Chapter 10

I materialized on the road that ran from Langre to Dijon in an area close to Dijon that held the stretch of forest that we had passed on our way here. I sent out a feeler, and detected Pat and the girls a short distance away in the woods. I quickly made my way there.

"We were worried about you!" Shannon said, as I entered the small clearing where they were waiting. I could see that Pat had already unhitched and unharnessed the team, and unsaddled his horse before caring for all of them.

Shannon and Clare rushed up to me, as I dismounted, and I gave them both a hug and a kiss. They had both been worried about me.

"What took you so long?" Clare asked, as I held her.

"I needed to wait for a good opportunity," I told her and the others.

"After I had ridden quite some distance, four scruffy looking men rushed out of some woods near the road to attack me. That gave me the perfect opportunity to use several Magic spells to stop them, and then to transfer here without leaving just a transfer signature. The other spells covered it," I told them.

"You could have been hurt," Shannon said, as she checked to see if I had been hurt. Clare had already released me, and was smiling. I suspected that she had already run a check using her Green Magic, as I had felt just the barest of indications from her.

"No, I have had a spell ready to be used ever since we left the Duke's Manor, and it stopped them before they reached me," I told both girls.

"It will be dark soon," Pat reminded me. "We need to finish up here so we can move to our destination for the night."

"You're correct, Brother," I told him while unsaddling my horse. The girls began brushing him down as soon as my gear was removed, and I went to place my gear in the cart with Pat's. When the girls finished, I took the horse for a drink, and then fed him.

"We can't just leave the horses and the cart here in the open," Pat said, as I was feeding my horse. "We need to protect them so they don't wander off, or someone doesn't steal them."

"Yes, a minimum warding spell would do if we had something to apply it to," I agreed.

"A defensive shell?" Pat suggested, uncertainly.

"That may be too much use of Magic," I told him. "It could be detected by someone looking for us."

"Only if they knew that we had been here," Pat said.

"I have a feeling that they will know that we are here when we use the Duke's apartment. They won't be able to do anything about it with our wards in place, but they could start a search for where we left the horses that they know we have. If they are very good, they could detect the series of spells used here," I told him.

"What do we do then?" Pat asked in frustration.

"We ... we can help with this," Clare said very quietly while Pat and I were thinking about what to do.

"Really?" I asked, unsure just what they could do that we couldn't.

"You said that you need something to apply your wards to. We can create that something using Green Magic. It would be something that others could not get through even without the wards," Clare told us.

"Okay! What do we need to do?" Pat asked.

"Clare and I need to make a mark on the ground enclosing the horses and the cart. We can make it large enough for all of us to stay inside of it also," Cathleen told us. "Then we will grow a dense hedge of thorns to keep everyone out of here. You can also attach your wards to it." Pat and I just stood there and looked at the O'Toole Sisters in shock for a short time.

"You can do that!?" I asked in amazement.

"Yes. It will take a few minutes, but we can do that," Clare assured us.

"All right. Let's try it and see how effective it is," I told them. Clare and Cathleen took sticks and scratched a large oval around the area where we had the horses and the cart. It included an area between them where we and the things we would be taking to the Duke's apartment with us were located.

The two young Mages then sat on the ground, and started to recite a mantra, as they drew signs on the ground with their sticks. Almost instantly, small shoots appeared in the ground where their groove had been scratched. They grew at an amazing pace, and spread out. Within ten minutes, we were surrounded by an eight foot tall, thick, dense hedge of thorn plants; the long, needle-sharp points of which would tear a man, or horse for that matter, apart.

"Can you weave your wards into that?"Cathleen asked, as she and Clare stopped chanting the mantra and rose from the ground.

"Yes, but after seeing what you have done, I'm not convinced that we need to," I told her in admiration at what they had done.

"It might be best to weave one into those plants just to be sure," Pat said on recovering from his own amazement. "But just a minimal one, so it doesn't have much of a signature."

"We'll leave enough of a signature when we transfer from here," I told him, and Pat and I also sat on the ground, and we each weaved a ward into the dense hedge of thorns.

By now the sun was going down. We quickly put our blankets on the horses to keep them warm during the night, and then gathered our clothes and the other things that we were taking with us. Pat and I used the transfer spell, and we all vanished from the clearing in the forest.

We instantly reappeared in the main room of the Duke's apartment. It was exactly as we had left it except for being very cold. We quickly started a fire in the main fireplace with the remaining wood, and then used a spell to light the Magic powered lamps.

"We're going to need more firewood," Pat told me. We knew where the firewood was stacked, as we had seen it from the stable. I materialized some here in the main room, while Pat did the same for both bedrooms.

