“This is so not good,” she whispered.
The lights of lanterns strung out on the winding trail below them betrayed the increasing flow of refugees from the fire—as did the clop of hooves, rattle of wagons, and complaints of various livestock. Somewhere off in the night, a bell began to toll.
“Nolan? Nolan!” A brown-haired, top-heavy young woman suddenly appeared out of the darkness behind them to wrap herself around Elissa’s escort. The woman didn’t say another word, but buried a face stained with soot and tears against his chest.
After watching for a moment as Nolan rocked the woman in his arms and patted her back soothingly, Elissa turned her attention politely back to the fire. She studied it numbly for another minute or three, watching the flames engulf the silhouettes of trees while lightning flickered across the sky behind it all, before clearing her throat. “Nolan?”
Nolan carefully detached himself from the young woman’s embrace, though she didn’t relinquish his hand as he stepped over to where Elissa beckoned.
“See all those lanterns?” Elissa pointed to the main cluster of lights visible on the farmland below. The cluster had sprouted a tail of lights making its way slowly down the road this direction, but many of them remained fanned out slightly ahead of the flames, their owners likely attempting to construct a fire break. More lights were converging toward the cluster from the surrounding lands, as well, as the able-bodied rushed to assist in containing the blaze.
Nolan nodded his acknowledgment.
“Then see there?” Elissa pointed off to the right, where an arm of the blaze had jumped ahead to a closer orchard. “And there?” She pointed off to the left, where the fire was clearly racing along a dry hedge row it had ignited.
Nolan continued to stare for most of a minute himself, watching the flames advance, then swore under his breath. “That bell’s tolling the wrong alarm.
“Nessa,” he said suddenly to the woman still hanging on his arm, “take charge of this road. Anyone who’s made it this far needs to keep going up, but we’ve got to get everyone else headed toward the castle.”
Nessa released his hand reluctantly, but nodded, then put on a no-nonsense face as she turned to face the mostly grown girl and the clutch of children who had arrived just behind her. “You heard him,” she told them. “We’ve got a job to do.” As she started barking instructions to the children, Nolan grabbed Elissa’s hand and started dragging her back down the way they’d come. He didn’t break into a run, but Elissa nearly had to in order to keep up with his long, urgent strides.
“We’re headed for the castle,” he explained. “They’ve got to change that alarm now. That bell will get everyone out of their beds, but it’s also going to send a lot of them scurrying off to help.”
Neither Nolan nor Elissa wanted to say it aloud, but both had seen what that meant. Those far-flung arms of the fire had begun to close in on each other. The main line of defenders was in serious danger of being cut off in a ring of flames, along with anyone who joined them. “It’s time for everyone to just go to ground and pray to Seriena that storm’s going to hit hard enough and soon enough to drown that fire tonight.”
“So I’m guessing that was your niece?” Elissa ventured with a little grin as they hurried down the road.
“Nessa?” Nolan chuckled. “Not so much.”
“Kid sister, then?” Elissa asked. “She did mash that chest up against you in a very sisterly way.”
“More like ‘drinking buddy’. Probably a distant cousin. If you’re trying to draw up my family tree, I promise it will be a heroic task.”
“Just looking for a smile in all this,” Elissa said. “Back at the abbey, drama was what happened when somebody put a book back on the wrong shelf. Nessa seems a lovely and sensible girl, and I do wish you many a happy drink together.”
Their chatter ended abruptly as they both looked up and realized that the lanterns now approaching weren’t held aloft by the sort of refugees they’d come accustomed to seeing, but by a mounted procession of black-robed women and of armed men in black and red.
“You’re going the wrong way little lambs,” the woman at the head of the procession said tiredly. “It’s dangerous down there. Best shelter for the night up at the work site.”
“Thank you, Sister, we’ll be fine,” Nolan answered with gracious good nature. “We’re headed away from the fire, toward the castle, to share our news of how it’s spreading.”
