I’ll never make it.
He figured he could follow the shoreline south and then west all the way around the island to reach Stron’s Watch and Port Eaton, but doing so would take a week if it were even possible at all. A wall-like ridge of jagged hills cut across the island’s interior to the southeast. If he could find a pass over them, he’d cut his travel distance down considerably and still come out near Port Eaton. The expedition couldn’t have come that way before, not with the wagons, but maybe a single man on horseback could. If he could get over the hills, he’d be back at the fort within a day or two. Then he could—
He yanked back on Gale’s reins. Just ahead, a dark shadow lay across the sand. In the ghastly red glow of the moon, he hadn’t seen it until he was almost upon it—it was a body, lying near the water’s edge, the waves edging closer.
A spasm of fear coursed through him, and he steered Gale away from it, farther up the beach. Whoever it was, it wasn’t his problem. Best I stay away, stay alive to warn the others. He made it another twenty paces before he sighed and turned Gale about.
“A quick look, that’s all,” he told the horse. “We’ll be careful.”
As he rode closer, he saw the man lying facedown in the sand was dressed as he was—in pants, boots, and a padded undertunic designed to be worn beneath ring mail. Then, the figure moved, rolled over, and groaned. Dilan tensed, fearing an ambush, but long moments passed with nothing happening. Something glinted in the sand next to the man—a longsword. Dilan waited, but the man didn’t move again.
Climbing down from Gale, Dilan moved closer, still holding Gale’s reins, ready to mount and flee at a moment’s notice. Whoever the man was, Dilan guessed it was probably one of the Wolfrey men-at-arms. But how did he get here? Dilan glanced back. The fortress and the cliffs upon which it sat weren’t that far away. The man could have stumbled out of the fortress just as Dilan had. If the man had been wounded, perhaps that was as far as he could make it. Help him, you gutless coward, Dilan admonished himself. Kneeling down in the wet sand, Dilan grasped the man’s soaked shoulder and turned him over onto his back.
Owen. It’s Owen. How is this possible?
Owen had been on duty clearing the entrance to the Great Crypt. Placing his ear next to Owen’s mouth, Dilan heard him breathing and felt the moisture of the other man’s breath on his ear. He didn’t see any wounds, but he couldn’t be sure under the moon’s eerie red glow. His confusion grew when he stared at the longsword lying beside Owen. In the moon’s light, the blade seemed to glow crimson. It was unlike any sword he had ever seen. The handle was a carved white figure of a woman with her arms outstretched. As he gripped the white handle to examine the weapon, a wave of energy coursed up his arm, causing him to drop the sword and fall back onto his ass in astonishment. Pushing himself up on his elbows, he stared in disbelief at the weapon and then at his still-tingling fingers. The sword’s touch hadn’t hurt him so much as surprised him. In fact, it had felt refreshing. What could possibly—
A flash of insight cut through him, sending shivers down his spine. This is Sight-Bringer.
Owen moaned, and his eyes opened. He reached out for Dilan, grasping his forearm, but his grip was weak. “Serina…” he managed. “She’s free.”
Dilan sighed. “I know.”
Owen closed his eyes again, his head falling back once more.
“I know,” Dilan repeated.
Chapter 33
Danika
Danika tosses in her sleep. Her breathing quickens as cold sweat drenches her skin. Earlier, she was dreaming of Brice, of the way he looked at her the last time they were alone. Then, the dream changed. He’s with her now but sitting on the edge of her bed, his naked back to her, his head in his hands as his broad shoulders shake. Is he crying? Moonlight pours through her bedchamber window, spilling across the room, coloring everything silver. Sitting up, she reaches for her lover and wraps her arms around his neck.
His skin is ice.
She jerks away as he turns to her, his eyes filled with soul-shattering sorrow.
“My love,” he says as he reaches for her hands, holding them tightly in his frigid grip.
“Brice, what’s wrong?”
“I love you. I will always love you.” Tears run down his cheeks and freeze solid.
