Free Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 by Frank Augustus Page B

were out in the servants’ quarters—that meant that it must be sometime after midnight. Time to get started, then. Jesse rolled out of bed and used a firestick to light a candle. He dressed as quickly as his healing wounds would permit, leaving his boots off to avoid making too much noise, then dug out all of his supplies from under his bed. He crammed all of them in two pillowcases. Next he went to an ornamented wardrobe and removed his sword, his bow, and a quiver full of arrows and laid them out on his bed. Just one more thing to get.
    Leaving his bedroom he crept quietly down the hall to what had been his father’s room. Jesse took a look around. The feather-mattress that his father had died on had been stripped from the bed. Even though servants had scrubbed the floors, you could still see slight dark areas on the oak flooring where his father, Anubis, and he had alternately spilled their blood. He noticed that someone had put the spear that he had thrust into Anubis back up on the wall, but the mount that had held it was still broken. It would take little to have it fall down. He counted four planks over from the wall, and then got down on his hands and knees. Pulling out a dagger he found the seam between the boards and began to pry. In a moment the plank came up, exposing a small, hidden compartment beneath the floor. His father had shown Josiah and him the hiding place over a year ago. “If I die suddenly,” Nashon had told them, “be sure someone knows that it’s here.” Jesse had told no one.
    He reached into the compartment and pulled out a tin box about a third of a pace long and a sixth of a pace in width. It was so heavy that he re-opened the wounds in his side and right arm pulling it out. Laying it on the floor, he opened it and counted out one-hundred gold Atlantan denari and fifty coppers for change, placing the coins in a purse. He should be able to live off that amount of money for years, he thought. He then carefully, quietly, placed the box back in its hiding place. Getting up to leave he headed for the door, then stopped. There was one more thing. “Sometimes,” his father once told him, “you need to listen to the small voice inside your head when it tells you to do something. It just may save your life.” Jesse returned to the head of the bed and reached up and removed the spear from its broken mount. He still didn’t believe that there were lions on the road—but sometimes it didn’t hurt to be prepared.
    When he got back to his room he laid the spear on the bed and divided the coins. Half he kept in his purse, the others he tucked in a money belt that he kept under his underwear. “A wayfarer may steal your purse and boots,” his father once told him, “but I’ve yet to see a robber who’d leave you beside the road naked.” When he was done with the money, he sat down at his desk. Laying out a piece of parchment he began to write a note to his mother using a quill and ink. He blew the ink to hasten its drying, then carefully folded it so that the seam was in the middle of the paper. He then dripped a small amount of wax from his candle to seal the letter and took his father’s signet ring which he now wore on a chain around his neck and embossed the wax with the signet of the house of Nashon: sheaves and a scythe. Jesse wrote his mother’s name below the seal then carefully placed it on the desk where it would be sure to be found. While he assured her in his letter that he would only be away a short time, he could not have known that many months would pass before he saw her face again.
    When he was done with his written, “Goodbye” he pulled on his boots, strapped on his sword, and threw his quiver, bow, and two pillowcases over his shoulder. He then picked up his spear and tiptoed out the door and down the stairs. As he was crossing the courtyard to the stables he observed that something about the night was not right. It was, somehow, darker than usual. No moon, he