The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3)

by E. G. Foley

  “Good idea.”

  Then he and Isabelle followed the younger two, arriving a few minutes later at the ruins of the old church or abbey or whatever it once had been.

  It must have been an impressive structure in its heyday, Jake thought. What was left of the walls had pointed gothic arches and pillars with ornately carved stone tops. Pieces of the ancient slate roof had long since caved in and crushed some of the rotting pews.

  “There’s rubble everywhere, so be careful where you step,” Archie warned, inspecting the ruins through the Vampire Monocle. “Don’t touch the walls, either. This place is falling down.”

  “I wonder what happened here,” Isabelle murmured.

  “Look! Some of the stained-glass windows survived. Over there.” Dani pointed to the east wall. “Let’s go see!”

  “You’re not going to see anything through them,” Jake said. “It’s too dark.”

  “There’s moonlight,” she replied.

  As the others began picking their way through the ruined nave to go and see the ancient stained-glass, Jake went off alone to have a chat with the resident ghost.

  It did not take long to find the spirit out on the old church grounds, but Jake stopped cold when he saw it.

  Blimey. A chill ran down his spine. He had never seen a ghost in this condition before.

  Namely, without a head.

  Even the headless traitor ghost he’d seen when he’d been sent to Newgate Prison had had his head with him, and could put it on or take it off at will. But this poor soul…

  He winced, watching in confusion as the ghost bumped around into the ruins of the open cloister, zooming this way and that like it was lost. It wore the long, simple tunic of a monk or friar with a cord tied around its waist. Jake suspected it had been here for an awfully long time.

  Oh, blazes. The pitiful thing lowered itself onto its hands and knees and began feeling around in the grass, trying to find its missing head.

  “Uh, hullo?” he called. “Are you all right?”

  It did not respond.

  He moved a few steps closer. “Do you need any help?”

  But still, nothing.

  Then he realized why. It didn’t have any ears. It couldn’t hear him. Couldn’t see him, couldn’t talk to him, either, without its mouth.

  It probably wasn’t even aware that he was there.

  Oh, this is terrible, Jake thought, wishing there was something he could do. Nobody should have to go through eternity without their bloomin’ head.

  Before long, the ghost gave up its search for its missing cranium, as it had surely done too many times to count over the passing centuries.

  Jake looked on, the hairs on his nape standing on end as the spirit’s bluish-gray shoulders slumped with disappointment. Climbing unsteadily to its feet, it went sailing back toward the church, bumping into things now and then along the way.

  The poor thing. Jake followed as it floated back into the stone shell of the ruined church.

  The others turned when he stepped into the wide opening that had once been the doorway.

  Dani beckoned to him with an air of excitement. “Jake, come and see! You’re not going to believe this!”

  “Bit busy,” he replied, hurrying after the ghost as it crossed the church.

  The headless apparition made its way across the rock-strewn nave to a small side alcove that was somehow still standing. It glided away, disappearing through the ornate stone archway that served as entrance to the alcove.

  Still following, Jake scrambled over fallen chunks of roof and stone pillars in his effort to keep up with the headless monk ghost.

  “Where are you going?” Dani persisted.

  Jake didn’t know where the ghost was leading him, so he gave no answer. The others grew curious and followed.

  With his head start, Jake was the first to arrive under the ancient archway into the side alcove.

  To his dismay, the ghost had already disappeared.

  But what he did find astounded him.

  Inside the alcove were three large marble tombs, bathed in the beams of pearly moonlight slanting in through the gothic window.

  Each pale stone sarcophagus was elevated on its own rectangular dais. Each also had a white marble statue carved on top of it, depicting a sleeping person—a knight, a lady, and a priest—their stone-carved hands folded in prayer.

  Jake stared in wonder. Eerie. He knew that back in London, lots of dead folk were buried in the great cathedrals like St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey, with its Poet’s Corner, where many of England’s greatest writers were laid to rest. But he had hardly expected to find ancient tombs in this small, time-forgotten chapel—probably the tombs of his own ancestors who had built the place, he realized, moving closer.

