The Pogrom of Mages: The Healers of Glastamear: Volume One by Charles Williamson Page A

gold chains will make you invisible. People can still feel or hear you so we must be very quiet. You both need baths or they’ll find you just by smell.”
    “I’m Turcha from Snowport Provence, and this is Otto of White Plains. Was that the anesthesia release spell you used to put the guard to sleep?”
    “You can just call me Friend. Yes, the spell will last at least till dawn. There’s a pond a thousand paces south. Let’s get cleaned up and plan what to do next.”
    They made good time to the pond where the healers washed off the offal the good citizens had paid copper coins to throw at them. The water was frigid, and both healers were shaking when they were finished.
    “Well Friend, can you explain what just happened to us. I understand the spell that put the guards to sleep, but I’ve never heard of golden chains that make people invisible except in ancient myths,” Otto asked after they were clean, dressed in some of Michaels dry clothing, and ready to travel.
    Michael decided to limit the details in case they were recaptured. “They came from Black Sand Beach twenty thousand paces south of Northport. There’s a naiad community in the reef. If you can make your way there, tell Obert their shaman that a friend sent you. You’ll be taken care of until we can move you to a safer place.”
    “Damn, you mean you’re not coming with us?” Turcha asked.
    “I’m headed north. I’ve seen what happens below the Great Temple of Northport. Under no circumstance do you want to be taken there alive. I could give you one of my horses, but how would you explain an invisible person riding a horse? Take all the food and a couple of knives. Stay away from people and detour far around Northport. They’ll be searching for you; it’s best to travel at night. I hope to see you at Black Sand Beach in two or three weeks.”
    He felt bad about not telling them his name or that they would find other rescued healers at Black Sand Beach, but it seemed safest to say as little as possible. He led them to his horses and gave them all the supplies he could. They headed south, and he mounted and rode Ebony Honor north at a fast trot in order to be far as possible past the inn by morning.
    As he rode by the inn, he saw the guards were still sleeping and no one was about. He wondered what the guards’ fate would be, but when he thought of the copper coins they had accepted, his worry about their future receded.
    He was at the wooden gates of the farming town of Appleton by dawn and waited with other travelers for the gates to be opened. He entered with a crowd of farmers carting their autumn harvests to the market square. He noticed an inn with a tree-shaded courtyard where he enjoyed a large breakfast of eggs, apple mutton sausage, apple biscuits, fried apple pies, and apple cider. The town was packed for the annual apple harvest festival so that one more stranger didn’t attract much attention. He saw a couple of priests, but they took no notice of him.
    After breakfast, he replenished his supplies at the market. Even though he’d had no sleep, he rode on hoping to move faster than the priests and guards who by now would have discovered their prisoners missing.
    About two hours past noon he was traveling through the Great North Forest, a dense stand of spruce and fir that stretched for a hundred thousand paces all the way to Snowport and east into the White Mountains. That evening, he moved nearly a thousand paces from the road to make camp on a bluff with a distant view of the Western Ocean. Around him stretched an uninhabited primeval forest of greens and blues. He didn’t want a fire to give away his location so he ate a cold dinner. Before bedding down he cast detect manna . There were no manna signs. He knew it would be a cold night without a fire, but he piled up all his clothing and his cape and crawled under them and fell asleep immediately.
    The sound of his horses woke him before dawn. When he sat up, he startled a buck