The Master's Chair (The Chronicles of Terah)

by Morgan, Mackenzie

  “As you wish, sir,” Captain Yardner said. Then he bowed and left the room. As soon as the door closed behind him, he wiped his face with his hand. He always felt that he needed a bath whenever he left Rolan’s office.

  Chapter 26

  Evelyne of Abernon

  The Tellurians pushed hard for the next few days, and on a Tuesday near the middle of May, they crossed the Teran equivalent of the North Platte River, which Kalen had told them formed the boundary between Brendolanth and Nandelia, but there was nothing to indicate that they had gone from one province to another.

  Thursday they crossed another large river, and their road curved to follow it, heading more west than south. Around mid-afternoon they found a secluded cove and set up camp for a two-night stay. That was the first time they had camped since they had been attacked and everyone was a little apprehensive, but after the first night passed peacefully, they relaxed a bit and enjoyed their second night.

  According to the route that had been marked on their map, they were to continue west, following the river, for a couple of days until they came to a southbound road at a “T” junction in the middle of a town called Abernon.

  Late Monday afternoon they rolled into Abernon. It was by far the largest town they had come across. Shops, stores, and taverns lined both sides of their road for several blocks. The blocks were formed by narrow crossroads. On the southern side of town, the crossroads were lined with houses, but on the northern side, they led to what looked like a large open meadow, which served as a buffer between the town and the river.

  There were three inns in Abernon, the largest of which was located at one corner of the “T” junction. A combination restaurant and tavern was located at the other corner, and directly opposite the main southbound road was the largest Chapel of Light that they had come across. It was as large as a small hospital on Earth.

  Karl stopped in front of the clinic as he considered which innkeeper he should approach for a night’s lodging. As the others pulled up behind him, a sister came out of the chapel and walked towards them. Her auburn hair was streaked with silver and she was a little plump around the middle. Her tan face looked like she had spent a lot of time in the sun and her hands looked like they had seen a lot of years of hard work, but there was a youthful twinkle in her eyes.

  “Is there a Sister Theresa traveling with you?” she asked Karl.

  He nodded and looked over at Theresa, who had pulled her wagon up beside him.

  “I’m Theresa, Sister.”

  “Good! Your assistant came through several days ago and told me to expect you. Here, let me show you to the barn,” she said as she turned to walk down the drive beside the chapel.

  “Uh, Sister, you do realize that I’m part of a fairly large group, don’t you? We like to stay together,” Theresa said hesitantly.

  The sister nodded. “We have rooms set up for all of you and there’s plenty of space in the barn. Come along now,” the sister said as she resumed walking down the drive.

  Karl looked at Theresa questioningly. Theresa shrugged, then nodded, and drove her wagon down the drive. As soon as Theresa pulled into the barn, a young man stepped out of the shadows to help her down. Once Theresa was safely on the ground, he climbed up and drove the wagon to the end of the barn so that the others could enter.

  “I’m Sister Evelyne, the resident,” Evelyne said as she took Theresa’s hand. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll introduce you to my aides and staff.” She leaned towards Theresa and whispered, “Taelor left a note for you.”

  Then she turned to the others and said, “There’s a pasture out behind the barn. Why don’t you put your horses out there? I hate to see them cooped up in tiny stalls in nice weather. You can set out some feed buckets for them if you like. Patrik will help you. Just let him know if you need anything. As soon as you’ve seen to your wagons and horses, come on in. We’ll have some refreshments ready.” After everyone had dismounted, Evelyne stepped over towards Karl and very quietly told him, “The horse that Taelor borrowed is in the pasture.”

  While the rest of the Tellurians were busy with the horses, Evelyne led Theresa on a quick tour of the chapel and introduced her to the staff. Then she and Theresa went to the kitchen to prepare the refreshments.

