Rise of Allies (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 4) (38 page)

“Very well. I shall be at your mercy, then, and my wives and children, too. But if that’s the way you want it… The Order’s always got to get its way, doesn’t it? Some things never change.”

Climbing up onto the table beside him, Nixie looked at Jake in astonishment when she saw Her Majesty in the parlor. “You can’t eavesdrop on the Queen!” she whispered.

“Shut
up,
” Jake breathed, straining with all his might to hear the vampire’s guarded information above the din of the volcano and the screams of the populace below.

“I hear rumblings, you know, in my mountain stronghold in the Carpathians. Creatures of shadow often pass through my lands and bring us news. What I have heard is only a rumor as of now, but I would give it credence if I were you. Your Lightriders are in imminent danger.”

“Which ones?” asked Sir Peter.

“All of them.” Jake leaned closer as the vampire glanced around the room. “My creatures of the night—the bats, the wolves, the moths—they tell me the Dark Druids are preparing…for war.”

The Elders reacted with shock all at once.

“
What
?”

“What’s this?” they exploded.

“You lie!”

“Never trust a vampire, Your Majesty.”

“The truce—!”

“Our treaty with the Dark Druids has been in place for fifty years!” Queen Victoria declared.

“It has been broken,” the vampire informed her. Then he looked around at them. “Is it possible you really don’t know what your long-lost golden boy has done?”

Silence fell.

Nixie turned to Jake, who turned white.

“What are you talking about?” the old wizard demanded.

“The Griffon heir, Jacob Everton,” the vampire said. “You have him to thank for this.”

Jake’s jaw dropped as the Elders and the Queen protested in confusion.

“You cannot mean young Jacob. He’s only a boy!”

“What’s he got to do with this?”

“Perhaps you should ask Guardian Stone,” the vampire said. “He’s been keeping secrets, protecting him.”

Jake’s pulse pounded in his ears.

“I was told by a raven that, this past Samhain, a demon called Shemrazul—one of their foul servants, whom they often conjure—came forward among the Dark Druids. Shemrazul reported to his masters that Garnock the Sorcerer was woken from his tomb in Wales not long ago.

“Apparently, some Welsh coalmining company stumbled upon the cave where the Lightriders had buried Garnock alive centuries ago. Once the miners broke the seal on the tomb, the ancient binding spells the Lightriders used to trap him were broken, and his spirit escaped in wraith form.

“Young Lord Griffon happened to be on holiday in Wales at the time; his family has an estate there. Verify it for yourself. I am surprised that his aunt, the old witch, what’s her name, Lady Bradford, did not share the story with you. But perhaps Her Ladyship is protecting him, as well.”

The Elders glanced around at each other in shock.

The vampire shrugged off their stunned silence. “It seems Garnock was trying to regenerate his physical form using the Spell of a Hundred Souls. The boy spotted him preying on the locals. He has the gift of seeing spirits, does he not?”

From the corner of his eye, Jake noticed Nixie staring at him with her jaw hanging slack. She mouthed the words,
What did you do?

Jake just looked at her, distraught.

“Nobody’s quite sure how the boy did it,” the vampire continued. “He might have had help from the Welsh dwarf clans who dwell in the Black Mountains there, though certainly they’re not known for magic. The point is, by the time the boy and his gryphon left Wales, according to Shemrazul, Garnock the Sorcerer had been utterly destroyed.”

Sir Peter was the first to recover from the shock of this news. “Oh, come, Prince Janos,” he said with an uncomfortable little laugh. “You cannot mean for us to believe that a mere youngster could ever defeat the founder of the Dark Druids.”

“Why don’t you ask him yourselves?” the vampire replied with a subtle glance in the direction of the painting.

Jake and Nixie gasped and ducked lower, plunging out of sight. As they crouched below the bottom edge of the frame, Nixie looked at Jake in question, clearly wondering if the vampire could indeed really sense them—and if he intended to expose their presence.

Jake had no idea. His mind was in too much of an uproar for him to have any sort of opinion on the matter.

Nobody was to have found out that he had defeated Garnock, but he hadn’t counted on word of his deed spreading in the underworld. Now it seemed like Derek and Helena, Gladwin, and even Aunt Ramona might all get into trouble for keeping his secret.

They had only done it to protect him.

“Well, I am only telling you what I have heard,” the vampire said. “The important thing is, the Dark Druids have now heard this story from their demon, and they have vowed revenge. Let a mere boy crush their founding master? They cannot allow this blow to their prestige to stand. It would undermine their authority. Moreover, this gives them the excuse they’ve long watched and waited for: to make their play for power.

“You know it is their way to attack without warning,” Prince Janos added. “That’s why I am here. To give you all fair notice of what you’re up against. Hopefully, my noble gallantry won’t get me killed.”

Someone scoffed.

“All I can tell you for now is that, according to them, the son of a Lightrider broke the truce and slew their master. Therefore, in their eyes, it’s the Lightriders, all of them, who must be made to pay. None of them are safe now…”

Jake was in a daze, so horrified by all that he was hearing that he barely noticed the fireball that came screaming out of the sky straight at them. Without warning, Nixie pulled him off the picnic table, yelling at him to take cover. They dove behind the table as a large chunk of glowing stone slammed into the far corner of the roof that they were standing on.

