Father wore what he liked and woe to anyone that complained. The nobles of Garenland currently favored the stupid things and even country barons had to keep pace. Otto hated the cavalry boots and didn’t especially care if the stiff, knee-high monstrosities got soaked. He stepped off the bottom step, careful to keep his new boots dry lest he draw his mother’s wrath. All the Shenk men lost their hair, it was only a question of when. It had been that way since he was five, and at seventeen it seemed unlikely anything would change, at least until it started to fall out. As if to mock his, his servant’s and his mother’s best efforts, Otto’s hair never stayed in place for more than fifteen minutes. Otto shook his head, sending his mop of unruly dirty-blond hair waving about. Certainly the looks of disdain he favored Otto with suggested he found his youngest son to be a diseased thing. It seemed Father feared wizardry was a disease that might be catching.
One lonesome passage allowed entrance and exit and the door to the stairs was located as far from Otto’s father’s audience chamber as the castle architecture allowed. The musty scent of mold lay over everything.Ī wall had been built specifically to seal his master’s chambers off from the dungeons and cold storage. A pair of Lux crystals rested in niches built into the wall, their feeble enchantments barely adequate for the task of illuminating the narrow hall that led to Master Enoch’s workshop. A thin sheen of condensation covered the stone walls and shallow puddles dotted the packed dirt floor. Cold and dank: those words always flitted through Otto Shenk’s mind when he reached the bottom of the basement stairs.
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