  While they worked, Evelyne told Theresa that she had received a message from Drusilla asking her to be on the lookout for Theresa. “She asked me to help you replenish your stock of herbs and to answer any questions that may have come up along the way. I got the impression that you haven’t been a sister for very long and that you’re not from anywhere around here.”

  “You’re right on both counts. I’ve only been a sister for about two months now,” Theresa answered. “You said that you had a note for me from Taelor?”

  “It’s in my office. I’ll get it for you later,” Evelyne said as she continued slicing bread. “It’s funny that Drusilla didn’t mention him. She did say you’d be traveling with a band of minstrels, but not one word about an assistant.”

  Theresa took a deep breath. Drusilla had told her that sisters would never betray each other, and she sincerely hoped that Dru had been right. “Drusilla didn’t know about Taelor. We found him passed out along the side of the road about two weeks ago. He had an arrow wound in his shoulder and was weak from loss of blood. I treated him and he traveled with us for a while.”

  “Why did he say he was your assistant?”

  Theresa sighed. “He’s an escaped slave. He needed to fit in with the rest of us, to have a reason to be traveling with us, so there wouldn’t be any questions when we were in town. He had been trained in a chapel, so we pretended that he was my assistant. It worked out quite well. We held a healing clinic about a week after he joined us in a small town that had been hit with a flu outbreak, and he was really good. I hated to see him go.”

  Evelyne nodded. “I figured it might be something like that. He arrived late one night, and was gone before daybreak the next morning. None of my staff met him, and I didn’t mention his being here to any of them, so you don’t need to worry about that.” Evelyne continued preparing the platter of cheeses, meats, and breads for the Tellurians. “You know, Theresa, you can tell me or ask me anything you want to. What is said between sisters stays between sisters.”

  Before Theresa could answer, Joan walked through the back door into the small kitchen. She felt sure she’d walked into the middle of a conversation. She glanced at Theresa and said, “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “No, not at all,” Evelyne said as she wiped her hands. “I was just asking Theresa if she was running low on any of her herbs, but we can get to that later. Will the others be coming in soon?”

  Theresa carried the platter that they had been fixing over to the table. Then she began to set out some plates and forks.

  “The guys will be along in just a minute. They’re carrying feed buckets out to the pasture,” Joan answered as she stepped over to the table to help Theresa. “I love that pasture! The grass is so full and green, and the scenery’s beautiful! It’s almost a shame to waste it on the horses.”

  “It is nice, but I wouldn’t want to live any closer to the river,” Evelyne said. “It floods every spring. I’ve seen it up as far as halfway through the pasture, but that’s rare. We had a nice surge go through here about two weeks ago, but the water didn’t make it over the top of the banks. So far this spring’s been fairly calm.”

  Joan heard the clomping sounds of boots on the back porch, so she walked over to the back door to open it for the guys. Evelyne poured some hot water into a big basin, tossed in a bar of soap, and grabbed a couple of large towels. She set the basin and towels on the counter on the other side of the room from where she and Theresa were setting out some cookies and tarts.

  “Wash up, and then have a seat at the table. Theresa, would you get some mugs out of the cupboard over there?” Evelyne said, pointing to a cabinet over the washbasin.

  Theresa found the mugs, set them out, an
d then filled a pitcher with milk while the others sat down around the table. As soon as everyone was seated, Evelyne placed the tray of sweets and the coffee pot on the table and told them to serve themselves. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in an empty chair at the end of the table.

  “Have you had any problems since you left Drisden?” Evelyne asked.

  Darrell grinned at Theresa and said, “Not really. We had a small problem with some bounty hunters who wanted to search our wagons, but Theresa set them straight.”

  “And then we had a small band of thieves attack us around midnight one night, but we had them on the run within five minutes,” Chris said with a touch of bravado.

  Evelyne looked at Theresa. “Taelor failed to mention any of this. What happened?”

