In which I kind of like this chapter, and don't have much to say.

Far, far away from the Low Country and its tough, dark-haired people, across the river, as far as a horse could travel in two days, lay the Carpathian capital of Terradon, where the Smoky River dumped itself into tributaries that fed the Oyster Bay. The bay was named for the sheer number of oysters that occupied its depths. A man could walk out one hundred yards and barely get his feet wet because of the mounds of oysters. The black shells made the entire bay glitter. When the light shone directly upon it, one could not look at it. It radiated heat like tar and was as torturous as a mirror in the sun. Beyond the bay was the Terracotta Sea, deep and full of fishing boats, and forever it stretched on, unless it stopped at the Highlands, the existence of which had been under the subject of much scrutiny over the past few hundred years.

      On a hill above the sandy shore of the bay, where the working class of Terradonians set up stands selling fish of debatable freshness, loomed Leida Castle, named for the first royal family who had occupied it centuries ago. In the days when all was well in Terradon, it was lived in and governed by Gideon and Winter Huntian, descendants of the Leidas. The castle was massive. It took up three million square feet and was like its own city. It was built of silver and whitewashed stone, surrounded by a moat, and guarded by trolls and griffins. The inside stretched on for ages, the stained-glass chapels, the kitchens with twenty ovens each, the banquet hall with hunting trophies mounted to the walls and a table for two hundred, armories, galleries of relics, halls of portraits. There were kennels, stables, livestock barns, a refrigerated house over a manmade spring, and a stone courtyard with a lofted stage for performances, locked in on all sides by rounded watchtowers. (I was obsessed with T.H. White at this point, and if he described every. single. room. in his castle, then darn it all, so would I.)

      In such a huge place, there were only two children to occupy it. They were twins, Wescott and Elowyn. They were seven years old in the last good days of Terradon. They had spent their few years of existence prowling about their endless estate, playing in their folly, and learning under their teacher, Edem. In those days, all children of Terradon were trained in self-defense, jousting, fencing, and archery. Edem, on his white horse, was too tall to joust with Wescott and Elowyn, so they had to fight each other. They circled one another on their black ponies, bearing lightweight, flexible foils. Edem, slight with a deeply scarred hand and shaggy, graying hair usually cloaked in purple, sat astride his horse, coaching them. "Bend your elbow!" he often shouted down at Elowyn, which distracted her long enough for her brother to take a jab at her. "Don't let your sword flop. Look alive."

      Wescott was the better swordsman, but Elowyn always beat him in archery. She aspired to be one of the sharpshooters up in the watchtowers that surrounded the castle. In their free time, she coerced Wescott into tossing pinecone after pinecone into the air while she nailed them with little arrows. Then they switched places. "Draw your string back further. Just think about the pinecone," she called on a day Wescott had managed to pin zero.

      True to himself, he kept on stubbornly, growing angry as his arrows zigzagged and wobbled all the wrong ways. "You have to take advantage of the moment the pinecone hovers. Just before it falls," called Elowyn, parroting Edem.

      This was usually all Wescott could take. "Enough bloody talking," he growled, stalking to collect his scattered arrows.

      That summer they were seven, when far away the three existing Draven children were learning to hunt for sport rather than survival while their father fished in the bay below the castle, a new aid joined the ranks of people serving the royal family. His name was Legion, a man with dark hair who claimed to be of the Low Country. (Because heaven forbid someone with brown hair come from Terradon.) He was appointed grandmaster of the military following the retirement of the old one.

      "Now comes Legion into the house of Huntian," said Gideon Huntian loudly to his entire household accumulated in the courtyard. "God save him and defend him, and may he have wonderful peace."

      "God save thee and defend thee, and may you have excellent peace," echoed the crowd.

      Elowyn and Wescott stood on the stage with their mother between them. They had snuck each other bored glances throughout the entire induction ceremony. Now Wescott was thinking about how hungry he was. Elowyn was watching Edem and noticing that he was not clapping, but she did not think much of this.

       "I do hope this works out," said Winter nervously. Winter was always looking for a reason to be stressed. She was fanning herself against the summer temperature as sweat slipped from her pale hair. "You recall what happened eight years ago."