“Oh? And how is it spreading?” One of the knights rode forward, towering over them on his destrier. It took a moment for Elissa to recognize Riordan in the darkness, but when she did, she shrank an involuntary step back. “Actually, I can’t imagine you having a thing to tell the earl that he really needs to know. All of this is the fault of the witch we came here to find, and she’s down there running amok. She’s already murdered our most revered sister in cold blood this night. No one is safe down there, and the fire is the least of your worries.”
“She…murdered…?” Elissa asked in aghast disbelief. The man spoke with such passionate conviction that she had to remind herself not to accept his words as unvarnished truth.
Riordan stared suspiciously down at Elissa for a long moment, then swung out of the saddle and stepped toward her. As he did, Nolan stepped bodily between them. Steel rang through the night as a dozen swords and knives unsheathed behind Riordan, but the knight calmly stared Nolan down. “Stand aside, man. I have no intention of harming a holy sister.”
Nolan studied the drawn blades at length before stepping hesitantly back, his posture still anything but relaxed. Elissa bit her lip, but stood her ground as the big man reached out to tilt her chin up and stare down into her face. She met his gaze and held it as he continued to stare at her and the seconds ticked by, until at last his stern countenance began to relax. “Brookshire?” he asked. “Elissa of Brookshire?”
“Riordan?” Elissa asked with a note of surprise so perfectly feigned it would have made Keely weep with pride to hear it.
“You…know her, sir?” Nolan asked.
“Know her?” the big man answered Nolan with a rumbling laugh. “There was a time it seemed I’d never be rid of her! Go’ss, you’re a welcome sight on a dark day, Littlebrook. And you’ve made something of yourself! A priestess? Still so young?” Riordan swept Elissa up and swung her around in an enormous bear hug, which her arms returned with enthusiasm while her face registered barely contained panic—though mercifully registered it only where Nolan could see it from over Riordan’s shoulder.
“Wow! It’s been so long!” Elissa gasped breathlessly—an effect easily achieved when caught up in the sort of embrace she was experiencing.
“What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?!” Riordan demanded good-naturedly.
“It sort of came with the ordination.” Elissa smiled sheepishly as he finally set her down. “Pontifine Augusta got it into her head I should take over here after the tragedy with Sister Petra. Maybe she needed someone expendable, in case it happens again.”
“It will not happen again. I just have a certain witch to wreak holy vengeance on,” Riordan said with a snarl, “then I will personally see that these vandals are brought to justice before they can cause any more harm. I owe you that much, after the business with my family.”
“You’ve got me tearing up, big guy,” the tired priestess at the head of the procession said, “but can you save your little reunion for the top of the hill?”
“But we’re going down,” Elissa insisted.
“I can’t let you,” Riordan countered firmly. “It’s too dangerous.” Then he frowned. “Tell me what you saw. It…wasn’t Ryan, was it?” he asked, his voice falling near a whisper.
“What? No!” Elissa gasped. “How could…? What are you…?” she stammered, then composed herself. “Riordan, your brother’s dead. You know that.” The last bit almost came out as a question, and indeed her eyes searched his face for some confirmation that it was true.
The big man sighed and shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Should be dead. Would be dead, Goddess forgive me, if not for my own folly,” he said quietly.
“But I saw…”
“What I wanted everyone to see,” Riordan said. “I will tell the tale later. But he’s alive and he’s free and he’s gone completely mad and…it seems he’s here. Since you’re here, too, he can only be looking for revenge. You’re in danger. So climb on the back of my horse and let’s get you up someplace safe.”
“I…No,” Elissa finished firmly after an initial hesitation. “My ordination may have been a farce, but I accepted these robes and a responsibility for these people with them. Many will die if we don’t let them know that the fire is out of control. My safety doesn’t matter, but I’ve got the best swordsman in the county as a bodyguard anyway.” She pointed emphatically back toward Nolan, who straightened visibly at the sudden attention. “I’m going. And the only way you’re stopping me is by throwing a kicking, biting, scratching, and screaming holy woman over your horse while you’re fighting off him.” She pointed again, and Nolan obliged by throwing a confident scowl in Riordan’s direction.
