Lichgates: Book One of the Grimoire Saga (an Epic Fantasy Adventure) (30 page)

“What was that?” she finally asked.

“An ambush. Carden’s company was small, so I suspect the demon sent his hordes to scour every inch of Ourea. They did not expect a small army to greet them.”

“Neither did I, but I’m glad they were there. Why were the other Hillsidians hiding?”

The captain paused, but eventually turned to her. “We did not want to alarm you with the possibility of an attack.”

Kara rolled her eyes. “How did that work out for you?”

She glared into the silent forest, chewing on the thought that the now-motionless trees housed dozens of uniformed soldiers on mutated dog-creatures the people in the sedan hadn’t even noticed. The captain didn’t answer her, so she turned in the awkward silence to look for another car along the empty road.

“Why didn’t the two kids in the car look up? It was almost like they didn’t even see us.”

“We may be riding drowngs while wearing full Hillside uniform, but if they’d glanced over, those humans would probably have seen horses and—what is that terrible fashion called?—jeans. Sometimes, your kind doesn’t see us at all. What a human chooses to see is never all that really is.”

“Amazing,” she said. “I wonder how many giant, two-headed dogs I passed without ever knowing it.”

“Here we are.”

The captain pointed ahead to a large farmhouse with a wrap-around porch that sat at the edge of the road. It had a small gravel parking lot with a few dusty cars and a barn that was leaning on its last, crooked legs. An old, wooden sign out front said
The Mountain Ridge Bed & Breakfast
in faded red paint.

He pulled to a stop by the porch and dismounted while the rest of the company followed suit. An older woman pushed open the screen door and greeted them with a warm smile. Her curly gray hair framed her oval face and fell over the ruffled sleeves of a red apron that matched her old, faded sign.

“Welcome!” she called over the porch railing. “Do you have a reservation?”

The captain forced a smile. “No ma’am. I was hoping you could house us anyway. Do you have room?”

One of the drowng’s heads nuzzled the woman’s hand as she reached for the captain’s reins, and a light, happy growl curled from its lips. She smiled and patted its nose while its other head—which she didn’t appear to see at all—hugged in close, waiting for an opening so that it could sneak in for a rub. Kara suppressed a laugh.

“There are only four rooms left, but if some of the gentlemen don’t mind sleeping in a bunk bed, I don’t see a problem with it. Anyway, I’ll get your horses fed, so don’t you worry about them. I was just about to start a late dinner, too. Hope you’re hungry.”

“That sounds fine,” the captain said.

Demnug and his men dismounted and headed for the farmhouse, so Kara dismounted as well and handed over Goliath’s reins. The old woman felt the horse’s neck and shoulders, letting out a disappointed sigh when she touched the damp, sweaty hair.

“Goodness,” she said. “Have you been racing, girl?”

“You can call it that,” Kara said with a nervous chuckle.

“Well, I’ll take good care of this big guy. You poor thing. You tired?” The woman patted Goliath’s nose, and he nickered as she walked him away.

The farmhouse’s screen door creaked when Kara pulled it open, and the murmur of men talking bubbled down a thin hallway that was lined with mirrors and old photos. She skirted around an antique end table littered with unopened letters and headed for the kitchen, of which a table and a refrigerator were visible through the narrow doorway at the end of the hall. The Hillsidian guards all sat around the table, talking as they chewed on rolls from a small basket in its center.

The captain leaned against a counter, lost in thought as he bit large chunks out of a roll of rye bread.

“How did you know there would be a bed and breakfast with a barn right here?” she asked him.

“Yakona take care of the lands around the lichgates,” he said. “Now, that woman has no idea what we are. She can’t see our uniforms or the drowngs, but we will leave her with enough money to last her a while. She will find hidden treasures here and there, and without her ever realizing it, our little blessings will be enough for her to stay and make a happy living helping us.”

“That’s amazing.”

He chewed through a second roll. “Tonight, you are my daughter and those gentlemen are various nephews and brothers of mine. We are on a farewell trail ride before you go off to—dang it. What is it called? College.”

“I can remember that, but have you ever wanted to tell her the truth?”

He shrugged. “We can’t. The truth would be too much to handle. Even if she believed us, even if she didn’t forever bar us from this inn, which I happen to love, the treasures would go unappreciated. No, it has to be a subtle friendship, one neither she nor any of our other human friends will ever see.”

Kara nodded and stood with him for a short while, but the conversation had run its course. The other Hillsidians were engrossed in their own discussions of the strategies they’d used and the friends they’d lost to the Stelian ambush. It was not a place for her, so she left them and trotted up the stairs.

There were eight doors and, of them, only the last door on the right stood open. Within, framed landscapes covered the little room’s walls. A twin-sized bed sat in the corner, a thick red comforter neatly tucked around the mattress. A small fireplace filled part of the wall on the far end of the room, and above it was a painting of a cliff. A river raged beneath the watercolor mountainside, and a wide, wooden bridge scaled across it. She studied the canvas as she walked closer, recognizing it as the very river over which she and Goliath had just escaped. Someone had given the lichgate caretaker a painting of Ourea!

