Griffin's Daughter (12 page)

Jelena’s heart was breaking as she made for the kitchen garden, half blinded by her own tears. When she reached its fragrant confines, redolent of rosemary, thyme, and jasmine, she dropped the bundled apron and leaned, weak-kneed, against the outer kitchen wall and gave free rein to her grief.

Magnes found her there, sobbing inconsolably beneath the stars that glittered like cold ice embedded in darkest velvet. “I don’t know why I feel so…so horrible!” she cried. “I should be delirious with happiness because I’m finally getting out of this awful place, but I’m not!” She buried her face in her cousin’s shoulder.

“
You have ample reason to grieve, Jelena. You are leaving behind the woman who raised you, who loved you and called you ‘daughter,’ and you may never lay eyes upon her again. Of course you should be sad. We are about to walk a road that is completely unknown to us, but whatever lies ahead, whether it be good or ill, we’ll face it together.” Magnes slipped his hand under Jelena’s chin and tilted her face upwards. “Courage, Cousin. We’d better get going. The night’s a’wasting, and we need to be well away before sun up.”

Jelena glanced up at the sky. “There’s someone else I need to say goodbye to before I leave, Cousin,” she murmured. She turned away from the garden and set out back across the castle grounds toward the keep. Wordlessly, Magnes followed, a comforting presence at her back. She knew that he understood.

The Preseren family crypt—Jelena’s destination—lay beneath the high altar of the castle chapel. The two cousins padded silently past the slumbering keep and entered the chapel through a side door set within its southern wall. Quickly, they slipped down the central aisle, past the large wooden altar carved with painted images of gods and saints, to the stairwell at the back that led down into the subterranean vaults. Magnes paused to grab a candle from the altar before leading the way into the crypt.

The air below ground was cool and still. The little flame from the candle cast a feeble glow, but Jelena would have known the way even in total darkness. She had been here often enough before. With unerring steps, she made her way to the very back of the crypt and paused before a plain stone sarcophagus. She knelt and laid her palms flat atop the chilly granite. “Mother,” she whispered, “I’ve come to say goodbye.”

Unlike the other caskets, which were fashioned of marble and crowned with detailed effigies of the occupant as he or she had appeared in life, this tomb was stark in its simplicity. No fine effigy adorned its top, only a plain stone lid that bore the inscription:

Here lies Drucilla, daughter of Teomartus and Lucinda of the House of Preseren.

“
They put my mother at the very back, away from all of her kin. She was an outcast, even in death, all because she dared to love a man who wasn’t human.” Jelena began to weep. “Why are people so cruel, Magnes?”

Magnes knelt beside her and slipped his free arm around her shoulder. “Some people are cruel because they are weak and afraid, Cousin.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “But not all people are cruel. Claudia and I both love you.”

“
Neither one of us had the chance to know our mothers, Magnes, but at least you have some memories of yours. I have nothing but stories and this cold box.” Jelena paused to wipe her eyes, then bent over and pressed her lips to the stone. “I love you, Mother,” she murmured. “Even though you’re not here, I still feel your love for me. I’m going to find my father…I’m going to find your Zin, and when I do, I’ll tell him just what you sacrificed in order to give me life.” She looked up at Magnes, and even in the dim light of the single candle, she could see his eyes shining with tears.
     

“
I know that running is my only choice, and I would have gone without you, but I’m very glad you’re coming with me, Magnes. I know that sounds selfish, considering what you are giving up, but it’s how I feel.”  She felt her melancholy begin to lift. Magnes’s calm, steady strength would be a great comfort to her in the days to come, and for that alone, she was very grateful.

“
We’d better go now, Jelena,” Magnes urged softly. She nodded, and with a last kiss upon the casket lid, she rose and followed her cousin up and out of the crypt, leaving her mother and all her ancestors behind to sleep the cold slumber of the dead.

~~~

As promised, Magnes had brought the packs and equipment they needed. They took a few moments to divide the food Jelena had filched and to settle the packs and weapons on their bodies. With everything in place, Magnes led the way back to where the castle wall ran behind the kitchen garden. There, they paused to listen. The night hummed with the myriad little noises that fill a green, growing place in spring. Crickets chirped merrily in the trees, and mice rustled in the wild grapevines. High up in the branches of a fruitless plum tree, a nightingale warbled.

Magnes dug around in the pouch at his belt and drew forth a small object. It was too dark for Jelena to see what he now held in his hand, but she guessed it to be the key to the long-unused door. He stepped forward and pulled aside the thick covering of vines to reveal a small, iron-bound portal.

“
I oiled the lock a few days ago,” Magnes whispered. The key turned with a soft click, and Magnes gave the door a shove. It swung open with a metallic groan that sounded as loud as thunder.

“
Damn it,” Magnes muttered. “I forgot the hinges!”

They held their breaths and waited. After a few moments, when she heard no cry raised, Jelena dared to breathe again.

Magnes pulled her close and whispered in her ear. “There’s a very steep, slippery drop down into a ravine just the other side of this door. Be careful, it’s treacherous. I’ll go first. Don’t start down until I do. I’ve got to close the door behind us.” He turned, ducked through the dark hole, and disappeared. Jelena took a deep breath and followed.

She found herself standing on a narrow ledge at the top of a slope that plunged near vertically into the darkness. She had always known about the natural defenses at the rear of Amsara Castle, but she had never dreamed that, one day, her path to freedom would lead down this perilous route.

Magnes pushed the heavy door shut and stowed the key away in his pouch. “There’s no way to lock it behind us, it seems. Good thing Amsara can’t be approached from this direction.”

“
Let’s just hope no one comes along and finds the door from the inside,” Jelena replied nervously.

“
We’ll be long gone by then. Ready?”

“
As ready as I’ll ever be.” Jelena hitched her pack up a little higher on her shoulders and adjusted the long knife at her belt. The bow and arrows she had strapped on top of the pack, so they were not readily accessible, but then she planned to use them only for hunting.

They started picking their way carefully down the slope, Magnes in the lead. The surface consisted of a constantly shifting sea of loose soil and small, sharp rocks. Each step sent a new shower of debris rattling down the slope into the pitch black of the ravine. In a matter of moments, Jelena was sweating and breathing hard. It took tremendous effort to stay upright and to keep herself from sliding down to certain injury and the end to any hope of escape. Below, she could hear the sound of water trickling over stones.

After what seemed like hours, they finally reached the bottom of the ravine where they paused briefly to rest.

“
Ugh!” Jelena exclaimed. “By the smell down here, I’m guessing this must be the drainage from the castle’s sewers.”

“
All the more reason to get moving,” Magnes replied. “C’mon.”

They began walking.

Eventually, the ravine spread itself out into the surrounding landscape. Jelena could not tell how far they had come, or in which direction they were heading, but she trusted Magnes’s navigational skills. He seemed to know exactly where to go. “Are we headed west, Magnes?” she asked, pushing herself a little to keep up with her cousin’s longer, ground-eating stride.

“
West and north. I reckon we’ll be across the border in three days’ time,” he replied. He noticed Jelena’s struggle to match his gait and slowed down to accommodate her. “We should reach the north-south road soon. I want to follow it until dawn and then look for a place to camp.”

Jelena looked back over her shoulder but could see nothing in the darkness, which was just as well. Her life at Amsara Castle truly lay behind her now. She would look forward, only forward, to the new possibilities that awaited her. She would shed her old identity, like a snake sheds its skin, and become a new person. No longer would she be Jelena the bastard. She would be Jelena the free woman, free to make of her life what she willed.

