Chapter 23

Reports of heavy border raids were already coming in. I had put one of my skills to good use. I had enlisted many birds to carry messages up and down our border with Scania to warn our people to be prepared for war. As a result, the Scanians met with heavy, armed resistance, and didn't achieve the surprise that they had intended.

It was only after the first wave of attacks had been launched, that an envoy arrived from Scania carrying a formal declaration of war.

I was impressed by the preparations that King Kenneth had already made. Every major town and city had a defence plan and a militia that had to train together on a weekly basis. That meant that Axon started out with a core of trained troops. This was a major advantage.

Another thing that the King had made sure had been attended to, was the state of repair of each town and city's physical defences. Walls, ditches, moats and trenches had all been well maintained and they worked exactly as they had been intended to.

One handicap we had was that there were few 'intelligent' creatures inside Scania. Most of what they bred for food and used to save on labor, were 'offerings'. That meant I couldn't use them to gather intelligence. The unnatural and unwholesome 'feel' of Scania had led to the intelligent creatures leaving that kingdom and also made it difficult to persuade any animals to go there to 'spy' on Axon's behalf.

The eagles were the exception. They flew constantly up and down the border, making sallies into Scania to try to give us forewarning of any attacks that were being planned. From that, we knew that Malcolm was building up his forces at three specific points. The King pointed out that there was nothing wrong with Malcolm's intelligence, as each of the three points was opposite a weak spot in Axon's border defences.

The warnings from the eagles allowed King Kenneth to rush additional reserves to bolster the troops already opposing the larger Scanian armies and all in all there was little to fault in what my father was ordering.

A major worry for King Kenneth was the lack of a wizard. King Malcolm had his own wife - Ingrid - and two remaining daughters - Eva and Frieda - all of them were wizards, so the concern was that Axon was particularly exposed to magical attacks.

"Don't forget that I have extremely strong magical abilities," I reminded the King.

"Oh, I'm not forgetting that. But using you that way, would be a last resort. I need you for other things," was his reply.

The King took the time to take me more into his confidence as well.

"As my son and heir, Sean, you should be party to some of the secrets that help me to rule this kingdom. One such secret you have already shown you don't need for yourself, but you might have need of it for others if I fall in the coming battles."

He certainly had my attention now.

"Which secret might that be, Highness?"

"The secret of travelling to the 'other-world'," he replied. "If the worst comes to the worst, you might wish to try to get some people to safety so you should know how to call for the winged horses."

"Won't Malcolm and his men simply follow into the 'other-world'?" I asked.

"They might, but you would have a big advantage over him because he would be out of his element there. Anyway here are the summoning words."

He proceeded to share the secret summoning words with me (they are secret, so I won't reproduce them here!).

"So, do all the royal families know these words?" I asked him.

The King looked at me as if I was a simpleton and he shook his head slowly.

"Each of the families has their own 'portal'. The winged horses belong to our family, they are ours alone to command. Just as I have no idea how the other families can travel to the 'other-world', so they have no idea about how I do it."

The King's words bothered me for some reason, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. He changed the subject to the defence of the northern city of Randall, one of those that Malcolm seemed to be targeting.

This was also as good a time as any to try to get to the bottom of Brenda's status as a wizard. It was perhaps a faint hope, but if Axon was short on magical defences, maybe Brenda could do something to help. I didn't forget that my mother also had to be a wizard. I had been born a royal, so she couldn't be anything else but a wizard. It was possible her magical abilities weren't very strong, but every little bit might help.

I arranged to meet with Mom and Brenda in the deserted banqueting hall so that we could discuss matters of wizards and magic. I enlisted enough guards to ensure that we weren't disturbed and made sure that they didn't know what we were about. I knew the guards would be unsettled by talk of magic, so it was best, just to keep it quiet.

The first task was to find out what, if anything, Mom remembered of her younger years on Gael, and any magical ability that she might have. It quickly became clear that she was aware of the power of the road, but had no idea how to use it to help her conjure up anything magical.

Brenda was similar.

"I can feel something around me that wasn't there before, but I have no idea what to do with it," she said.

"What exactly do you mean when you say you can 'feel something'? And why wasn't it there before?" I asked.

"Well, ever since the night you did your 'thing', I've felt different somehow. I don't know, kind of like the air is thicker or something. I don't know if you remember, but you started giving off this really intense white light. Then there was almost like a reaction - a huge wave of reddish-purple 'stuff' completely covered me. I could feel it in my lungs, in my mouth, everywhere. It was almost as if I was absorbing it. That's when I felt different. Changed maybe."

