Bricrui
(The Forgotten: Book 2)
Laura R Cole
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Laura R Cole
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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CHAPTER 1
Charles readied his sling and peered around with trained eyes. He lifted a foot to take another step, but paused as movement caught his eye. A rabbit hopped out of a bush and snuffled around in the ground a mere twenty feet from him. With careful precision, he lowered his foot back into the spot it had previously occupied.
Slowly, Charles took aim and let the pellet fly. The rabbit startled and scurried away, bouncing back and forth in evasive maneuvers. The pellet hit the ground and embedded itself in the dirt harmlessly. He swore under his breath. No rabbit stew tonight.
He trudged over and retrieved the ammunition, rubbing the dirt off it onto his pant leg. He glanced up at the sky; the sun was beginning to fade over the treetops. It might be a good idea to call it a day; he was getting much too old to spend another night in the woods, and the children would miss him.
Just as he was heading back to the cart he’d already filled with firewood, he heard an ear-piercing scream. It echoed through the still woods, quieting its other inhabitants in fright. Though he had heard the sound many times before, it still gave him a chill. It was the rabbit dying. Its frantic shrieks filled the forest air, everything else suddenly eerily hushed. Charles wondered if he had scared the little guy into the waiting jaws of a wandering coyote.
He crept back around the copse of trees, towards the sound, and pulled aside a hanging bit of brush to clear his view. As the scene came into sight, he stopped dead in his tracks. It was definitely not a coyote. The beast was the rough shape of a man, but horribly disfigured. It was holding the now-silent rabbit in two human hands, tearing at its flesh with its mouth, dripping blood down the sides of its face. The face itself was covered in oozing pustules of infection and whatever it had looked like before had been completely lost.
Charles involuntarily drew a sharp breath in shocked surprise, and he found himself staring into two bright red eyes as the thing whipped its head around at the sound.
It threw the mangled and bloody remains of the rabbit to the ground, and turned to face him. He looked around frantically for something to defend himself. Spying a large branch lying on the ground, he dove for it. The creature snarled and darted towards him, clawing at him with too-long fingernails.
Charles felt the whoosh of air of its passing as he maneuvered himself out of the way, and he brought the stick around to pound the thing in the back. The beast howled in pain and rage, but didn’t slow. It jerked back around and paused, sizing up its prey.
Charles held the branch out in front of him menacingly, hoping it would be enough to deter the monster. It wasn’t.
The thing lunged again, opening and closing its bloodied mouth in snapping motions towards his throat. The wet slapping noises of its lips made Charles shudder. He swung the branch as hard as he could, his fear-driven adrenaline giving him strength, and it connected with the beast’s head right before its body thudded into his own.
They fell to the ground, Charles pinned underneath the beast’s weight, and he scrambled to keep its mouth and hands away from him. The beast fell like a rag-doll against him, however, its growls falling silent.
Charles took a few breaths, terrified that it would suddenly wake again, and then pushed it away from him. There was already a welt forming on its head, where the branch had made impact, a tiny trickle of the beast’s own blood mixing with the red stains from the rabbit and who-knows-what-else.
Charles scrambled to his feet and looked down at the unconscious monster.
“Well, now,” he commented to no one but himself, “This can’t be good.”
*
Hunter watched the girl – no, woman – in front of him, bounding lithely along through the forest with a grace and ease he wouldn’t have thought possible. Could it really be the Katya from his youth? She had certainly grown into a beautiful young woman. Her long dark hair flowed out behind her, shining in the snippets of sunlight streaming in through the canopy above.
Had he known that it was his Katya that he and Natalya had left here, he never would have allowed them to return with the baby until she was free as well. He had so many questions for her!
His thoughts drifted back to the fateful day when they were younger. Katya had come into his life when he was very young. His parents told him that her mother had become ill and begged that they take her in. They had told him that she was from a people far to the north; he wondered now if this tribe hadn’t been what they’d meant. Perhaps that was why she was up here. But if so, why had she been imprisoned?
When the priests had come and taken her, Hunter had done everything he could to stop them, but as a small boy against trained mages with the law behind them, there was little he could do. Under the old laws, anyone possessing talent had to either pay for expensive training or submit to the wills of the priests and become an indentured servant to pay back the gift of power to the gods by servitude. His parents had been unable to come up with the outlandish sum, though they had tried despite her not really being their daughter, and she had been taken away.
After that, his parents decided that they had enough of the Gelendan laws and had found a way to gain passage through the border into Treymayne. Hunter had enlisted in the Guard there as soon as he was able, lying about his age to get in sooner. He had hoped to save enough money and then find a way to travel back to Gelendan to buy the training for her. But when the time came, he could find no way back. He eventually worked as a mercenary on the border lands to the east where the untamed lands still bred bandits and creatures of unsavory ilk.
