Ghost Clan

by Heather Walker

  She put out her hand to touch the stone, but Angus yanked it back. “Dinnae!”

  “What is the matter with you?” she asked. “We came all the way over here to find an answer, and now you want to back out. There’s no danger. We have to find the last door, wherever that is.”

  He held her hand back. “Dinnae touch it. Ye dinnae ken what’s in there.”

  “Isn’t that what we came here to find out?” Carmen asked. “Do you want to go back to the door in defeat?”

  Before he could reply, the ground trembled under their feet. Carmen put out a hand to steady herself. She would have touched that stone again, but Angus jerked her away just in time. She stumbled against him when another, longer tremor vibrated up through her legs.

  It kept going this time. It shook the stones in their positions. The other men looked all around them, but the shaking didn’t stop. One stone leaned forward and banged face down on the ground. The earthquake got stronger. Another stone slumped at a dangerous angle.

  Angus retreated and towed Carmen away with him, but the shaking got stronger with every passing second. In an instant, the whole land erupted in violent quaking. Angus and Carmen backed toward their friends, but they only made it a few paces when the whole ground under their feet caved in.

  Some of the standing stones plummeted into the sink hole. Others listed in different directions. The ground crumbled beneath Carmen’s feet. She stumbled away as fast as she could, but the terrible disaster overtook her before she got far.

  The cave-in started where she stood when she almost touched that stone. A thin crust below the grass roots gave way to reveal a great cavern under the soil. Wicked points of fire licked under the grass roots, and a blasting inferno of blistering heat shot through the hole.

  Carmen darted away just in time. Angus paused just an instant to make sure she got behind him. At that moment, the shell of earth separating the fire from the outside world powdered under him, and Angus plunged out of sight.

  Carmen whirled around with a shriek. “Angus!”

  Only his fingertips remained visible. He clutched two fistfuls of grass to hold himself above those devious flames dancing below him. Quick as lightning, Carmen made a dive for the hole. She grasped Angus’s wrists, but she couldn’t pull him up. He was too heavy.

  His body dangled over a vast pit alight with fire. It puffed around his legs flapping in mid-air. He kicked and scrabbled, but he couldn’t get a better handhold. The grass to which he clung tore loose in his hands. He pawed a fresh handful, only to have that come away, too.

  Carmen dug in her heels and heaved, but she couldn’t stop him sliding back. He gasped in terror in her face. Her feet slipped, and his bulk threatened to drag her into the pit along with him. “Angus!” she croaked.

  Cold calm filled his eyes. He gazed up at her face straining above him. He knew the truth, and he accepted it. He nodded to tell her to let him go, to save herself by releasing him to his inevitable fate. They tried to find the answer in this field, and they failed. She would live, but without him.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t will her fingers to unwind from his wrists, not even to save her own life. If she was going down, she might as well go down with him. The next time his hand broke free with a fistful of grass, he didn’t try to gain another one. He nodded one more time.

  Carmen sobbed once. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t watch him fall to his death among the fire demons, but what choice did she have?

  Just when she made up her mind to let go, to let him plunge out of sight in that horrible sink hole, someone materialized at her side. Powerful arms strapped around Angus’s shoulders, and a heavily muscled hand caught hold of the thick leather belt around his waist.

  Carmen blinked. She barely recognized Robbie at a time like this. “Hang on, mon. We’ll ha’e ye out o’ there.”

  He pursed his lips and heaved. The expression on Angus’s face changed. He stared up into his brother’s face, and the light of hope broke through his light eyes. He flung his other hand up and caught hold of Robbie’s arm.

  Both brothers set to work with a will. Carmen split her muscles helping them as best she could, and she and Robbie hauled Angus back from the brink. They slid him over the grass until he tumbled over behind them. He panted and sweated, and soot stained his socks where his legs hung over the flames.

  Robbie pushed him clear of the hole. “Go alang o’ ye.” He shoved Angus and Carmen back toward their friends. Carmen helped Angus to his feet. They both started to retreat away from the sink hole. Robbie turned over on the grass. He got on his hands and knees to stand up when the whole section of sod on which he knelt separated under him.

