Bricrui (The Forgotten: Book 2) (2 page)

Hunter fell silent, but held out his arms
once more. She sunk into them and Hunter was surprised by the
feeling of comfort that seemed to pass between them. After a few
moments, she tore herself away from the embrace.

“We should find somewhere to spend the night.
This forest isn’t exactly hospitable.”

“I know what you mean.”

They moved swiftly through the trees for a
while more, now searching for suitable spots, and soon came across
one. They made camp in silence, though Hunter couldn’t help but
steal glances every now and again at Katya as she gathered wood and
prepared the fire. It was hard to believe she was really here.

They finally had the arrangements to both
their satisfactions, though it had required some friendly
bickering, and they sat next to the fire to catch up in
earnest.

The hair on the back of Hunter’s neck
suddenly sprang to life and he looked around in alarm, just in time
to see Katya jerk suddenly.

“Bloody-” she swore as something hard
connected smartly with her head.

Hunter leapt to his feet as she collapsed,
but a split second later, pain burst from the back of his head as
well and the world dissolved into darkness.

*

Queen Layna looked out at the long line of
her subjects waiting to speak with her. In the wake of the attack
in which baby Phoenix had been stolen and she and King Gryffon left
in magical stasis, they had decided that it would be best if they
stayed at the palace. Seeing as how Lord Telvani had been scheming
right under their noses for so long, and had plenty of people
placed within the palace that were loyal only to him, it was a good
idea for them to be present to weed these out. It also gave Layna a
greater sense of security to have Phoenix in a well-guarded place
after her kidnapping. Unfortunately, it left the people with the
need to come to them rather than the two monarchs traveling the
countryside as they had been previously.

She sighed. This meant that she had the
tedious task of sitting in the gardens for hours at a time
listening to complaints. She wouldn’t let Princess Phoenix out of
her sight, so she figured that meeting with the people in the great
outdoors would at least allow the child to enjoy her day a little
bit. Plus, sitting near the Kiani Stones always made Layna
relax.

The next woman was being brought forward and
Layna smiled at her. She had been extremely concerned by the number
of people who had turned out the first day. She had announced that
she wanted to hear grievances from people who were concerned about
actions that had taken place in her name. The incident with Telvani
and the deeds which had been done in her name by his minions still
haunted her. He had used her royal Knights as a breeding ground for
his own misguided group, “the Faithful”, still looking to follow
the path of the Order and blood-magic. Therefore, she was
determined to find any more wrongdoings that may also have been
done in her name.

Luckily, however, most who came here had
small complaints – the latest woman included – which really had
nothing to do with secret dealings of Lord Telvani. Rather, they
tended to be more mundane matters that the people simply thought
were too unfair of life to have dealt them, without something evil
having interfered. Layna quickly took care of the woman’s gripe,
and waited for the next to be brought forward.

She looked behind her, across the gardens,
towards Phoenix. She was sitting with Amelia a safe distance away
from the crowd, warded within a pavilion, and playing with a
flower. The child was trying to pluck the petals off, while Amelia
was trying to save the poor plant from her destruction. Whatever
had been done to her at the hands of the tribe, she hadn’t seemed
to have suffered any lasting damage. The end goal of their actions
was still a mystery, and it was one that Layna and Gryffon were
both eager to solve as soon as possible. The tribe’s plans having
been thwarted, who knew when their next attempt would come. Or what
it might entail.

One of the aides suddenly came rushing into
the clearing, and bowed before bending to whisper in her ear.

“King Gryffon requires your presence in the
throne room, Majesty,” he reported, straightening. “I will make
your excuses for you as it seems to be a matter of some
importance.”

Layna nodded to him and stepped down off the
dais that had been set up for her, walking across the gardens to
pick up Phoenix. Once she had her child, she allowed her entourage
to usher her away from her waiting subjects, who watched her go
with disappointment. She trusted that the man would properly
appease them. Her mind was already racing as to why Gryffon would
have sent for her. Hopefully it was not yet another plot uncovered
from Lord Telvani. They had discovered several already and it
appeared that he had something big that had been in the works for
some time, which they had not yet gotten to the bottom of. Perhaps
there had been a breakthrough. Though if it was a breakthrough that
required both her and Gryffon’s intervention together…

She forced her racing mind to quiet. She
would find out shortly, and there was no point in worrying herself
until she knew what it was she needed to be worried about. The
doors to the throne room parted at her presence – opened
automatically by the guards stationed there, a fact that had taken
some getting used to – and she glanced around.

