Free Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild by Peter Plasse Page B

these two other countries, basically trying to survive, for as long as anyone on their world has been alive. Culturally, the setting is roughly equivalent to the middle ages of your Earth. The weapons are swords, bows and arrows, those sorts of things. The Humans are on the brink of discovering gunpowder, but as of yet have not.”
    “Well it sounds horrible,” said Jessica. “Dangerous. Take us there now so we can get our daughter.”
    Hemlock reached into the folds of his simple white robe and removed a small globe. He peered into it, Jacqueline looking along with him. All leaned in to have a look.
    “There she is!” cried Jacqueline. “She’s riding a big white horse, a huge white horse. It looks like she’s following a boy on another horse, a black one. They’re riding really fast.”
    Hemlock placed it back in his robe, mumbling something like, “See, she is riding with Erik up to the castle as we speak. Good. Well, give me a few minutes and we’ll be ready to go.”
    “Get us there now, Hemlock,” snarled Jessica. “Now.”
    “I will need a few minutes. Get dressed as you would if you were going camping. It’s summer there, so you won’t need a lot in the way of warm clothes.”
    And with that, he vanished.
     
    A few minutes later the four of them were all together in the living room. Blake was seated at the piano, tinkling away, looking distracted. Jessica fumed, muttering to herself how she would kill Hemlock if anything untoward had happened to Stephanie; how she would rearrange his anatomy, with the select removal of certain parts for emphasis. “Wizard or no wizard, we’ll see how wizardly he looks without a head,” she murmured under her breath.
    Blake stopped playing abruptly, leaned towards the remainder of his family, and asked in a low voice, “So what is it, then? Are we bound for Ravenwild as a family? Are we committed to this or what?” He placed his hand outwards in the form of a tight fist. All responded by joining him in this pose, fists together in the center of the family circle, after which Jacqueline hugged her mother and asked, “Is it going to be okay Mom? Are we going to find Stephanie?”
    Jessica’s face might have been carved out of a solid block of granite as she responded, “It will be fine, Jacq’. Won’t it Blake?”
    Blake nodded while he tightened one of the straps on his backpack. “Interplanetary travel by some mechanism we could never possibly begin to understand to rescue our wayward daughter who has journeyed before us to a land centuries behind us in technological advancement that is at war with two other lands, the populations of which are comprised in large part of Trolls and Gnomes, whilst we will find ourselves aligned with Elves and Dwarves? What could possibly cause us to think otherwise?”
    Orie smiled while he worked on putting an edge on his sheath knife.
    “Dad,” said Jacqueline, taking a bite of a big red apple. “Nobody mentioned Elves.”
    “Did so,” said Orie.
    And with that pivotal comment, there was a protracted silence. It was the kind of silence that eats at you as you think very, very scary thoughts as to what things might happen to you in the near future, all of them bad. The kind of silence when every sound, the sound of Orie’s blade being honed, the sound of the straps of Blake’s pack getting redone to accommodate all the survival gear, seems amplified.
    Jacqueline coughed. She had been getting over a simple chest cold when this escapade began. Sitting off by herself, she seemed lost in the rocks of the fireplace, the precise stonework of which she had always liked.
    Orie finally spoke, looking up from his blade. “Dad, we have STATES in two weeks. If this guy Hemlock, who is clearly a real smart guy, doesn’t deliver what he says he can deliver and I miss STATES, I am going to be pissed. And I mean pissed. But that’s just a reality check. Meanwhile, do we really believe that Stephanie is on some parallel