“You heard the sister,” the spokeswoman said sharply without leaving Riordan a moment to protest. “She’s not our problem, and we’ve got responsibilities of our own. Now let’s move.”
“Yes, sister.” Riordan withdrew reluctantly, nodding his assent to the woman. “Be careful, Littlebrook.”
“I will,” Elissa assured him with a small smile, and she stood back with Nolan to let the procession ride on past.
“I’m really not much more than passable with a sword,” Nolan said quietly as they hurried on down the road. “Now give me a nice, sturdy cudgel and maybe…” He trailed off, noticing that Elissa was hyperventilating.
“He’s going to kill me,” she gasped.
“No, he’s not,” Nolan said, gently grabbing Elissa’s shoulder and bringing her to a stop. “Just breathe. No matter how big or nasty or crazed this Runyan is, I can handle him. We’re on my turf, I fight dirty, and…”
“Not Ryan,” Elissa hissed. “Riordan!”
Nolan looked back and forth between Elissa’s face and the darkness that the riders had disappeared into, trying to reconcile what he was hearing with what he’d just seen.
“How long do you think I could hang out with Keely and not know when I’m being conned?” she hissed. “Yes, we were sort of kids together, and Riordan wasn’t faking the whole nostalgia thing, but his brother is dead! Not sort of dead! Not mostly dead! Not maybe dead! He’s as totally, completely, gruesomely dead as dead gets! Riordan made sure of it, and I was too much a frightened little mouse of a girl to stop him.”
“Then…But…” Nolan tried a couple of times to make enough sense of the situation to form a coherent question or protest, but the efforts went for naught.
“Riordan doesn’t know how much I saw,” Elissa said. “He thinks he can come up with a plausible story to make me doubt. And there’s only one reason he would try to resurrect his brother.”
“Guilt?” Nolan ventured.
“Scapegoat!” she blurted, then it all came out in a rush. “Even when it was just kid stuff, Riordan had a knack for letting his brother take the fall. ‘It wasn’t me! It was Ryan!’ They were twins, and Riordan was better at telling a convincing lie than Ryan was at telling a convincing truth, but Riordan finally taught me his own tells. Back there, he thought we’d seen something he didn’t want us to see. He’s covering up something about the fire. The man sacrificed his twin brother to ambition, and the Inquisition’s had five more years to harden him since then. He’s not going to blink at getting rid of some kid he used to know. And he’s not going to blink at getting rid of some stranger he’s barely laid eyes on, for that matter,” she finished, staring at Nolan meaningfully.
“Do you think he’ll find an excuse to double back before they reach the top?” Nolan asked, warily eying the darkness behind them.
“How hard do you think it would be for him to sort of drift back in the line until everyone had passed him by?” Elissa asked.
“Ever handle a flintlock?” Nolan asked, pulling a pistol out of his belt.
“Not once,” Elissa answered. “I fancy my chances better with running. But you’re on your home ground, right? And you fight dirty…?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her on down the trail. She quickly matched his step, and they broke into as much of a run as they dared by lantern light on the dark slope. “I can take him. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
“I told you I’m learning to spot a con, right?” Elissa asked.
There had to be a metaphor here, the detached corner of Sabina’s mind mused—some sort of allegorical summation of what had become of her life—as the rest of her mind stared in fascinated horror at the wall of flames not twenty feet away, licking at the mouth of the crevice she’d taken shelter in. She already had her back pressed up against the rock behind her, and the sides of the fissure closed in so tightly she couldn’t spread her elbows without touching both. Sweat covered her body and drenched her hair and clothes, the heat so intense that she thought the fire would roast her even if it couldn’t come any closer.
A gust of wind blew a fresh cloud of smoke her way, and she coughed painfully, her throat already raw, until her head swam, and she fell to her knees. Then even her knees didn’t work, and she collapsed flat on the ground, gasping like a fish.
