The Stones Of Earth And Air

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Book Excerpt

Chapter One 

The large, grey wolfhound growled as the Crown Prince of Ponderia entered the room. The prince scowled at the dog.

‘Shut that animal up, Pettic. He knows me well enough. Why is he growling at me?’

‘I really don’t know, Torren,’ replied the blonde young man sitting near the window.

He put a restraining hand on the dog’s neck and said, ‘Be quiet, Cledo. You know the prince and you like him.’ He turned to the prince. ‘I can’t understand it. He usually greets you as eagerly as he greets me. I don’t know what’s got into him.’

‘Well, if you can’t get him to stop being so savage, he’ll have to be put down. And you shouldn't call me by my name now I'm eighteen. I'm a prince and you're a commoner after all. I've been invested as Crown Prince and will be taking on some of my father’s duties from now on.’

With that, the prince threw himself into a chair by the fireplace opposite where the children’s nurse sat, telling a story to the youngest of the family, six-year-old Prince Allry.

‘You shouldn’t talk to Pettic like that.’ This was sixteen-year-old Princess Lucenra. ‘He's been a good friend to you for the last five years. Remember you chose him yourself from among the boys brought to you on your thirteenth birthday. It was you who insisted that the fact he's a commoner didn’t matter when father suggested one of the sons of the nobility would be a better companion for a prince. The pair of you've been inseparable ever since. You even gave him the dog for his sixteenth birthday.’

The two young men were exactly the same age. On Prince Torren’s thirteenth birthday the king allowed him to choose a companion from amongst many boys who shared his birthday. The boys had come to Glitton, the capital city of Ponderia, from all around the country in response to a proclamation. Prince Torren and Pettic had immediately formed a bond and the young prince would not be swayed from his choice.

Everyone agreed in the intervening years that the choice had been a good one, each boy complementing a trait in the other. Prince Torren had been self-confident and he had helped Pettic to gain his own confidence. Pettic, in his turn had helped the prince to realise that ordinary people were not any different from royalty and the prince had spent many happy hours at Pettic’s parent’s farm, helping with the various chores. Now it seemed the bond was breaking down.

Lucenra continued scolding the prince, and the two younger princes and the other princess stopped what they were doing to listen.

‘Luce is right, Torren,’ called fourteen year old princess Icerra. ‘He's been your best friend for ages. You shouldn’t speak to him like that, nor insist he stops calling you by your name.’

The two younger boys, Prince Phillus and Prince Kitu both nodded their agreement. So did the nurse, but she refrained from saying anything aloud, having been on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing from Prince Torren the previous day. This culminated in a threatened firing from the prince—a fact that had shocked the old woman because she had brought up all six of the royal children from birth, and they all loved her greatly.

On seeing all his siblings seemed to be against him, Prince Torren stormed out of the nursery and off to his own apartments. The king gave Torren and Pettic their own rooms the previous year. Apartments opposite each other in the palace.

As soon as Torren left, Cledo stopped growling and settled down again. Pettic rose to leave, but Princess Lucenra stopped him.

‘Please stay, Pettic. I'd like to talk to you.’

Pettic sat down again. Cledo wagged his tail as the princess came and sat next to him. She bent down and stroked the dog’s head.

‘There's something very wrong with Torren,’ she began. ‘I'd almost believe it isn’t him he’s so different. He was never so arrogant and conscious of being a prince, and he'd never have told you to stop calling him by his given name in the past. It's come on him so quickly that I wonder if somehow he could be under a spell.’

‘We could go to see Blundo,’ suggested Pettic, naming the court magician. ‘He might know if such a thing is possible.’

Princess Lucenra jumped up immediately. ‘A good idea,’ she said. ‘Let’s go now.’

She immediately started heading for the door and Pettic had to hurry to catch up with her.

They made their way along the maze of corridors in the palace to where a spiral staircase rose up to a tower room. There they knocked and a voice told them to enter.

The room was full of clutter, at least to the uninitiated, but Pettic supposed that to a magician it all made sense. There were bottles and boxes all around and books on every surface. The dried remains of a variety of animals hung from the ceiling and various contraptions stood on tables and chairs.

