Thomas came to on a bed of coarse woollen blankets, and burst into a fit of coughing that left him doubled over and helpless until the attack had passed. The room swam around him and he swayed dizzily as consciousness faded in and out. For a moment he had no idea where he was or what had happened, and he lay still, waiting for his head to clear, before carefully sitting up and looking around.

      He was in a small log cabin, furnished with crude wooden furniture and carpeted with overlapping animal skins. A fire roared in an open grate and oil lamps smoked lazily where they hung from ironwood hooks hammered into the wall. A couple of medium sized ironwood swords, a longbow, and a quiver of arrows tipped with obsidian hung on another wall, next to the stuffed head of a ferocious looking forest animal with tusks and long, wickedly curving horns. The one window was merely a hole in the wall, with two slatted shutters fastened back from it, and a door in the opposite wall led to the next room, apparently a kitchen.

     Lirenna and Jerry were lying next to him, a single blanket covering both their bodies. Their skins were an ashen grey colour, but they were both alive and breathing, and as he saw them the memory returned, along with the full horror of their desperate landing. Lirenna had bandages wrapped around her left arm and was badly bruised around her face, but Jerry seemed more or less unharmed. They were both asleep, and Thomas thought it best not to disturb them just yet. He tried to sit up and suffered another wave of dizziness that defeated him for the moment, but a couple of minutes later he was able to fight it down enough to rise from his bed, gathering a blanket around himself to cover his unclothed body.

      He found that the bed was, in fact, a large table, padded with half a dozen blankets. Another wave of dizziness swept over him and he almost fell, but he was caught by a large tubby woman who rushed in at the sound of his movements. "There now, there now," she said, helping him to a chair. "Darris! Darris! They be waking up!"

     A large, heavily muscled man came in, wearing coarse woollen and leather clothes and with his long dark hair tied in a ponytail. "Glad to see you be up," he said. "We were getting worried."

     "Did you..." A sudden attack of coughing took him and he had to wait until it was over before he could speak again. "Did you get us out of the lake?"

     "Me and my two sons. Miriam, my good wife here, saw you come down, hell of a splash you made, and she came running to get us. There were only the three of you, were there not? Only we weren't sure we'd got the all of you."

     "Yes, just the three of us. Thank you for saving us." He tried to think of something to say that would adequately express his gratitude, but failed. Fortunately, more words didn't seem to be necessary.

     "Twasn't nothing," said Darris with gruff indifference. "We all be good swimmers, and the water was clear and shallow. We could see you lying on the bottom. Simple thing it was to fish you out. You'd all taken in some water, but started breathing again once you were out. Except the little feller. Took my son, Tarrin, a long time to get him to start breathing again."

     "Where are your sons? I'd like to thank them as well."

     "Tarrin be out seeing to the goats. He'll be in soon. My other son, Ralph, has gone to the village to get the cleric. He'll be back tonight."

     "I do hope you don't mind us laying you out on the table," said Miriam, wringing her hands nervously, "but the beds aren't fit for us humble folk to sleep in, let alone highborn wealthy folk like you. We gave you all the blankets, though, so we hope you weren't too uncomfortable."

     "It was fine," said Thomas, wondering what she meant by highborn wealthy folks. "You've been very kind and generous, and I hope to be able to repay you some day."

     At the words ‘repay you,' Darris's eyes showed the first shine of interest, and enlightenment came to Thomas in a flash. These people had seen the three of them fall out of the sky on a flying carpet. Only two types of people travelled in such an extravagant manner, wizards and noblemen. None of them looked like wizards who, as everybody knew, were old, gnarled, and dressed in flowing black robes with all kinds of silver stars and moons sewn into them. That only left the second possibility. They obviously thought that they were rich, probably princes or the children of landed gentry. They were probably hoping for a fat reward for rescuing them. He wondered how disappointed they would be when they found out that they were flat broke, and what form that disappointment would take.