“You’ll be safe in there,” her guide had told her before almost shoving her back into the crevice, but Scarlet had conspicuously passed up sheltering there herself. Sabina had tried to chase after the woman, but had quickly been forced to agree that her makeshift shelter looked like the least flammable spot in a world quickly transforming itself into a hellish inferno.
She didn’t know how Scarlet found the courage to even try to escape through it. She didn’t know if Scarlet had made it through alive. All she did know was she’d soon heard some dreadful screams that threw the woman’s survival into even more serious doubt. Well, she also knew that “safe” had become a relative term, translating into “not burned alive as such”.
Somehow down against the ground, Sabina found herself breathing a pocket of relatively cool and clean air, and her head stopped swimming long enough for her to realize she would be dead as soon as that small respite gave out. Rolling onto her back as she weighed her lack of options, it dawned on her that the wall she’d been up against might be climbable. The side walls soared smoothly hundreds of feet overhead, but only a rough blockage of fallen stone walled her in behind. Climbing had never been Sabina’s thing. Laborers and pesky little brothers might climb, but climbing would never even crossed the mind of a well-bred young lady.
Were the lady, perchance, only mildly well-bred, thoughts of climbing might just come flitting through her mind at random moments, seductively representing themselves as the only alternative to a fiery death—but even then the lady in question would recoil in horror and carefully glance around to be quite certain that no one was watching before making eye contact with said thoughts and formally acknowledging their existence.
Amidst the heat and the smoke and the unyielding stone, Sabina drew a long, deep breath that she hoped would not be her last, scrambled to her feet, and—with all the dignity possible to muster while climbing frantically in a fine gown utterly spoiled by soot and sweat—pulled herself up and into the welcoming darkness of Skull Crevice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Wake Up
“Now ride!” Nolan slapped the back of the horse, and it sped out of the farmyard as best it could given its advancing age and the inexpert guidance of the girl on its back. Lightning danced through the clouds, briefly illuminating mount and rider in its flickering strobe before the night fell once more to black. The bobbing glow of the girl’s lantern lingered, dwindling in the distance, until they passed through the gate to the road and disappeared around a hedge.
&n
bsp; He and Elissa had made it down off the Tooth without sounds of pursuit, but neither of them took that luck as more than a badly needed head start. The specter of being ridden down before they could reach the castle had still loomed large, so Nolan had detoured at the first farmhouse where a flicker of light had offered hope of someone to pass the proverbial torch to.
Unwilling to risk that Riordan might pass this girl on the road and take her for their co-conspirator, he had sent her off on the long route to the castle, despite the precious minutes it would cost. As she’d disappeared into the night, he was still silently cursing the Inquisition for forcing him to walk this knife’s edge between the safety of an innocent girl, the safety of dozens of his friends and family, and the safety of the young woman he’d been charged on pain of death to protect.
“One more problem out of our hands,” Nolan said resignedly, forcing himself to take a deep breath and let it go. “Now we head this way.” Turning away from the road, he grabbed Elissa’s hand again and led her quickly around the back of the old barn.
He helped her over a stile into a pasture, prepared to prod her into using whatever reserves of speed she might still have after their rapid descent, but instead found himself running to catch up with her and the lantern she carried before she could unthinkingly leave him behind in the dark. He steered her off to the left, and she flushed at the realization she’d just taken the lead without any real notion of where she was going.
A chill, damp blast of wind cut across the pasture, carrying with it both the hope of a serious storm about to be unleashed on the wildfire and the threat that unless—and until—those rains arrived, the winds would be out there spreading sparks and fanning flames. Behind them, the farmyard and stile vanished into the night, leaving them lost in a bubble of lantern light floating through a sea of sunbaked grasses that had been cropped short by grazing livestock.
When she would glance behind them, Elissa could make out a horizon glowing infernal-red behind a haze of smoke, but ahead of them, only occasional flashes of lightning proved that the grassy sea didn’t stretch on forever into the darkness.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 25
