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whereabouts.
    Mother has played it cool so
far. Telling the man little tidbits of information. She swears that
last she had heard you had fallen in the battle of Southpass and
were now in the hands of the Ablaians. He has taken the information
in stride and as far as I can tell has never been happy or
depressed about it, but he continues to return with more
questions.
    Tomorrow is my thirteenth
birthday so I must get ready for the coming party. It will not be
the same without you. I hope you are able to make it back to us
soon.
    Your friend
Maria.
    Thad folded the note back up and placed
it carefully in his pack. Had something happened at the party? Even
if he knew in what direction the palace was, and he could search
that far all he would be able to see would be the magical array
surrounding the area. It was like looking at a painting through a
broken bottle. You got the general idea of what was going on but
nothing detailed.
    It was frustrating to think one of his
friends might be in danger and he was helpless to save them. In his
case it was a fact of life. Right now stuck who knows how far below
the surface of the earth he could barely help himself.
    That night as he slept Thad’s dreams
were filled with the princess. Who was chained to a wall much the
same way he had been in his stay in the palace dungeons. She was
crying for him to save her, but as hard as he ran he only drifted
farther away. Then the dream changed and it was Monique who was
trapped in a dirty ally. The dream shifted again and he found
himself staring at Eloen who sat on the ground of a sloping hill
pounding her fist on a freshly dug grave weeping openly.
    The visions of the three women who he
had cared for in such pain forced him to wake in a cold sweat.
After a few minutes he was able to stop his shaking body.
Reassuring himself that it was only a dream then laid back down and
fell into a far from peaceful sleep.

CHAPTER IV
    Thad reached the underground river
shortly after he began his third day in the lightless tunnels. The
river wasn’t overly large at only five feet across and between five
and six feet deep. The one thing that did catch his attention was
the glowing masses that darted around under the dark
water.
    Using his magic Thad lit up a large
area of the water to find glowing fish swimming around in its
depths. They were of all different sizes and shapes. Most of them
looked ugly with bulbous faces and no eyes that Thad could see. How
the fish looked meant little to him, his main concern was if they
were edible and if the water was drinkable. If not he was going to
be in for a very uncomfortable next few days.
    His first task would be catching one of
the fish. It seemed an easy enough task. Using one of his rings
Thad sent a stunning blast into the water catching two of the fish
in its blast. The water was moving much faster than he had
anticipated and the fish were quickly swept out of
sight.
    On the next try instead of paralyzing
the fish he simply used his own stores of magic to grab ahold of
one and yank it from the moving water. Once the fish was on dry
land he quickly stunned it so that it couldn’t flip itself back
into the water.
    The fish looked much like a salmon
though its head was much larger than the rest of its body and its
scales glowed like a candle. Focusing on the fish he studied it
intently with his magic until he was sure that eating it posed no
threat to him. The only thing he dreaded was the first taste. It
might be edible but that didn’t insure it would taste good. He
still remembered the first time he had eaten one of the cave
lizards. While filling, the taste made him think of what his boots
must taste like soaked in sweat after a long days walk.
    The water would be drinkable after a
small amount of cleaning. It wasn’t dangerous without it but the
water did hold a small amount of metal dissolved within it. With a
semi-clean supply of water and plenty of fresh meat his day was
looking up. He had skipped