She tries to pull back, to get away—his fingers are so cold. Gasping in pain, she sees her own breath before her eyes—but no moisture comes from her lover’s mouth.
“I love you,” he repeats, softly, an ocean of sadness.
Fear grips her heart. Something is wrong here. She pulls harder, but he won’t let her go. “Brice, you’re hurting me,” she whimpers.
“You should have gone with me,” he says. Now, blood pools over his teeth, painting them red. His eyes have also turned completely red. She screams—
And bolted upright in bed, instantly fully awake. She was alone—Brice wasn’t with her, wasn’t dead. She pressed her palm against her sweaty breast, holding it tightly against her pounding heart. Pain shuddered through her but receded almost immediately as relief washed it away.
“Just a dream,” she whispered to herself, closing her eyes. It was only a dream. Brice is with Palin—far from me but safe. Thank the Craftsman.
When she opened her eyes again and saw the moon outside her open window, she gasped.
The moon, full and bright, was the color of blood.
#
After breaking her night’s fast, Danika found herself before the closed door leading to the office chambers of Wendel Dert. She rapped on the door, and following a pronounced wait, heard him call out for her to enter. When she opened the door, Dert was bent over his desk, writing.
When he glanced up, a flicker of annoyance passed through his small eyes. “My lady, can I be of service?”
“I was looking for Father Cotlas,” she said.
“In my chambers, my lady?”
“I’m… I’m sorry. He’s not in the fort.”
“Well, he’s old. I’m sure he couldn’t have toddled off too far.” He returned his attention to his ledger.
She stood there for a few more moments, fighting down her anger, and then stepped back, closing his door. Every single time she had visited that island with her father, Dert had been like that, full of his own importance. Her father had claimed he was a competent reeve and had served well for decades on that windswept rock, managing the island’s affairs, but she knew he had become like a lord, the only real authority on the entire island, clearly not used to deferring to anyone.
Still, I am a Dain.
She sighed, moving back down the circular tower stairs. Dert was right, though. Father Cotlas couldn’t have gone that far.
#
As Danika entered the fort’s stables, still looking for Father Cotlas, she heard Wren, her handmaiden, pleading with somebody, clearly upset. Wren was eighteen and not used to travel or the hard conditions in a fort filled with men. She had been miserable since coming to the island, and more than once, Danika found herself wishing she had left the younger woman back at Castle Dain despite her need for a servant. Appearances mattered, though, and it was unseemly for a lady to travel without a handmaiden. Still, she didn’t like the tone she was hearing in Wren’s voice. She put her back to the wall of the stable and listened.
“Come on, my little pretty one. I have a young girl like you, and I miss her,” a gruff voice said. “Just a quick kiss, and we’ll let you go.”
“Please leave me alone,” said Wren. “You’ll get in trouble.”
“Think so, do you?” another man asked with a chuckle. “I think not, pretty one. We’re not doing anything. You came in here to bother us while we were working. You’ll get in trouble.”
“That’s not true,” Wren pleaded. “I just wanted to see the horses. I’m sorry. I’ll leave.”
“I’ve got something better than a horse for you to see, my little one.”
Anger, not fear, coursed through Danika, and she stormed insid
e the stables, her face dark with indignation. As expected, two of the garrison soldiers had backed Wren into a corner. Tears were running down the young woman’s cheeks. Have these men no shame? The soldiers in the fort possessed entirely too little respect, and it was beginning to infuriate Danika. First, Wendel Dert’s cavalier attitude toward me, now this outrage? At Danika’s entry, the men spun about, guilt on their faces.
Both men backed away quickly from Wren, lowering their heads in respect. “My lady,” they said.
One of them, a particularly ugly brute with a shiny face, said, “My lady, the stables are no place for—”
“If I hear one more word out of either of you, I will have you both whipped and sent to the gaol for a month. You sicken me.”
Both men’s faces went white, and they stared at their feet.
“Get out now!” Danika said, forcing them to go around her.