Gryffon was sitting on his throne and a man
stood next to him, speaking into his ear. Layna strolled closer,
forcing herself not to run. As she drew near, she recognized the
man as Charles. He had traveled with her and Gryffon during their
adventures and she felt a closeness to him, though since she and
Gryffon had ascended to the throne, he had chosen not to keep their
company. Layna understood that it wasn’t their company itself that
he avoided, but rather everything else that came along with it. She
oftentimes wished she could go back to being just a maid and not
have her every move watched and dissected by thousands of prying
eyes as well.

He now ran a children’s home for the
displaced youth from King Nathair’s reign. Last she’d seen him was
during the brief time she’d spent in the ruins of Hardonia with
Natalya. He had brought a group of his charges to help with its
rebuilding. She hadn’t realized that he’d returned already.

“Charles,” she exclaimed happily, shifting
Phoenix on her hip so that she could embrace the old man.

He returned the hug with gusto, but wore a
serious expression. “Layna,” he greeted her in his gruff voice,
“It’s been too long.”

“Indeed,” she replied, stepping back to look
him in the face, “But I don’t think that you’ve come just for a
social call.”

“No, unfortunately not. I was just tellin’
Gryffon here - sorry - His Majesty,” Charles corrected himself but
both Gryffon and Layna waved off the formality, “That I came across
somethin’ very disturbin’ out in the woods.”

He took a deep breath, steeling himself to
continue. Layna’s worry grew; Charles had been the one who had told
stories of woodland nymphs, dire bears, and all manner of other
beasts in the woods. What had him shaken so?

“I missed a rabbit,” he began and Layna
waited patiently, “but somethin’ else got it. An’ that somethin’
else was like nothin’ I could ever of imagined. It had the body of
a man, but horribly disfigured. It was oozin’ pus from sores on
every inch of its body, its fingernails had grown into long
claw-like appendages,” he hooked his hand in threatening motions
and raked at the air, “and worst of all, its eyes were bloody
bright red.” He gulped. “It caught the rabbit with its bare hands
and was gnawin’ it apart, eatin’ the little beastie alive while the
poor thing was screamin’ like you woren’t believe.”

“Some kind of sickness?” Layna asked, her
forehead creasing in worry. They certainly didn’t need an outbreak
on their hands as well as everything else.

“I don’ know. But you can take a looksee for
yourself.” He stood up straight, looking proud. “It attacked me but
I was able to subdue it and bring it in for you to look at. I
thought it’d be somethin’ worth your while to check into.”

“It certainly sounds that way,” Layna
acknowledged, laying a hand on his upper arm. “Thank you.”

“It’s quarantined in the old dungeon where
the healers and mages are taking a look at it,” Gryffon reported.
He glanced down at Phoenix and added, “And they also looked Charles
over and assure me that he’s not carrying any sort of infectious
contagion, or else they wouldn’t have let him in here.”

“Do you think this is something connected to
Telvani?” Layna asked, directing the query to Gryffon.

He shrugged. “We know he was working on
something, but this? What purpose would it have? Creating a plague
to kill off the people he wanted to control? It doesn’t quite sound
like him.” He looked thoughtful. “Although it does have the stink
of blood-magic about it, so I wouldn’t rule his involvement out
just yet either.”

“Perhaps it is just some new illness,” Layna
suggested hopefully. If it was to be between a sickness and
blood-magic, she’d take sickness.

“Can we see it now?” Gryffon looked past
Layna and Charles towards where one of the royal mages was
standing. The man nodded and started moving towards the door.
Gryffon looked at Phoenix worriedly. “Just in case, maybe we should
leave the baby up here.”