  “It was nothing really. The bounty hunters stopped us and wanted to search through our things. Taelor was asleep in the back of my wagon and I didn’t want him disturbed, so I refused to allow the search. They didn’t really argue about it. And Taelor didn’t know about the bandit attack because he left before it happened,” Theresa explained.

  “Yeah, the bounty hunters didn’t argue, but one of them tossed the flap up on the back of her wagon as she started to drive past them. You should have seen her come off that wagon seat!” Darrell said with a chuckle.

  “You did mark them, didn’t you?” Evelyne asked.

  Theresa could feel a blush creep over her face. She glared at Darrell and said, “No, it wasn’t necessary. They apologized and rode off.”

  “You should have burned them anyway. I would have,” Evelyne said. “What did they do when they saw Taelor in the back of your wagon?”

  “They didn’t see him. I had covered him with a blanket and put a sleeping tarp over the blanket.”

  “Good,” Evelyne said. “Now what was that about bandits?”

  “Chris saved the day there,” Kevin answered. “He had a feeling that we were being watched, so we woke up the others. The bandits took off as soon as they realized that we were armed and ready for them.”

  “But why did they attack you?” Evelyne asked.

  “One of them had seen us use two gold coins to buy a few things in town and figured we had more,” Joan said with a shrug. “Theresa had held a healing clinic the night before and the town director had paid her with the coins. It was just one of those things.”

  “They’d have killed all of you if they’d had the chance,” Evelyne said. “I hope you burned them.”

  Theresa shook her head no. “When Joan woke me up, my first thought was to get some woundwort and bandages ready in case any of us got hurt. By the time I got out of the wagon, it was over. The whole thing didn’t last more than a couple of minutes. I only saw the one that Darrell captured.”

  “You captured one?” Evelyne asked.

  “We wanted to know who had attacked us, so Darrell tackled one and we questioned him,” Steve explained. “When we found out that they were just a group of bungling thieves, we told him to go home and stay there.”

  “You let him go?!” Evelyne asked, surprised. “Why?”

  “We couldn’t just kill him in cold blood, and we didn’t want to have to watch him until we could turn him over to the authorities,” Karl explained. “If we had tried to hold him, his friends would probably have felt compelled to try to rescue him, and if they had attacked us again, we wouldn’t have had quite so easy a time of it. They would have been ready for us. At the time it just seemed like the best option.”

  “I see,” Evelyne said with a sigh. Then she shook her head. “You certainly showed more charity than anyone else would have. Oh, well, I guess all’s well that ends well.”

  After everyone had finished with the refreshments, Evelyne said, “If you like, I could get one of my aides to show you around town, or if you’d like to rest up a bit, I’ll be glad to show you to your rooms.”

  “Would it be all right for us to work out a little behind the barn? Maybe do a little sparring?” Darrell asked.

  Evelyne laughed and said, “Considering your knack for running into trouble, that might not be a bad idea.”

  Joan groaned. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could get a hot bath afterwards, is there?”

  Evelyne smiled and said, “I think that can be arranged.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  While the others were practicing hand-to-hand combat, Theresa and Evelyne went out to the shed that housed Evelyne’s indoor herb garden and workroom. The room was dark and cool, and smelled of rich moist dirt. A large workbench sat directly under a skylight and there were storage cabinets along all four walls. Between the workbench and the cabinets, there were rows and rows of herb beds.

  Evelyne motioned Theresa to one of the lab-type stools while she took a seat on another one. “I know you’re probably running low on several herbs, but that can be taken care of later. I’ll bring one of my aides in here tonight and she and I can get everything you need together in no time at all. I thought we’d just talk for a while,” Evelyne said. “Tell me about your clinics. How did they go?”

  Theresa told Evelyne about the healing clinics, about the herbs that she had used to treat various illnesses, and about the exhaustion she frequently saw on the faces of the women. Evelyne nodded and said that she saw a lot of that, too. She laughed over Theresa’s tea breaks and said that she might try it with a few of her patients. Before either of them realized it, they had been chatting for over an hour and it was getting close to dinnertime.