She laughed and became suddenly dizzy. She sat on the bed, waiting for the black and white spots to fade as the last of the adrenaline dissolved in her system. Her head reeled. She set her cheek on the soft pillow, which melted the tension in her neck, and pulled the far end of the comforter over her like a sleeping bag. She dangled her filthy, mud-drenched boots over the side of the bed as she fell asleep, but even the deep exhaustion couldn’t suppress a dream that was too tormenting and violent to let her sleep.

The world was hazy, immersed in a thick layer of smoke. Without understanding why or how, Kara knew this was a dream. She was looking at the world through someone else’s eyes, and it annoyed her that she knew this.

Several guards burst into her otherwise empty room, each of them so massive that they barely fit in the tiny space. They had large wings: some black, some white, some gray. They grabbed her arms and dragged her upright. She fought them, twisting and struggling out of instinct, but she was shackled within seconds. Sharp needles bit into her skin. The blurry outlines of the spiked cuffs which had confined Braeden in the Stele peeked back at her from her own wrists.

The world went dark until a single ray of unexpected light sprung into view. More sunshine appeared, radiating from the windows above, and echoed off the brilliant white stone walls. It burned her eyes as they adjusted.

Another of the winged yakona stood before her, his skin a pale shade of silver that glistened in the sunlight, iridescent and beautiful from beneath a white fur cloak. She recognized him, but couldn’t think of a name.

A dawning realization crawled over her skin like a frost, icing her blood with a wave of panic—something terrible was about to happen.

The winged figure looked her over and sneered, as if he smelled something foul. “You call yourself a hero, but you're nothing more than a thief.”

“I don’t call myself a hero,” she heard herself say. The muffled sound wasn’t her voice, but in the hazy echo of the dream, she couldn’t tell whose it was.

“You threaten the safety of my people and of my bloodline,” the man said. “For this, you and your minions will pay with the very blood you stole.”

A guard carried in a beautiful woman with dark skin. She was limp in his arms, and bright red blood trickled in rivers down her hands and bare feet. The guard tossed the woman on the floor as if she were garbage and not a real, breathing creature. Kara leaned in, breathless and afraid for the woman, who couldn’t have been more than twenty. Dozens more yakona from every kingdom were brought forth in a similar manner, some of them unconscious, and all of them chained.

“You offered them freedom, but lies and heresy always lead to death. None should have the power you bestowed upon these strangers, these enemies of all yakona bloodlines. Your reign over our people will end here, tonight!” The winged tyrant pulled out a sword.

Kara sat upright in her bed and heard herself screaming.

She clamped her hands over her mouth and leaned into the pillow, hoping that it would help to settle her racing heart. The door burst open, shedding hallway light into her dark room. The captain ran in, wearing his uniform and gray socks.

“What’s wrong?”

The five other guards followed suit, all dressed for battle and missing their boots. A few minutes later, the old woman raced in as well, draped in a black shawl that swept dust from the floor. Kara blushed.

“I’m sorry, it was just a nightmare. I’m sorry.” But she was shaking, the dream far too vivid to have truly been just a nightmare.

“What happened?” The captain sat next to her on the far end of her bed, dismissing the other soldiers from the room with a wave of his hand. The old woman nodded as well, apparently believing that she saw a father talking to his daughter, and closed the door when she left.

“What did you see?” he asked again.

Kara just shook her head. Her entire body still trembled, the image of the winged man and his sword still imprinted on her eyelids. She was afraid to close her eyes.

Demnug cleared his throat and slapped his hands on his knees, pausing for a second before he pushed himself to his feet.

“Very well,” he said. “Try to get some sleep.”

She waited for the door to latch behind him before she wished forward the Grimoire and opened it. For a while, she just stared at the first, blank page.

That dream had been real and unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Who was that woman? She’d had red blood, after all. Since Braeden had black blood and Hillsidian blood was green, she figured that the woman had to be human. But, since the man had mentioned that they were all “freed,” she thought again.

Were they the vagabonds? The first Vagabond’s followers?

She doubted she could ask the Grimoire how the Vagabond died; after all, he wouldn’t have been alive to write the entry. She could summon his ghost, like she had in the forest, but she wasn’t sure how he would react to such a question. Her stomach twisted into a knot at the thought of asking him. How could she word that without sounding insensitive and nosy?

The edges of her nightmare were already blurring. She couldn’t remember any faces, not even the tyrant’s. Words faded until only the general understanding of what had been said lingered on her mind. But the wings—those weren’t something that could be forgotten. She debated. They might have been a creative tweak her mind inserted into the memory, borrowed from her worries of meeting the Kirelm Blood.

Either that, or a Kirelm Blood killed the first Vagabond.

He was only trying to unite everyone. Why would anyone kill him? She rubbed her tired eyes with her palms.

She hunched forward and pondered all of her new questions, none of which the Grimoire could answer. It wasn’t until the first rays of the morning told her to get dressed that she wished away the untouched book and peered out the window at the sunrise.

On a sloping hill below, the old woman picked up sticks from the thick patches of grass which covered most of her yard. The woman bent for another stick and paused, looking into the forests where dozens of Hillsidian yakona hid, but the woods were tranquil. Not even a leaf tumbled across the thin spaces in the trees. Still, she watched, half-frozen in her quest for the small branch beneath her fingertips. Then she was mobile again, snatching a few more twigs before turning back inside. She glanced up to Kara’s room.

Kara’s heart panged with the guilt of being caught spying, and she ducked away from the window. When she peered out again, the woman was gone.