Lichgates: Book One of the Grimoire Saga (an Epic Fantasy Adventure) (15 page)

Richard, however, couldn’t contain his excitement, and there was no doubt in Braeden’s mind that the king was debating which question to ask first. It seemed as if the man had forgotten to breathe.

When Braeden was a boy, Richard had recited the Vagabond’s legends from memory before bed each night. The stories had sparked his hope that someday, he could be a vagabond, too: that someday, he could be free.

The Queen’s generals leaned back in their chairs and shook their heads, grumbling when they once again found their voices.

Braeden turned to look at his adoptive brother Gavin, who watched Kara without blinking as she took the only available seat across the table. Her lips formed a thin line as the room hummed. Gavin’s face was smooth, but his eyes were ravenous. His gaze flickered over to Braeden, and he shifted in his seat when they made eye contact, but the hunger in his expression couldn’t be hidden. Braeden sighed, annoyed. That look meant the wheels in Gavin’s mind were churning out ways in which this could benefit him.

“Welcome, Vagabond,” Richard finally said. The grumbles and mutterings hushed. “How did you come across the Grimoire?”

“Yes, we are most curious,” someone else said. It was General Mino, who looked Kara over and shook his head. He towered in the seat next to her, almost twice her size.

“That’s a long story.” Kara chuckled, but the room didn’t laugh with her. She cleared her throat. “I was hiking and found a lichgate, but I didn’t know what it really was at the time.”

She described the door in the mountain and how the roots inside had dragged her into a sunken library. She’d opened the Grimoire and read about the Vagabond.

Here, Richard leaned in closer. Braeden suppressed a smile.

Kara continued and, when she explained how Deidre had found her in Ethos, she told the invented story that Braeden had given her in the market. He released a quiet sigh and relaxed his shoulders. She’d been alone in the cage, she lied, and had been alone when she went to the Stele.

“Do you know how to find your way back?” Gavin interrupted, leaning his elbows onto the massive wooden war table.

“Sorry, I have no idea.”

Gavin grumbled under his breath and leaned back once more, hiding his mouth with his hand as Kara continued with the altered tale of how the muses had helped her escape. The room gasped at their mention. Everyone leaned in closer, now, finally interested in the tale. If the muses had helped her, their faces said, the tides had just changed considerably.

The Queen, however, did not react to anything Kara said. The woman’s face was as solid and smooth as Gavin’s, untouched by the thoughts Braeden knew to be racing through her overactive mind. Once, a year ago, he’d asked her what she was thinking when they’d been in a similar war room because a fleet of soldiers from another kingdom had ventured too close to the Hillsidian border. She’d shared her strategy with him and assembled ten times as many soldiers as she’d needed, reasoning that these foreign yakona were likely scouts sent to find Hillside and its villages. She’d led the attack herself and killed twenty soldiers within fifteen minutes. No one threatened her kingdom and survived.

Braeden had never again asked what the Queen was thinking.

He shifted his gaze around the table. General Mino, with his coal-black skin contrasting the gold trim of his tunic, leaned his massive, muscular form as far away from Kara as possible. He scowled when he caught Braeden looking at him.

Braeden broke eye contact and watched Kara. As she spoke, no one interrupted. No one questioned her story. They didn’t even clear their throats. Everyone simply waited, unwavering and still, as she spoke and often averted her gaze from Gavin’s particularly intense stare.

In all fairness, Braeden had tried to prepare Gavin during their impromptu sparring match after Adele had ordered him out of Kara’s room, but the Hillsidian prince had a habit of not listening.

“...and then I was knocked unconscious.”

Kara stopped speaking. Braeden blinked his way out of his thoughts and back into the war room. Chairs squeaked as the Queen’s council turned to face him, and he realized that Kara had already described as much as she knew before she awoke in Hillside.

