He had been told that his demeanor was intimidating, more than once. It's just as well that I'm content with my own company, as they find difficulty enough dealing with me as a mentor, much less as a friend. Most of those gifted in magecraft, as he was, didn't reach the level of skill he had until they were much older. His already sparse sleep would suffer further. You're just tired of this endless war, and you want to go back to being a scholar. You really want the opportunity to learn about them about their land and culture. If they were Alythian, or proved to be dangerous, there would be plenty of time to capture them later.Īdmit it to yourself. The first step was to observe, then make contact with the strangers to find out where they had come from and why they were here. Once again, Kelderin would take on the responsibility of doing what was best for Garantha by keeping secrets from it.

The treatment the strangers would receive in Garanthan dungeons could make an unknown land their enemy. Revealing the existence of the group would be a disaster. That would be a monumental mistake if the travelers were from another land entirely. The people might even be tortured to extract information from them in the hope that they had intelligence about Alythia. If he reported them, the Guard would take them into custody and hold them in the dungeons below the castle. Kelderin kept his sighting of the newcomers in the woods to himself, for now. To my kids, who are going to inherit all this stuff one day, and to my local editing meetup groups, even if they don't know what all this magic jargon means.

Marcus Fernstrom, Chris, and Karen, who's always been kind and supportive. Please do not participate in the unauthorized distribution of this material in violation of the author's rights. No part of this work may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. ePub Format Ebook Edition / March 2017Ĭopyright © 2017 by Donna Michele Fernstrom

Self-published by the author through Smashwordsįirst. The Author/publisher does not have any control over and is not responsible for the content of third-party websites. Names, characters, incidents and places are fictitious or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locations, is purely coincidental.

Sorrows by Donna Fernstrom