The Wrong Scapegoat: A Mythic Fantasy Novel (Ravens of the Morrigan)

by Cornelius Flynn

  That seems to be the best place to start, hence the choice of route.

  Wildcat glides along the branch, leaping off the end and landing softly on one of the archways at the side of the courtyard. She quickly drops to hang from the edge in the shadows of the stonework and then slides down one of the columns to the ground.

  Moments later she’s sprinting along the line of pillars towards the main buildings. She knows timing is of the essence and that she has only fifteen heartbeats to make the trip. She dashes past the last of the columns by the front of the building, and... disaster strikes.

  Knowing where every living being is can be useful when planning a route through a place safely. It turns out, as it has on more than one occasion in the past, that knowing where the inanimate objects are can be helpful too.

  Her foot catches a pottery jug standing behind the last column as she makes her dive towards the wall of the temple proper. It falls over and skitters across the smooth marble floor making a noise which, to her heightened senses, feels as loud as a thunderclap.

  “What was that?” The shout comes from the end of the colonnade just as she reaches the wall and is ready to climb.

  “I think somebody’s there!”

  Tensing, she bends her legs, and leaps upwards with all of her might to grab a windowsill of the floor above, hoping she was quick enough and cursing her misfortune.

  By the time the two guards have arrived beneath her she has worked out three different ways of killing them swiftly and silently, which seems such a waste since she’s under strict orders not to do that sort of thing. She relaxes and hangs from the window while her mind contacts one of her hidden allies and suggests that a slow-moving, juicy mouse might be available below.

  “Sounded like it was here. Keep your eyes open.”

  One of them waves his lantern around and is about to look up when a black tomcat springs from nowhere and lands at the side of the column to which the jug has skittered. It sees the men and almost changes direction in mid-air to shoot off across the marble floor and up a column.

  The guards are startled, jump backwards and then laugh at their own stupidity. The one with the lantern pats the other on the back.

  “Jumping like a couple of old women who’ve seen a mouse.” He picks up the disturbed object and stands it to one side again. “Come on, not long ‘til we can get back inside and have something warm.”

  They resume their patrol, and she takes this opportunity to continue her climb.

  Finding the shutters on the windows to be disappointingly well secured, at least if she wishes to remain silent, she settles on the roof approach. After a short climb she eases herself up to look over the low parapet and make sure that no guards wait here.

  Patches of snow glisten where the spring melt has not quite set in.

  She levers herself over the edge and moves at a crouch, placing each foot carefully on the slippery surface, to the stairs. Listening at the door, she pushes her senses out to see if any of her feline friends have detected anyone she should know about.

  It all seems quiet.

  She tries the door which has a simple latch mechanism and is, as she was told by their informant, not bolted or locked because nobody believes that someone could enter from that direction.

  Hoping they oiled the hinges recently, she begins to ease it open as it creaks and grates a little. She pauses to see if anyone’s been alerted before slipping inside to close it behind her, enjoying the warmth of the smooth wood as she leans against it.

  Consulting her mental map of the temple area, the corridor in which she stands has doorways opening off both sides. The nightlight candle burning slowly at each corner provides enough light to move around, but she has no need of it.

  Another part of her gift is that she shares the night vision possessed by her feline allies. Nonetheless, it’s useful illumination, and helps orient her to where she needs to go.

  She counts off the doorways until she finds the one she seeks.

  Wildcat closes the office door behind her, smiling at how easy it was to pick the simple lock.

  She hopes that all of them will be that easy. Perhaps, these monk-y types are so open, honest and trusting that they don’t think they need good locks?

  Lighting a lamp is risky, but less than with a candle. The latter would illuminate the whole room, flicker and be seen through the small window shutters from the outside. Someone might wonder why their Lord Abbot was up and around in the dead of night and come to investigate. The lamp will allow her to direct the light. She simply has to avoid shining it on a window, or under a door.

  The search of the desk is disappointing. The abbot keeps no secret papers of any kind whatsoever. In fact, there’s only one actual book in the whole room and it seems he writes everything in it. Right down to the most tedious details of temple life.

  She flicks through the pages from the last week or so and sees nothing out of the ordinary.

  Carefully, she checks the other items of furniture in the room. Simple things fashioned in a homely way. None of them yield any hidden compartments. It seems that the abbot is just what he appears to be.

  She’s disappointed, but does have other places to search.

  The next few rooms are unlocked and containing nothing useful, so she moves around the corner.

  Checking there’s no light behind the first door, in case the normal occupant is still here working, she tries the handle.

  Locked.

  She smiles to herself, at least she’s getting more picking practice. She examines it, removing simple tools from her belt pouch to feel around within the mechanism. A huge grin splits her face, as she sucks in her breath.

  A real lock!

  Someone doesn’t want anyone getting in here and that’s the sort of place that might be useful. It takes her less than a minute to work out the settings for the pins and tumblers, and she enters quietly.