  It seemed logical to assume that the lifelike statue on top of each grand coffin was a three-dimensional portrait of the dead person buried inside.

  Which meant he was looking at likeness of his own long-dead ancestors.

  Jake quickly circled the coffins, searching until he found engravings on the sides of the platforms to tell him who they were. Unfortunately, he could not decipher them.

  “Hey, Archie!” he called over his shoulder. “You read Latin, don’t you?”

  “Sure do!” the boy genius answered as the others joined him in the alcove.

  “Criminy,” Dani muttered when she saw what Jake had found.

  Archie came over to stand beside him at the sarcophagus of the knight. The knight statue wore a funny pointed helmet, his shield and broadsword resting on his chest.

  “What does it say?” Jake asked, pointing to the Latin words engraved along the side of the dais.

  Archie leaned closer, reading the Latin inscription in the dark with the help of the Vampire Monocle. “Great Euclid, Jake! This is Sir Reginald himself—the page boy who found the gryphon egg!”

  They all stared in amazement at the tomb.

  “Was Sir Reginald the first Earl of Griffon?” Dani asked after a moment.

  Archie shook his head. “No, if he’s a ‘Sir,’ that means he only got to the rank of knight or maybe baronet during his lifetime. After that, his descendents would’ve had to be promoted to Barons, and then Viscounts before they worked their way up to Earls through their service to the Crown. That’s generally how it works.”

  “I see.” Dani grinned and elbowed Jake. “So, if you play your cards right, maybe you could get promoted to Duke when you grow up.”

  Jake snorted, then he wandered over to the lady’s coffin. “So, would this be Sir Reginald’s wife, then?”

  Archie followed and read the inscription. “Must be. Her name is Lady Agatha Everton.”

  “Agatha?” Jake murmured.

  “Good medieval name.” Archie nodded. “I’m glad we came up here and got a chance to pay our respects.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So, what about the priest?” Dani asked, nodding toward the third sarcophagus.

  “Monk, actually,” Archie replied.

  That was probably the headless ghost, Jake thought, but he remained behind for a moment, lingering by the knight and his lady.

  Now that he knew who they were, the pair of sleeping marble statues of his long-dead ancestors brought back an uneasy memory of something he had seen on his last adventure. Something that still didn’t make any sense.

  When he had sneaked into Valhalla to help his friend, Snorri the Norse Giant, Jake had glimpsed into Odin’s crystal pool, which showed the king god images of what was going on in all the Nine Worlds.

  What Jake had seen in the pool’s reflection had unnerved him. A vision of his parents—who had supposedly been murdered when he was baby. He was sure he recognized them from their portrait hanging over the fireplace mantel back at Griffon Castle.

  The image in the pool had shown them, not dead and buried, but sleeping, rather like the knight and his lady, inside two glass coffins side by side in some dark place.

  Jake didn’t know wha
t to make of it.

  Thinking of that memory sent a chill down his spine. He could not be sure if Odin’s crystal pool showed true things or the things you only wished were true.

  He was afraid to hope there might still be some faint chance that his parents were alive somewhere, somehow.

  After all, the only person who had ever claimed they were not quite as dead as everybody thought was the sea-witch, Fionnula Coralbroom.

  But Uncle Waldrick’s treacherous ally would have said anything to save herself. Only a fool would trust her.

  “’Hoy, Jakey, come and look at this one!” Dani beckoned him over to the monk’s tomb. “Archie says he’s from a later century than those two.”

  He went over.

  “Sir Reginald and Lady Agatha were from the twelfth century, but this one died in the early 1400s,” Archie told them.

  Jake nodded. “Am I related to him, too?”

