Betrayal in the Highlands (5 page)

Beneath the table, Becky snored lightly.

“I, I don’t understand,” Edmund said. “Back, back in the … in the pits … back in the pits, you said … I mean … you’re always so happy!”

Pond snorted, and then a genuine smile spread over his dirty face.

“That’s the funny thing.” He wiped the snot from his nose and the tears from his eyes. “It took the Hiisi … it, it took the goblins to teach me what’s important in life.” He peered at the mostly empty bottle in his hand and then set it on the table amid the pile of priceless gems and jewelry.

“I’d love to get married again,” he said. “To have somebody to hold and to love and to take care of, even in old age … that’s what I think magic really is.”

For a moment they both sat staring at the wine bottle. Then Pond patted Edmund’s knee.

“Don’t spend too much of your life pining for something you can’t have. Or something that never existed. Life is too short, Ed. You have to look for happiness inside yourself ’cause you aren’t going to find it in somebody else.”

He yawned, loud and long.

“It’s time for bed.” Pond pushed himself to his unsteady feet. “I’ve been dreaming about sleeping in a real bed, with real sheets and an actual pillow, for ages. And tonight I’m sleeping the sleep of the dead.”

He wobbled to a door that, except for its gold knob, blended perfectly into the wood-paneled walls.

“Goodnight, Ed. Think about what I said, but don’t stay up too late. After what we’ve been through, you deserve to get all the sleep you can.”

“Pond—”

Pond turned around. His eyes, though clouded with drunkenness and fatigue, shone with the same peace that seeped out of his grin.

“Thanks for everything,” Edmund said.

Pond took a slight, unsteady bow. “It’s been an adventure, hasn’t it? But every day is an adventure, no matter where you are or what your situation. Get some sleep, Ed. You deserve it.”

Still stunned by Pond’s confession, Edmund watched his pit mate go into the bedroom. “Goodnight, Pond.”

PART TWO

Chapter Five

Edmund groaned and cracked open his bleary eye. The first thing he noticed was the wedding ring he’d found in the troll’s lair, its sizable diamond sparkling inches away from his nose. Just beyond the ring stretched the underside of his grand canopy bed.

He groaned again, the liquid contents of his stomach threatening to erupt.

He swallowed; his throat felt like sandpaper.

His head pounded.

“Ugh!”

Something licked his hand and then began to chew on his fingers.

With an effort, Edmund lifted his head out of the puddle of wine-scented drool. He turned, the room spinning as he moved.

Behind him sat Becky, tongue hanging out, tail whipping the air. She lowered her front legs, ears pulled back.

Oh no!

“Don’t—” he whispered to her.

Forty pounds of puppy came crashing down upon his head, nipping at his upraised forearms.

“Stop … sit …” Edmund fended off her playful attack. “Down.”

Becky barked.

“Stop!”

Edmund covered his throbbing ears.

With her foe’s defenses lowered, Becky lunged, licking and nipping at Edmund’s filthy hair. He knocked her away. She barked again and then latched on to his forearm, growling.

Damned dog!

Distract her!

“B-B-Beck … Becky … Becky,” he said. “Want to go out? Want to go outside and play?”

Becky let go and sprang back, quivering with anticipation.

Oh, that was stupid of me to say.

She barked and barked and barked.

Face down on the floor, Edmund clasped his hands tighter over his ears, wishing the hammering in his head would go away.

“Please … stop.”

But she didn’t stop.

Where’s Pond? He could take her out and throw a stick or something.

Didn’t he say something earlier? Or
…
or was that a dream?

He tried to call for Pond, but Becky’s eager barks drowned out his thin voice.

“Okay, okay,” he croaked. “We’ll go out. Just … just give me a minute.”

He slid his hands underneath his shoulders, took a deep breath, and heaved himself onto his knees. The world seemed to slosh around him.

Ugh!

Becky danced as he fought his way to his feet.

For a moment he teetered, contemplating how much better he felt when he was affixed to the cool, non-moving, parquet floor.

Growling, Becky lowered her front end, ready to pounce.

