Chapter 3

I wake up with a shock as something lands on my bed. Well, it is not really my bed, it is the bed I slept in at Marcus house. The "something" turns out to be Ameiliee who is jumping up and down on the bed. As she sees that I am awake she smiles and says "Get up lazy bones, we have places to be, people to see and stuffy places to leave"

I groan something about not enough sleep, and she starts to tickle me until I have to roll out of bed to escape. After that I just give up and wake up.

We go downstairs to the dining room and the housekeeper brings us breakfast and shortly thereafter Marcus arrives. He has clearly not had even close to enough sleep. Apparently Ameiliee and Marcus spent much of the night talking about old days. Seeing how fresh Ameiliee is, reminds me again of one more thing that is different with elves. Where humans need to sleep, true elves do not. According to my father they however have to meditate for an hour or two each day or they get really irritable after few days. Apparently wood elves need longer meditation than true elves but still only couple of hours each day.

Quite soon after the breakfast we bid Marcus farewell and leave. Ameiliee shakes her head sadly as we are behind a corner from the house. While we walk towards the riverfront she tells me how Marcus lost his spark of life(Ameiliee's Stories: How Marcus lost his spark) and nowadays mostly only cares about making more and more money.

It takes us we about two hours to cover the distance of a quarter of a mile to the riverfront, due to the many people Ameiliee chats with. Ameiliee starts to talk to people at the docks trying to get us passage down the river to Norek. After a while she finds a river barge that is about to leave downstream with a cargo of furs and gets us passage.

The skipper tells us that the journey should take three days and we will only stop at one other town, Chaimai, on the way. We are the only passengers on board and there is a crew of two.

After the first hour or so, the trip seems boring as nothing really happens except we go slowly down the river though woods where things just look the same.

After a while also Ameiliee seems to get bored and pulls out a strange looking, plucked, stringed, instrument that is somewhat like a psaltery and starts playing it and singing. She plays and sings most of the day, only stopping for food and to point out something in the surroundings to me. I must say that she has an amazing eye for details in the surroundings, as she can be seemingly totally absorbed in her music and then point out something like an interesting bird that takes me a while to see, even with her pointing and explaining.

The next day is the same, except that we stop at Chaimai, a town about the same size as Asserate.

During the stop, some more furs are loaded and Ameiliee talks with quite many people on the docks as normal. I also note many more light skinned people than I have seen before in any place. I ask about them and Ameiliee tells me that there is fairly famous holy site and church of Oriana near the town and thus quite many pilgrims come to visit the town. Three easterners in armor join us on the barge going downstream.

The third day starts the same, except I spend a bit of time watching the easterners play some game with dice and coins on a grid. Apparently the dice rolls somehow determine what coin you can move and where, the objective being to jump over opponent's coin and get it to yourself.

About noon, Ameiliee suddenly jumps up from her playing, yells "Goblins" and casts a spell creating something that looks like a 15 foot by 15 foot glass wall on the side of the boat.