~~~

Far to the north, in a land that for millennia had lain cloaked in perpetual winter, deep beneath a mountain on whose summit crouched the remains of a mighty fortress,
something
began to stir.

For over a thousand years, it had remained dormant, its energy dampened by powerful magical wards put in place at the time of its defeat and imprisonment. But time and neglect had steadily weakened the very structure of the arcane energy that had sustained the wards, allowing the thing slumbering in the freezing darkness to slowly awaken.

For a very, very long time, it simply
was
. No coherent thoughts disturbed the dark, still pool of its consciousness. It floated, disembodied, a being of pure energy, existing in a place where no light, no sound, no sensation could penetrate.

Then, with sudden, convulsive force, the very fabric of the universe ripped open, and something pushed through. The being that had been asleep for so long now roused, fully conscious, responding to the familiar energy signature of the magic it had itself created so long ago. 

With full awareness came memory and rage, but the spirit was too weak yet to wrestle free of the magical chains that kept it bound in the cold and darkness. It struggled anyway, fueled by its towering fury, but soon gave up in defeat, accepting that, for now, it would remain a prisoner.

The struggle against its bonds had not been a complete failure, however. The spirit did discover the creeping weakness that slowly degraded the integrity of the magic; it was only a matter of time before the wards could be broken and it would be free. In the meantime, it would practice the art of patience, but that did not preclude making use of what tools it could.

Through experimentation, it found that it could extend its consciousness outward, beyond the tons of ice and rock that imprisoned what remained of its physical essence. Even in such an inhospitable wilderness as the high mountains, many creatures, both furred and feathered, managed to eke out a precarious existence. The spirit found the simple minds of these creatures easy to commandeer. They made useful tools, serving as living connections to the outside world. However, the force of its essence drained the creatures of their vital energy, killing them after a time. No matter. There were enough to meet its needs.

It began to search.

Across the frozen desolation of the high mountains and down into the vast forests that lay at their feet, it ranged, merging first with a swift-footed fox, then a snowshoe hare, a sleek black raven and a gray wolf, silent as the shadows. The ravens proved to be the most useful. Their keen eyes saw much; their powers of flight allowed the spirit-being to range over much greater distances—but they tended to die quickly. The wolves, eagles, and big cats lived longer, but they could not get as close to farmsteads and villages without attracting unwanted attention.

The energy signature that the spirit-being searched for was, at first, weak and unfocused, but as time passed, it grew stronger. The spirit now knew that it must concentrate its search in the lands far to the south of its mountain prison, beyond the territory it had once ruled over as a mortal man. There, it felt certain it would eventually locate the vessel that contained the Key.

But finding the Key wasn’t enough. The spirit would also need the talisman that it had forged and charged with its mortal hands over a millennium ago. Only by reuniting the Key with the magic of the talisman could it regain its full power and put its plan into motion.

The combination of the two magical energies would unlock the barrier between the living world and the Void—that trackless, howling vortex wherein dwelled unnatural creatures of darkness, fearsome and terrible beyond description. Opening the barrier would release a vast army of these creatures that could be bent to the spirit being’s will. With such an army at its back, it…
he
would be invincible, the Destroyer of Nations. No longer The Nameless One, he would reclaim his name and power, and all the peoples of the world would be under his dominion.

This had been his intent a millennium ago, until he had been betrayed by those he most trusted. His magic had been stripped from him. The Key had been stolen and hidden beyond his reach, and his body slain and buried deep beneath the shattered fortress of his enemies. They had sealed him up and warded the chamber, trapping his immortal soul and stifling all self-awareness.

His enemies obviously hadn’t anticipated that their magic might fail.

He didn’t devote much time to wondering why they hadn’t kept a more close watch on the wards; his emotions were distilled down into two only—hatred of all living things, and the desire to conquer and destroy. He would accomplish his plan when he located the Key and the talisman.

He was very close.