  “I don’t think so. His name is Brother Colwyn, and er, the inscription says he was murdered right here on the premises of the church and its community of Cistercians. I believe they used to call them White Monks. Anyway, if he wasn’t a relative, I’d assume the murder was why they had him buried here.”

  “Brother Colwyn,” Jake murmured. “I’m betting that’s our ghost.”

  Dani and Archie looked at him in surprise; he told them what he had seen.

  “Did you speak to him about the black fog?” Isabelle asked, hands in her coat pockets.

  “Er, no. He was in no condition to answer me.” And when he told them why, all three reacted with gasps and low shrieks of horror—which, naturally, Jake rather enjoyed.

  “That’s awful!” Dani exclaimed. “Maybe we should try to find his head for him.”

  “It’s only been missing for, what, five hundred years?” Jake said skeptically.

  “How do you take off a ghost’s head, anyway?” Archie wondered aloud.

  “No idea.”

  “Sounds like there must have been dark magic involved,” Isabelle murmured, which immediately brought back the ominous pall of fear they had only just started to forget.

  Jake frowned. At least her answer made sense. Bad business, black magic. The white kind was dangerous enough. Great-Great Aunt Ramona always told them magic was only to be used as a last resort, and even then, you could never be entirely sure there would not be unintended consequences.

  Jake shook off the gloomy mood. There were unicorns waiting out there somewhere for them. “Right,” he said. “So, what did you want to show me before?”

  “Oh, you’ve got to come and see!” Dani gripped his arm and started dragging him out of the alcove. “You’re not going to believe what we found. Don’t tell him!” she chided the others. “I want to see if he has the same reaction we did.”

  She led him back out into the rock-strewn nave, where they picked through the rubble to stand before one of the two remaining walls.

  Dani pointed up at the last stained-glass window that was somehow still intact. “Look like anybody you know?”

  Jake gazed at it.

  Only a little moonlight shone through the window, just enough to reveal the figure it portrayed: a white-robed male angel with nearly white-blond yellow hair, gold-tipped wings, and a knotted cord around his waist. He had sandals on his feet and a silver sword in his hand. Jake took a step closer, staring in fascination. Why, if you put that fellow in a black suit, top hat, and opera cloak…

  He turned to them, squinting in confusion. “Dr. Celestus?”

  “It is! It’s got to be him. I’d know him anywhere!” Dani declared, and well she should, since this was the very angel who had saved her life.

  “But that was just back in May,” Jake said. “This window must have been made over five centuries ago.”

  Isabelle shrugged. “I guess he’s older than he looks.”

  Puzzled by the thought that he might personally know an actual immortal being, Jake stared up at the stained-glass window a moment longer.

  The air of mystery around this night had definitely thickened.

  Still, they didn’t want to risk being gone too long and get in trouble with Derek and Helena. So they left the old church ruins and continued on with their nighttime trek across the countryside.

  It was time to find the unicorns.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Unicorn Hunt

  “Let’s try over there,” Isabelle suggested, pointing across the moonlit meadow.

  They agreed to this and marched on in their search, crossing to the far side of the field, where the path led into the woods again.

  “How long do you think this is going to take?” Dani asked.

  “More importantly, what snack will Snowdrop have made for us when we return?” Archie jested.

  The words had no sooner left his mouth, however, than the dark forest around them began to shake. The thunder of hoof beats filled the air.

  Dani gasped. “The unicorns! They’re coming!”

  “Where are they?” Jake cried. “I don’t see them!”

  “Me neither,” Archie said, glancing around anxiously through the Vampire Monocle.

  “Quick, you need to hide!” Isabelle ordered.

  “Where?” Jake asked.

  The sound seemed to be coming from all directions, making it impossible to guess which might be the safest way to run.

  “Isabelle, which way?” her brother demanded with dread in his voice. “I don’t fancy getting impaled tonight!”

  That quickly, it was too late.

  The unicorns burst into view at the top of the ridge just a few yards above them and came galloping out of the darkness straight at them through the trees, horns gleaming like a charge of cavalry sabers.

