turned that over in his mind as he stood in the darkness in front of the closed door.

He felt the beans in his hand grow warm and he imagined them creating a cloak around him.  What if they could cloak him and he walked through the door?  Would the alarm still sound?

A blue glow seeped out of his hand and traveled up his arm.  Very quickly he was enveloped in the blue glow.  He stepped forward and walked through the solid door, without opening it.  He went through it with ease.

Outside the door there was faint light form the windows and the blue glow that shrouded him disappeared.  He sighed and walked down the hallway carefully, to the stairs that led down to the first floor.  He went down them as silently as he could.  

In a matter of moments he was outside the dormitory looking at the stars in the night sky overhead.  At that moment he saw the red streak of a shooting star cross the sky and then vanish and he smiled.  “Thank you, Eperna,” he whispered.

He went to the gates and found them locked.  How could that be?  In all the time he had been at the academy they had never locked the gates at night.  His frustration began to rise.  He felt the beans in his hand wiggle.  Seeds become flowers.

He turned and looked around.  He could go up the stairs to the palace, but in his heart he felt that was not the right thing to do.  He thought of Soronia then.  He had heard that she had been taken from the palace by her family and that she was now in the family manor.  He turned and looked at the other cliff, opposite the one by the royal palace.

In the night the cliff looked shiny and black.  And there were no stairs.  He wondered if he could find Soronia and apologize to her for everything.  He was sure he had gotten her in trouble.  And he wanted her to know he didn’t take the lost crown.  He was not the one who had stolen it.  She had to know.

He thought about where he was and how the city wall was close to Wilding Manor.  If he could get up there he could try and talk to Soronia and then he could go down the wall to the tower where the crown was hidden.

He craned his neck and looked up the face of the cliff.  It might as well have been a thousand miles high.

Seeds become flowers.  The words went through his mind and he felt the seeds in the pouch, in his hand.  What if --?  The thought seemed crazy to him.  He walked through the grounds to Dandrealla’s small garden.  Once there he opened the pouch and dropped a couple of the seeds on the ground by the cliff wall and stepped back.  He looked at the ground in the darkness and felt foolish.  What was he thinking?