Wren rushed forward, buried her face in Danika’s shoulder, and began to sob.
Danika patted her back. “It’s fine, Wren. It’s fine. Some men know no better.”
I really should have left her back in Castle Dain.
#
Later, Danika stood alone atop the fort’s single tower. She leaned against the battlements, staring out to sea, where a flotilla of small fishing boats bobbed on the water, their brightly colored single sails catching the sun’s rays. She smiled as she watched the boats. She had learned to sail there, years before, when she visited with her father. Forts were no place for a teenaged girl, and she had been bored to tears, so a townsman had been found who was willing to teach her how to sail.
Despite the Greywynne islanders’ surly reputation, the fisherman had been surprisingly patient with her—and her obligatory guard—explaining that he had already taught his own daughters to sail, “So why not one more lump-headed girl?”
Once out upon the waves, Danika had found a sense of freedom that she had never experienced in the north with all its customs and expectations of appropriate female behavior. There—and throughout the entire Fenyir Islands—women were the equals of men. The civilized Kingdom of Conarck considered the Fenyir clans to be little more than barbarians, but on the islands, a woman could achieve anything a man could—many even fought as warriors alongside the men or skippered their own raiding longships, pirating the merchant vessels traveling along the island chain.
Soft footsteps on the stairs announced the arrival of Father Cotlas, his face white from the exertion of climbing all the way up the tower. She rushed over, took his arm, and led him to a wooden bench, helping him down onto it.
“I should have found you, Father,” she said.
He waved his spotted hand at her. “I’m old, not dead. I can still climb stairs.” He coughed, and she patted his back. After some moments, his coughing eased, and he nodded. “You wanted to talk to me, my lady.”
She opened her mouth, paused, and then bit her lower lip, suddenly realizing how pointless talking to Father Cotlas about her dreams would be. I shouldn’t have bothered him.
“Come, come, my lady, you can talk to me. I’m a priest of the Craftsman. You can tell me anything.” He patted her hand, sliding over on the bench and making room for her.
She sat beside him, gathering her thoughts, feeling foolish in the bright light of the day. “Father, I don’t want to waste your time, but… I had a bad dream last night.”
He nodded. “You’re not the only one, not after that business with the moon. That’s why I was out of the fort. The locals are terrified—feel it must mean something.”
“What do you think? Have you ever seen such a thing?”
“I didn’t see it last night. I was sleeping. But a long time ago, I saw something like it… once,” he said softly, looking away toward the forest.
“When was that?”
“How old are you, Danika? Twenty-two?”
She felt a fluttering in her stomach as she recognized the tremor of fear in his voice.
“I’m twenty-five, Father.”
He smiled weakly. “Yes, yes, of course you are. I remember when you were born. But you’re still just a child, too young to have known the bad days, the days of Serina’s rebellion.”
“I know her war nearly destroyed us all.”
He snorted. “That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but maybe you’re right. Who knows where her hunger would have stopped? At any rate, coming back here, looking for the sword, going to her fortress… I fear these actions have stirred up the past.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was with Duke Stron at Roald’s Farm when we fought her ghoul soldiers, her undead captains.”
“I didn’t know that. Were you—”
“On this island, at her fortress? Yes, but I was just a young man. I didn’t go down into the catacombs with the others. They were all better, more pious priests than I ever could be.” He paused. “But I’m old, and my mind wanders. I was talking about Roald’s Farm, where we first managed to stand against her—to win.
“We were all terrified. We had heard the stories… about her being a necromancer, that she could raise the dead. It was all true. That night, her army of ghouls attacked.” He shivered, trembling at the memory. His hands shook so badly that he placed one atop the other to hold it. “It was an army of corpses driven by hatred and malice. As they came at us, we felt the Dread of Serina—that soul-numbing fear that always surrounds her. We’d have all turned and fled that night had it not been for your uncle with Sight-Bringer. He was everywhere that night, or so it seemed. Wherever the fighting was the worst, your uncle was there to drive the monsters back. You should have seen him. Ghouls and blood fiends fell before his righteous power.”