  “I’m going to have to go to the kitchen soon and check on dinner,” Evelyne said. “Is there anything you want to ask me before we join the others?”

  Theresa said that she did have one question that she needed to ask. “How does this pendant work? What do I have to do to get it to protect me?”

  “All you have to do is focus on the person’s forehead, picture the flame burning them, and the fire in the opal takes care of the rest.”

  “What if one of my friends steps in between us to protect me? Will the opal burn them too?”

  “No, it will only burn the one you’re focused on,” Evelyne said. “Of course, if someone grabs you or attacks you, your fear will activate the opal, and it will strike out on its own, so you might want to warn your friends not to grab you.”

  Theresa nodded. “I did. And Drusilla also told me to tell them not to try to remove the opal if anything happens to me because it would burst into flame.”

  Evelyne nodded.

  “Well, what if I’m unconscious and someone tries to take it. Won’t I get burned, too?” Theresa asked.

  “No. The opal would burst into flame, but you wouldn’t be hurt,” Evelyne said, shaking her head. “Dragon’s fire can not burn anyone it protects.”

  “Dragon’s fire?”

  Evelyne frowned. “Yes, Glendymere’s flame is in each of our opals. Haven’t you ever heard the story of the opals?”

  Theresa shook her head.

  “You must be from a really isolated area,” Evelyne said with a frown. Then she settled back on her stool and said, “A long time ago, about five hundred years, the sisters who traveled around Terah were often attacked for their herbs, potions, and healing gems. Some were even sold as slaves. Sister Drixanne thought someone should do something to protect them, so she went to see Glendymere, the grandfather of the dragons. He took her into his deepest cavern, the room where he keeps his jewels. They searched through the gems he had collected on Terah and the ones he had brought with him from the land of his birth, looking for just the right stones. Finally they came across his opal collection. All of the opals had a glimmer of fire in them, but the flame in the black opals danced as Glendymere approached, so he carried them up to the surface.”

  “Our opals?” Theresa asked.

  Evelyne nodded. “Glendymere had some oil lamps stored in another one of his caverns and he told Drixanne to choose one. She selected a brass-based lamp with three oil bowls, one on top of the other. Then Glendymere carried Drixanne
, the opals, and the lamp back to her home in Camden. When they landed behind the chapel, he laid the opals out in a circle, took a deep breath, and blew dragon’s flame into the stones. Then he breathed on the old oil lamp to light its wick. Glendymere said that although the dragon’s flame in the opals would lie dormant until awakened, the opals would protect the sisters as long as his flame burned in the lamp.”

  “How did she wake up the flame in the opals?”

  “By holding the opal in the flame of the lamp until the spark inside the opal began to grow.”

  “Ouch!” Theresa rubbed her fingertips in sympathy.

  Evelyne laughed. “Glendymere picked out an opal for Drixanne, suspended it in the flame, and then handed it to her. She mounted it in the center of her healer’s pendant and slipped it around her neck. As she stroked the opal, Glendymere covered her in dragon’s flame. According to the legend, Drixanne said that his fire breath felt cleansing and refreshing, that there was no sensation of burning at all, and all of the sisters who have been entrusted with the care of the lamp since then have said that the flame in the lamp feels cool on their hands when they place an opal in it.”

  “Because they have an opal on?”

  “Yes, their opals protect them from the flame.”

  “Would your opal protect me? Or just you?”

  “My opal won’t burn you as long as you have your pendant on, but it won’t protect you either. An opal identifies with the first person who wears it after the flame is awakened, and the dragon’s flame continues to burn in that opal until it’s removed, either by the person who’s wearing it or by another sister after the person dies.”

  “What happens then?”

  “The flame becomes dormant again and the opal is returned to the head of the Sisterhood.”

  “Who decides who the head of the Sisterhood is?”