Regardless of his failure, Katya stayed foremost in his mind, and when the barrier was taken down, he jumped at the chance to search for her once again. He had initially sought her out back in Borden, hoping that she had remained with the priests there, but it was a futile hope. He had soon been forced to return to Treymayne, and to his work.
The merchant job offered by his uncle, however, gave him the perfect means to return and further scour the countryside for her. And though at that point he had held out little hope of actually finding her alive, he had also wanted to help mend relations between the two countries. His trip to Gelendan had brought back feelings of nostalgia, and he wanted this new government of theirs to succeed so that no other families would be ripped apart. He felt that Treymayne’s influence on them would be a good thing.
As the shouts of the pursuers behind them grew fainter, Katya slowed her pace ahead of him, and he fell into step beside her.
“What happened to you?” Hunter asked incredulously when they paused to catch their breaths, still hardly able to believe he’d actually found her, “I thought you were dead.”
Katya embraced him tightly. “I thought so too at times, but it doesn’t matter anymore, I’ve found you.”
“What were you doing out here?”
“It’s a long story,” Katya avoided answering it completely, “I was basically wandering around out here when I ran into one of the tribes, the Myaamia is what they call themselves. They are descendants of the survivors who fled the Dark King.”
“I figured as m
uch. They tried to tell us that they were traders from Gelendan, but they spoke and dressed too differently to have that story hold any credibility. Why were you in their prison?”
“I had something that they had been searching for, and they thought that I stole it from the place they were looking.”
“What was it?”
“The Bloodstone.”
“The Bloodstone, as in the stone that corrupted the Dark King and King Nathair and that Queen Layna supposedly pierced with the sword Leoht to kill Nuko?”
“Not supposedly, did. And yes.”
Hunter thought about this for a moment. “So did you steal it?”
“No. I had it since the battle at Fire Mountain.”
“Are you telling me that you are the mysterious woman from the Queen’s stories?”
“I thought she wasn’t going to mention me…” she grumbled.
Hunter’s eyes grew wide. “She didn’t really, I just happen to be traveling with someone obsessed with the story, and my Uncle Charles was involved with you all too.”
“Your uncle is Charles?” She shook her head and chuckled softly. “It is a small world, isn’t it?”
“So what happened to you after you were taken?” Hunter asked, a slight tone of pain creeping into his voice of its own accord.
“You couldn’t have stopped them,” she told him softly, and put a hand on his shoulder. The touch warmed him.
He refused to meet her eyes, but he nodded. Guilt knotted his stomach that he had not been able to find a way through the border. He shouldn’t have given up hope!
“They erased my memories, else nothing could have kept me from you,” she smiled.
“I tried,” he started, his voice breaking, and she shushed him.
“They trained me within the priesthood for a while until a ‘sponsor’ offered to take me. Unfortunately,” she spat bitterly, recalling the time, “I didn’t realize I was essentially agreeing to slavery and furthermore, slavery as the man’s personal assassin. It was only Marak who kept me sane during those times.”
“Your snake? You still have him?” Hunter’s face brightened as Marak slithered out from under her tunic and curled himself around his wrist. “I remember the mischief he used to cause…”
“Indeed,” Katya laughed, “and he’s got a few more tricks up his sleeve now.”
Hunter was gratified that Katya could still laugh after all she must have been put through. His thoughts darkened as the rest of what she’d just told him sunk in. “An assassin?” he whispered.
Her laughter ceased abruptly and he instantly regretted the question as a flurry of emotions passed over her face: remorse, embarrassment, and sadness. On impulse, he reached out and hugged her. He didn’t want her to think that he thought any less of her because of what she had been forced to do. It was as much his blame as hers; he had allowed her to remain in slavery all this time…
“It wasn’t the happiest time of my life,” she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder, “but they had me completely under their control…even more so than I realized at the time.”
“I’m so sorry, Katya,” he said and they stood, just holding one another for several long minutes. Finally, she drew back.
“I did so many horrible things…” she began, but he cut her off.
“It’s not your fault,” he told her firmly, ending the discussion. She didn’t have to tell him about it, none of it mattered. All that mattered was that she was here with him now. He glanced around the woods in thought. “Katya,” Hunter began slowly, “Are you from that place? My parents always said you were from up north, and there’s not a whole lot of north you can go in Gelendan past Borden.”
“I guess I am,” she said, and a tear welled up in her eye. “I just found out that the old man I befriended there was my father. He said that when it was discovered that I had the mark – the mark that means the Dark King’s blood is in my veins – that it was the law of the tribe to exile me. He said he later regretted his choice to obey the law, but he did obey it. My mother refused to send her child out with nothing, however, and went with me. She became ill and found your parents to ask them to care for me before she died. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had to do with heart-ache from my father’s decision.”