"We also need something to eat!" Shannon reminded us. "We ate everything that we had except for some bread and the remains of the ham for lunch."

"And water to bathe in too," Sheena reminded me.

"It probably wouldn't be wise to visit the kitchen at this time," I said, as Pat returned from the bedrooms.

"There is no need to visit the kitchen. I know where most of the food and other things are kept, and can just materialize whatever we need this close to them," he told us.

"You do that, while we wash the dishes so they are clean to eat it on," Sheena told him, as she and the other girls collected the dishes from the table along with the silverware, and they all headed for the bathing area to wash them.

"What do you want to eat?" Pat asked me, as I was the only one still there.

"Something beside ham," I told him.

"Don't you like ham?" he asked.

"Yes, I like ham, but we've had ham for several days now, and something else would be nice," I told him.

"I'll see what I can find," Pat said as he got sort of a vacant look on his face, as he projected his thoughts to the kitchen area. Things soon began to appear on the table.

The first item was a small covered pot that contained pickled vegetables. This didn't appeal to us at all and was quickly returned. Next was a plate of sweet potatoes!! We had studied the history of various foods and their origins in home school, and knew that the sweet potato had been known for something like 8,000 years in South America. They had been spread by those great mariners, the Polynesians. in our Reality, and probably in this one also. Pat and I could only surmise that they had reached Europe by one of the trade routes from the Orient some time in the past.

The next item that appeared was a large pot containing a thick stew. It had a number of vegetables visible in it. There were carrots, peas, and chunks of celery along with pieces of sweet potato, and other small leafy type vegetables or herbs plus onions and garlic. There was also some pork in the stew. We kept that item also. This was followed by a plate of pork chops, and then loaves of bread. Last Pat materialized on the table a container of milk, cold frothy fresh milk recently from the cow, plus a small plate of yellow butter.

The girls had returned by now with the clean dishes and silverware.

"Ooh! Stew!" they all said on seeing the pot of stew, and they quickly placed the dishes on the table and began ladling out the stew. Clare and Cathleen broke off large chunks from a loaf of bread, and placed them by each girls' plate.

"Would you like some stew, Michael?" Shannon asked on second thought.

"No. I believe Pat and I will work on these pork chops, and the sweet potatoes," I told her. "Would you girls like some of them, or some milk to go with your bread and stew?"

"Just some milk, thank you," Sheena answered, as the girls all quickly took their seats and began to eat. Pat and I followed at a more leisurely pace.

"We love stew," Cathleen told us, as the girls all industriously attacked their bowls of stew.

We were all still enjoying our dinner when a loud banging began on the door to the main room of the apartment along with the voices of several men shouting.

"Must they disturb us during dinner?" Pat asked in a peeved voice, as he put down his fork.

"They'll probably keep that up all night if we don't do something about it," I pointed out to him, putting down my own fork also.

"Yes!" he admitted with a great sigh. "We'll have to do something about it, or we'll never get to finish our dinner in peace," he finished, but I could see the devilish little boy look in his eyes.

"Do you remember our Parents' wards? The ones that burned when touched?" I asked him with my own devilish little boy grin.

"Do you mean, did I ever get burned by them? Yes!!" he replied. "But I also know the spell, and yes, it would be appropriate along with a silence spell." The girls were all looking at us like we were crazy by now.

"Let's proceed then," I told him, and we both cast the spell for our Parents' wards and wove them into the existing wards around the rooms that we were using. We could immediately hear those outside howl in pain before we cast the silence spell also.

"You made them stop!!" Clare said excitedly in the silence that now pervaded the apartment.

"Oh, they are probably making even more noise now that we have changed our wards, but it doesn't come through the silence spell that we also used," Pat told her.

"Good! That means that they won't be able to keep us awake all night," Sheena said.

"There will be other things to keep us awake!!" Cathleen told her friend, and blushed heavily.

"Oh!" Sheena said, and then added, "Oohhh!!" when she realized what Cathleen meant.

"We all need to take a good hot bath first," Shannon told the other girls, as they finished their meal after that.

"Yes, a nice hot bath, and then into those comfortable beds!" Clare agreed with enthusiasm.

In the bathing room the large tubs were empty to Pat's and my surprise.

"What happened to the water?" we asked.

"We sent it away. It was dirty," Clare told us.

"Sent it away?" we asked.

"Yes, we sent it to the fields near the Manor. It wouldn't be good for bathing in, but was okay for irrigation use," Cathleen told us, casually.

Pat and I materialized more water in the tubs and heated it with a spell so the girls could all bathe. While they were busy, we managed to tear ourselves away from watching them long enough to tend the fires in both bedrooms to be sure that they would be warm when we went to bed. We washed after helping them dry off. There was a lot of rubbing and giggling during that.