  The ground stuttered to a stop at a dangerous angle. Robbie cried out in startled shock. “Angus!”

  Angus and Carmen spun around in time to see that section of grass drop another few inches and stick. Robbie dared not crawl away for fear of breaking the whole section loose. He looked all around him for any way to escape.

  Angus ran to his side, but he, too, held back from touching that sod. He put out his hand. “Tak’ a hold, Rob.”

  Robbie raised his hand to grasp that lifeline when the whole section dropped beneath him. He barely got hold of Angus’s hand in time, and his whole weight plunged into the sink hole. His momentum yanked Angus off his moorings. All Robbie’s weight hung by one hand clasped around Angus’s wrist.

  The impact broke loose the crust on which Angus perched. His head and torso fell over the side. Carmen shrieked and grabbed his belt just in time, but she couldn’t hold both of them.

  Angus floundered for Robbie’s other hand. “Hang ontae me, Rob!”

  Robbie twirled over the licking flames. “Don’ let me go, Angus.”

  Angus panted and gasped. Flames touched Robbie’s feet. His socks smoldered, and the hair on his legs curled in the heat. He shrieked in terror.

  Sweat broke out all over their skin and made their fingers slip. Robbie’s kilt spun in the blasting hot air rising out of the rift. “Don’ let me go, Angus!” he cried.

  “Rob!” Angus gasped. “Don’ let go!”

  “I cinnae hold on,” Robbie cried.

  Carmen leaned back and pulled at Angus’s belt with all her might. Robbie would pull Angus into that hole along with himself if he didn’t let go soon, but Carmen didn’t have to tell Angus that.

  The flames curled all around Robbie. They blew Angus’s hair off his sweat-streaked face. Robbie’s fingers slipped another fraction of an inch on Angus’s wrist. “Rob!”

  “Angus, mon, pull me up!”

  “I’m tryin’ tae!” Angus wailed. “I cinnae….”

  They flailed and fought, but it was no use. Carmen got on her knees and grabbed a handful of Angus’s shirt around his shoulders. Over his shoulder, she saw a hideous face shape snarling out of the fire-infested pit. Before her eyes, two curling plumes of fire slithered out of the sink hole and entwined around Robbie’s ankles. They pulled him down into that gaping mouth.

  Angus flung his other arm forward. He jerked out of Carmen’s hands. She screamed in desperate fury to get another purchase on his clothes before he wriggled from her grasp. He caught both hands around Robbie’s wrists. Sweat oozed between his fingers. “Rob! Rob!”

  Robbie squealed in petrified horror. Those two vines of burning malice dragged him out of his brother’s hands toward his doom. “Angus!”

  Angus’s desperate cries changed to anguished hopeless pain. “Rob, no! Rob!”

  Carmen held on for dear life. She couldn’t lose Angus now. His fingers slipped another fraction, and the hair on his knuckles corkscrewed into tiny tendrils of smoke. “Rob!”

  The fire demons gave one last tug, and Angus’s fingers snapped closed on empty air. Robbie’s arms popped out of his hands. For one eternal moment, the brothers stared into each other’s eyes before Robbie whisked out of sight into the orange and black cauldron boiling so far below.

  Angus hung by the waist from
the crumbling sod and screamed at nothing. “Rob! Rob, noooo!”

  Carmen bit back sobs. Now that she no longer had to hold Robbie’s weight along with Angus’s, she wrestled him back from the precipice. He didn’t fight her, but he didn’t help her, either. His torso hung limp into the pit. His screams turned to broken sobs. “Rob! Rob!”

  Carmen got him back onto his chest before her strength failed utterly. She didn’t let go of him, but she couldn’t save him without help. The moment he felt her efforts flag, he rolled over on his side and crawled onto the grass next to her.

