One Hundred and Ten Years Later…
Sweet Danu, it's good to be home again.
Randel watched as the castle staff brought in the trunks full of his belongings. He shook his head ruefully, he'd only left Caladh with two trunks, and here he was coming back with six. Admittedly, most of it was clothing. He'd thought it best to dress in accordance with the fashion of the nation he was visiting at the time, and being loathe to discard anything, here he was with a luggage train worthy of a Fae.
Bah, maybe the castle tailor can do something with this stuff. Except for the tights… I won't ever be wearing those again. Now I know how Jareth felt during Sarah's Run…
At least from what he'd seen on his way to his chamber, fashion hadn't changed much in the Goblin Kingdom since he'd been gone. Not that he cared much about fashion anyway. He was certainly not the clotheshorse that Garthan and Jareth were.
Maybe I should let Garthan go through these before I take them to the tailor. He might like them as they are…
The porters departed, and Randel was left to look around his chamber. Nothing had changed, apparently Lily made sure that the maids only cleaned in here but didn't meddle. Some of the old correspondence he'd gotten way back when was still in the tray on his desk. His bowl of coins was still in its place. It was silly, but he was absurdly touched by the gesture, that his friends would keep his chamber exactly as he left it, awaiting his return.
He had been back now and then during his mission, popping in for a quick debriefing with Jareth, Garthan and Jacen and meeting with Anduin to go over troop movements and after-action reports. Those visits were regrettably brief… he'd only gotten to see Sarah and Lily once or twice in the last hundred years.
It was certainly one of the most ambitious diplomatic missions Jareth had ever launched. When they originally discussed it, he'd thought that Garthan would be the one to undertake the mission, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he was probably better suited. He was not bonded and had no family… it was unfair to expect Lily to go so far from home for so long, not to mention that she was pregnant with Tremane at the time. He could tell by Garthan's face that he did not want to do this, so Randel volunteered to go in his stead. Anduin was fully competent as Adjutant to the Lord Martial, the Kingdom could do without Randel's presence much better than it could without Garthan's. Jareth wholeheartedly agreed, but had refrained from asking him, knowing how much he hated mixing with the Fae.
Besides… it was a way to sample a wide variety of local beauties. Or so he told himself.
In truth, he took the mission for the same reason that Garthan would have taken it; because he knew it was important. They needed to establish closer ties with the nations surrounding them, as well as assess the military capabilities of those nations. Besides making the rounds of Elven and Dwarven kingdoms, he also visited the more neutral Fae lands, both to get an idea of their battle readiness as well as to assess the general mood of the Fae nobles. In every kingdom he visited, he sent out correspondence back to his King, correspondence that he knew was intercepted and read, as were the official replies. His hosts didn't know that all true correspondence between himself and Caladh was done via the Ughlánas.
He had a miniature portrait of Lily in his possession, framed with a latticework of silver and set with crystals. It looked for all the world like a picture of his sweetheart. In reality, it was a summoning charm. The crystals in the frame were keyed to Randel directly. By pressing his thumb on them in a specific order, he could signal Caladh that it was safe for an Ughlánas to 'pop' in, take his correspondence and drop off Jareth's or Garthan's without alerting his hosts. Anyone other than Randel could spend a thousand years touching the crystals and nothing would happen.
The real covert part of his mission was installing the new Jezral talismans in each of the palaces. Invented by Toby and Jareth, they were small, innocuous pieces of wood and plaster that Randel would carve at night to match a piece of trim or decoration within the rooms he was given in each kingdom. He'd put several in various rooms, everywhere he went. They were not magical per se, they absorbed the magic within the palaces they were placed in and stored it. In the unlikely event that someone scryed that bit of decoration directly, the magic it had absorbed would show up as part of that kingdom's defenses. They would lie dormant, waiting for a day that hopefully would never come.
For the Jezral talismans were the portals that would open these palaces up to death squads of Othánas and Ughlánas, should that grim necessity ever come to pass. Because they were already inside the palace, and because the magic used actually belonged to the target kingdom, no defensive shields or wards would prevent Jareth from sending a squad if it ever became needful. It also meant that he could send them without having to accompany them personally. The palace at Ardalon was now full of them.