The truth was he’d run into the house seconds before Deidre had shoved Kara into the glass cabinet. Fear coursed through him when he saw the thick trails of blood surging over the shards of glass. He’d worried, then, the Vagabond—his one chance at freedom—would die.

He’d lost control.

Kara, lying almost unconscious on the floor, hadn’t known what exactly came to her rescue. She hadn’t known that he let the smoldering darkness within consume him, but he didn’t think he could have won without its help.

His hand twitched beneath the table from its place on his knee. He forced a soft, steady breath in an effort to keep calm.

“Well,” Kara said. “I don’t know how we got out of there.”

“I knocked Deidre unconscious,” he lied, forcing a smile as he mimed jabbing an invisible head in front of him. His face was calm, hiding the nerves fluttering in his gut. More than a decade of lying had its advantages.

“And you didn’t kill her?” General Mino slammed his fist into the table. “The isen, especially Deidre, are some of the greatest threats the kingdoms face!”

“That’s enough, General.” The Queen dismissed his outburst with a wave of her thin hand. Mino crossed his arms and sat back in his seat.

“I doubted she was far from waking up,” Braeden lied again. “Since Kara was hurt, we needed to get out of there.”

He’d actually fought Deidre for at least another ten minutes, breaking through walls and windows before the sirens had started. The isen tried desperately to run for Kara at every chance, but he threw her across the room or through a sink each time she turned away from him. Once the sirens began, she paused, watching him long enough to accept that she would lose if she stayed. She retreated.

“You knocked her out cold, huh? Impressive!” Gavin patted him on the shoulder. Braeden forced himself to smile at the compliment, but Gavin was already watching Kara again.

The Queen nodded once. “You did well, Braeden. Miss Catherine, thank you for sharing your story. You are welcome here anytime and for as long as you please. We of course wish for you to make Hillside your home, as it once was for the first Vagabond. Whatever your quest becomes, we will guard you and guide you through it.

“That said, the other kingdoms will want you to visit them as well. You obviously understand by now that the weight of your presence in our world again means more than just welcome. The thick tensions that have grown between our kingdoms for eons will only ignite further if you are hoarded here, and we can’t risk an unnecessary war. You aren’t ruled by anyone, but I ask that you go. Otherwise, the Bloods will think that I have kept you here as a weapon.”

“Mother, the other kingdoms don’t have to know that she’s real. We could explain away the rumors,” Gavin said gently, smiling to Kara as he spoke. His tone made Braeden want to punch him in the mouth, but he shook his head instead and tried to guess at the half-formed plot boiling in his brother’s mind.

The Queen sighed and massaged her temples. “Gavin, they already know. One day you will see that the world has much keener eyes than you. Don’t be foolish.”

“I simply believe that we shouldn’t throw her back into the fray so soon. She should be allowed to rest.”

“By no means would we do such a thing. If you choose to leave, Vagabond, we will supply you with everything you need. The other kingdoms will meet us in a safe location, where our men will be forced to wait while they take you to their Blood.”

“No one trusts each other here, do they?” Kara peered around the table and even caught Braeden’s eye for a second.

“It has always been so,” the Queen said, shaking her head. “Only two yakona have ever seen all of the kingdoms beside the Stele: The first Vagabond and our era’s Blood Aislynn of Ayavel. Even Aislynn is blindfolded when she’s brought into the city. She has been granted this right in recent years only because of her, shall we say, unrelenting quest for peace. But ours is a deep and bitter hatred. The Grimoire will know.”

“Yes, Kara,” Richard said. “May we see it?”

“Of course.”

Kara rubbed her pendant with her thumb and held her breath. A funnel of gleaming blue ash spun from the necklace and assembled on the table in the shape of a large book. The glow dissolved, congealing into a dark red leather cover. Even though he’d already seen it once before, Braeden caught his breath as the thousand-year-old book became solid on the table.

This was it. The answer to his decade-long search sat in front of him, just waiting for the right question. For his question.

