Chapter 11

“Do you have any idea where we are heading? Any at all?” Ylva asked.

The last few weeks we had been visiting a few distant villages. Evaluating prospects for some new trade, as I had said. Well, that was almost total bullshit - except the gathering of some leaves, some fresh and some dried, that made an excellent mosquito repellent - especially if you could make a paste out of it. Even our small, sturdy horses - relatives to those used by the Elves - seemed happy when we used some of that on them. I had known some plants that could be used as a protection from mosquitoes, but these leaves were the first ones that didn’t smell worse than horse manure.

“Some. There are two or three areas that seem most probable. Remember, they don’t want to be found and, according to what we heard from the last village, it is possible that there are some people living out there.”

Ylva had sounded almost miserable while I had enjoyed our time in the rolling country where spotty wooded areas alternated with swampy depressions. In a way, it wasn’t all that surprising, since she had lived almost all her life in or at least close to some city and these occasionally very dense forests could feel almost scary to her. Liv handled the new situation much better and Linnea had enjoyed visiting the forests in the Hidden Valley.

“Still, there could be hundreds of people living out there but there’s no way of seeing - or finding them.”

In a way I could understand Ylva. Even if this region reminded me of some of the remote areas around the village where I had been born, there were clear differences, too. In the western coast, the terrain was solid rock, granite - as I had learned at the University. Here it was limestone and there weren’t that many rivers running on the surface as some of them had drilled holes in the terrain and were now running at least partly underground. All those things made the traveling here a bit tricky. Luckily, you were quite able to move safely if you followed the paths made by wild animals.

I could also understand how Ylva was feeling. Because of the terrain there were places in this part of the Kingdom that lacked roads and suitable waterways and, because of that, there weren’t villages, either. Well, there were villages by the coastline and nearby islands that were accessible by boat or ship - if you were brave enough. If the north-west coast was rough because of its heavy storms and rocky shoreline, this north-east coast was challenging because the variety of the sea bottom. There were some deep areas from which some fishermen could get huge amounts of herring. However, if you didn’t know the waters well, you were likely to wreck your boat on rocks just beneath the surface next to the deeps.

But there were people living in the coastal area and on some of the islands and the Sea Guardians were also present there, at least occasionally. So, the group we were looking for would not be there.

Before starting this search, I had had several long discussions with the Elders - the Elves who still remembered some of the people who had escaped Aston. We had questioned Tove and Frey for what they had been told and we agreed that, without doubt, I would not find people from the area Tove and Frey thought they would. Even if the group might have initially planned to go there, they would have changed their plans when a group of people was left behind. Maybe they would have kept an eye on the area for a while, but they would not be there.

The notes we had been able to find in the books I stole from the library told a story that the people living in Aston - the natural Mages - weren’t totally unaware of the risks and they were preparing to leave. The mission in which my mother had been an extreme example. However, those people were also aware that there were only a very few of them when compared to the number of ‘normal people’. Besides that, those people hadn’t been fighters or warriors. No, those people had mostly been teachers or people working with relations between the different racial groups. Teachers of small children, teaching tolerance to the children. Ironic, really.

The thing that was the most difficult for me to understand was that magic had been such a natural part of their life that no special attention was paid to it. It was a skill everybody had to some extent, while each person’s specialty would differ. Someone was able to see well in the dark, somebody else was able to hear extraordinary well, and so on. The skills they had tried to enhance and reinforce were the ones connected with healing people and animals and my mother had been an extraordinary healer.

I pushed those thoughts aside as I remembered how we had tried to tackle the issue about finding the escaped group. The group of us had gone through the facts we knew, the maps I had stolen and then each of us had individually made their guess about the possible hiding place of the group. I had insisted that both Leilatha and Shalana would take part of this thinking - and we all had pointed out the same area.

I took a quick look at Ylva, who had made a comment about how easy it would be to hide here and wondered if I should reveal my current range of sensing, since I had surprised myself by it. Out here, where I had no real need to restrict my sensing, I was almost sure that I had been able to feel the village by the coastline when we had been on high ground. However, it wasn’t just that - it was also the fact that if I was able to sense bears and two packs of wolves in an area where I could be quite certain that there weren’t many humans living nearby. Even if they could hide their presence, which was quite possible. I needed to keep in mind that I had no idea about the real skills of those people.

“No, Ylva, it could not. There’s a herd of deer in that direction, which means that there shouldn’t be any humans nearby. On the other side is a pack of wolves, which means the same thing. Once we reach that high area in front of us, we will re-evaluate the situation.”