Chapter 25

“So, what are we going to do with Kerr?” Micky wanted to know.

They were sitting in the loungeroom slurping on bowls of freshly made camla soup. Ronan had filled the pot the night before with chunky root vegetables and cured camla meat, from Ricky’s overstocked larder.

To tenderise the meat, the soup had been simmered over a low heat during the night. With the fresh bread that Ronan had made, it was a very filling way to start the day.

They were all watching Kerr’s people starting their tenth day at the crossroads. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The nine people left, the hired help, had taken to huddling in one of the three large tents that were on the south-west side of the tree.

Ronan determined that their soup wasn’t as tasty as hers was, and it looked a little thin. Ricky commented that he doubted that any of his meat animals were alive and they would have to kill one of the four lankys they had left for food soon.

While it was warmer under the shield than outside of it, the nighttime temperatures still dropped to around sixteen degrees. If the snowstorms were heavy, some of the snow melted on the shield and drizzled in.

This made the areas not protected by the tree unpleasant to be in while the storm raged. Afterwards, the damp grass took a long time to dry, so your boots stayed wet too. Cold weather and wet feet were not a good combination.

Kirin and his five mercenaries stayed in their two tents on the north-west side of the tree, near the large fire pit. They were also near Kerr’s tent. Micky commented that they’d kept a rotating guard on these tents whenever she had checked the area.

Kerr, Miles and Jen were pretty much left alone unless Kerr was trying to get the hired help and mercenaries to do something for him. Since they had failed at hacking at the tree the day before, Kerr was not having much luck with motivating his troops.

They were a miserable lot.

“Well, I think it’s time you two learn to blink,” Ricky told his girls.

He wasn’t surprised that he didn’t get any opposition. Since his girls were now High Wizards, they had very little trouble learning how to shift themselves from room to room in the caverns. Ricky did warn them of the dangers of blinking blind.

He also explained that they had to remember that elevation and the condition of the surface could be problems if they didn’t remember the spot they were blinking to very well.

The two girls soon realised that great care had to be taken before they blinked anywhere. They also determined that it took a lot of energy to move even 2m and surprisingly little more to move 20m.

Ricky explained that the spell helped them to create the space-time fold between point A and point B first. The maximum distance was determined by how much magical energy they had left to move their body across space. If they tried to blink farther than they had energy for, the spell didn’t work.

It was why long jumps took longer to recover from, but short jumps still required a lot of energy to make the shift happen in the first place. He also told them that once they got used to blinking short distances, it got easier and they learnt how to conserve their energy better to do the longer jumps.

He also warned them that in here, they were able to pull magic from the cavern, so it did seem that blinking wasn’t that hard to do. It would be very different when they were not near the cavern or a good source of crystals.

They would have to pull the magic from within themselves or from the ether of the universe. This was why the ancients had built the transporter daises and crystal caverns, so they could travel long distances without draining themselves of energy.

“Is that why we used the dais to come here rather than you blink us into here?” Micky asked.

“Yes, I’ve planted a lot of Quaz crystals around the ring in the crossroads. Sucking the magic from yourself in large chunks, fatigues you quickly and isn’t good for your health, long term.”

“Over the years I have made small caverns of crystals that I can blink to at half waypoints between here and the dales, then near the dales and then between the dales and the cities. This has made travelling to coastal cities a lot easier for me.”

“I’ll have to take you both to them the first time so that you can use them in the future. I’ll also take you to the rings in the palaces but remember that you have to be very careful using most of them, as you still have to get outside.”

Ronan gasped, “You tricky little devil. That’s how you got away with it. You didn’t lie because you didn’t blink yourself, you used the transport rings to get you to Mineral City and back to Spirit City.”

“My dear, I don’t tell lies. I also didn’t kill Prince Byron. Matty cursed him and the men who raped her. You can’t break a dying persons curse if the accused person is guilty as charged.”

Ronan frowned, “So why didn’t you tell us that?”

Ricky shrugged, “I don’t like to think that my sweet little girl was driven to such barbarity, it is bad enough that I know I am capable of it. Killing is not always the answer.”

He walked away, and the girls let him go.

About an hour later, Ricky found the girls eating.

“Come, pack your bags, we are going to deliver some people home, sort out some legal crap and then go visiting,” Ricky told them.

The girls looked at him in shock. To start with, the man standing in front of them was dressed in the height of courtly fashion. His single-buttoned vest was made of a floral patterned, pink-gold on dark-brown damask fabric. As was his thigh-long, long-sleeved coat that had a wide collar and wide lapels. Both were eye-popping.

His dark brown slacks hugged his arse, but they were a looser fit from above his knees. The bottoms were tucked into his calf-high, dark brown, lace-up leather boots. They at least toned down the coat and vest some. The pale pink-gold open-collared shirt, with no frills, complemented the costume.

Ricky’s silver-white hair had been restyled and was braided from both temples to the nape of his neck where the ends were tied into a single queue with a pink-gold braid-cord wrapped around it. Ricky looked very dashing, even regal.

“Close your mouths and shoo,” he scolded them. They scuttled from the kitchen with his chuckles chasing them.

Half an hour later, the girls were back with their new satchels slung over their shoulders. Ricky was rather surprised that they took so little time to get ready. He nodded in approval as the girls had raided his cupboards and had borrowed outfits similar to his.