He forced himself to lean back and blink the lust from his eyes. He took a deep, quiet breath, but his heart wouldn’t stop racing. General Mino had seen his reaction—that much was clear from the way Mino’s scowl deepened—but it was too late to do anything about that. Braeden busied himself with looking at Kara and pretending nothing had happened.

She grinned and ran her fingers over the cover, apparently oblivious to how silent the room had become. No one breathed as she toyed with the great book’s corners, tracing its edges.

“What have you learned thus far?” the Queen asked.

Braeden’s intuition flared. Something was amiss with the question.

“I can see someone’s most influential memory,” Kara answered. “I figured that you wouldn’t want me to demonstrate it, though, since it’s such an invasive thing for me to see.”

Richard raised his hand. “I would be honored, actually.”

Braeden laughed and the flash of worry thawed in his gut.

“I would rather see the Vagabond’s gift for myself,” the Queen interjected. “But in private. Kara, would you grant me a moment once the gentlemen have left?”

“Oh, well, of course.” Kara raised her eyebrows.

Braeden did not envy whatever she was going to see.

“We must first discuss Deidre,” the Queen continued. “If she is working for Blood Carden, then Ourea is a darker world than I thought.”

“I suspect that she serves only as a double-agent to Niccoli.” Mino grunted in annoyance. “She would learn intimate details of the Stele in that manner. I don’t see their alliance as a threat to us.”

“Wait. Who’s Niccoli?” Kara asked.

Mino huffed. “The oldest known isen. He leads what is rumored to be the largest isen guild in existence. He is incredibly powerful.”

Richard stretched himself in his seat and looked out a window as he recounted one of the first history lessons Braeden had ever learned. “It was Agneon who was truly fierce, though. He was first seen about two hundred years ago and lived a short life as far as isen are concerned. He was far more powerful than Niccoli, but because the guild leader was his master, Agneon had to do as he was told. Hillsidians as recent as my father fought against him. It’s believed that the drenowith finally killed him, and for good reason, because he hunted more drenowith than any other creature. They were his favorites.”

“Good riddance, then,” Kara said.

“Niccoli’s guild has not been as powerful since Agneon was killed,” the Queen added. “They have returned to squabbling with other isen and have mostly left us alone, except for a few who break ranks now and again. But for that, we have Braeden.” She smiled, and he nodded to her in gratitude for the compliment.

“There’s more than one isen guild?” Kara leaned onto the table, eyes wide and curious. “Where are they?”

“I wish we knew,” Braeden said. “There are guilds throughout Ourea and even some in the human world, but all we have to go on are rumors, since no one has ever found a guild and lived long enough to talk about it. We’ve never actually seen more than a few isen together, but they always report back to their master. They have to.”

Someone knocked at the door. The Queen waved her hand, and the door swung open to reveal an empty hallway. A small card flittered through the doorframe, floating as if on a breeze, and fell to the table in front of her. A small orchid bloomed from the card as it landed, and the Queen smiled.

“Braeden, you have a guest waiting for you in the throne room. You are dismissed.”

He didn’t want to be dismissed. He didn’t want to let the Grimoire out of his sight. His mouth opened out of turn, and every face looked at him when he did not bow and leave. As surreal as it was, he spoke.

“If I may, my Queen, I would like to go as Kara’s guide when she leaves. I know Ourea well, since I travel between the lichgates so often. Since Deidre is after the Grimoire, there’s no telling what other isen will be hunting the Vagabond, too. I can help.”

The Queen smiled, the cold lines of her grin seeping into her eyes. She obviously recognized something in his words that he did not quite understand himself.

“I apologize, Braeden, but the answer is no,” she said. “I need you elsewhere. I was going to speak of this later, but there are reports of an isen threatening one of our villages. You must help them. My people can’t live in constant fear of their own forests.”

“I’d actually like his help, if you don’t mind,” Kara interjected. “I can wait until he gets back. After all, you did say you would send people to help me. I would feel better going with someone I know.”