      "I wasn't born eight years ago," Elowyn reminded her.

      "Your father hired one of the artisans from the city. A sculptor. Put him in charge of the kitchen staff. He ran off with our gold spoons and that's why we have to eat off of silver ones." She whispered, "Your father is kind and accepting. It is a fatal flaw."

      Elowyn looked out at the king, standing tall with a crown in his golden hair as he addressed the adoring crowd. He did not look very fatal or flawed.

      When they were at last set free, Wescott and Elowyn burst into the circle of outbuildings on the east wing of the estate—the stables, kennels, and barns with endless fields of grass between. Wescott was eating a little cake he had snatched from the kitchen. He bore a stick like a sword and hit his sister with it, provoking her. She tackled him but her mind was not on the fight. She was thinking of her black pony. Eventually she left her brother and smuggled fistfuls of pear leaves over the stall doors in the stable.

      She was alone except for Edem, who was in a corner brushing his horse. He always insisted on doing things for himself. "Wescott got two new boats this morning. Me and him are about to sail them," Elowyn reported to Edem as her pony's tongue curled around her fingers.

      "Hmmm," said Edem in his usual quiet manner, but like when Elowyn was wrestling her brother, his mind was not into it. He did not even correct her grammar.

       Edem once had a wife and small children. They died somehow, in the  Second Winters' War, an ugly clash that occurred the year Wescott and Elowyn were born. Edem, who had been Wescott and Elowyn's teacher since they were five years old, never spoke of it. Elowyn forgot he ever had a life outside of this one.

      At exactly seven o clock Elowyn and Wescott joined their parents for dinner in the everyday dining hall. Winter was happiest in quiet moments together. She laughed at things her husband said. She listened attentively as Wescott described a toad he had captured. At dessert time, she personally carried out the cinnamon cake she had baked herself. "Let me know what you think," she said as her children dug into it.

      Madge, Winter's short, plump, graying lady-in-waiting, knocked on the doorframe, then hurried in and bowed.  "There are refugees at the gate," she whispered to the king and queen.

      Winter gasped. It made Wescott and Elowyn nervous without really knowing why. Gideon cleared his throat evenly and said, "Raise the portcullis."

      "Gideon, don't—" Winter began, but Gideon was pushing away from the table.

      The three remaining Huntians listened to Gideon's heavy shoes clomp out of the dining hall. Winter got up quickly. "I can't even watch. You children stay here." She got up and vanished through the gallery into the kitchen.

      Elowyn's blue eyes locked with Wescott's matching ones. At the same time they scrambled from the table and out into the hallway with a slippery marble floor and surged down the monstrous set of stairs into the main entrance hall. Armored guards with brawny dogs lined each wall. Gideon Huntian stood at the raised gate. The night was warm and filled with the call of gulls and the gentle slap of the bay. On the cobblestone knelt a dirty woman with black hair waving in the salty breeze, clasping a baby in her arms. A little girl held on to her shoulder.

      Gideon noticed his own children and held out his arm for them to come closer. They ventured to his side. "This is Reyka, and her children Nabi and Josef," he said. "They come from Bellica."

      Wescott was shy. He lowered his eyes to his boots. But Elowyn, who had never been beyond the beaches of the Eastern Shore, and to whom Bellica was an enticing mystery, was interested. "How long did it take to get here on your boat? A day?"

      The woman merely smiled briefly at Elowyn and the continued to look at the ground, as shy as Wescott. Gideon put his large hand on Elowyn's head. "It was not as simple as that."

        The woman was sent off with packages of cheese and salted beef, sacks of apples and potatoes, and a loaf of bread. Gideon and his children joined Winter in the drawing room, a small room draped in gold curtains and lit by flickering candles. Winter's white hounds curled up and slept on the carpet of bearskins.

      "I wish you wouldn't do that," Winter stressed as she and Gideon shuffled through their nightly game of cards.

"They're just innocent people," said Gideon, his eyes on his card hand. "Fleeing from their radical government."

      "Some of them, yes, But others are the radical government!"

