Chapter 3

Mt Dragon was the highest peak of the three mountains on the island.

It stood a good 600m higher than Ricky’s plateau, (2.2km) and the top 400m was snow-capped all year round. Mind you, you had to go back down around 250m or so, to get to the effective base of the mountain.

It was roughly a 40km trek from Ricky’s treehouse to the base, due to the terrain in between. It also had to be done on foot once you left his plateau due to the steep slopes and cliffs.

Typically, very few people who visited this mountain came back as it was considered extremely dangerous. Some said the mountain was haunted and hollowed with caves and crevasses that went down for hundreds of metres.

Other people believed that dragons were still alive and lived in the mountain, and they ate you if you trespassed. Ricky was more than happy to keep the supposed myths alive if it kept most of the curious people away.

The mountain was special to Ricky; he visited the crystal cave that was buried deep in the mountain most winters when he was home and if he needed more magical Quaz crystals. He also had some very good friends who lived in Mt Dragon.

Ricky didn’t visit Mt Fayle very often because it was classed as an active volcano. It was about 200m lower than Mt Dragon mostly because it didn’t have a pointy top. The hot-mud cauldron it did have, hiccupped about every ten years or so when it spat out some rocks, hot muddy fountains and sulphuric gases.

It was an interesting mountain to go fossicking on when it was quiet, as it often coughed up some rare gems for Ricky to find. He was super careful when he did wander that way.

Mt Pix was the third and shorted of the three dominant mountains. It was nearly 400km to the north, and it was also considered dormant. Ricky didn’t visit it often as it wasn’t under his protection.

Mt Dragon was supposed to be dormant, but Ricky knew it wasn’t as quiet as people wished to believe. He had felt more than a dozen good-sized quakes come from that direction in his lifetime.

He knew more than most that the quakes had come from under Mt Dragon, as well as Mt Fayle. Ricky’s plateau was an old volcanic plug, and he knew the volcanic action had been shifted to the other two mountains.

He’d even had to fix the roads several times when quakes had caused large cracks and once when one of the bridges on the west road had fallen down. He was glad that it had happened after he had found his second magical item since Earth was one of his weaker magical disciplines.

The view from up high in Ricky’s tree home was wonderous.

He could see anyone coming up one of the roads for many klicks. Ricky liked to face east in the morning and watch the sun peek around Mt Dragon as it climbed into the sky. He moved to his favourite branch to the west in the evening to see the sun go down behind a set of lower peaks on the south side Mt Fayle. He didn’t get as much traffic from this direction.

Sounds also carried far and usually the visitors gave him plenty of time to observe them before they got to him if he was busy when they arrived. It was rare that anyone approached his home without his knowledge.

The fact that he felt them enter the weather shield that protected the crossroads and his tree, always gave him some warning and did his other methods of detection.

He loved his treehouse and where he lived.

On this cold stormy evening, Ricky wiggled the thin point of his eating knife into one of the eyes of the beernut seed that he held.

Beernuts were a popular food of the Fayle and Pix people who lived on Zeta Island. In the centre of the tasty fleshy fruit was the large nut. It had two small cork-like eyes in one end, which kept the milk in the nut.

The oval-shaped seed was roughly 10cm (4”) long, 6cm at its widest and 4cm at its thickest. The milk inside the thin but hard shell did indeed taste like an excellent, nutty flavoured cold beer.

The white flesh inside the seed was about 6mm thick on the sides. It was sweet and nutty flavoured to eat and highly nutritious like the outer flesh. Drinking the milk of too many of the nuts would get you drunk very quickly if your magic didn’t dispel the effects.

The defleshed nuts could be stored for many years as long as the eyes remained intact, and they were kept in a cool, dry place. However, the milk did become very potent if left for too many years.

The stringy yellow-orange flesh that covered the nut was on average no more than 2cm thick, and a thin green and orange skin covered it. The orange flesh had a soft citrus flavour that was very refreshing.

If you stripped the flesh from the skin and then left it to dry in thin strips, it made an excellent travel food, as did the meat of the inner nut. Dried, the flesh could sustain a person for many hours of hard walking.

While the inner and outer flesh could be eaten fresh in small quantities, i.e. not more than one or two fruits in a day, it was best to cook the flesh if you didn’t dry it; unless you were looking for a laxative!

The orange flesh tended to take on the flavour of any meat, strong vegetable or flavouring that was also in the pot. The nutmeat provided a lot of the protein, oils, vitamins and minerals that the local races required for sustenance.

Ricky liked to strip the fruit from the nuts and hang the thin strips of flesh on his drying racks for several weeks. He was happy to go sit on his favourite branch, suck on his beer and watch for travellers as the sunset. He would crack out the inner meat later once he went inside his tree home.

It wasn’t a bad way to live.

Ricky was looking to the north-west when he noticed his visitors.

He was rather surprised, as it was extremely late in the season for travellers to be up here. He’d not had a visitor for over a week and wasn’t expecting any for at least another nine weeks, as the snow season had already started, and he knew several passes were already blocked.

The people of the island used the roundabout roads when they provided the shortest traversable distances between the coastal cities and particularly between the dales. The cities that were closer together relied more on their ports and the coastal roads for visitors and commerce.

Ricky climbed higher and to the north to find a better branch. Once happy, he focused his long-eye along the road coming up the north-west slope from Amethyst Dale. This road was one of the least travelled by wagon trains as it crossed several deep valleys, and the final slope up to him was very steep for several klicks.

He had been meaning to smooth the two northern roads out more but hadn’t quite gotten around to doing it. The northern roads weren’t as kind to lankys pulling heavy wagons, as the other byways.

The rulers of these provinces didn’t spend the money to maintain the road from their end. They weren’t really popular with Ricky either, so he wasn’t as quick to help them out.

Ricky noticed that the caravan had an ornate carriage in the lead and four lumbering wagons followed it. It wasn’t close enough to see a crest on the carriage, but he knew the design and only the very rich owned such a carriage.

The first two wagons were covered with a hooped canvas. They suggested to him that the servants and the luggage were in them. The other two wagons each had metre-high sides, and they were covered with a stretched flat canvas that was well tied down.

Ricky counted off six outriders. Using his long-eye, he studied them. He determined they were of the Burgis race or at least they were Burgis-Pix crossbreeds, going by their heights and bulk, even though in winter garb. He judged that most of them were around 155cm tall.

This made sense to Ricky since it was mostly the Burgis people who like to hire out as mercenaries and guards. Their dress and their steeds, a lanky with longer legs called a pelly, also indicated they were comfortable with the job they were doing.