Moonstone, Magic That Binds (Book 1) (21 page)

“My back still hurts, as usual. That’s not Daryaku’s doing,” Mander said, slowly straightening up. Both men stood and hugged. “Take care and do me proud, Lotto.” He waved as he left, but didn’t look back.

The conversation left Lotto in a pensive mood. So many people looked up to him and yet he hadn’t done anything to deserve their confidence. He could use arms, but so could every man in the rangers. Well, maybe he was better in some areas than the others.

~~~

CHAPTER NINETEEN

~

R
ESTELLA ROSE TWO DAYS LATER
, amazed that Lotto no longer pestered her dreams. Did she miss him? She shook that thought off and strode off to the barracks to see General Reallo.

“We sent a regiment and a very large squad of rangers for duties on our western borders with Prola, yesterday morning, Captain. Did you wish to see them off?”

She didn’t like the glint in Reallo’s eye. The general was too much the joker for her. Silver had told her about the rumors surrounding her visit to the training grounds and she decided that the best way to address it was to stay away.

“I’d like permission to begin to train again. My arm will remain in the sling, in fact I’ll have someone tie my arm tighter to my body, but I must move around or I’ll turn into a soft princess again, General, sir.” She said that to entertain the general. His smile rewarded her effort.

“Suit yourself. You’re forces will be mustered out from Captain Jossi’s unit in two weeks. I suppose we can order them here for a week of training and two week’s rest and then send you out at that time. The healers say you’ve got at least another two weeks before they think you’re ready and that will fit the timeframe well enough. I imagine you’d like to go after Ashdown, with many of Forthwith’s men at your side rather than his?”

Restella couldn’t help but smile. “Indeed, sir.” Relieved that Lotto headed west and she would deploy further to the north, she could now concentrate on getting well and working with her father and Mander Hart on strategy.

~

As the weeks passed much more slowly than suited Restella, Lotto still plagued her dreams. They didn’t have the potency that her dreams did when he trained in the castle, but he would enter as the little half-wit and turn into the man she saw at the training ground or the just opposite would happen. Sometimes he threatened her, physically and other times he saved her from attacking forces. Why couldn’t he leave her alone? His presence in her mind was such a distraction!

The dreams weren’t romantic, but the attraction still persisted. She wanted to scrub him out of her mind, but couldn’t. The day came when the healers finally gave her permission to use her right arm and training became her diversion. Restella made certain that she trained hardest in the evenings so she’d be so exhausted that she would fall into a dreamless sleep.

She anxiously awaited her return to battle when she could mount her horse and lead troops out of the city. As usual, with the spring came a flood of new recruits. General Reallo had doubled her unit. She now nearly had enough soldiers to call her unit an army, as she rode towards a confrontation with Baron Ashdown. A lot were green and along the way, she’d pair them up with experienced soldiers so by the time they arrived, all of her soldiers could fight.

~

The journey to the northwest came to a crawl with her expanded forces. They only traveled for half of a day, spending the other half drilling the men in how to use their arms.   Most of the men carried pikes, since poles could be cut from saplings along the way and steel heads mounted as they continued to march. At this rate it would take three or more weeks to get to the border with Ashdown.

Restella observed the process from her horse. She had never had a blacksmith wagon in her group before, but then she had spent only two years in the field. Four horses pulled the steel wagon. The forge fire never fully went out, but still it would take hours to get up to the proper heat so the blacksmith could push a glowing pin of metal to lock a pike head on a pole. But even with the fires banked up, the heat served to dry the saplings and stiffen them up.

She thought of Lotto’s finding General Kirrello’s staff. Could the Moonstone be at work? Lotto’s practice with the staff became the talk of the veterans while she trained. She wondered what would have to happen to give her the peace to go about her own business without every thought turning to him? She ground her teeth and turned her horse towards her tent. Perhaps her father, the king, could arrange something at some point, maybe a posting for Lotto in Learsea or someplace even further from Beckonvale.

Her tent was larger this time. She had two Captains reporting to her as well as ten lieutenants. Silver had just finished spreading maps on the collapsible table that all of her staff reviewed every evening.

