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Yern turns from the window and nods, “Just him.”

Opening the front door, he steps out just as Shorty pulls to a stop. “Anything wrong?” he asks him, worried.

Shaking his head, he pulls a sack filled almost to capacity off his horse and hands it to James. He can see Jiron and Tersa standing in the doorway behind him. “Everything’s fine,” he assures them. “We picked up a shipment back in Bearn that had to be in Wurt first thing in the morning, so she sent me here to drop off your stuff.”

James opens the sack and finds it stuffed with crystals, the common ones he’s been working with. Smiling, he says, “Tell her thank you.”

“Will do that,” he says as he pulls out a letter. “This is from Thelonius back in Cardri.”

Taking the letter, he asks, “Would you like to stay for lunch? We have plenty.”

“No, she told me to get back fast before they moved much further down the road,” he tells him. Pulling himself back up on his horse, he turns to leave.

“You tell her to stop by when she passes through next time,” he says to Shorty.

“I’ll do that,” he replies. “Goodbye, James.”

“Bye Shorty,” he says. “And thanks again.”

Giving him a brief wave, he kicks his horse into a gallop and races back down the road to rejoin the caravan.

As he turns back to the house, he sees Jiron and Tersa standing there. Holding up the sack, he says, “At least she dropped these off before she headed north.”

“She wouldn’t forget about you,” Jiron assures him.

“No,” adds Tersa. “She knows how important those are to you.”

Coming back to the dining room, he takes his seat and pulls out some of the crystals and sets them beside his plate. While he finishes his meal, he closely examines them. As far as he can tell, they’re exactly the same as the one he took from the underground complex. It has to be with how he’s doing it. It has to!

Once he’s through eating, he gets up from the table and takes his plate and cup into the kitchen where he sets them on the counter. He knows it annoys Ezra that he does it, the master should not have to clear his own dinnerware. But he just can’t leave it there, his mom and then his grandma had ingrained that in him too well.

He returns to the dining room and puts the crystals back in the sack. Illan and the others are beginning to leave for the hunt, “We’re going to take Miko with us.”

“Good idea,” agrees James. “He’s pretty good with that crossbow of his.”

“So he keeps telling us,” Illan replies with a grin.

Miko stands up, all six foot two. He’s quite the man physically, but inside, he’s still a boy. Giving James a grin, he goes to his room to retrieve his crossbow and bolts.

“Be back by dark,” Illan tells him as he leads the others out through the front room. Miko quickly joins them before they get too far away from the house. James watches him as he walks with the others. They’ve really taken a liking to him, sort of taken him under their wing so to speak. Their initial wariness back at Lythylla has long since worn off.

Ezra and Tersa are busy in the kitchen and dining room, getting everything cleared off and cleaned up. Roland grabs an axe and heads out to lay in some firewood. Though fall is still well over a month away, he needs to get busy so they’ll have plenty when it does arrive. James tells them that he’ll be going into town for a few hours to see Alexander.

Taking his sack of crystals out to his workshop, he sits them down by his workbench. Then he heads over to the old barn where his horse is currently stabled and prepares him for the ride into town.

A smile comes over him as he remembers that time with Corbin when he first mounted a horse. He’s come a long ways since then.

When his horse is ready, he leads him out of the barn and then mounts. Riding out to the so-called road that passes by the end of his lane, he passes where the workmen are hard at work on the new buildings. They wave to him as he rides by.

Townsmen from Trendle, they’re happy to have this work. Seems there are many who are barely able to make it around here and those that got this job are sure thankful. The buildings are going