     Strangely, after almost drowning, he found he was thirsty and asked for some water. Miriam dashed into the next room and returned with a small clay cup, which she handed him with a little curtsy. Thomas felt an initial impulse to tell her that he wasn't an aristocrat, that she didn't have to show him any special courtesy, but he stopped himself just in time. If he wasn't a nobleman, that would leave only one other explanation for having been aboard a flying carpet and he didn't know how they felt about wizards. Best to keep that little gem from them for the time being, just in case. He thanked her, therefore, and took a sip. The water had an unpleasantly sweet taste, but he didn't comment on it. Instead he asked after the backpack, and Darris assured him that it was safe, drying off in the stables. Thomas suppressed a strong impulse to rush out and check up on it, anxious for the safety of his spellbook. If the backpack was safe, the book would be safe. Its wrappings of oilskins would have protected it from the water.

     Darris saw the worry on his face and misinterpreted it. "They'll be fine," he said, indicating his companions. "My boy Ralph fell out of a tree into the lake once, almost drowned just like your friends. He were asleep for three days, worried the living sin out of mum and me, but he were fine in the end. Your friends'll be fine as well."

     Thomas nodded gratefully, and felt angry with himself for worrying more about a book than his friends. Books can be replaced, after all. Even spellbooks, although it would have required a lot of effort and the help of an older wizard. People couldn't. He sat next to Lirenna and took one of her hands in his. It was clammy and cold, but he could feel a pulse in her wrist. He gave it a squeeze and laid it carefully back by her side. Six months, he thought. We almost didn't last six days! Darris shared a look with his wife, and the two of them quietly left the room, leaving the three wizards alone. Thomas hardly noticed, he was staring into the demi shae's face, thinking how peaceful she looked, how beautiful, thinking how close to death she'd just come. He snatched her hand up again, squeezing it hard, and prayed she really would be all right, prayed harder than he'd ever prayed before in his life.


☆☆☆


     Lirenna regained consciousness an hour later, while Thomas was bent over Jerry, soberly trying to assess his condition. He was lifting one of his eyelids, trying to see his eye, when he heard a faint groan coming from the other end of the table, and he looked up to see her head slowly lolling from side to side. She rubbed her head with her bandaged hand and looked at the bandages in puzzlement. "You're awake!" cried Thomas joyfully, and Darris, hearing him, came striding in, a look of serene happiness on his broad, honest face. Miriam followed him, rushing to the demi shae's side and taking her hand. She stroked it gently.

     "There, there Milady," she said, "You just relax and take it easy. Everything be all right. You be safe here, you're going to be just fine."

     "What happened, where am I?" she asked, looking around the room nervously. She saw Jerry lying next to her, still unconscious, and tried to sit up, holding a blanket to her chest and wincing at the pain in her arm, but Miriam pressed her gently down again.

     "There now, you just lie there a while, Milady. You just wait until you've recovered a bit before you try moving."

     "It's all right, Lirenna," said Thomas. "We're safe here. These people saved our lives."

     The demi shae raised her head again to look at him, blinking as she waited for her bright, slanted eyes to focus. "Thomas, you're all right. What's wrong with Jerry?"

     "He nearly drowned, I'm afraid," said Darris. "It'll probably take him a bit longer to get back on his feet, but he'll be all right."

     Lirenna tried to stand again, looking around for her clothes, and this time Miriam let her. She wobbled a bit, but Thomas got up and steadied her. "I want to thank you for saving all our lives," she said. "You have our undying gratitude and we hope, one day, to be able to repay you."

     From the way she said it, Darris got the impression that no financial reward would be immediately forthcoming and the doubts he'd been feeling ever since first finding them rose closer to the surface. Perhaps they'd stolen the carpet, he thought. After all, the clothes he'd found them in, though almost new, were not those normally associated with very wealthy people. He decided to sound them out. "I hope that table wasn't too uncomfortable," he said. "This place of ours must seem high squalid compared to what you be used to."

     Lirenna started to laugh, but it turned into a cough. "Well, actually, it's quite an improvement over our rooms in the University," she finally managed to say.

     "University?" asked Darris, "What University would that be, if I might ask?"

     Thomas tried to catch her eye to warn her, but she wasn't paying him any attention. "Lexandria University," she said. "The school for wizards."