      Elowyn had no idea what any of this meant. She stretched out on a polar bear skin and made her toy horse run across the floor.

      "What's a refugee?" Wescott asked.

      "Someone who leaves a bad place to go somewhere else," Gideon replied.

      "I want to be a refugee. I want to go to Bellica," said Elowyn.

      "Not me," said Wescott doubtfully. "I don't like the dark-haired people."

      "Neither of you want to go to Bellica," Gideon said.

      "And I want to go to that other place. The low place. What's it called?"

      "Low Country," Wescott informed her, "and they have dark hair there, too."

      Elowyn flopped over to look at her mother. "Is dark hair bad?"

      "No," said Winter. "It's just a different race of people. Usually the farmers and laborers. But it matters to some people. And it is important that we look good to the other Terradonians."

This was what we played in the game. We actually split the dark-haired Legos up from the light-haired Legos and made the brown-haired people live in our "poor district." (We, by the way, both have very dark hair with my brother's bordering on black.) Eventually I learned that just because you play something in a stupid Lego game doesn't mean it translates sensibly into a story years later.

      Later that night, Gideon Huntian was called to a council in the Black Forest, a region that ran behind the Low Country and up into Terradon. His children slept through the action and rose to find him in his bedroom, dressing hurriedly. Wescott stood in front of Elowyn, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Where are you going?"

      "Just a quick meeting." Gideon ran his hand over Wescott's blonde head. "I'll be back by tomorrow morning, I am certain. A carrier owl from the Black Forest came by last night. The Maleficus want to have a meeting about trade."

The Maleficus was a council of wizards in the Black Forest. Elowyn wanted to meet them. "I want to go, too. I want to see the Cherry River," she interrupted, moving in front of Wescott.

      "The cherry springs," Wescott said. "The cherry springs and the Smoky River."

      "Whatever," said Elowyn, annoyed.

      "Do you know why they're called the cherry springs?" asked Gideon. "Because the water is so sweet, they say it drains out of the cherry trees." He knelt on the thick rug and held Elowyn's face in one hand and Wescott's in the other and kissed them. "You two will see it someday. Just not this time."

      In the grand entrance hall, Gideon sheathed his sword while Winter fussed about him, ensuring that the pages had packed everything he needed. "I wish you didn't have to go," she fretted. "Not now, with Bellica in more chaos every day, and refugees everywhere..."

      Gideon kissed her. He smiled again at his children. "I have a small army going with me. And you three here have the greatest military in the world. This city is a lamp on a hill. Nothing can put us out."

Yeah, that's what they said about the Titanic.

      Gideon rode a gray horse. He mounted before the castle and started off towards the black bay, closed in by six bodyguards. Wescott and Elowyn were held captive in their classroom, a round turret room full of books and maps with bay windows. Elowyn squinted out at the bay and did not hear a word that left Edem's mouth. "Does the Smoky River go from the Black Forest all the way to here?" she asked, interrupting a subtraction explanation.

      Sometimes Edem let the children lead the lessons. Today was one of those days. Wescott and Elowyn sat on top of the table with a book of maps between them, and Edem sat in a rocking chair. "It comes all the way from the Black Forest to empty into our bay." He leaned forward to trace his finger along the map lines. "But between Terradon and the Black Forest is the Low Country."

      "Where I've always wanted to go," Elowyn noted.

      "What's in the Low Country?" asked Wescott, always inquiring.

      "Lots of woods. Some farms. But mostly woods that lead into the Black Forest."

      "What's in the Black Forest?"

      "Besides a campground, and the Maleficus council, nothing. Well, except—" Edem caught himself. He cleared his throat and casually scratched his head.

      "Except what?" Elowyn asked expectantly.

      "On the border of the forest....." Edem's voice trailed off again. Then he seemed to rearrange his thoughts. He reached over and shut the heavy book. "It's nothing. It's just endless woods. Run and play now."

      Elowyn and Wescott sprinted out into the summer air and blue sky to race each other on the stretch of beach owned by the Huntians. They each carried a toy boat. The bay was calm today. It barely lapped the sedimentary shore and the sun beat down upon it. Wescott and Elowyn bent in the water, their feet blackened by the oyster shells, and blew on their boats to make them sail.

