“You were captured and taken last night, were you not?”
“I was,” she said.
Harold looked sincerely upset. “I’m so sorry. You’re so lucky you survived it.”
“We saw a room full of people who didn’t,” Aahz said.
The poor guy looked like he might just faint away right there. He was wringing his hands, shaking his head, and pacing.
“It’s all my fault, you know. All my fault.”
“Okay,” Aahz said, trying to calm the guy a little. “You want to explain to us what’s going on?”
“Actually start from the beginning,” I said, leaning against the kitchen counter.
From where I stood I could see out the two-story-tall windows that flanked one side of the big room. The valley below was in complete shadow, but the sun still covered the mountains and streamed in through the window onto the grass. If this was a prison, it was the nicest jail cell I had seen in a long time.
Harold nodded. “I’m sorry, I am just so shocked you are here, that the map worked.”
“The beginning,” Aahz reminded him.
“Please?” Tanda said. “Right now you are looking at four of the most confused people you have ever seen.”
“Okay,” Harold said, his head nodding like it was on a spring. He glanced at the window and then took a deep breath. “I’ve only got a half-hour until sunset and this is a long story. I might have to continue it in the morning.”
“No problem,” Aahz said, clearly doing his green-scaled best to calm the guy. “Just start and we’ll go from there.”
Again Harold did the nodding routine, his head going up and down so hard I was sure he was going to have a neck ache. “First off, you’re standing in what centuries ago used to be called Count Bovine’s Castle.”