Read Online Preserving Hope by Alex Albrinck - Free Book Online Page A

be safe from any type of tracking or hunting from the baron. They moved at a more casual rate, until they came to the place where the Ealdor and Halwende rivers forked, with the gentle Halwende taking the more easterly route, and the rapid-filled Ealdor flowing from the west. Between the rivers was a dense forest, and the weary travelers were suddenly encouraged. They could live within the seclusion of those trees without fear of discovery; the lands between the rivers would likely be quite fertile, though certainly chilly.
    “We traveled into the forest beginning in the early morning, and found a small clearing where the water was bubbling up to the surface. We made camp there, and the next day, using the tools we’d borrowed, we began constructing a large building, large enough to house everyone, including the horses. A few days later, we built a second structure, and this time it was just for the people.”
    Will nodded. “Those buildings were the stables and the Schola, weren’t they?”
    She nodded as well. “The name on the building came early. Arthur said that we needed a vision to guide us, something that would compel us to keep working hard even when we were bone-tired and cold and aching. He spoke of a vision of this tiny set of buildings evolving into a village of like-minded people, each plying their trade in relative anonymity, quietly growing our own personal wealth. Personal growth, in Latin, can be written as alio incrementum . As our village grew and we built personal rooms for shelter, we left that large room specifically free to store any books we might come across in our travels or Trading missions, or anything else that might educate us. We wanted to continue to perfect our ability to read and write, and that’s really what we used it for initially. It was, in a sense, a school. So, it got the alio incrementum schola label, after a few of our best educated neighbors learned bits of Latin."
    It was a noble beginning, it seemed, to a word that would later provide Will with so much pain, separate him from his family, and take the lives of many innocent people. He promised himself that he’d use his far advanced abilities and technology to promote the original aims of education and improvement of self, rather than the eventual aims to limit those concepts only to a chosen few.
    Eva told of their first two years, challenging years. The winters were harsh, and they were often hungry, but gradually they were able to exchange the money they’d taken from the baron for supplies and tools they could use to create goods. They started weaving fabrics into clothes, and used the profits from selling over time to branch out into nearly everything else, including carpentry, the forging of swords, daggers and knives, and even brewing beer. They eventually added more people to the community, extending invitations to those as they met who seemed capable of sharing their ideas. People like Will Stark.
    “During one of those Trading runs to sell goods, Arthur heard travelers from distant lands telling tales of people doing what he called magic, feats like flying and turning invisible and reading the thoughts of others with perfect accuracy. Arthur and others applauded the man for such a wonderful and compelling tale, but the man stated with deep sincerity that they’d seen such feats with their own eyes, and even told Arthur where. He came back and told all of us that we should send two or three of our number to investigate. What if, he said, we learned what enabled those people to do what those travelers had seen them do? What if we could repeat that process here, and develop those same abilities? Could we imagine that success? As it turned out, we could imagine only too well, and Arthur, Genevieve, and my brother departed. They returned six months later, and the detail we found most notable upon their return was that Arthur and Genevieve had been married abroad and she was three months pregnant.”
    Will blinked.