      "You're spitting on my boat," Wescott accused.

      "You're spitting on my boat."

      "You're cheating, anyway. Mine has a broken sail."

      The serene water transformed into a series of ripples. The sandy floor beneath Wescott's and Elowyn's bare feet began to quake. They looked down and then at each other. Up on the hill, the horses outside the stables began to break away from their trainers in fear. All around the towers the trolls, griffins, and dogs stood guard, but something was different. All the men were gone.

      What they could not see or even hear was the army of Bellican men with painted faces turning the inside of the castle into a slaughterhouse. There were dozens of them. They cut down the dogs who sprang at them snarling. They smashed cases of relics and took the swords for their own use. The outdoor guards took up arms and charged inside. Servants fled from every outbuilding, pursued and trampled and killed. The slashing of swords echoed ear-splittingly throughout the castle. Winter's lady in waiting, Madge, came flying into Winter's bedroom screaming and bleeding, which caused Winter to nearly pass out from trauma. She was dragged by her bodyguards out of the room towards the emergency escape hatch, which led to a tunnel system.

      Gideon, almost out of the city now, was the last to hear of the carnage. An aid rode up hard from behind, his breath coming in ragged spurts. "My lord," he gasped, "the castle—it is under attack."

      There was a unified intake of breath among Gideon's bodyguards as they turned their horses around but waited for instruction. For three seconds, Gideon was silent, awash in what he knew he had done wrong.

      He turned his strong horse to face the castle and lifted his double-edged sword. "Let them come. They will soon realize their mistake."

      In the main entryway, before the marble staircase, Gideon and his small army met the attacking Bellican terrorists head-on. Winter and her bodyguards, who had not yet made it to the escape hatch, were caught inbetween. Winter screamed and pushed the bodyguards in front of herself. "Take anyone but me!" (This a direct quote from my brother as he spoke for the Lego lady, in appropriate breathless, shrieking tones.)

      A masked rebel shoved her aside with his forearm. He stared at the king and breathed heavily through his face covering.

      Gideon lifted his sword the moment the Bellican brought his down. The clangor created as they clashed together made Winter scream again. She stood by as a bloodbath ensued. The castle was a battlefield. Terradonians killed Bellicans and Bellicans killed Terradonians. The entire world seemed to drown in noise and confusion and terror. Then Gideon was pinned by his shoulder to the wall and a sword was raised over his head. A second sword was held to Winter's throat.

      "Give us your king," said the masked man as all was temporarily silenced, "or we kill your entire kingdom."

      All eyes were on Winter. This was the moment she proved herself as the weak queen she truly was. She did not fight back.

      Gideon Huntian was taken. He was beaten and chained and led to an inevitable death across the sea in the goblin tunnels of Bellica. Half his household was slain defending him, all for nothing. The noises of fear and clashing of swords gradually died out to an eternal echo. The trolls, charging and roaring, drove the last of the killers out of Terradon.

      An hour later, Edem and Winter found Elowyn and Wescott hiding in the backyard castle folly beneath a red-painted child's table, their tiny drawbridge shut and secured. It had saved their lives. "Who were those people?" asked Elowyn with her eyes peeking out from beneath the tablecloth.

      "Did Father kill them all?" Wescott asked.

      For the second time that afternoon, Winter made a bad situation worse. (Well that's one way of putting it.) She did not answer. Instead she panicked all over again, sobbing, hysterically shouting curses at the nation of Bellica. It was nothing her children had not seen before. They did not imagine she had just stepped aside to make way for their father's demise.

      Edem left the three of them in that moment. He stood upon the stone steps of the palace and stared out at the lengthening shadows on the city streets, beyond which hordes of men were hustling to the deserts of Bellica with their prize.

      "Legion did this," he said to the world, although there was no one to hear him.

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So this entire chapter was directly taken from the Lego game we played. Attack, castle folly, fainting Winter, and all. The next chapter continues the Lego-ness. Eventually I learned that if you're going to base a story entirely on a Lego game, it's best to, you know, add to it.