Bricrui (The Forgotten: Book 2)

Bricrui

(The Forgotten: Book 2)

Laura R Cole

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Laura R Cole

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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 much. 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.”