Storm Warned (The Grim Series)

by Dani Harper

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Dani Harper

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477827925

  ISBN-10: 1477827927

  Cover design by Jason Blackburn

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014955022

  To Dad, who encouraged my first submitted work when I was barely fourteen. It was a letter to the local newspaper, and when it was published, I remember the incredible thrill of seeing my name in print. The biggest thrill, however, was when you told me I had a way with words. If I do, I’m certain that it came from you.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.

  —Plato

  Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.

  —Plato

  ONE

  Beddgelert, Snowdonia Mountains, Wales

  1820

  A strange horn sounded, deep and long, the notes bouncing off the mountain slopes and echoing down the valley. Something about the odd tone, the bell-like timbre, sent a shiver down Caris Dillwyn’s back and made her redouble her efforts.

  She had one last sin to accomplish.

  The ash tree’s exposed roots made kneeling awkward, especially in long woolen skirts, but after a dozen years of practice, she was used to it. She was grateful that the forest floor wasn’t muddy today as she carefully placed the battered fiddle case inside the half-rotted trunk. She gave the wooden box an extra push to make certain it would stay in its familiar hiding place, then scrambled to her feet and brushed the dirt from her clothes. The guilt, however, could not be so easily swept from her mind, and she sighed. A whole afternoon wasted when I should have been working. Surely that was an extra sin even though her day’s chores had been done early, and she would work several more hours when she got back to the farm. Usually she came to the woods only at dusk, but the rare sunny afternoon had beckoned her. For the first time in a very long time, she’d said yes.

  And oh, how she’d enjoyed it, even though the pleasure likely made her list of misdeeds even longer.

  As an extra precaution, Caris gathered handfuls of last year’s leaves and piled them at the base of the tree to cover the hollow spot. She would take no chances on losing her one and only treasure, her great-grandfather’s forbidden fiddle.

  The plaintive horn sounded again. A strange time of year for a hunting party, she thought. But the wealthy do as they please. And sometimes they pleased to holiday in the little stone village of Beddgelert, where Prince Llywelyn the Great had once kept his sporting lodge. Such guests were more devoted to drinking and didn’t usually venture far in search of game, certainly not this high up the mountainside. How strange that the sound seemed to come from somewhere above her . . . A trick of the echo, she chided herself. But she couldn’t deny that the call of the horn was unusual in its tone, if not its origin. A hunting horn signaled that a quarry had been sighted. It beckoned both riders and hounds. Its call put a thrill in the blood and caused the heart to leap with excitement in both man and beast.

  But this horn invited no joyful response. There was something ominous in its voice, a warning rather than an exultation. She thought of the preacher’s sermons about the book of Revelations, the great trumpets that heralded sorrows and judgments, and the reaping down of sinners . . .

  Sinners like her.

  Her stocky cob, named Eira for his snow-white coat, seized her jacket sleeve with strong teeth and tugged hard. His rubbery lips left flecks of chewed grass behind. “That was quite unnecessary.” She scolded him without heat, however, and was already putting a sure foot in the stirrup. She mounted easily, sitting comfortably astride even though her stockinged legs were nearly exposed to the knee. (And was that a sin, as well, if there was no one to see?) Thank goodness she’d grown up on a farm, and not on some upper-class estate. Try as she might, she simply could not imagine trying to curl herself around a sidesaddle.

  Eira was normally steady as a rock. Now, however, the pony stamped his feet impatiently, then abruptly lurched down the winding mountain path at an awkward trot without her urging. It wasn’t like him at all. He’d been content enough to graze the afternoon away while Caris practiced old bardic ballads, wistful songs of farewell and lost love, and lively Celtic reels. She even dared a bawdy song she’d overheard outside the Royal Goat last week. As usual her da had stopped at the pub for just a pint—which always turned into several—leaving Caris outside to keep an eye on their wagon. Could she help it if she overheard a shanty through the open windows? The randy lyrics had reddened her cheeks: “I wish I was in bed with the captain’s daughter . . .” Yet her fingers had twitched all the same, anxious to apply the bow to the old fiddle and try the tune’s rollicking rhythm for herself. Without its scandalous words, of course—she had faults enough already. The local preacher sermonized often about the devilish nature of music played purely for enjoyment, and hadn’t she spent countless hours over the years doing exactly that? There was no help for it, though. The music seemed to bubble up inside her like a lively spring of achingly cool water, ever-flowing and impossible to contain.

  But contain it she must, at least when she was at home. There Caris tried to remember to sing only hymns within her father’s hearing. But all too often, she’d be moving the sheep or gathering eggs or forking out hay, and a merry folk song would simply spring from her lips. That’s when the lecturing began. Music be given to man that he might praise his Creator, said Da, echoing the stern sentiment of their preacher. And naught else. But drunk or sober, Dafydd Dillwyn would never raise a hand to her. Instead, she’d end up in her room or, much more likely, with more work to squeeze into an already long day.