  Jake gasped at their overwhelming beauty, frozen in dread mingled with awe.

  “Dani! Put the boys between us. Hurry!” Isabelle ordered. “Take my hands to put them in a circle.”

  The girls quickly turned their backs to Jake and Archie, their hands joined. Isabelle, as Keeper faced the approaching herd, shouting at the animals as the four of them braced for impact.

  Jake was too scared to scream. The boys had never meant to meet the unicorns on the ground. Archie and he had expected to climb a tree nearby and look down on them from a safe vantage point while the girls went to pet them.

  His heart in his throat, Jake stayed close to Archie within the circle of the girls’ arms.

  Isabelle was speaking words Jake did not understand, holding her ground without showing fear as the whole mass of towering, horned horses came bearing down on her.

  It was like standing in the middle of a horseracing track. In the next second, the unicorns were practically on top of them.

  But somehow the herd split, swerving clear of them on either side with naught but a sure-footed change of lead. A few of the creatures snorted in annoyance, but they went streaming past the terrified cluster of kids as if they were no more than a large boulder in their path.

  Jake’s heart hammered as he saw the moonlight glimmer on those sleek, deadly horns, any one of which could have run him through like a sword.

  Indeed, with the four kids huddled in a ring, one unicorn taking a stab at them would have likely skewered at least a few of them at one go, like a shish kebab.

  “I can’t believe I’m seeing this,” Archie squeaked in terror, his voice barely audible over the thundering hoof beats and the agitated whinnies.

  “Don’t move,” Isabelle warned. “Dani, hold your ground.”

  The ten-year-old let out a frightened whimper, but she did not budge from protecting the boys. “Isabelle, get us out of here!”

  “Just…wait,” the Keeper answered. “Steady…”

  Jake stared in wonder as the unicorns barreled past, kicking up clods of dirt.

  Even though he was petrified, he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. They galloped by so close that he could feel the breeze of their passing.

  Their manes danced as they ran, their
tails streaming out behind them. The mares had a hint of pastel colors in their mane and tails; otherwise, they were every shade of white and ivory and silver. There were some smaller unicorns, colts and fillies, which must have been born this past spring. They were growing fast, though their little horns looked relatively harmless.

  As the herd swept by, barely seconds passing, it seemed like they might just be all right—until the stallion arrived. He was pure white and larger than the rest, and he clearly did not appreciate this intrusion on his turf. Unlike the mares, he stopped to confront them.

  Jake swallowed hard as the kingly beast skidded to a halt in front of Isabelle, then reared up, tossing his head angrily, as if to say, “Keeper, how dare you bring them here?”

  The mighty pearl-white stallion looked like he wanted to kill the boys to protect his mares and foals, but one look at the kingly creature and Jake almost didn’t care.

  The unicorns’ nearness was having a profound effect on him, putting him in a kind of serene, soothing trance, even though he knew he was in danger.

  Meanwhile, Isabelle spoke soothingly to the stallion, keeping her own body between the angry beast and the boys. “They mean you no harm,” she was saying. “They’re only children, they are not a threat…”

  Jake was barely listening. Unicorn magic was taking hold of him, quite the opposite of the gold fever he had experienced earlier in the Great Vault.

  He could feel the breeze from the herd still rushing past them on both sides in all their overwhelming beauty.

  The way the moonlight glistened on each pearly horn, the charm in each big, brown eye, and the velvet texture of their hides as they ran past entranced him.

  Even if one of them chose to kill him, he couldn’t help but think it might not be a bad way to go.

  All of his own badness from this day seemed washed away from him. All the hurt about disappointing Red and Derek and himself with his display of selfishness, it all felt forgiven, washed away by their presence.

  Even the fear he had experienced today—his phobia about being underground and the even more unsettling news about the animal attack on the miners, then finding the dead goblins…all that darkness dissolved like a night fog burned away by the morning sun.