AOA Book III

Chapter 11.1 - Iona's Letter

Note to readers: Hey, I'm back from the dead, guys. My skull still hurts from that nasty injury, but I thought I'd post for anyone who hasn't forgotten about these characters and this story. Love you all. My skull still hurts, and I had a bit of the post-concussion syndrome, which got me into a bit of trouble with my slurring insanity. All cleared up now---I hope.

Special thanks to my grammar editors. You guys have helped me in the probably hundreds of hours of revising books I and II for publication - more on that soon!

Anyway, here's some Livia:

I'm afraid I'll forget your face sometimes, both yours and Hervin's, and that scares me more than anything else because the two of you are what I think of when I get too lonely. Maybe I'll never see either of you again. If that is my fate, I hope that maybe these words will reach your hands someday, and you'll know that I never forgot you.

I want you to be happy. I want you to smile back at one of the dozens of young men that try to catch your eye whenever you go out—one who is kind and who can challenge you. I want you to have children as brilliant as you are, and raise them free. I would love to be 'Aunt Iona' to your little prodigies, but if I can't, at least I can dream that they will exist. Maybe you'll write a few notes about me to them, once they can read.

Livia clenched her jaw, blinking tears from her eyes that made it difficult to read further. This was the third letter Iona had written her, stuffed away in a crack in the wall near the pile of blankets on the dirt floor that had been her bed. Livia kept picturing her sweet little sister darting about to the commands of that hideous brute, Gorlick. Images of his ax colliding with the wall of magic she had thrown up around herself flashed through her mind. Livia had seen the murderous intent in his bulbous, yellow eyes, but the memory did not fill her with fear as it had at the moment. She was furious at the monster for keeping Iona in that grotesque shack for all those months.

"Anything useful in there?" Soulic muttered, glancing back over his slung arm at the note. The two of them were plodding along slowly over the countryside, neither one of them sure they were going in the correct direction now.

Livia shook her head, pursing her lips. A few hours before, they had come across yet another set of chaotic footprints that the sansrit warrior had determined to be a battle—a battle he was sure Gorlick had lost. This seemed to be confirmed by the fact that the half-ogre's enormous ax blade had lay sunk in the dirt, somehow cleaved off of its handle by a warrior fiercer than himself, if such a thing were even possible. There was evidence of a tussle between Gorlick and a creature more the size of an ordinary man, and then Gorlick had gone in one direction, and his opponent another. Each of them had had a companion, with Gorlick's seeming to match the boot-size of Dunlin, his idiot companion, while his enemy's companion had footprints much smaller and thinner—like Iona's tiny feet.

Livia had no idea what to glean about this being who had managed to take Iona from the monster that had nearly killed both her and Soulic. Still, the sansrit warrior had pointed out that Iona—if that was who the footprints even belonged to—did not look to have been dragged, and her steps moved away from the one with her here and there, suggesting at least that she was not being manhandled. For just an instant, Livia had felt a sliver of hope that one of the starborn had rescued her sister, but Soulic had been confident the fight with Gorlick had been a physical one, meaning no spell-casting. He had also asserted that the swordsman was almost certainly the same one who had slaughtered the two dozen craith up on the mountainside, which meant... what?