New Beginning 1035

“Why do you look to the north?”

Esmerelda flinched at the voice from so close behind her. She would never get used to Henrick’s penchant for appearing and disappearing silently. Could not magicians use doors to enter and exit, like everybody else?

“These are my private chambers,” she said, turning to face him. “It would be polite to knock.”

His twisted smile told her, as if she did not already know, that politeness was not much of a concern for him.

“You have golden fields to the east, lush green hills to the south, and a verdant forest to the west,” he said, pointing to the high windows on each side of her top-of-tower room. “Why would you insist on looking in the one direction where the view is so spoiled?”

Esmerelda turned to the north-facing windows again. The ground, so very far down below in the valley at the base of the cliff on which her castle was perched, was withered and black. The trees were thick with gnarled branches outstretched like grasping claws, but no limb sported so much as a single leaf. Patches of limp dead grass floated like islands amid pools of oily mud. Even the northern air seemed still and gray, catching none of the breeze and very little of the sunlight that danced at the other points of the compass.

“You know why,” she mumbled.

“I’m sorry, Princess Esmerelda, I couldn’t quite hear that.”

“It’s just Esmerelda,” she snapped. “I am no one’s princess.”

"Sorry, sorry," he whimpered.
"Never mind. Now, tell me--when are they setting up the drilling rigs? I want to get the crude moving to China while OPEC's still imploding."


Opening: JRMosher.....Continuation: Khazar-khum