The window looked over the town, and stood open in spite of the winter chill in the air. The remains of smoke hung in the room, which accounted for the open window. A slightly sweetish odour that Pettic could not place drifted to his nostrils

Leaning over a bench where the smoke appeared to have come from, was a youngish man. He appeared to be in his mid thirties with brown hair that he wore longer than usual. Whether this was from preference or from forgetting to get it cut no one knew.

He wore a brown robe tied in the middle with a piece of string in lieu of a belt. As the pair approached him, he turned and smiled, making his whole face light up.

‘Well, if it isn’t Princess Lucenra and Earl Pettic! Welcome, Your Highness, and My Lord. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’

Lucenra answered him. ‘We have come to ask you if something is possible using magic.’

‘What is it you want to know?’

Pettic cut in. ‘We wondered if it's possible to change someone’s personality using a spell,’ he said.

‘Well, now,’ the magician mused, frowning. ‘That all depends on exactly what you want to accomplish. A complete change isn't really possible, but it is possible to bring out latent personality traits.’

He paused and scratched his head. ‘It's also possible to get someone to do something for you, as a favour—to make them like you enough to do almost anything for you, but these are all short-lasting spells. What is it you want to do?’

‘It’s not us,’ said Pettic, ‘but Prince Torren seems to be behaving very much out of character. I've been his best friend for the past five years now and Lucenra's his sister. We're both seeing a side of him he's never exhibited before. He's arrogant, thoughtless and even on occasion cruel. He threatened Nurse with being fired yesterday, and we all know how much he's always loved her.’

‘Hmm. That doesn’t sound like Prince Torren. Leave it with me and I’ll look in my library and see what I can find. Come back tomorrow afternoon and I’ll tell you if I’ve discovered anything.’

The next afternoon Lucenra and Pettic climbed the stairs to the magician’s room once more. They knocked on the door and Blundo bade them enter. They found him poring over a book. This time the window was closed and a fire burned in the fireplace making it cosy and warm. Blundo stood up as they entered and sketched a bow towards the princess.

‘I think I may have found out something that would work, but as to the why, I've no idea,’ he said. ‘It's possible to change a person’s appearance.'

He walked over and picked up a large book from one of the bookshelves before continuing.

'Now, if someone wanted to replace one person with another, they could do this, but it would mean enchanting a gem for the person to wear. Even so, the spell is not permanent.’ He frowned. ‘This would mean the gem would have to be re-enchanted every so often. How long the spell lasts would depend on the strength of the magician concerned. Have you noticed the prince going away on his own at all?’

‘Not really,’ replied Lucenra, walking around the room and looking at things. She picked up a gem lying on a table. It tingled in her hand and so surprised her she almost dropped it.

Blundo looked at her.

'Did you feel something? he asked.

'It seemed to tingle,' she replied, frowning, 'but that's not possible.'

'Yes it is if you have an affinity for the gems,' replied Blundo, taking it from her. 'A pity you're a royal princess. That tingle implies you could become a magician.'

Then Pettic interrupted. ‘I was just thinking. There was one occasion when Torren took his horse and went off. I asked him to wait so I could saddle mine and accompany him but he told me he wanted to have a ride by himself. I thought this was odd because he always wants me to accompany him on his rides.’

Both Lucenra and Blundo looked at him.

‘When was this?’ asked Blundo.

He shrugged. ‘About three or four weeks ago, I think.’

‘Hmm!’ Blundo stroked his chin, which he wore clean-shaven, unlike many magicians. ‘Watch him very carefully and if he goes off again on his own, try to follow him. See where he goes and whom he meets and look for any signs that magic is being used. Someone doing something with a gem, that sort of thing, then come back to me and we’ll talk again.’

It was almost a week later that Torren went off again. He announced he was going for a walk and he wanted to go alone.

Fourteen-year-old Icerra tossed her black hair and grinned. ‘Who is she, Torren?’ she giggled. ‘That’s the third time you’ve gone off on your own. But she can’t be so wonderful, because you only see her every few weeks!’

Torren rounded on his sister. ‘It’s not a girl!’ he stormed. ‘If I want to go for a walk on my own, I can go for a walk on my own. It’s none of your business.’ He turned to the others, ‘And yes, before you say anything I know it’s snowing out there. I LIKE walking in the snow.’

