Dragonsbane (Book 3) (53 page)

He felt a familiar tug on his pack as Baird’s knobby fingers tightened their grip. “Old trees must perish to give way to the new. Ah, but how sad to see a monster fall. I shall plant new roots among these howling men — their Thane has offered me warmth and a full belly for the rest of my days. I would be a fool to turn such a boon aside.”

For once, he’d been so quiet that Kael had actually forgotten he was there. “I’m happy for you, Baird.”

“Happy? Hmm, happiness takes on a strange smell about you, then. It reeks of something solemn.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I hear Kael the Wright means not to settle. I hear he means to travel on and leave the howling men.”

Kael was more than a little surprised. He hadn’t told a soul what he had planned. “How did you —?”

“Ah, I shall miss him greatly!” Baird moaned over the top of him. “Do pass my sorrows on, when next you see him.”

Kael sighed heavily. “Baird … I
am
Kael the Wright.”

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the beggar-bard’s grin had spread wide beneath his bandages. “I know that, young man — but I was beginning to wonder if
you
did!”

*******

By midday, what started as one of the gloomiest mornings Kael had ever seen had blossomed into full-fledged nonsense.

Jonathan struck up a particularly bawdy ballad and the pirates sang along, trying to coax smiles from the wildmen’s faces. It was only after Lysander had them clapping out of tune for several moments that the craftsmen finally joined in.

They beat their drums in annoyance at first, trying to force the pirates back into rhythm. But soon the pounding was no longer forced: they played a wild tune that thrummed beneath Jonathan’s fiddle, giving life to every bawdy line.

The song of craftsmen’s drums swept the warriors in. They learned the pirates’ jig with ease — though what started out as a harmless dance quickly became a caddoc.

They spun each other around with such terrible force that the whirling motion would cause one of them to lift his feet up off the ground. When that happened, his partner would take the opportunity to sling him into the nearest tree.

Lysander swore and dropped to the ground the first time a wildman went sailing overhead. “Good Gravy!” He swore again when a tree cracked and thudded into the ground. “Somebody’s bound to get very seriously injured if you don’t keep a tighter hold on your men!”

Gwen stopped laughing long enough to shout: “Make sure those trees fall
away
from the path! We’re not trying to get anybody flattened.”

“Yes, Thane!”
Griffith cried. Then he hurled his partner into an oak.

The resulting
crack
had Lysander swearing all over again.

With the caddoc slowing the wildmen’s pace, the giants marched well ahead. The force of the earth seemed to carry their hulking bodies quickly down the slopes. They still grumbled about the thinness of the air, but seemed to be happy about going downhill.

Nadine had taken it upon herself to look after the children from downmountain. They followed in a neat little clump behind her — many wielded staves with their ends sharpened to points.

Somehow, the whole lot of them been surrounded by giants, and Nadine wasn’t at all pleased about being trapped among their thick ranks. “I do not need your protection,” she barked at Declan.

He glanced at her from over his shoulder. “Protection? What makes you think I’d bother protecting such a wee speck of woman?”

“
This
,” she said impatiently, waving at the wall of giants that surrounded her and the children. “What is this if not protection?”

“It looks to me like you’ve drifted into the middle of our march.”

“Your march has swallowed us! Everywhere we turn, we are followed. Your heads blot out the sky!”

“Well then, I suppose we ought to bring the sky to them.”

There was a chorus of delighted squeals as the giants scooped the children onto their shoulders. Their little red heads bobbed above the crowd and their laughter filled the air.

“Be careful with them!” Nadine warned, though her glare faded quickly at the sight of their grins. She walked among the giants for the rest of the day, occasionally looking back to watch the children.

Though sometimes she glanced up at Declan.

*******

A few days of hard travel passed before Kael heard Lysander cry excitedly from down the slope: “Here it is! This ought to suit your people nicely.”

The small castle that sat at the mouth of the Earl’s road looked as if it’d seen better days. Gwen frowned as they neared the shattered gates. “It’s a mess.”

Silas, it seemed, had decided to take his punishment rather literally. He’d spent a large amount of time in his human skin as they traveled down the mountains, hardly ever more than a pace behind Gwen.

Now, when he saw how she glared at the castle, he leaned forward and murmured: “This den sits in the mountain’s shadow and at the Valley’s mouth. A Thane who rules from here will have one foot in the wilds, and the other in the realm of men.”

“Keep your pretty words to yourself, cat,” Gwen said sharply.

“Yes, my Thane.” He smirked from behind her and his glowing eyes followed the path of her finger as it trailed from her jaw to her chin.

Her gaze shifted across the squat towers and thick, sturdy walls for a moment before she sighed. “I suppose it won’t be too bad … once my craftsmen clean it up a bit. March, wildmen!” she bellowed behind her.

They followed with a howl.

Kael recognized the heavy gates, the stone courtyard and the hallway beyond the keep’s entrance immediately: this was the castle from Kyleigh’s memories. He knew before he even stepped into the first room what he was bound to find.

Though that didn’t stop his stomach from flipping when he saw it.

The shelves had been knocked from the walls so that only the oak paneling remained. In place of the whittled desk was an empty throne. The chamber was molded into a perfect circle, but there was no eye carved into the floor. Kael was beginning to think that perhaps he’d been mistaken when one of the stones shifted beneath his boot. He pulled it loose, revealing an older layer of stone — one that had a design carved across it.

With the craftsmen’s help, they stripped the top layer off the floor and uncovered the Wright’s eye buried beneath. When Griffith saw it, he gasped.