  Something doesn’t feel right in the room. There’s a static charge in the air like she feels before a thunderstorm.

  She recognises the touch of magic.

  “Well, well. At least one of our monk-y men is dabbling in the dark arts. Quelle surprise.” She mutters to herself, happy to have found evidence that at least something’s amiss here.

  She must be careful. The owner of the room could have placed some kind of magical traps or alarms which couldn’t, under normal circumstances, be bypassed.

  Removing her gloves to reveal the furred backs of her hands, she tucks them away in her belt, extending her arms to sense any magical currents in the air. This isn’t a perfect method of finding them, but how the hairs stand up on end gives her a clue where things might be strongest, and what she should avoid touching.

  She needs a way to negate this problem, otherwise how is she to search the desk and the papers?

  Feeling her way around the room, she realises that the crackling in the air is more residual than active. Something’s been done here recently and left it behind. Relaxing, she checks the papers on the desk then picks open the single drawer to find only wax seals, pens, ink and blank parchment.

  It’s quite disheartening.

  The bookcase against the wall contains record-keeping, commentaries and holy texts. She’s about to abandon her search when she realises that her foot dragged slightly on the floor.

  Crouching, she examines it.

  The smooth, polished stone here has roughness and abrasions, as if an item has regularly scraped across it. Now she’s excited. Something’s hidden, and she probably needs to move the bookcase to find it.

  Moments later she discovers the mechanism which releases it from the wall and it swings outwards, hinged on one end. She moves it only enough to squeeze through into the passage behind, taking the lantern with her, and pulls it shut.

  There’s no point giving anyone clues about what she’s up to, should they enter the office in her absence.

  She must now be within the walls of the temple, in a passageway that’s at be
st two feet wide and well hidden. Steps descend into the darkness ahead of her, and she makes her way down, silently and quickly. No other openings appear in the passage or off the stairs.

  She can only assume that no one but the occupant of the office knows of its existence.

  Counting the steps, she works out how far down she’s come. When they turn a corner and continue, she realises she’s below the floor of the temple itself.

  Now that’s interesting.

  She loves to hunt, and dark hidden passages are one of her favourite places to prowl.

  Could there be anywhere down here to hide a sizeable number of bodies, and how long it would be before they were discovered. As far as instructions go, as long as people think you’ve done as requested, that’s good enough.

  If nobody finds out what you did, then you didn’t do it. Simple.

  Her final step-count places her twelve feet below the floor level of the temple with a door bolted from this side.

  “Mmmmmm.” She whispers. “Nobody else is allowed back this way.”

  She carefully draws the well-oiled bolt and pulls on the surprisingly heavy door. When she has it open she understands why. The other side has stone blocks matching the wall so, when it’s closed, it cannot be seen.

  Someone is obviously paranoid and doesn’t want this passage traced back to their office.

  The room she enters is another office, but with a much more clandestine purpose. This is what she’s been looking for: a secret chamber beneath the floor of the temple. Someone hid this when the temple was created. They must have dug out extra foundations. They’d have it marked on the plans as a large cellar and then walled part of it off.

  However they made it, the fact that she’s found it is making her very happy indeed.

  She approaches the plain, but solid, oak desk in the centre of the office and shines her lamp to reveal the other exit from the room, a simple, wooden door. She’ll investigate that soon, but the maps and books interest her much more.

  It is all written in code, or in a language she doesn’t understand. That’s frustrating. She takes a deep breath and slowly exhales, to stay sharp and focus on what’s going on.

  Maps of Gwynedd and of the countries surrounding it are here, some containing a lot of detail.

  It seems they’re gathering intelligence. Some areas covered by more than one map, each with different markings, possibly showing influence or troop movements? She frowns, much of this is beyond her.

  It’s obvious that a plot exists and the temple is involved, but she has no idea who it is that has access to this room. She can remember exactly where the office was that joined the passage, perhaps one who knows the place better could say whose it is?

  Returning with nothing more than suspicions, and the secret room, wasn’t going to help Piper though.

  If they were to prove his innocence and catch those concerned with the attack upon the prince, and the murder of his bodyguards, she needed to find something. There must be solid evidence here to take with her which someone else can interpret later. But what?

  How can she work out what to steal when she doesn’t know what any of it is?

  Wildcat continues to pore through the paperwork until she recognises something.

  The prince’s crest, as found on his signet ring, is on a sheet of vellum alongside what look like instructions. She grabs that and the other three sheets related to it and stuffs them inside her jerkin.

  Looking around the room carefully she sees evidence that all is not as it seems. The symbols here are wrong and not from the temple of the True God at all.

  Reliefs in the walls depict a man wrestling a bull, among other things. A strange hat rests on the carved wooden ball in a shelf at the rear of the office. She doesn’t recognise the type, but will be able to describe it to someone later.

  The texts resting on the shelves also seem to be in this strange language, but she has no idea which ones might be interesting and can’t carry them all.