There was a clue in there somewhere I thought and I focused on that night in an effort to learn more.

"What changed exactly?" I asked her.

"I'm not sure. It wasn't like how I felt on my birthday, but it was certainly different."

Her answer had opened up another question (not unusual on Gael, as I'd discovered to my cost) and I shifted my focus.

"Why did you mention your birthday? What happened then?"

"On my eighteenth birthday I had already been on Gael for a month and a half. Hassan was still looking after me and I was feeling very down because I thought you were dead.

"Anyway, on my birthday that year I was lying on my bed when everything around turned the same funny reddish-purple color and I got a really bad headache. It was weird, like I was seeing everything with double vision, only the blurred part of the images was that funny color."

Mom gasped and we both looked at her to see what was wrong. She saw we were looking and knew that some kind of explanation for her gasp was required.

"That's what happens when a wizard emerges. I can vaguely recall it happening to me. It wasn't long after Kenneth had brought me back to Gael, but it was before we were married.

"It's not as dramatic as it is for a royal, but it happens at the same time as it does for them, on our eighteenth birthday."

"I can't think of Hassan without wondering once more how she..."

My words trailed off as something absolutely absurd occurred to me.

"Brenda, think back to when King Kenneth told me he had arranged my marriage to Hassan. What did he say was the Scanian royal family's name?"

Mom answered before Brenda even had a chance to think.

"It's Barns. I don't need to try hard to remember that, because it was the name of the only other crossover who was banished from Gael, the first one, before my own mother and I.

"In fact, I think you've both met her in dreamtime. Charles' wife, Gwendolin was a member of the Barn family and it was her that they banished first. Poor Charles, he never re-married and his brother took the kingdom when he died.

"I'm sorry, I thought you knew this. The fact that the Taggart's and the Barns' are joined in marriage is the reason Axon would fall to Scania if Kenneth was to die without an heir," she said.

My pulse quickened. Mom's answer gave me more certainty that what I had guessed was true.

"But Charles claimed she was weak in magic?" I tested.

"That might well have been the case. My mother was weak in both magic and in 'the power'. She put it down to the effects of being a cross-over."

It sounded plausible to me and my excitement was growing.

"Brenda, what's your Grandma's second name?"

"Barnes," she replied. "Oh! You're not suggesting ... No! That's simply not possible."

"Why not? The King told me the other day that each of the royal families has their own way of getting into the 'other-world'. It's always bothered me how Hassan managed to get to your cabin to capture me and take you to Malcolm's palace.

"For that matter, it's always bothered me how the initials I carved on Gwendolin's cabin managed to turn up on your family's cabin. But if the cabin actually belongs to the Barns family then perhaps it's their portal into the 'other-world'! Perhaps it is the same cabin!"

Brenda could see the logic in what I was saying, but it was such a massive leap that she was struggling to accept it.

"But Grandma Barnes? A wizard?"

"Perhaps the generations of interbreeding with people from the 'other-world' have weakened the bloodline and the old ways have been forgotten?" I suggested.

Something else had occurred to me during this conversation, something that Hassan had said when she had described watching me 'emerge'. I tied that in with what Brenda had just described had happened to her on that night. Again, what I was thinking was on the face of it ridiculous, but ... what if... ?

The next few weeks saw a reduction in the number of raids across the border. King Malcolm must have realised that his smaller squads were having no effect on the well-prepared Axonites and he began to conserve his troop numbers for something altogether bigger by way of an offensive.

King Kenneth used this time to train up even more men. I found myself pitching in as someone who could help with the training. One startling thing that came out of those weeks was that I discovered that my assumption (sorry Mom, I did it again!) that the Axon people were poor and downtrodden was completely wrong. Neither were they ignorant about the technology that existed in the 'other-world'!

When I looked at the common people they appeared tired, worn-out, and weary - and they were. But it was the reason for this that I had got wrong. The people of Axon were weary of the constant attrition from the enmity with Scania. The raids, the taxes that were levied to pay for the defences, the time that had to be devoted to training as militiamen. All of these things combined to make the people heartsick.

In fact, the declaration of war was actually seen as a positive thing, as most saw it that the situation was at last coming to a head. There would perhaps be a final reckoning that would put an end to the constant friction.

When I tried to suggest that their King was arrogant, that he was only interested in maintaining his privileged position, the people I was training disagreed strongly. There was unanimous backing for the King.

"Who else would have had us so well prepared? Who else would have stood against Scania so resolutely for so long?"

And they made it clear to me that they would always choose their magical world over a world full of technology. They might not trust wizards, but they definitely preferred magic to science - go figure!