Read Bakkian Chronicles, Book I - The Prophecy Online
Authors: Jeffrey Poole
Bakkian Chronicles, Book I - The Prophecy (20 page)
Growing cautious, Bolli nodded.
Steve took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, trying to calm himself. He searched within for his jhorun. It was definitely getting easier to find. The tingles appeared instantly this time, almost eager to do their part. Steve eyed the first pot and ordered it to start getting hot.
In a matter of moments the aroma of cooking meat instantly filled his nostrils, making him realize just how hungry he was. A slight sizzling sound had also started within the pot. Baffled, Bolli approached her first cauldron and carefully leaned over to peer inside. Being skeptical by nature, she tentatively held a hand over the pot to ascertain the pot’s temp, but had to snatch her hand away lest she be given a burn. She didn’t know how this stranger was doing it, but he was! Her first cauldron was already cooking! She pulled out a large wooden spoon and stirred the contents. Pieces of meat floated to the surface of her stew. She also noticed that a few chunks of meat were beginning to char.
“
Can ye lessen the heat some? The meat has started to burn.”
Steve nodded, pulling back in some of the heat from the pot. With the temperature now at a comfortable range, she indicated she was ready to get pots two and three going. Steve looked them over. Within seconds, all three pots were glowing a soft red. He was startled to discover that if his attention diverted to anything else, his jhorun receded on its own accord. Slowly, ever so slowly, it started to cool off. Luckily, it was easy to tell when the well-used cauldrons started to fade from red back to black.
Sarah, following her nose, finally wandered into the kitchen and saw Bolli moving from pot to pot, giving the contents of each pot a thorough stirring. She also noted that all three pots had a warm, soft reddish color on the bottom. From Steve’s jhorun? It had to be. No flames whatsoever! She was impressed!
Steve glanced over at her and smiled. Instantly, two of the three pots lost their reddish glow. Sarah noticed and gestured for Steve to look. His head whipped around, saw the problem, and restored the proper amount of heat.
“
This is incredible!” Bolli kept saying, going from pot to pot. “Ye will have the entire feast cooked in the time it takes me to make the fire! I can not thank ye enough!”
Thacken poked his head into the kitchen. “Rhenyon and his troops have arrived. His men have practically filled every table we have. How soon before -” and he saw the three pots hanging in a row over the hearth, no fire present, yet glowing red. Even standing where he was, he could feel the heat emanating from the large pots and smell the enticing aroma of his wife’s cooking. “By the wizards! They are cooking! It smells great! Ye did it! Thank ye, Steve! Ye have saved my wife and I hours of work! Go rest. I’ll send two plates of food up. Ye both look dead tired.”
“
Thank you, Thacken. Bolli, I’m glad I could help.” He gestured to the pots. “Once I leave, they’ll start to cool down. It might take it a bit, but they will start cooling off.”
“
I’ll have proper fires started by then. Thank ye, Steve. I’ll have Thack send up a bottle of our finest wine. Rest well!”
Following Sarah back out into the great room, he was amazed to discover that practically all the tables were full of soldiers, and more kept streaming in. Giving the weary soldiers a wide berth, Sarah led him to the far stairs where he followed her up.
Their room was small and homey, with a padded mattress in the corner. The bedding was folded neatly (Bolli’s influence, Sarah presumed) on the corner of the bed. A small fireplace was situated directly across from the divan, with the small window open wide to allow the fresh night air to enter. It also appeared that the window served double duty as the air outtake for the fire, as there were signs of black soot on the window frame and on the glass itself.
“
Want the window open?”
Sarah nodded. “Yes, please. The air smells so fresh here. No evidence of industrialization. We ought to bottle it and sell it on eBay!” She giggled and looked at the fireplace. “Can you light the fire?”
“
Are you asking me if I can or if I will?”
“
I know you can, silly, I want you to light the fire, please.”
Steve looked at the fireplace, and within seconds the logs instantly erupted into flames. Warmth flooded into the room, chasing out the cold bite of the night air. Steve leaned up and pulled the windows to within an inch of being closed.
“
If it gets too smoky, let me know. I can open it some more.”
“
Thanks.” Sarah sank down onto the bed and kicked her shoes off. “I don’t think,” she began, “that my feet have ever been this sore. But you know what? I don’t care. I’m actually having a good time!”
“
I’m glad you are, babe.” Steve joined her on the bed. “So what did you think of my culinary abilities down there?”
“
I wanted to ask you about that. What possessed you to volunteer for that? I thought you were going to use that grif to pay for the room?”
“
So did I. Thacken didn’t give me a chance to offer it. His abruptness caught me off guard, and he mistook that hesitation as us not having any means of paying for the room.”
“
So you offered to cook instead? I’m impressed!”
“
You clearly didn’t hear the whole conversation, did you?”
“
I thought I did, but, ummm, clearly I didn’t.” Sarah laughed. “What’d I miss? It was kinda noisy in there.”
“
He wanted to know if I could do any service that would be the equivalent of paying our way. So I said that I could heat things up. Rapidly.”
Sarah snorted. “That’s the understatement of the century.”
“
You would have thought I just informed him I could turn lead into gold. He told me about those soldiers arriving any moment, and he hadn’t been properly notified, so his poor wife was struggling to get all the food ready.”