  Once in a while, however, when her gruff father was well into his cups, he seemed a different person entirely—perhaps the one he’d been before his beloved wife had died and left him with a tiny girl child to care for. Sometimes he’d even use his fine baritone voice to share some of the old songs he remembered, ones that had once been handed down through generations, music all but lost to time and the church’s strict influence. The Welsh language
survived both the English and the church, he’d say, thumping the tabletop with his thick-fingered fist and making the ale slosh from his tankard, but its true song did not, and so Wales is naught but a bird without wings.

  The following day, when he was sober (and no doubt contrite), it was strictly hymns for him—and therefore for her as well. She had nothing against them. Some were pretty enough, and a few even utilized simple folk tunes. But to her musical heart, they seemed both limited and limiting. Of course, it could only be another sin to think like that . . . As for her stern father, she knew he loved her in his way. His lectures about music were driven by concern that she wouldn’t attract a good husband with her seeming lack of piety—and sure enough, here she was, long past twenty and not a suitor in sight. A spinster, a ddibriod, as some wags in the congregation whispered.

  Caris told herself she didn’t mind a bit, that she was much too busy to be lonely, and most of the time it was even true. She had her father to care for, as well as the farm—and the more Da drank, the more both needed her. Besides, she reasoned, wasn’t it better to be alone than be wed to someone who couldn’t understand her soul-deep need to create music? It had pulsed through her as long as she could remember, and even singing didn’t assuage it fully.

  The discovery of the precious ffidil at the bottom of an old trunk when Caris was ten had changed everything. She knew better than to show the instrument to her father—at best, he’d make her put it back. At worst, he might take it away or even destroy it. Musicians and bards, according to the preacher, were heathens, the devil’s servants for certain. And so hiding the fiddle had been her greatest sin to that point.

  Caris’s next transgression, however, had been her most daring—to visit the Romani, the Kale, and ask them not only to teach her to play the instrument, but also to share their songs with her. The Gypsies camped in the high forest above the Dillwyn’s isolated farm every year, and although the preacher had nothing good to say about the travelers, most of the Beddgelert farmers were glad enough to see them. The men mended roofs on barns and houses and sheared sheep. Their women sold bright dyes of every color, made from plants they’d gathered on their travels. What Caris liked best was that the Kale played a great deal of Celtic music—including Welsh music—around their campfires at night.

  Perhaps it was fitting that the free Romani should be the keepers of Wales’s heritage, preserving the old songs and daring to play them in the open air. Caris didn’t know if her country would ever want its music again, but she surely did, and any other tunes she could learn as well. Irish, Scottish, English, and more—the Gypsies knew them all, plus haunting tunes from Europe that thrilled her blood. And so she’d begun a secret life. She still worked long, hard hours on their hillside farm, but at night, when Da was well and truly feddw (strange that the preacher had few complaints about ale and spirits!), she headed for the forest with the fiddle under one arm. In the other hand, she carried buttermilk or oatcakes to trade for music lessons, tunes, and songs.

  Persisting in a bad habit was undoubtedly an evil all its own, but she sometimes wondered whether it was a new sin each time, or just a large one overall. Whichever it was, long after the Gypsies left each season, she continued to visit the forest for as long as the mountain weather would allow. There she would play to her heart’s content without fear of anyone overhearing her. The first few years, she’d been afraid that Da would wake and find her gone, and what could she say that would make a lick of sense to him? He’d be certain that she had a lover—or was just plain daft.

  Would he prefer to think that, rather than know what I’m really doing?

  As time passed, however, Da began to drink earlier in the day. The farm did well enough under Caris’s management, and her father conceded more of the business of it to her until she ran it all by herself. It was harder to find the time for her fiddle, but still, she seldom chose her bed at the end of a fourteen-hour day. What did she care if she spent her days bone-tired? Better that than doing without her music, which had grown by leaps and bounds until she improved upon the old songs and began to create new ones, tunes that were less and less tame by the day.

  Ballads and lays and reels seemed to burst forth from the old instrument with a life of their own until she danced as she played . . . She not only led two lives, but she had become two people. One was the hardworking, businesslike Caris, who pulled lambs from birthing ewes, raked out pony stalls, took sheep to market, sold wool, and bargained keenly.

  And the other Caris? She could only shake her head. Who is this wild woman who leaps about in the woods, making music for only the trees to hear?