Layna nodded. She hated to be parted from the
babe for even a moment, but it would probably be better than
bringing her to see a monster.

They left Phoenix with Amelia back at the
nursery and the three of them followed the train of guards towards
the dungeon. The old dungeon was the section which Layna had termed
too unfit to house prisoners, and she felt a twinge of guilt that
anything should have been put in here. When she set eyes upon the
beast, however, her guilt evaporated. It was the most grotesque and
frightening countenance she had ever laid eyes upon.

It paced back and forth in the cell,
glowering out at them with its red eyes, snarling every now and
again. Layna probed it gently with her magesight, automatically
connecting to Gryffon’s power. Its aura was a mixture of red and
black, the poison in its blood pumped around through its veins with
every heartbeat. But there was no discernible point of infection,
no clue as to what exactly was causing it. There was a definite
feel of magic about it, but again, nothing that would explain what
had happened to it.

One of the guards suddenly gasped and put a
hand over his mouth, nearly losing the contents of his stomach. All
eyes flew to him. When he had regained control of himself, he
spoke. “I know who that is,” he said softly, swallowing hard.

“Well, who is it?” Gryffon asked when a few
moments had passed with the guard simply staring at the thing in
disgust.

“Lord Telvani,” the man replied softly.

“What?” Gryffon exclaimed.

“How do you know?” Layna asked, appalled at
the thought. Granted they had just spoken of the possibility of his
involvement…but to have it actually
be
him?

“Either that or it killed Lord Telvani,” the
guard amended, and explained, “The amulet around its neck. The lord
took to wearing it all the time the last few weeks of his being
here. He wouldn’t take the thing off for anything.”

“Lord Telvani,” Gryffon repeated, astonished.
He moved slightly closer to the thing and peered in, narrowing his
eyes in an attempt to make out some recognizable feature. The
creature stopped its pacing and watched him warily, the red eyes
following his movements. They had sent search parties out looking
for the man after he escaped from the palace, but he hadn’t turned
up anywhere in the city or in the surrounding areas that they had
looked. It had been as if he disappeared off the face of the
planet.

Suddenly it lashed out at him and Gryffon
backed up a pace and shrugged. “I can’t tell, but if it is…”

“What in the world did he get himself into?”
Layna finished the sentence for him.

*

Natalya patted the horse’s mane underneath
the metal faceplate it wore. All the fanfare that came along with
riding among the Queen’s Knights of Phoenix was a bit much, but she
did understand the importance of making sure that they exuded a
strong presence in order to allay any fears that the people may
still have about the snakes in the government. It appeared that her
own hometown, Hardonia, had been the only one where Lord Telvani
had the chance to use his Faithful among the Knights to perform
heinous deeds in the name of the Queen. So luckily their reputation
was not tarnished too badly. The same could not be said for
Natalya’s heart.

The Queen had felt horrible that Lord Telvani
had ordered the massacre of every person within the walls of her
hometown to cover up Lord Morven’s boasting. Rather than quietly
snatch the talented in the night as he had been ordered to do, the
lord had found it amusing to announce during the festival that he
would be taking the girl – Natalya’s younger sister, Alina. This is
what had prompted Natalya to leave the town to go after her, which
had ironically saved her own life. She had been convinced that if
she could just get to the Queen and tell her what had happened,
everything would be alright.

Only she had gotten entangled in an elaborate
plot against the King and Queen and had needed to travel with her
companion, Hunter, to the tribe to the north who they discovered
had been responsible for the attack. Once they returned the baby,
the monarchs were able to break out of the spell that held them,
and Natalya’s optimism had been returned.

That was when she had found out about the
slaughtering of her townspeople, her parents included. Though she
had made peace with the tragedy, her heart still felt as though it
had a huge hole, and the search for her sister had really only just
begun. Contrary to Natalya’s hope that all would be well as soon as
she had an audience with The Queen, the woman had not known about
Telvani’s collection of the talented, and therefore did not know
where her sister had been sent. But she had put together a special
group of her Knights, and put Natalya in ‘charge’ of them for the
explicit purpose of finding these missing people and rounding up
the last of the people once in the Order.