  He would have collapsed there, but a gut-wrenching rumble sounded out of the depths of the Earth itself. Their heads shot up, and one of the standing stones across the circle sank out of sight.

  Carmen laid hold of Angus, and this time, he scrambled away with her, back to solid ground where the others waited. They barely made it before a deafening boom shook the ground beneath their feet. Angus collapsed at his brothers’ feet and rolled over to look back. Carmen doubled over with her hands on her knees and watched in horror while the stones plunged one by one into the sink hole. The entire ring imploded on itself until nothing remained but a smoking crater.

  Silence descended over the landscape. The group stared at the wreck of their plans and hopes and dreams. Robbie lay somewhere down there. Nothing remained but to leave without him.

  Carmen stood up and caught her breath. She faced the brothers, their numbers now reduced to five including Ewan. Angus sat up on the grass at her feet, rested his forehead on his knees, and burst into tears.

  Chapter 17

  Angus buried his face in his arms and gave vent to all the pain and sorrow this wretched journey cost him. He didn’t care who saw him. He didn’t care if his brothers or Ewan or Carmen thought less of him.

  He didn’t want to do this anymore. He couldn’t face this challenge without Robbie. How could he ever live this down? In all their battles, he kept his brothers together. They lost their father and their land and their castle, but they always had each other.

  He hated Ewan now for not being his brother. He thanked Heaven Brody wasn’t here to see this tragedy. How could this happen? In all the long weeks of hardship, he never let himself believe—really believe—that he could ever lose one of his brothers.

  Why did it have to be Robbie that died? Why couldn’t it have been Callum or Jamie that fell in that sink hole? Why did it have to be the one man Angus depended on more than any other?

  He hated himself for even thinking that. How could he value one of his brothers more than the other? He did, though. He depended on Robbie in ways no one could understand. In some respects, Robbie was Angus’s leader. No one ever said so, but almost everybody knew it.

  Angus never ordered Robbie to do anything. Robbie deferred to Angus’s leadership, but he didn’t have to. If Robbie ever stood up to Angus, the group would follow Robbie. Angus never doubted that for an instant.

  He let his sobs rack him all over. He didn’t care anymore. He shed the tears the others couldn’t shed. Carmen alone stared down at him in mute shock at his outburst. Callum bit his lip to stop it quivering. Ewan stared into the distance beyond the sink hole. Jamie hugged his injured arm against his stomach to hold back quaking shudders all over him. His teeth chattered, and his eyes darted all over the landscape without seeing anything. Fergus blinked down at the ground.

  Angus raised his head and hugged his knees against his chest while the last sniffs came slower and slower. He wiped his face on his shoulder, but he couldn’t rise to his feet. He hated this field and everything in it. He hated everybody for seeing him break down. He hated the castle beyond that magical door.

  Most of all, he hated the witch for doing this to him. Maybe she didn’t command the fire demons to kill his brother, but she got him into this mess.

  He took out the book of the Fire Trilogy and set to work reading it as never before. The answer he sought wasn’t behind some door in any corner of this magical realm. The answer was in this book all along, and he had to find it. He had to break the curse and kill the witch if it was the last thing he did. He no longer cared about anything else. He would pay her back for this, and he would watch her suffer the way she made him and his people suffer.

  He bypassed the pages he already read and started from the beginning. He skimmed two pages of names of previous Kings who sat on the Phoenix Throne. The chronicle ended with Andrew Cameron, Angus’s great-grandfather. That must have been the man the witch originally attacked to rob him of the Phoenix Throne. The Camerons never got it back, and the castle and everyone in it hovered in the realm of ghosts ever since.

  He came to the listing of the Laws, but even those didn’t tell him much. They repeated a bunch of nonsense like the other Laws he read.

  The Law requires the King pay the Phoenix Tribute

  To find the thistle growing alone and sturdy on the distant hillside….

  What was the Phoenix Tribute? What Tribute did he have to pay to get the Throne back? He better find out before he tried to assume the Throne. One wrong move would throw the realm back into the witch’s hands, and all his efforts would come to nothing.