Gwen had made good on her word: no sooner did they return from Thanehold than one of the craftsmen had strung Marc’s claws onto a leather cord, weaving beads of stone-ice in between them. Now Griffith wore the claws around his neck in a sharp, deadly-looking ring.

They clacked together as he crouched to run his finger across the symbol’s large, triangular pupil. “We were meant to come here. Fate’s turned our exile into a gift. She’s given us a new place to call home.”

“A great Wright once lived here,” Kael said quietly.

“What happened to him?”

“He gave himself up to save the Kingdom.”

Griffith sat back on his heels. His hand dragged down his stripe of hair, and his eyes were distant. “Gwen’s going to leave us one day.”

“Yes, she’s told me,” Kael said.

Griffith got to his feet with a sigh. He took the blue marble from his pocket but instead of sending it through his fingers, he merely stared. “She says she’ll wait until I’m ready, but I wonder … sometimes I’m afraid I won’t ever be ready. How will I know which paths to take? How will I know what’s best for my people?”

Kael watched Griffith stare at the marble for a moment, and a sudden thought twisted inside his head. Slowly, he drew the
Atlas of the Adventurer
from his pocket. He felt its worn leather cover and ran his fingers across the faded words that trailed down its spine. Then he held it out to Griffith.

“Here — this book will teach you everything you need to know.”

He stuffed the marble away and took the
Atlas
carefully. “Really?”

“I’ve carried it with me since I was a boy,” Kael said with a nod. “Its pages are filled with the stories of knights and heroes, all sorts of brave men who weren’t afraid to forge their own paths. There are maps and histories, as well — everything you could hope for, really. It’s a book fit for a Thane.”

The
Atlas
sat heavily in Griffith’s hands for a moment, as if he wasn’t certain what to do with it. Then slowly, he opened the first page. His eyes trailed in a hesitant line across the poem about the six regions of the Kingdom before he turned to the next.

Kael spent the day with the craftsmen, helping to repair the castle. They hung doors into place and mended holes in the roof. Some of the hallways were so packed with rubble that they had to be cleared before the craftsmen could mend them. All the while they worked, Griffith sat in a corner of the throne room, the
Atlas
propped against his knees.

Soon his eyes had begun to move surely across the words. They burned with a light as he read. Once, Kael glanced up and saw that a smile had bent Griffith’s lips. He was caught up inside the
Atlas
’s world — Kael could practically see the beautiful lands passing by as he trailed his finger across the words, swore it was the blaze of battle that made his eyes shine so fiercely.

He couldn’t help but think that this was what Setheran would’ve wanted. He would’ve been pleased to have his book handed down to another whisperer. It would’ve made him proud to know that what he’d written could bring such a light to Griffith’s eyes … that his stories would ring on long after they’d ended.

*******

“The Thane wishes to speak with you,” Silas purred.

Kael had only just gotten settled for dinner. “Can’t it wait?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t do to keep the Thane waiting,” Silas murmured. He
tsk
ed and drifted away, hands clasped smartly behind his back — and Kael had to fight the urge to roll his eyes.

From the way he strode with his chin arched so high above the rest of them, Kael began to think that perhaps Silas had confused the word
punishment
with
power
. Still, he knew Gwen would only come after him if he ignored her. So he abandoned his dinner and with a groan, marched up the stairs.

When he finally made it to the chamber Gwen had claimed for herself, he was surprised to see Kyleigh leaning against the window. She spoke to a woman he didn’t recognize: a woman with short, fiery hair, full lips, and a band of freckles across her nose. She turned when Kael knocked on the open door, and he saw there were scars across her face.

They were red and slightly faded — little dots that clustered at her chin and spread out as they climbed up her cheeks to her forehead. Had he not known they were scars, he might’ve thought she’d just been spattered by something red.

“Hello, mutt.”

“Gwen?” He could hardly believe it. Even after she spoke, he had to look into her eyes to be sure. “Where’s your paint?”

“The wildmen only wear our paint in times of war. Now that the Man of Wolves is vanquished and our battle with the wynns must wait, I haven’t got a reason to wear it.” She touched the scars on her chin. “Come here and make it bearable, will you?”

“What happened?” he said as he placed his hands. “Were you burned?”

She smirked, and her eyes slid over to the window.

“You more than deserved it,” Kyleigh growled.

“I still don’t regret clobbering you, pest. I hope I’ll have a chance to do it again. It happened when I cracked her over the head with my axe,” Gwen explained. “Her blood sprayed across my face a bit. The winter cooled it quickly, but not before it left some nasty marks.”

By this point, both women seemed to be fighting very hard not to grin.

Kael
was more than a little confused. “Do you want me to heal the scars on your back, as well?”

“No …” Gwen smirked at Kyleigh again. “No, those I rather like.”

Kael shook his head as he went to work. He was certain he would never understand them — not if he had a thousand years to sit and wonder. So he gave up trying.

When he was finished, Gwen ran her fingers across her skin and nodded in approval. “Have you given any more thought to my offer, mutt? You don’t have to marry me,” she said, half-laughing when she saw the burn spread across his face. “But you’re welcome to stay among the wildmen. Griffith would be happy to have you … and I would be happy for Griffith.”

Kael shook his head. Somehow, against every reasonable bone in his body, he’d come to like the wildmen. He knew he would miss them terribly. But he also knew that if he stayed, he’d spend the rest of his life yelling at the tops of his lungs, trying to keep them all in line. And he wasn’t sure he had the stomach for it.

“I’m grateful for the offer, but I can’t stay here,” he said firmly.

Gwen frowned. “Where will you go, then?”