The Sceptre of Samnos

Ilandia Part 9

     When they woke up the next morning, Derek had already gone into his workroom to try to lose his fears in his work. "Are you okay?" Shaun asked Thomas as they washed their faces and brushed their hair. "With your dad I mean?"

     The wizard glanced at him, a hard comment about minding his own business already on the tip of his tongue, but there was nothing but understanding and sympathy on the woodsman's face. "We had very much the same row when we told our folks we were going," continued Shaun. "It's hard when your folks won't let go."

     Thomas nodded, and he felt a powerful swelling of gratitude and relief in his heart. These are my friends, he thought, and my dad's only making such a fuss because he cares for me. I'm lucky to have such people in my life. Luckier than I deserve.

     Derek stopped work and came back in at sunrise, to join the others in preparing to leave. Margaret and Edith were deeply unhappy about the whole venture, but now Derek joined sides with Thomas, assuring his wife and her sister that they'd be careful and that there wasn't any real reason to worry in any case. "She's just one old woman," he told Margaret, "and there's seven of us. Strong fighting men, wizards and even a cleric. Between us, we can handle one feeble old woman."

     So menacing was the Mad Woman's reputation, though, that the women could not be comforted and went off to cry and hug each other in private.

     They came back to see them off, though, following them through the streets all the way to the town gate, and they got almost all the way before they were recognised by those townspeople that were already up and about and a new crowd gathered around them. Al was there, and he asked them curiously where they were going, it being obvious that they were leaving the town, but they fielded the questions by the simple expedient of asking him about his family. Thomas was surprised to learn that Alan had married Daisy Harper, the girl he’d had a crush on and whom he might well have married if he’d never left the town five years before. Alan and Daisy had a child now, a beautiful little boy named Timmy, and Thomas mused that Timmy might have been his child if things had gone differently.

     There wasn’t time to question his old friend further, though, as they reached the town gates and Margaret pleaded with her husband and son once again to be careful.

     “Why, where you going?” asked Alan with some amusement, but Derek turned and fixed him with such a glare of intense anger that he backed away, swallowing nervously.

     “They’re probably off to see Mad Alliss,” joked another member of the crowd, but the look of fear on Margaret’s face as she turned to face him caused a collective gasp to rise from the crowd.

     “No, you’re not!” exclaimed Alan in horror. “You can’t!”

     The travelers ignored him and the rest of the crowd, and Margaret made one last attempt to persuade Derek and Thomas to change their minds. Thomas stood firm, though, and his father repeated his assurance to his wife that he would make sure no harm came to him. Diana tried to comfort her by saying that Caroli had plans for them and would not let them come to any harm before Her purposes were carried out, but privately she knew that clerics and priests and their friends got killed in nasty ways as often as anyone else.

     She didn't mention this to them, though. By the power of her Goddess, she was able to soothe them down until they were able to let them go with only the minimum of fuss and worry, but the two older woman still stood by the gate, staring anxiously after them, until they entered a small patch of woodland and passed out of sight. Thomas could still feel their worried gazes on the back of his head for hours afterwards, though, giving him a terrible, nagging feeling of guilt for the emotional turmoil he was putting them through. If something bad does happen to us, he thought, they'll go through hell when they find out. That thought alone was almost enough to make him turn back, and he forced himself to put them out of his mind.