"Out!" Shawna shouted. Without warning, she swung the heavy pan like a broadsword.
Shailiha held her breath. She didn't know whether Shawna might actually brain him with the pan. But then Morganna started to cry.
"Now see what you've done!" Shawna shouted. His eyes wide, Shannon continued to back away. "Leave here this instant, or I'll give you a goose egg the size of a Shadowood thorn apple!"
Shawna was particularly protective of Morganna, and no one knew that better than Shannon. Clutching his jug, he backed out of the kitchen just in time to narrowly avoid another swing of the frying pan.
With Shannon gone, Shawna looked over at the baby. Shailiha had already taken her up from her stroller, and the child was beginning to quiet.
Shawna took a pan from the stove and poured some warm milk into a bottle. Fastening a nipple to the bottle, she handed it to the princess. Shailiha gave the bottle to Morganna, who began to drink greedily.
"Men!" Shawna muttered as she went back about her work. "The small ones can be just as much trouble as the large ones-maybe more!"
The princess smiled. She enjoyed being in the kitchens with the gnomes, and so she had brought Morganna here to pass the time, as she and the other members of the Conclave waited for the meeting to be called.
Tristan had told them all that there would be a meeting as soon as the wizards ended their research. It was now well into the afternoon, and still the two irascible mystics had not called for them. Shailiha knew that Tristan had spent much of last night and most of today prowling the palace, trying to release his pent-up frustration.
She really couldn't blame him. She had seen the changes he had gone through, and she had shared many of them with him. She had wept for him, laughed with him, mourned with him, and been terrified for him. In the end they had always had each other, and nothing could change that. Today might prove to be one of the most important days of his life. She would be there with him, no matter what news the wizards might bring.
There was something else that had been tugging at the princess' heart-something other than their predicament concerning the Orb of the Vigors. It was a deeply personal concern. She had yet to talk to anyone about it, not even Celeste.
Despite all of the people now living here in the palace with her and her brother, Shailiha was desperately lonely.
Tristan and Celeste had found each other. After more than three hundred years, Abbey had found her way back into Wigg's heart. Traax and Duvessa seemed drawn to each other. But for Shailiha there was no one.
Her grief at the death of her husband Frederick had been all-consuming at first. She had loved him more than her life. With his passing she had thought that the secret, fiery part of her heart that could feel such love for a man had been smothered forever, and that she would never again want it rekindled.
But as time went by she felt familiar needs stirring within her once more. Was it wrong to feel this way? she asked over and over. Was Frederick looking down upon her from the Afterlife? If he was, would the presence of another man in her life hurt him?
Shailiha looked down into Morganna's face. At least Frederick lived on in their child, she thought. For now, she supposed that would have to do.
"Begging your pardons, ladies," a strong male voice said from one of the several kitchen doorways. "The wizards wish to have the food brought in so that they may start the meeting."
Shawna and Shailiha looked up to see a Minion warrior standing there. "Keep your armor on," Shawna said. "I have a few more items to prepare."
Repressing a laugh, the princess watched the gnome finish her work. Soon several silver trays lay on the butcher's table, each piled high with delicacies: roast pork with plumberry stuffing; selected fruits, vegetables, and cheeses; and one of Shawna's specialty desserts, a five-tiered, swizzle-rum and cinnamon cake, slathered with farmer's cheese frosting. It all smelled wonderful.
Shailiha wondered whether any of them would want to eat after they had heard the wizards' news. She shrugged. They all had to eat sometime, she supposed.
Finally finished, the gnome wife wiped her hands down her apron. Looking up, she cast her commanding stare upon the unsuspecting Minion warrior.
"Well, don't just stand there with your wings drooping!" To emphasize her point, she pointed a diminutive forefinger at him as though it were a deadly weapon. "Help us with these! That's why you're here, isn't it?"
The warrior stiffened. "Minion men do not do such work."
Pursing her lips, Shawna walked over to him. She barely reached his waist.
Shailiha waited. She knew that this would prove interesting.
Shawna crooked her finger, beckoning the warrior closer. As he bent over, quick as a flash she reached up and grabbed one of his earlobes. Then she gave it a savage twist. The warrior's face went red with indignation but, surprisingly, he did not move.
"Now then," Shawna said. "You can either help us carry these things to the meeting room, or I can report to the Jin'Sai that you chose to be uncooperative. Which would you prefer?"
She let go. With a sour look, the warrior picked up two of the trays as though they weighed nothing and started for the door. Shailiha placed Morganna into the stroller and took up the remaining tray. Shawna took the stroller by the handle. Then she stretched up toward Shailiha's ear. The princess bent over.
"I told you men were trouble," she whispered. Then she winked.
"But if a girl knows how, they can be managed. Even the really big ones."
Smiling, Shailiha followed the gnome from the kitchen.
CHAPTER XXI
The Orb of the Vigors was slicing a pass into the Tolenka Mountains.
Geldon stared in disbelief.
The orb still screamed-perhaps even louder now than before. As its golden rain fell onto the granite mountains, it vaporized the stone, leaving in its wake a narrow, charred passage. The newly created canyon penetrated the slopes like a long, dark finger trying to poke its way through to the other side. The rough-hewn pass was already several hundred meters long, and the orb showed no signs of stopping or of changing course, even as it headed directly toward one of the Tolenkas' many deep, white glaciers.
His mouth agape, Geldon watched as solid, living rock was melted, and freshly carved boulders and granite shards were ripped away from the mountain. Occasionally rubble tumbled down to obstruct the pass, but then the energy dripping from the orb pulverized it, clearing the way again.
Geldon tried to recall what Wigg and Faegan had told him about the mysterious mountain range. Lining Eutracia on her entire western side, the Tolenkas had always been insurmountable. No pass had ever been found through the imposing slopes. Their peaks were so high that even the wizards could not climb them. As an experiment, Tristan had recently ordered a group of the hardiest Minion warriors to try to fly over them. They had been forced back by the thin air and the savage, icy conditions that prohibited any traversing of the peaks.
For centuries, rumors abounded about what might lie on the western side of the mountains. Some said that it was a great, dark void, and that if a man stepped too far, he would fall off the edge of the world. Others swore that it was a home to savage, inhuman creatures that would kill every Eutracian man, woman, and child if set free to roam the eastern lands. Still others maintained that the western side held the Afterlife: that the souls of their departed friends and relatives could be found there, that the howling winds that whistled down the slopes were actually the plaintive cries of the dead, and that the runoff of snow during each Season of New Life was in fact their tears, as they cried in their torment to be set free to rejoin the world of the living.