“
And you just happened to have the ability they needed to rapidly cook everything.” Sarah nodded. “That’s thinking quickly on your feet. Good job!”
There was a soft knock on the door. Steve opened it to reveal Ellis, holding a large tray with several steaming bowls of the same dish Steve had helped cook earlier, a round loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and several glasses. Steve took the tray from the boy, thanked him, and sent him on his way.
“
Looks good!” Sarah said. “What’d we get?”
“
Let’s see,” Steve put the tray down by the bed. “We have some bowls of stew, loaf of bread, and some wine. They didn’t send any water, though.” He picked up the bottle and eyed it. The contents swished around as he rotated it, looking for some clue on how it might taste. Unsurprisingly, no label.
“
It’s what we were given. Supposed to be the finest here. Let’s not insult our hosts, okay?”
Steve sighed, uncorked the bottle, and poured a glass for each of them. It looked to be some type of merlot. He hoped it wasn’t too strong. Gingerly, he took a sip. Mmmm, not bad! He didn’t ever recall red wine tasting like this! The sweet, fruity liquid was light and fragrant, with a light aftertaste of… Steve smacked his lips. What was it? Some type of flower? Spice? Lavender, or maybe rosemary? Whatever it was, he realized he was so grateful to quench his thirst that he didn’t care if it tasted like raw sewage. Eagerly, he gulped more down.
“
Whoa there, bucko,” Sarah cautioned. “Go easy on that stuff. We don’t know what’s in this, and it might be more potent that the wines we are used to. And since you don’t drink wine, I’d just as soon not have a drunk, human flamethrower in the same room. Know what I mean?”
Steve snorted, spraying flecks of wine onto the piece of bread he was about to take a bite of.
“
Is that what you think of me? A human flame thrower?” Steve paused to let that sink in. That characteristic smug grin of his appeared on his face. “Yeah, I can live with that.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “You’re just a big kid, do you know that?”
Mouth full of stew, Steve nodded. “With pride!”
Comfortably sated, Steve pulled the bedding over the mattress and invited Sarah to stretch out alongside him.
“
Let me get something first.” She walked over to the pack, fished around inside for a moment, then pulled out the leather journal.
Stretching out next to her husband on the bed, she held the journal up questioningly.
“
Whatcha doin’?” Steve noticed the journal. “Are you looking for something?”
“
Remember when we talked briefly about your grandparents? We were curious about what their jhoruns might be. I want to see if it’s mentioned anywhere in here. Do you mind if I read this?”
“
By all means, babe. Help yourself.”
“
Let’s see,” she opened the journal, “here’s the opening inscription, which changed from that foreign language to something we can read. We’ll get into that later. But for now, let’s see what we have.” She skimmed the first couple of pages. “Nothing much, just talking about New Year’s dinner they had, here’s an entry about some old book that Simon,” Sarah looked up questioningly at her husband. “Simon. Just to be clear, that is the name of your grandfather, right?”
Steve nodded.
“
Apparently he was working on repairing some old book. Doesn’t mention if it was rare, or where it was from.”
“
Find that entry from before, with that Volan person.”
Sarah started flipping through the pages. “Okay, let’s see. I think it was roughly halfway through, closer to… Ah! Here it is. Volan’s journey. Let’s see, that was an entry for April of 2008. I’ll read the whole entry:
April 3
rd
, 2008
It’s our first day of this visit. The Kri’yans have granted us leave to discover the location of the manuscript. Several years of steady, relentless questioning has apparently finally convinced them to grant us permission to access the Archives.
On day 3, we uncovered a reference to a distant family member that lived on the sea. What we found incredible was that there were references to a small island off the western coast which was allegedly rumored to resemble a griffin cub in flight. There have been only a few villages that have been along the western sea, and of those, only one remains: Capily. As it happens, there are several small islands nearby. We were very surprised to learn that no one had ever investigated the western coast. So the following day, we journeyed to the coast via their royal highness’ personal
marjihn
.
We explored all along the sea from the village’s most northern point to the most southern, all the while keeping the village in our sights. It wasn’t until Grace went to refill her canteen from one of the freshwater streams that she discovered the ruins of a house tucked away in the forest.
Poking around in the ruins we discovered that the forest had, unfortunately, decimated anything that might have at one time helped us. After a brief search in Capily, we located the town scribe and told him we were on official business.
“
Official business?” Steve interrupted. “Sounds like they were definitely in league with the king and queen, don’t you think?”
“
I do. Let me finish.”
“
Sorry.”
Lucky for us, the scribe was a very knowledgeable, organized person and had records dating back several hundred years. Spending a day or so in his company helped us learn all we needed to know about that quaint, seaside village. It was only a matter of time before several documents were uncovered that helped us track down the name of the family that had lived in the ruins of that small house and how long it had been vacant.
The house had belonged to a man named Kahrill. He had married a local girl and moved into her family’s house in the village, thus abandoning his ancestral home. Once again, our new-found friend came to our rescue. The scribe searched his records and identified a great-great-granddaughter that was still living in the same house. Apparently living in the family home from birth to death is a common occurrence in this village. The woman was very cooperative, letting us search through her great-great-grandmother’s things.