“All right … all right.” He shuffled uneasily into the parlor, rubbing his spit-dampened face. His tongue tasted like the bottom of a fuzzy wineglass.

So much for celebrating your freedom.

I’m never going to drink again.

Becky bounded ahead to the front door. Her excited gaze bounced from the crystal knob to Edmund and back to the knob again. She barked.

Edmund stopped.

There was something on the floor—something shredded to pieces.

A letter?

Maybe it’s from Molly! Maybe she really does want me. Maybe she realizes what a mistake she made marrying Norb and how I was the one who rescued her, not him!

Don’t be stupid.

Holding his aching head, he lurched to the front door and scooped up the pieces of ivory-colored paper, Becky nipping at his fingers.

Unfolding a sliver of stationery damp with puppy slobber, he found firm yet elegant writing in black ink. Grand flourishes accompanied many of the letters. He read the words “well” and “me.”

“Wait a second. Molly can’t write. Neither can Norb. He can barely read.”

Maybe she had somebody write this for her
…
a scribe, perhaps.

Edmund smoothed out another piece, the smudged words “Eryn Mas is” appearing through Becky’s sticky saliva.

Maybe she had a scribe write it for her when she was in Eryn Mas. They had to go there for Norb to become Lord of the Highlands.

He cringed.

“Lord Norbert. I should have shoved the Star down his damned throat.”

You were trying to take the high road.

I’d like to kill him.

Kill
…
?

He thought about Pond again.

Did he say that he—

Becky barked and pawed at the door, where numerous claw marks had already been raked across the dark wood. Edmund ignored her. He separated yet another mangled portion of the letter and attempted to find a piece that fit with it.

This is no good. I need a table.

Clearing a spot, Edmund pushed aside the mounds of treasure on the glass table in front of the sofa. Thousands of rubies and emeralds and diamonds fell, clinking, onto the empty wine bottles cluttering the floor.

Becky barked.

“Give me a second, will you?”

Start with the edges. Then work your way inward.

He put together two pieces that formed the upper right-hand corner of the letter.

Becky barked.

“Hush!”

Smoothing out more fragments, Edmund wiped away Becky’s slobber, smearing several words in the process.

“Damn it!”

Be careful!

Becky barked again, this time adding a low snarl.

“Who would write me?”

It has to be Molly. Who else would?

You’re an idiot. How would she know where to find you? You just got here yesterday. It has to be from somebody local.

Maybe it’s from the lady of the manor. That makes sense.

Maybe
…

Becky dug at the door, rattling its hinges.

“All right!” Edmund shouted, immediately regretting the volume of his voice.

Becky whined. The rattling quickened.

“Half a moment, I said.”

He shuffled through the pieces; there were scores of them, all wet and stuck together.

There’s at least a couple pages here. Why would the lady of the manor write a long letter? She’d just slip a note under the door and ask to meet with me.

Maybe it’s from somebody else.

Who?

Holding his splitting forehead in one hand, he searched the pile of shredded paper with the other. He found a piece with the word “you” on it, underlined twice.

“Damned dog! If I can’t—”

There was a tinkling of running water.

Then an acrid smell met Edmund’s nostrils.

He turned toward the door. A yellow puddle was growing under Becky, soaking slowly into an elegant rug.

Chapter Six

Edmund sat in a gazebo not far from the main manor house. On the bench next to him, weighed down by many small stones, eighty-three tattered pieces of the mysterious letter had been arrayed in long columns. As he moved the scraps around the bench like pawns on a chessboard, screaming seagulls circled in the brilliant blue sky, drifting along on the gentle coastal breezes that constantly fluttered the papers’ edges.

Across the expansive front lawn, Becky chased grey squirrels darting this way and that into the many topiaries dotting the estate.

“Damned dog,” Edmund grumbled.

He fit two pieces of the letter together. They seemed to form the last line.

“… hear from you with all due haste,” he read aloud.

He examined other fragments he’d placed together.

“… at our last meeting …”

At our last meeting? Who have I met recently?