“What do the scouts tell us?” she asked Silver.

He jerked up. “I didn’t hear you come in. Lost in thought, ma’am.”

“A few are still out, but no specific signs of Ashdown, but I don’t expect anything until we are halfway into Forthwith’s lands and that won’t be for a week, yet.”

“I wish that we had more scouts, like Lieutenant Workman’s unit under Captain Applewood,” Silver said.

Lotto’s group!  The last thing she wanted was for him to get back into range. She turned and touched the moonstone and could sense him to the south of them. “Ah, yes, Workman’s unit is far from us.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but how can you know?”

Could she confide partly to Silver? She looked down at the map and then closed her eyes and touched her sword. “About here along the border with Prola.”

Silver furrowed his brow and waited for Restella to talk.

“The Moonstone. Lotto Mistad found it and when I took it out of his hand, we became bonded somehow. Fessano, the Court Wizard knows more of how it works than I do. Other than make me taller and stronger…” Restella shrugged. “I have no magical power, but Lotto and I are bound to the stone. I can sense where he is.”

Silver looked at Restella and back down at the map. “The rumors of your encounter at the training ground were because of your bond?”

She nodded. “It’s not a romantic bond, but a function of the Moonstone’s power. I can sense where he is and he can sense where I am, even better than I can, him. If we’re close, like at Beckondale, in the castle, I had dreams of him every night. Again, not romantic, but Lotto showed up all the same. Before the Moonstone, he was a village half-wit, boy-sized, maybe four-and-a-half feet tall. Addled. He could barely put two words together and after we touched the stone together, we both passed out. I left with it and he grew man-sized in just days. His mind grew as well and he’s got magical power.”

“Who knows all this?” Silver said.

“It’s not a secret, exactly. Mander Hart took him in. Kenyr, the weapons master knows and Fessano, of course. I’d like to hate Mistad for intruding on my life. Ever since I relented and followed Fessano’s advice to see him on the training ground, every day he shows up in my mind in one thought or another. Sometimes I think I’m going to go mad.”

“I can see why you are frustrated,” Silver said. “Lotto’s a commoner. Your father could just banish him.”

The thought had crossed Restella’s mind before. “He’s not a commoner. His father and mother were Serytaran nobility. Kenyr was their sworn man.”

“I see and he’s Mander’s protégé of sorts.” Silver rubbed his chin. “That I do know and Mander Hart loves him like a son.”

“So I am trapped.”

“How, Captain?” Silver said. “Reach out to him. Tell him of your bond. Perhaps talking to him is what you need to do. If he feels the same way you do, maybe he’ll leave Valetan of his own accord. From what I know of the lad, he’s a very honorable person.”

Tears came to Restella’s eyes and she looked away. “I know. I wish he were dead!” She shouldn’t have said such an awful thing.  How could a man affect her so?

“Can’t Fessano work some kind of magic to deaden the bond?”

That was a thought that never came up before. “It’s as if he encouraged the bond, now that you said it. He wanted me to see him, if only from afar.” She shivered at the memory of that encounter. “Lotto’s very face shook me, shocked me.”

“From what I can see, his is a pleasant face. You could do worse, ma’am,” Silver said. “If I might make a recommendation?”

“Yes, Silver.”

“Don’t fight it. To me, and I hesitate to be personal here, but you did ask, I think you should embrace the images. In your mind make him a friend and not an enemy.  Perhaps you are so emotional about his presence that you have made him an objectionable obsession. If he brings a feeling of protection and well-being, you won’t suffer as I have seen you suffer since we’ve been on our journey.”

“That’s a possibility,” Restella said. She had already talked too much about Lotto. “I will reflect on your advice, Silver. For now, I’d like to be alone until dinner.” Restella felt miserable. If Silver noticed her discomfort regarding Lotto, then the entire army probably knew. Sometimes she felt the Moonstone’s effect might not be worth it.  She gathered her fingers into a fist and clenched hard and twisting feeling the muscles work in her forearm. She chided herself for even thinking the amulet wasn’t important. It was worth every injury and every peril for she had achieved what she had only dreamed of a few years before.

“Certainly, ma’am.” Silver saluted and left Restella staring at the map. She put her finger down where the link told her of Lotto’s location. “Be my friend,” she whispered. Confusion filled her mind so much that she couldn’t control her tears and fled to the private section of the tent.

