But then, what could stop that, or at least impose a long setback, was Valdenmoor.
Darion rode toward the castle, let the crowd noise settle behind him, and thought about Valdenmoor.
The farmland. That was the problem. Everything he was building: the livestock, the planting, the slow reconstruction of what the invasions had stripped out of Percvale decades ago, it all ran through that eastern land.
The goats needed ground, same with the cattles. Seren's ability needed ground to work on too. There was no version of what he was trying to build without the farmland at its center, and Valdenmoor had thirty days from the letter's date to take it if fourteen thousand gold coins didn't appear.
He had counted the days. He was well inside that window.
Aldric the Second was making a genuinely poor decision. It was not exactly cruel, the man hadn't struck him as cruel.