The whole building shook; a corner of it exploded into a cloud of dust and crumbled away. The canvas sun-shade overhead caught fire. Black smoke billowed in the air above them.

“Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!” Nixie straightened up at once and limped as fast as she could toward the doorway.

Jake hesitated, glancing back toward the frame, desperate to hear more.

“Jake, come on, it’s too dangerous! Besides, you can’t do anything about this if we get stuck inside this painting!”

She was right. Another direct hit like that, and the whole building would collapse. They’d be buried in the rubble. Grimly, he tore himself away and caught up with her in a few strides.

They hurried back downstairs and out into the streets of Pompeii. The city seemed eerily abandoned now. Everyone who
could
take shelter already had, not that cowering in their cellars would do them any good. They could not hide from the toxic fumes nor the tidal wave of oven-hot volcanic matter that would soon come rushing down the mountainside.

For now, the ash was falling faster, swishing around their shins, light and powdery as snow.

“The paintbrush is this way,” Nixie said urgently.

Jake followed her down the street, but could barely pay attention. His head was spinning.
I can’t believe I’ve nearly started a war,
he just kept thinking, over and over again.

“Quit dawdling!” Nixie shouted, impatiently grabbing his arm and pulling him toward an ancient-style public well. The wooden handle was made in the shape of a paintbrush.

“Good find,” Jake murmured, doubting he ever would have noticed it there. They moved closer, stepping up onto the platform around the well.

Jake tried to focus, though he was still numb with shock after that devastating news. “What do we do? Drink from it?”

“Dunno. Let me try pumping it.”

But when Nixie pulled on the handle, it acted as a lever, opening a trapdoor under their feet. Instantly, the platform they were standing on gave way and dropped them into the well.

“Whoa!”

They fell into pure darkness, but instead of plunging straight down, they landed on their backsides and proceeded to whoosh and whiz down a long, twisting, stone slide. They both screamed most of the way down, until the dark tunnel dropped them out of the sky onto a haystack.

Jake landed with an
oof!
Nixie’s cry was considerably sharper. He still couldn’t see her, temporarily blinded by the dazzling sunshine.

“Did you land on your ankle?”

She groaned. “I think I’m all right.”

As his vision started clearing, he sat up and glanced around anxiously, but there was no sign of Mt. Vesuvius—though their clothes still smelled of smoke. Other than that, it appeared that, once more, they had survived.

“Ugh.” He fell onto his back in the hay and let himself relax for just a moment, striving for clarity. These leaps from one painting world to another were growing extremely disorienting.

“Jake!” Nixie uttered all of a sudden, looking around. “I know where we are!”

“You do?”

“It’s the farmhouse painting! The safe one. Look! The old farmhouse in Provence!”

“Are you sure?”

“Look at this field around us! Don’t you recognize the sunflowers?”

She was right.

“Sweet Pleiades! I think we’re actually safe here.” The young witch let out a sigh of relief and flopped onto the haystack, which was about the size of an elephant’s back.

After the day they were having—and the news he had heard—Jake had a hard time believing they were actually safe.

“We should get out of the way in case anyone else drops in.” He pointed at the opening of the tunnel weirdly hanging in the blue sky above them.

Though it dissolved even as they looked at it, one couldn’t be too careful. “Hurry, let’s get down. We’re too visible up here. Who knows who might see us?”

“I suppose.” Nixie didn’t want to move, but she joined him in carefully sliding down to the ground.

He felt better when he had gained his feet. He looked over at Nixie to see if she was ready to continue and found her staring at him with a trace of awe.

“What?” he mumbled self-consciously.

“
You
killed Garnock the Sorcerer?”

He wasn’t sure what to say; she had heard for herself what the vampire had reported. He heaved a sigh and finally admitted, “Sort of. He was technically dead when we met. But you’re not allowed to tell anyone!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t. Sounds like they already know, anyway.” She eyed him with lingering wonder.

“Would you stop looking at me like I’m a freak?”

She shrugged. “I just wouldn’t have thought you had it in you, that’s all.”

He huffed.

“What I
mean
is that I wouldn’t have thought somebody who wasn’t even a wizard would have a chance against the original Dark Druid.”

“Well, magic isn’t everything, Nixie. Plus, Garnock nearly killed me in the process, if it makes you feel any better. And Isabelle, too, and a lot of other innocent people in Wales. Now let’s go.” He led the way into the field of sunflowers, rattled.

Broad, green leaves acted as flimsy doors, but he pushed them aside, stepping into one of the narrow rows between the towering plants.

The tough, fuzzy stalks reached several feet over their heads as Nixie followed. It was shady and green under the dense, emerald canopy of leaves, like walking through a sunflower forest. He felt as small as Gladwin. It was soothing and delightful, like everything in this painting was meant to be.

Still, all things considered, Jake was not yet fully convinced that something horrible would not pop out at them.