~~~

CHAPTER TWENTY

~

G
ULLY MOTIONED TOWARDS
L
OTTO
to move his squad above them. One of their advance men had spotted scouts for the Prolans in the forests along the borders of the small kingdom of Prola when they entered a hilly area with ridges running north to south.

Lotto carried his staff horizontally to the ground. That way, he could move straight ahead while he threaded his way along the flat ground without worrying about low-hanging branches. As he reached the next ridgeline, the staff helped him scamper over the rocks. He even used it to vault over a stream, leaving his men to wade through. He passed a clutch of mushrooms nestled within the roots of a dead tree. He remembered from his days with Jessie, that they were the edible kind. He paused to pick them and put them in his bag, anything other than the mush and jerky that had kept them going these past weeks.

The ridgeline ended just above him. He stayed just below it as he had been taught and crept along, motioning the five men behind to follow as he scanned the track below. A flash of red and then more as he saw Prolan scouts move through the woods in the gash of a valley called Hannolo’s Gap.  If the Prolans proceeded through the gap, they would run right into Captain Applewood’s troops as intended.

Red. His green and brown coat would keep his men’s presence a secret. Lotto took a deep breath and concentrated on a tree just ahead of the men. He uttered a spell and heard the wood crack in the silence of the woods. The sound of the tree falling would alert Gully and the rest of the rangers that the enemy had been sighted.  Lotto patted the spellbook in his pocket, smiling that he had memorized most of it. He signaled to his men to stay where they were.

Lotto scampered down the hill as quietly as he could and slid behind the enemy column. They had stopped up ahead.

“Valetan soldiers up ahead?” one of the red coated men said.

“Do you think that tree fell on its own? We should head back to Hedge’s Crossing and bring the army. If we can convince Captain Lessa, we can catch them from behind by heading over a few ridges and then attack them from a direction they won’t be expecting. There’s a cut-off a mile or so back that we can use.”

“You don’t have to convince me.” The small column turned around and used hand signals to retreat back the way they came. Lotto followed them for a mile along the gap and then retrieved his men. 

He returned back to Gully’s position, where the men had begun to eat their midday meal.  Gully had been looking at a map of the area.

They’re bringing their army through here.” Lotto laughed, pointing down at the path the Prolans had intended to use. “They thought I’m a wizard.”

Gully squinted at him. “I don’t know what’s so funny. You are.”

That brought Lotto up short. “Well.” He looked down at the ground and then to the west at the trail leading up the ridge. “I know how we might be able to defeat them.”

“Then let’s get back to Captain Applewood and let him know what General Mistad has up his sleeve.”

Gully gathered his men and they ran through the forest to their horses and took off to the north to intercept Applewood’s forces.

The captain had already set up camp at the mouth of Hannolo’s Gap for the night and ate with his five other officers when Gully and Lotto barged in.

“Lieutenant, I’d appreciate a bit less heavy breathing. You must have something important to tell me. Sit, both of you, and tell us what you’ve found. Prolan’s, I imagine.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Gully said, eyeing the food set up at the table. Lotto looked around at the officer corps of their regiment. They had rushed here from the field without eating and Lotto hoped that his stomach wouldn’t growl as they both stood in front of Applewood. Gully continued,  “Mistad has an idea on how to capture the Prolan army.”

“Over dinner, gentlemen. Be seated. Grab a couple of chairs.

Lotto didn’t hesitate to gulp down some wine, to clear his throat. “I made a small tree fall for the Prolan scouts and it convinced them that our forces knew they were going to come down through Hannolo’s Gap. They are heading back to bring their army to the border. I heard them say that they were going to move their forces through the vale two ridges to the north, we could attack them at the top of the second ridge after the track winds through a rocky valley. If you bring forces from the head of the gap, making it look like they are the vanguard of a larger force, we could catch them between us and there’d be a lot less resistance.  We might be able to go right to Mountsea, the capital. The king couldn’t do anything to halt us.”