  The dire hunting horn was definitely closer now, and her sensible cob extended his stocky body into a fast canter. Caris frowned as she adjusted her seat to his rapid pace, yet she didn’t dare rein him in. Though her da had often said, “’tis dangerous to run a horse to his barn,” something was terribly wrong if Eira was so bothered. But what?

  Although the Dillwyn farm was isolated, she’d explored this thick forest on the hills high above the valley since she was a small child. There were no wild boars left anywhere in the country, never mind here, no fierce animals bigger than a badger or a fox, and Eira never spooked. Now the forest seemed far darker than it should. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d stayed too long, lost in her music, but a break in the trees revealed dark clouds overhead that doused the bright daylight as surely as water doused a fire. It was a long way back to the farm, and she could find her way there blindfolded if need be—yet a mountain storm was nothing to trifle with.

  A flash of lightning half blinded her. Thunder crashed like the world was ending, and her steady, dependable Eira did something unheard of: he threw his rider and bolted for home.

  By the time Caris got her breath back, her white pony was long gone. She got to her feet slowly and with care. Nothing broken or sprained, thankfully, but she’d have some bumps and bruises on the morrow. The wind had picked up, thrashing the limbs of the trees, and above the din, the mournful horn wailed like a lost soul. She’d never heard the like of it, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

  It’s coming this way.

  Caris saw nothing unusual in the dim forest. The storm above, bearing down on her with incredible speed, was something else entirely. The blackened clouds roiled like an angry sea, lit within by flares of unnatural lightning—green and blue and vivid mauve.

  I’ll never make it to the farm. But staying among the trees in such weather was a poor plan. There was little other shelter to be had—unless she went to the dolmen. On their way to their campsite each year, the Romani waved bits of red cloth at the ancient stone structure and spat in its direction, giving it as wide a berth as the rutted forest paths would allow. Evil or not, Caris hoped the great white capstone, supported by three half-buried boulders, would shield her, and she ran as fast as she could in its direction. Her heart was in her throat as the wind whipped her long black hair free and yanked at her clothing with invisible fingers. Lightning struck behind her, close enough that she could feel the ground shake, and she nearly lost her footing.

  As the clap of thunder died away, instinct made her cast a glance over her shoulder, and what she saw did make her stumble and fall: great coal-black hounds of monstrous size were bounding in her direction, their red and glowing eyes revealing their identity: grims!

  Panicked, she scrambled to her feet. The dark fae dogs, called barghest or gwyllgi by some, were said to foretell one’s death, but they weren’t the most frightening thing she saw. Following the hounds were forty or fifty riders—and their horses’ hooves didn’t touch the earth!

  She was completely surrounded by the otherworldly company before she could scream.

  Caris choked down her fear and forced herself to stand still, her hands in front of her gripping each other so hard that they hurt. She needed the pain to help keep her wits together. All these years she’d thought the W
ild Hunt was just a story to frighten children into being good, and that the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair Ones, were nothing but make-believe. She knew, however, that many of her neighbors believed them to be real—real enough that they set offerings of bread and milk on their porches at night to avert fae pranks and beg their favor. Even the preacher must have thought them real, as he occasionally spoke out against the evils of consorting with demons and faeries. Perhaps he thought them to be one and the same. Whatever they were, no one wanted to actually meet them.

  But here she was.

  The storm boiled overhead, and chains of lightning shot through the inky clouds. Several of the massive hounds paced in front of her, all of them at least as high as her waist, growling low in their great shaggy throats and occasionally showing their long white teeth. Yet Caris instinctively knew that the dogs were unlikely to attack unless commanded. It was the Fair Ones themselves she had to be wary of, as they towered over her on their gleaming mounts—though it was difficult to remain on her guard. Tall and slender, the Tylwyth Teg were so beautiful that it actually hurt to look at them. Their ethereal faces were exquisitely sculpted and seemingly lit from within. Their iridescent eyes, never a single hue for more than a moment, glittered with countless secrets, and their long white hair fell free in wild, wind-stirred waves. As in the old stories, the fae wore brilliant colors, reds and blues and greens more vivid than anything found in nature. Their leader wore riding leathers the deep, rich hue of communion wine, trimmed with finely wrought silver.

  Caris felt a strange longing well up as she studied her captors, a desire to look upon the Fair Ones always despite the ache it caused within her human heart. Perhaps they were accustomed to being admired, for the fae returned her gaze without expression. Even their horses were like nothing Caris had ever seen. Long-limbed and glossy-coated, they danced in place on polished hooves. Their great eyes showed more than a little interest in Caris, but the natural curiosity of a mortal horse was lacking—and so was the friendliness. Instead, there was an icy anticipation, as if the fae horses were keen for the signal to chase her down. It was then that she noticed that several of the creatures had tusks or fangs, and a few even boasted horns!