The Sceptre of Samnos

New Friends Part 2

   Thomas tried to imaginedm how proud his parents would be to see him. Our son, the wizard! Wizard! The very word had a power all its own. His father was a cobbler, a hard working man who barely managed to scrape together a living for his family at the very bottom of the social stratum, but soon he would be the father of a wizard! How would that affect him, his status in the town? Thomas found he had absolutely no idea, but it had to be good, had to be an improvement on his lot so far. He tried to imagine what they were doing now, what they were thinking now. Did they know he was coming? He'd written to his parents as often as he could find the time, but the letters he received in return always came in clumps of a up to a dozen every six months or so, the mail service following a tortuous path back and forth across the continent between all the wizards, a small number, who could be bothered to participate, so it was possible that his parents' news of him was months out of date.

     He made the mistake of voicing his thoughts to the others, only remembering too late that Jerry was an orphan. "Oh Jerry, I'm so sorry!" he cried in anguish. "You know I didn't mean..." The nome merely laughed, however, reminding him that he had no memory of his parents. "You can't miss what you've never known. Don't worry about it."

     On the fourth day they passed the Ghost Ocean, a land bridge connecting the northern and southern halves of the continent, between the Western Sea and Great Lake Megra. Once, the lake had been continuous with the sea, but as the long ages passed the sea bed had been pushed up by slow but irresistible geological forces. The new land, however, seemed, in some strange way to ‘remember' being underwater. The area was shunned by everyone in this part of the world, although no-one could say for sure why, or even whether, it was dangerous. The three wizards bypassed it, just to be on the safe side, and made camp just north of it on the fringes of the Endless Plains.

     On the fifth day, they flew over the Overgreen Forest, a nearly continuous stretch of dense woodland that reached over a thousand miles from the shores of the Western Sea along the Copper Mountains as far north as the Beltharan province of Callinia, where it changed to coniferous woodland. This was the final stretch of their journey. Ilandia lay just on the other side of it, and they expected to be there later that day.

     "Some people say there are dragons in that forest," said Thomas, to pass the time.

     "Really?" said Jerry. "Let's hope they don't see us. They might be curious at the sight of a flying carpet, and decide to investigate."

     "I think we're too high to be seen from the ground," said Thomas, hopefully.

     "Look!" said Lirenna suddenly, pointing off to their left. "What's that?"

     Jerry and Thomas gave a start, expecting to see a huge forest dragon swooping down on them. To their relief, however, they saw only a small flock of rainbow coloured birds, each about the size of a pigeon. "Just birds," said Thomas. "Nothing to worry about."

     "They're coming straight towards us," said Lirenna, a trace of concern in her voice.

     She was right, he saw. The birds, about twenty of them, were flapping madly to keep up with the speeding carpet, and getting closer. There was a kind of purposefulness about them that made him nervous. They seemed vaguely familiar as well. Hadn't Rogin devoted an entire lesson to a kind of bird like that, about a year ago? He strained to remember.

     Suddenly, it came to him. "Oh my Gods!" he cried. "They're bane birds! Carpet! Fly faster! Faster!"

     The carpet leapt ahead, but it was too late. The birds were all about them, landing on the carpet, clinging on under it with their claws, hanging from the tassels, hopping from place to place, and all of them sticking their needlelike beaks into it like bees sucking honey. "Get rid of them! Quick!" cried Thomas. Comprehension suddenly dawned on the others and they swung wildly at them, trying to scare them off or hit them with whatever weapon came to hand. Thomas took off his leather jacket and swung about with it, hitting one, more by blind luck than anything else, but it simply came to rest again a few feet away and continued to feast. Lirenna tied a heavy bone comb to the end of a silk scarf and swung it around her head, failing to hit any birds but hitting Jerry on the head, who was busy trying to dislodge one that had landed on his backpack.