“Are you crying?” He asked, concerned. He didn’t want to make her talk about it if it was going to upset her.
“My father was the one who helped me escape, and he was shot by an arrow,” she explained, sniffing and wiping another tear off her face. “I had to leave him.”
“Maybe he’s alright…”
She gave him a pitiful look. “It’s a village full of mages. I doubt that their arrows don’t have some sort of spell on them to ensure they do their job.”
Hunter fell silent, but held out his arms once more. She sunk into them and Hunter was surprised by the feeling of comfort that seemed to pass between them. After a few moments, she tore herself away from the embrace.
“We should find somewhere to spend the night. This forest isn’t exactly hospitable.”
“I know what you mean.”
They moved swiftly through the trees for a while more, now searching for suitable spots, and soon came across one. They made camp in silence, though Hunter couldn’t help but steal glances every now and again at Katya as she gathered wood and prepared the fire. It was hard to believe she was really here.
They finally had the arrangements to both their satisfactions, though it had required some friendly bickering, and they sat next to the fire to catch up in earnest.
The hair on the back of Hunter’s neck suddenly sprang to life and he looked around in alarm, just in time to see Katya jerk suddenly.
“Bloody-” she swore as something hard connected smartly with her head.
Hunter leapt to his feet as she collapsed, but a split second later, pain burst from the back of his head as well and the world dissolved into darkness.
*
Queen Layna looked out at the long line of her subjects waiting to speak with her. In the wake of the attack in which baby Phoenix had been stolen and she and King Gryffon left in magical stasis, they had decided that it would be best if they stayed at the palace. Seeing as how Lord Telvani had been scheming right under their noses for so long, and had plenty of people placed within the palace that were loyal only to him, it was a good idea for them to be present to weed these out. It also gave Layna a greater sense of security to have Phoenix in a well-guarded place after her kidnapping. Unfortunately, it left the people with the need to come to them rather than the two monarchs traveling the countryside as they had been previously.
She sighed. This meant that she had the tedious task of sitting in the gardens for hours at a time listening to complaints. She wouldn’t let Princess Phoenix out of her sight, so she figured that meeting with the people in the great outdoors would at least allow the child to enjoy her day a little bit. Plus, sitting near the Kiani Stones always made Layna relax.
The next woman was being brought forward and Layna smiled at her. She had been extremely concerned by the number of people who had turned out the first day. She had announced that she wanted to hear grievances from people who were concerned about actions that had taken place in her name. The incident with Telvani and the deeds which had been done in her name by his minions still haunted her. He had used her royal Knights as a breeding ground for his own misguided group, “the Faithful”, still looking to follow the path of the Order and blood-magic. Therefore, she was determined to find any more wrongdoings that may also have been done in her name.
Luckily, however, most who came here had small complaints – the latest woman included – which really had nothing to do with secret dealings of Lord Telvani. Rather, they tended to be more mundane matters that the people simply thought were too unfair of life to have dealt them, without something evil having interfered. Layna quickly took care of the woman’s gripe, and waited for the next to be brought forward.
She looked behind her, across
the gardens, towards Phoenix. She was sitting with Amelia a safe distance away from the crowd, warded within a pavilion, and playing with a flower. The child was trying to pluck the petals off, while Amelia was trying to save the poor plant from her destruction. Whatever had been done to her at the hands of the tribe, she hadn’t seemed to have suffered any lasting damage. The end goal of their actions was still a mystery, and it was one that Layna and Gryffon were both eager to solve as soon as possible. The tribe’s plans having been thwarted, who knew when their next attempt would come. Or what it might entail.
One of the aides suddenly came rushing into the clearing, and bowed before bending to whisper in her ear.
“King Gryffon requires your presence in the throne room, Majesty,” he reported, straightening. “I will make your excuses for you as it seems to be a matter of some importance.”
Layna nodded to him and stepped down off the dais that had been set up for her, walking across the gardens to pick up Phoenix. Once she had her child, she allowed her entourage to usher her away from her waiting subjects, who watched her go with disappointment. She trusted that the man would properly appease them. Her mind was already racing as to why Gryffon would have sent for her. Hopefully it was not yet another plot uncovered from Lord Telvani. They had discovered several already and it appeared that he had something big that had been in the works for some time, which they had not yet gotten to the bottom of. Perhaps there had been a breakthrough. Though if it was a breakthrough that required both her and Gryffon’s intervention together…
She forced her racing mind to quiet. She would find out shortly, and there was no point in worrying herself until she knew what it was she needed to be worried about. The doors to the throne room parted at her presence – opened automatically by the guards stationed there, a fact that had taken some getting used to – and she glanced around.
Bricrui (The Forgotten: Book 2) Page 1