Nobody. At least nobody locally. The only person we’ve met was that doorman yesterday, and he wouldn’t write a long letter like this.

“… hear from you with all due haste,” he read again.

It sounds urgent.

Urgent
…

“Who would know where I am? We just got here!”

Obviously somebody knew you were headed this way.

And if somebody knows we’re here, then Kravel and Gurding might know as well.

“Kravel!”

He stared at the yellow-striped bees buzzing from tulip to tulip.

Would Kravel try to fake a letter from Molly, perhaps attempting to lure Edmund to some isolated place where the goblins would be waiting? Maybe. But such a trick didn’t frighten him. He knew Molly too well. He knew her tone and the words she used. He knew everything about her. Kravel couldn’t fool him in a million years.

You didn’t know she would marry Norb.

He didn’t want to think about that.

Turning his attention back to the letter, Edmund fingered a scrap that contained the phrase: “… in peri …”

In peril?

Maybe Molly’s in peril! Maybe Kravel recaptured her. It wouldn’t be difficult if Norb were stupid enough to return to Rood without first—

If she were captured again, would you attempt to save her?

His heart said “yes” without thinking. But then he remembered her hanging on to Norb, kissing him after they had rescued her from the Undead King’s tower.

After
I
rescued her, not Norb!

She just wants to be friends. She told you that as plain as day.

“Just friends …”

No words or weapon had ever hurt him more.

He studied the mauled letter.

It probably isn’t ‘peril.’ It could be a hundred other words
…
‘period,’ ‘peripheral’
…
‘perithecium.’

Who would use the word ‘perithecium’ in a letter? Besides, you’re missing the obvious fact that nobody could have possibly known you were coming here. Something’s wrong! This letter can’t be good.

Perhaps the ‘i’ is actually part of an ‘r.’ Perr? Perry? It could also be part of an ‘n’ or an ‘m.’

Rubbing his temple, Edmund wished he had something to drink. A glass or two of wine would help him concentrate, not to mention relieve the pulsating in his head.

He scrutinized the letter’s ending line again.

“… hear from you with all due haste.”

He attempted to piece together more of its edges without success. Apparently a great deal of the letter had found its way into Becky’s stomach.

“Damned dog! If this is from Molly, I’ll—”

Far to his left, Becky exploded with another fit of barking. She raced around the base of an alabaster statue of the goddess Alaña, leaping at a chattering squirrel who’d taken refuge in the goddess’s upraised hand, when somebody spoke behind Edmund.

“It is such a—”

Edmund sprang to his feet, shouting, fists ready to strike. An elderly woman of substantial girth and elegance gasped.

“My word!” she exclaimed, holding her corpulent chest as she caught her breath. “I’m … I’m terribly sorry. Mr. Edmund, is it? I … I had no intention … I just wanted to introduce myself. My dear!” She fanned her pale face.

“Baroness Melody?” Edmund lowered his clenched hands, his heart skipping several beats. He remembered to bow. “N-n-no … no, it, it was my fault. I … I didn’t hear you approach. I’m sorry. Are you … are you all right?”

The Baroness smoothed out her billowing dress with one hand, her ivory cane clutched in the other.

“My dear, dear Mr. Edmund … it has been ages since I have ever been able to sneak up on anybody.” She chuckled, her breaths gradually subsiding to more even puffs. “I didn’t mean to startle you!”

Scooping up the paper scraps, Edmund shoved them into his pockets.

“Nor I you, Baroness.” He brushed the pebbles away and gestured to the bench he’d been sitting on. “Please d-d-do … do me the honor. And thank, thank you for allowing us to stay. Your guesthouse is exquisite.”

Baroness Melody sat, continuing to fan herself as fat beads of sweat trickled down her temple. “It’s an honor to have somebody of your abilities in my humble home.”

My abilities?

“I’m … I’m terribly sorry.” Edmund sat next to her. “I didn’t m-m-mean to raise my hands to you like that. It’s just that m-m-my, my mind … my mind was a bit preoccupied. Please forgive me.”