Inktober Day 14: Castle

 Chapter 12

When they left the lord’s manor, Kandra had them all ride in full view of the villagers. They watched and waved as their lady left with her guests in tow.  Magda wondered then if she actually knew these people. Did she help them? Was she any kind of real ruler to them in her husband’s absence? Was their lord actually her husband? All these things swirled around in the back of her mind, but mostly, she just wished one of the people would see in her eyes the fear she was so hopeless trying to convey.

Magda tried to feel something from her circlet. She kept thinking back to that night they had found those statues in the woods, and how her circlet had guided her back to Wendell, back to safety. She willed it to guide her now, but felt nothing. She looked into the sky and thought of the star which had seemed so bright that night. In the gray sky of the early morning, she wished she could still see it.

They traveled along a river and in the distance, Magda could see a range of mountains, with two peaks standing like sentinels guarding the pass. Between these peaks was a great wall. Magda recognized this as the wall separating Tìrmàgach from her father’s kingdom. She remembered reading that this wall had been erected hundreds of years prior, when her forefathers had sought to guard against invaders from the North. As far as she knew, it was manned now by men from Tìrmàgach to the North and men from her father’s land to the South. She began to hope that one of her father’s men would know her or Wendell, and maybe they could be saved.

It took the whole day to reach the wall. It was taller than Magda imagined and attached to it were two towers, one on either side. She kept her eyes open for any sight of her father’s banner, but her heart sank more and more asshe saw not one man of her father’s retinue. Only darkly clad figures, like those who served Kandra, and all seemed to know exactly who she was and what she was doing. There was no hope of escape.

“We will stay in the tower tonight,” Kandra said. “In the morning, we move again.”

They left their carriage and ascended the tower steps. It was not a large dwelling, being just large enough for the sentries to sleep in between watches. Any hope of talking to Wendell without being overheard was quashed.

Magda managed to get some sleep that night, but the morning found them waking before the sun rose to cross the wall and descend the tower on the other side of the mountain pass. In the distance, she saw rising out of the misty green land before her, a castle. It was a single tower on a hill set in the middle of a lake, which was fed from the mountains looming to the North.

Magda searched the skies for that bright star that had given her hope that night in the woods, but could find nothing. They were in Tìrmàgach at last, and not a single star could be seen.