Father Cotlas’s eyes gleamed with the memory. He smiled at her, his whiskers white with age. “We beat her that night—for the first time! We stood our ground and fought her army. That was the beginning of the end for her rebellion. Her blood-fiend captains couldn’t stand before that sword, and its holy touch burned the ghouls, sent them back to whatever hell Serina had dragged them from. Her army—defeated for the first time—fell back, and we pursued, chasing them all the way across the Promiscuous Sea.
“You should have seen that army, my lady. The ships filled that bay below us. Even some of her own people among the Fenyir clans joined us. Port Eaton burned that night. Then, we pushed her back all the way to her dark fortress, destroying her there. Well… you know that tale, how only your father survived the confrontation, may Father Craftsman keep his soul.”
“But what does this have to do with last night, the moon?”
Father Cotlas was silent for long moments. When he finally spoke, his words were barely a whisper. “Nothing, my lady, nothing at all. I’m old, and my mind wanders to the past.”
“Father, what aren’t you telling me?”
He sighed and bit his lower lip.
“Please, Father.”
He nodded. “The night… that night at Roald’s Farm, just before her ghouls came upon us, the moon also turned red.”
“That’s… what does that mean?”
“Nothing.” He patted her hand, smiling weakly. “It means nothing. Last night was probably just a trick of the eye.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry, child. Your brother and… Your brother will be back shortly. Then, we’ll leave this cursed rock behind us. You’ll see. All will be well.”
Danika forced a smile upon her lips, a weak, fake thing. She stared past Father Cotlas, out at the dark interior of the wood line.
Be safe, brother. Be safe, my love. Come back to me, both of you.
I’ll leave with you then, Brice. The world be damned, I’ll run away with you then.
Chapter 34
Owen
Owen woke to the familiar gait of being on horseback, but he was tied by the wrists to a saddle horn. He jerked in surprise, almost falling off despite the bonds, but a strong hand held him in place.
“Easy, Owen,” said Dilan,
walking beside him and holding him upright with one hand while carrying Sight-Bringer across his shoulder with the other.
The sun beat down upon Owen, baking his aching head and making it feel as though a donkey had kicked him. He winced in pain, shading his eyes with his hand.
“Dying,” he muttered then shivered despite the heat.
“No, you’re not.” Dilan handed him a sloshing waterskin. “But it was a lucky thing I found you.”
Owen took the waterskin and tried to drink but couldn’t manage more than a few sips before he started coughing. Dilan took the waterskin back and thumped Owen on his shoulders. When he finally stopped coughing, Owen took in his surroundings. He was sitting on Gale. A length of rope secured him to the saddle, wrapped around his waist, his wrists, and the saddle horn. Owen fumbled with the knot, untying it.
“You kept falling off,” Dilan said. “Not sure why people call you Horse-boy.”
“It’s an insult,” Owen muttered, “not a reflection on my riding skill.”
“Nor your ability to recognize a joke.”
Knee-high grass brushed against his legs. Rolling hill land surrounded them. In the distance ahead, he saw a forested ridgeline, rising like a wall before them. Flies buzzed his pounding head, and his eyelids seemed impossibly heavy. His thoughts were terribly disjointed… but he remembered the Great Crypt and… Serina! He jerked back, almost falling again.
“Where… where are we?” he asked.
Dilan turned, shading his eyes as he walked backward. “Southwest of the fortress. We’ve been walking since last night, when I found you on the beach near the cliffs… with this.” Dilan hefted the sword. “What happened?”
A cold anger burned through Owen’s sickness. “Modwyn. Modwyn happened. The effeminate bastard betrayed us, murdered Lord Palin. Fed him to… to her. She’s alive. Serina Greywynne is still alive.”
The Vampire Queen Saga: Books 1-3: (The Vampire Queen Saga Boxset) Page 18