This was the true purpose of the various diplomatic "missions" Jareth undertook. Certainly, great strides were made in normalizing relations with the various kingdoms, but the real reason was to keep their contingency plan a viable one. Everything else was just a bonus.
Randel stretched out on his bed with a sigh. While the mission was certainly interesting, he hoped never to go on another one. The novelty of new sights, new places and new faces wore off within the first five years.
I never thought I'd get bored with a variety of women, but… damn, I was bored.
He missed home. He missed his friends. He missed the Ughlánas. He missed the food from the castle kitchens, the scent of the soap that Othánas women used, the herbs that scented his sheets…
At least I'm home now.
That was his last conscious thought before he drifted off to sleep.
That morning, he had breakfast with Jareth, Sarah, Garthan and Lily in Jareth's solar. The warm welcome he received was a balm to his heart. This was his family.
Jareth insisted that he take the day and just relax, get reacclimated to being home. Tomorrow was soon enough to get back to work. Randel decided to just wander the castle and grounds, revisiting old haunts, and remembering past events. He didn't have a destination in mind, he just let his feet take him where they would.
Going out to what had once been the East Garden, he realized that a lot of things had changed while he was gone. 'Garden' was probably a misnomer, since it was really just a stretch of empty ground that hadn't been improved. It was now a complex of sporting fields. Soccer, tennis, even an Aboveground baseball field and basketball court. Various Othánas and Ughlánas were out in force, chasing balls of various sizes. He paused at the basketball court, watching a group of Ughlánas try to put the ball through the hoop with much hilarity.
Goddess, I've missed this…
He watched them for at least twenty minutes before he moved on. He came upon an odd area, the playing field within filled with a large quantity of sand and a net strung in the middle, dividing it in two. There were two women on each side of the net, hitting a white ball back and forth. Apparently, the goal was to keep the ball from hitting the ground. That's not what caught his attention the most, though. What the women were wearing was… eyepopping.
They were all wearing breeches, tight breeches, which came to just below their knees, leaving their calves bare. Their feet were bare too. Their shirts (if you could call them that) were closely fitted and sleeveless. The outfits left very little to the imagination as far as the shapes of these women. He found himself smiling in appreciation as he watched these lovelies jumping and diving for the ball. The sand was apparently there to cushion their falls as they hit the ground. He found his gaze drawn to one girl in particular.
She was just… beautiful. Long dark hair, delicate brows, kissable lips… this one was far and away the loveliest thing he'd seen in a hundred years. She enjoyed the outdoors regularly, judging from the light bronze shade of her complexion. The outfit she was wearing detailed the curve of her hips, her taught thighs, flat belly, and her voluptuous bosom. Somehow, this girl was more desirable in these clothes than a hundred other women he'd seen in various states of finery or dishabille. She played her sport with a complete lack of affectation, lunging, diving, and leaping with abandon. Randel stared at her, feeling an unfamiliar warmth rushing through his veins.
What the hell, Randel? Has it been that long?
Well, in truth it had been, at least as far as tumbling with an Othánas woman was concerned. As he watched this girl, he felt the familiar heat of desire. He'd have to figure out a way to introduce himself to her. Maybe she'd be amenable to spending a few delicious hours…
His reverie was interrupted when she turned to fully face him in pursuit of the ball. She stopped short as soon as she'd spotted him standing by their field, the ball sailing over her head to land near his feet. After a brief pause, she trotted over to retrieve the ball, picking it up where it had come to rest on the ground. When she rose, she looked at him.
She was even prettier up close. She met his gaze with laughing green eyes and a smile that could light up an entire room with its brightness. Something flickered in those eyes… almost like recognition. Impossible, but that's what it felt like. As he stared down into her face, he felt a wave of… something… wash over him. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before.
What the hell was this?
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Yeah, we all know what it is, Randel. (ha ha).