  He read further this time.

  The Law forbids the King from exacting Tribute from the Tribes.

  The Law lays out the Tribal boundaries and the Tributes therefrom.

  The Law forbids the King from exceeding these.

  The Law empowers the Forces to seek the penalty for transgressions.

  Could that be why the witch went after the King in the first place? Was she one of the Forces sent to punish him for infringing the law? Maybe one of these Kings—maybe even Andrew himself—got a little greedy in taking his Tributes. Maybe he saw profit in the wrong places, and the witch came to make him clean up his act.

  He shut the book. None of that mattered now. Only one road lay open to him, and that was the road to the witch’s chamber. The book told him he would find treasure under the bell ringer’s bed. If Carmen was right about the witch hiding in the utmost tower, they would find both in the same place.

  He got to his feet and started walking. He didn’t have to explain anything to these people, and they set off in his tracks, back to the door. He didn’t look back. Robbie was gone. Dwelling on that fact wouldn’t get him closer to the witch.

  When all this business ended, when he put the witch in the ground and rested in his own chamber, that’s when he would think about Robbie—not before.

  He crossed the field and entered the door. He found himself back in the same stone hall in the castle. His remaining brothers and Ewan and Carmen joined him, and he closed the door behind them.

  Carmen cast one imploring glance toward the closed door, but no one said anything. Angus strode down the hall, back to the landing, before he stopped and faced his party. “Weel, we’re back where we started and none the better fer’t. I propose we get up tae the bell tower richt off and no more delays. Whate’er treasure we find up there, or whate’er there is tae find, we’ll find it up there.”

  Callum nodded. Ewan looked away. Jamie and Fergus stared at Angus in silence.

  “It’s lik’ ye said, Jamie,” Angus went on. “The enchanted mirror did fall and break, and the book tells us tae go up the tower in that case. If anybody has any other suggestions, I’ll hear ‘em. Otherwise, we’ll go there.”

  Still, no one said anything until Carmen sighed. “You know better than any of us what to do. You’re the King. What you say, we’ll do.”

  Angus cast one more searing look around his ragtag group of followers. He was the King. He knew that now. He couldn’t depend on anybody to make the decisions for him. Maybe Robbie had to go to impress that fact on him once and for all.

  “Awricht. Now which one o’ ye found any stairways in this maze to tak’ us up there?”

  “What about the book?” Carmen asked. “Does it give you any idea of the layout of this castle?”

  “None,” he replied. “I guess the book was written
for people who knew their way around it wi’out bein’ told.”

  Carmen nodded. “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “Can ye remember which tower ye were in when ye saw the hag?” he asked. “We can forget that one, I reckon.”

  “If I remember correctly, I was closer to the main entrance and the grand staircase, so we’re nowhere near it. Any of these stairways should be more likely to get us there than that.”

  “I reckon so.” He pointed down the hall. “We might as weel start on one end and work alang until we find it.”

  He led the way to the far end of one of the winding halls. If he had to be the leader, he better stick to his own decisions. Even if they didn’t find the bell tower, working their way through this castle and finding their way around would take their minds off their recent loss.

  He no longer indulged in thinking about Robbie. He couldn’t. He had a job to do. He had to rally his remaining followers, even if they never accomplished their mission.

  After much hunting around, they found another narrow stone staircase winding around the outer wall of one of the many towers. They started climbing. The first time Fergus put out his hand to test one of the doors, Angus barked out, “Nae!”

  Fergus jumped. “I dinnae mean ought….”

  Angus turned away. “Ne’er ye mind that. Come on.”

  Carmen followed on Angus’s heels. She set an example for all the others. She never gave up, and even when she questioned, she always put him in the lead.

  The stairway ended in another wooden platform high in the tower’s lofty tip. From there, the party could see the pointed roof above their heads, but no bell. This wasn’t the place they wanted.

  Angus took a firm grip on himself and made everyone walk all the way back down to the main landing. They found another stairway and spent hours ascending another tower with the same result.