     Miriam cried out and jumped away as if a bear had suddenly appeared in the room, and Darris backed away towards the wall with the weapons on it. "Wizards!" he said, fear creeping into his voice, "You all be wizards?"

     "Please, it's all right," said Thomas, leaving Lirenna and walking slowly forward with his hands held out in front of him. "There's no reason to be afraid. We've only just graduated, and none of us knows any but the very simplest spells. We couldn't do you any harm even if we wanted to." It wasn't quite true, as most graduates learned one or two simple combat spells for self defence, but he really hoped he wouldn't have to use them. Not just because he would have hated to hurt the people who'd saved them, but also because he didn't know how long they'd been unconscious. The spells might have changed since he last time he'd read them. Even so, though, he felt the words coming to the forefront of his mind as his training took over, and his hands twitched with their readiness to make the necessary movements. Don't make me do it, he prayed as his eyes measured the distance between Darris and his nearest weapon, a woodcutting axe leaning against the wall behind him. Please don't make me do it!

     "Stay away from me!" warned Darris, but his initial fear was slowly fading, calmed by the earnest look of honesty in the young man's face. There was strength there, he saw, although most people would only have seen the polite, apologetic facade, but it wasn't a strength that scared him. He somehow sensed the basic goodness, the fundamental innocence, in Thomas, in all of them, and he allowed himself to relax. "I'm sorry," he said, "It be just that..."

     Thomas nodded in relief, remembering Elmias’s warning. Many people had a superstitious fear of wizards, especially in this part of the world, close to the Shadow, the home of the dreaded Shadowarmies that had caused such terrible suffering and destruction three times during the previous century. The enemy had made great use of evil wizards in the three wars. They had used their power to terrible effect, and few people remembered that there had also been wizards on the side of civilization, fighting against them, helping to drive them back. "So you be wizards," said the woodsman, staring at them in wide eyed disbelief. They look just like ordinary people, he thought. "I be got wizards in my house."

     "We be all a bit jumpitty these days," added Miriam, doing her bit to smooth things over while Lirenna gathered up her clothes and went into the next room to dress. "Things moving in the forest, people afeard of going too far from home, even in groups together. It weren't more than a threemonth ago that the Warley boy disappeared. Just went out to feed the goats and never came back. And Crelly's men chased a whole tribe of goblins away from Yallerby just in time to stop them stripping the cold store bare. No-one be feeling very good these days."

     Thomas assured them that he understood, and said it had to be hard living this far from the protection of a big city. "Why do it?" he asked as he pulled his damp clothes back on. "If it's so dangerous, why do you live here? Wouldn't you feel safer living in Ilandia?"

     "This do be our home," said Darris.

     There was a whole conversation contained in that simple statement, but it wasn't enough for Thomas. "But this is your family!" he pointed out. "Isn't the most important thing to keep them safe?"

     Fortunately, the return of the woodsman's younger son, Tarrin, put a stop to the argument before it could start, and the two conscious wizards spent the next few minutes thanking the embarrassed young man for helping save their lives. "Do you be ready for something to eat?" asked Miriam, "for this is the time we do normally be having our day's end meal..."

     "We do have only simple woodsman's fare," said Darris apologetically. "None of the good vittles and fine wines you wizards must be used to..."

     "Simple woodsman's fare sounds great to me," replied Thomas, who suddenly realised he was starving. How long had they been unconscious? he wondered again. It felt like days since he'd last eaten. He glanced at Jerry, still lying on the table, his chest rising and falling gently with his breathing, but starving himself wouldn't help him. He and Lirenna followed the forest family through into the kitchen, therefore.

     It was quite possibly the best meal Thomas had ever eaten. It consisted only of a simple stew, meat and vegetables chopped up and cooked together in water, but it satisfied him in a way no other meal ever had and Miriam kept refilling his bowl as he emptied it, beaming in delight at the obvious pleasure it was giving him.

     Lirenna enjoyed the meal just as much, and her obvious desire to wolf down the vegetables as fast as she could get them in her mouth was tempered only by her shayen sense of good manners, which drove her to eat slowly and delicately. She barely touched the meat, the shae folk having little taste for it, but that didn't matter as Tarrin, after asking politely, swept it onto his own plate and ate it for her.