  Realising that time must be advancing, and she still has to get out of here, she decides to investigate the other door and see where it leads. Collecting her lamp and pocketing a few important-looking documents to add to the ones she’s already stolen she carefully opens it

  She expects a passageway leading to the back of a cellar somewhere, but that’s not what she finds.

  The Capo Borealis wakes suddenly. The bracelet around his wrist vibrating and humming. His head feels fuzzy, possibly a result of the wine the night before.

  He does his best to shake it off, once he realises why he’s awake.

  No meeting is scheduled. None of their agents are due to report in. No one should be in the basement, especially not his office. How on earth had they got in there? The answer to that would have to wait, the most important thing now was to catch them and stop them getting out alive.

  He dresses and moves with surprising swiftness along the corridors to awaken some of those faithful to him, and catch whoever is poking around down there.

  Wildcat sees a flash, and a static shock shoots up her fur, strong enough to make her ears tingle.

  “Ack!” She mutters. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! What were you thinking?”

  The room beyond is a large meeting area with over a dozen chairs, surrounding an impressive table, each carved with more symbols unrelated to the One God. The table looks well-used and fit for a purpose, rather than a display item.

  She has no time to investigate this more. That feeling means she’s triggered a magical trap or alarm. Hopefully, it’s the latter. At least then, she has a chance to make it out of here.

  The floor outside the door is black, and still smoking. That could have been nasty.

  Returning the way she came is not a good plan, as she may meet the owner descending to find out who’s in his private workroom.

  She runs quickly around the room and finds another door at one end, plus ladders extending into the ceiling all down the side behind the alcoves. She decides to try the door and hopes it’s not bolted from the other side, like the secret entrance to the office.

  Muffled thumps from above, people running, her pursuers are on their way.

  Shouldering open the door she finds the passage she was hoping for. Fresh air gusts down it towards her as she spots a pair of decorative spears on the wall.

  Pulling them free of their mountings, she runs into the passageway closing the door behind her.

  Moments later the first of those loyal to the Capo Borealis descend the ladders into the meeting room.

  They move swiftly to search for intruders, before entering the office where they are met by the Capo and his loyal general.

  “Anything?” He asks.

  “No one in the main room and no one in here.”

  “But they’ve obviously been here.” He replies, looking around to try to determine what has been disturbed. “I can smell them. Some foul elder magic lingers in the air.”

  A shout from the room outside, and they all rush out to see one of the others at the exit door.

  “Jammed from the other side, Ordo. Someone left this way.”

  The leader points to two men and sends them back up the ladders to sprint to the exit from the tunnel to catch, or follow, whoever used it.

  “Can we force it?” He asks.

  “Not without being heard above.” The Soldier leans against the door, testing it again.

  “Very well. Two of you stay here, I’ll check what’s been disturbed and by whom. The rest, outside and see what signs we can find of these interlopers.”

  He stamps back into his office accompanied by his commander to see what’s been compromised.

  Chapter 14

  The torchlight flickers revealing the perfectly cut stone work of the underground room in which the Order holds their meetings.

  A lingering smell of spices and candle wax permeates the air, some of which is caused by the ventilation holes which rise to the heated underfloor of the main temple area. The Capo Bor
ealis is not happy.

  “So, Commander, would you care to explain how this thief not only gained access to the temple proper, but found a way into my office, discovered the concealed exit, and has ransacked our supposedly secret meeting area?”

  The soldier clears his throat. “I have no explanation, Ordo.”

  “Were some of the newer guards perhaps asleep at their posts, rather than patrolling?”

  “No. I can assure you that none were asleep.” The commander stands to attention. “I provided them with fast-leaf myself. All of them chew it during patrols and, as I’m sure you are aware, it not only heightens their senses but makes it impossible to sleep.”

  The Capo nods and extends his arms towards the route barred by the escaping thief.

  “And yet, Commander, we’ve been violated and our exit has been blocked. If it wasn’t for the magic seal upon this door,” he points to the scorched area outside the entrance, “which incidentally was supposed to stop people getting in, not out, we wouldn’t even have been aware of his presence, would we?”

  “Our precautions have always been adequate in the past, Ordo. No normal thief could have bypassed the patrols, or locks.” He looks around the room. “They also appear to have left no sign of their intrusion.”

  The conversation is interrupted by banging and shouts from behind the jammed exit. After a clattering noise the door opens and a man stands holding the decorative spears, stolen from the wall.

  “It was jammed shut with these, sir.” He points behind himself. “They were rammed deep into the stonework on either side so there was no way it could be opened.”

  “It seems that we have a particularly quick thinking thief on our hands, does it not, Commander?” The Ordo raises his eyebrows.

  “Indeed. One who can bypass active guards, open locked doors, find hidden passages and create a safe escape route, all without being seen.” He turns back to his men. “Was there any sign at the exit of which way they might have gone?”