With that, he swept out of the nursery where, out of habit, he and Lucenra still gathered along with Pettic, even though all had their own rooms now.

‘Time to follow, Pettic,’ whispered Lucenra, and Pettic stood up and casually left the room, picking up a warm cloak as he passed the cloak stand.

Torren left the building and crossed the palace gardens to a small gate in the wall. Few people used this gate and most had forgotten its existence. The children used it when they wanted to escape the wrath of someone in the palace. He passed through and into the streets of the city. He did not see the shadow slip through after him.

The narrow path leading away from the little gate led to some narrow back streets. They were rarely inhabited and so, as the children had found out in earlier years, they could easily pass unnoticed through the city streets. Fortunately for Pettic, the snow made it easy for him to track Torren, and the dark, narrow alleyways meant he could keep hidden.

Torren came to a gate out of the city. He had a cloak wrapped tightly round him and the guards did not recognise him as he passed through. The guards did recognise Pettic, though They knew him well and waved at him. They assumed he was going into the city to buy something, or some other errand.

Pettic followed Torren along the road for a little way,being sure to keep hidden, until the prince turned off the road into the forest. After a few minutes walking, he turned up what looked like a deer track. Pettic followed keeping his distance. It was easy to remain hidden amongst the trees, and anyway, Torren never looked back.

After half an hour's walking they came to a clearing where a heavily cloaked man waited. Torren approached the man and mumbled something Pettic could not catch, and he crept as near as he dared, hiding behind the bushes that grew under the trees.

The man said, ‘Well Dilrong, is it going as planned?’

‘Yes. No one suspects anything.’

‘Time to replenish the spell then. Give me the ring.’

When Torren, who it seemed was called Dilrong, handed over his ring, the prince seemed to disappear and a different young man stood in his place. Although he was about the same height as the Prince, there all resemblence ended. This person had unruly, mousy hair and a rather sly look to his face. It was a look that Pettic had noticed on the prince in the last few months. He had a longer nose than Torren and a rather pinched mouth.

 The strange man took a contraption from beneath his cloak which he put on the ground. He suspended the ring on a chain so it hung down inside. Then the muffled up man started mumbling and a light appeared in the contraption.

‘Can’t you make the spell last longer?’ Dilrong asked.

The magician ignored the young man for a few minutes, took the ring from the contraption and handed it back. As soon as he put the ring back on, Prince Torren once more stood in the clearing.

‘I know having to come out here every few weeks is a nuisance, but being Crown Prince, and ultimately King, will be well worth it, I think you'll agree.’

So it isn’t Torren. We were right. But why has this magician (for he must be a magician) done this? And who is he? Pettic wondered.

Pettic hurried back to the palace to tell Lucenra all he had found out. He found her in her rooms when he got there, getting ready for the evening meal with her parents and he had no chance of speaking to her.

He entered his own rooms and threw his wet cloak down on the floor. He was not customarily untidy, nor inconsiderate of the servants, but he felt frustrated. He needed to talk to someone about what he had seen. He realised it was getting late so he rang for his valet and asked him to prepare a bath and lay out his clothes for the evening.

He went to meet the royal children in the nursery as usual before going to dinner. As it happened he was a little early and met Lucenra and Icerra just outside the door. The boys had not yet arrived. As he went to open the door, someone opened it from the other side and there stood Blundo.

For a few minutes they all stood looking at each other, then Lucenra said, 'What are you doing in the nursery?'

Blundo looked at the princess then cast his eyes down as he remembered to bow.

'Err...you remember the enchanted crystals my predecessor gave you as protection?' he said quickly. 'Well, I've only just found out about them so I came straight away to check they were still there and the enchantment's still holding.'

'And is it?' replied the princess.

'Yes, your Highness. You'll be pleased to know it's holding very well.'

He bowed again and left. By then, the others had arrived and they all went down to the small hall for dinner.

After dinner there was to be a concert in the Great Hall by a well-known quartet and the king and queen expected Pettic to be there with Torren. He was looking forward to it as he enjoyed music. He knew Torren would not have been, though, as he was not very musical. Would this other ‘Torren’ enjoy the concert, he wondered?