The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (27 page)

“Begin at the beginning,” the queen said kindly.

He nodded and gathered his strength. “Very well, Your Majesty. It all started when Starchie and me—that’s Starchwort.” Wake-robin nodded at his friend. “We were bored, so we thought we would lasso a mole. Always fun to lasso a rabbit and then you can ride it, flippity-fast they are, great fun. But we never heard of anybody trying to ride a mole. So we decided that we should be the first. Well, we did.” He shook his head, lost in his thoughts. “But it didn’t go as planned.”

“Poor planning all around,” Starchwort admitted with a pensive nod.

“Moles live underground, y’see,” Wake-robin pointed out.

“Everybody
knows that,” Jake said impatiently.

“The mole was stronger than we thought. We got the rope around its neck, didn’t we, Starchie? But then it ran.
Dove into its hole, it did, and pulled us underground. It was dark down there.

“Starchie had the good sense to let go of the rope,
but I hung on. That’s me. I never know when to quit.” He shuddered at the memory. “The mole ran so far underground into its dark, moley tunnels that it came down to the ceiling of the Harris Coalmine.

“When it turned a corner at top speed, I fell through a crack in the rock
and we got stuck. There I was, dangling into one of the coalmine tunnels, hanging onto the lasso by my fingertips.” He gulped. “That’s when I saw them.”

“Wh
at? What did you see?” Dani asked.

“T
he eyes,” he whispered, fixing his haunted stare on a memory that only he could see. “Glowing eyes in the blackness. Two of them.”

“Two eyes?” Jake asked
.

“No. Two
creatures in the mine. Maybe more. Beasts.”

Dani blanched. “What were they?”

“Big. Horrible.”

“Yes, but what sort of beasts
?” Jake persisted. “Wolves, bears?”

He wished
for a moment with all his might that the pixie would say
anything
but gargoyles. He still hoped his theory about Garnock might be wrong.

Wake-robin shook his head, looking lost. “I don’t know.”

“Well, what did they look like?” Dani asked. “What color were they?”

“
Hard to tell, it was so dark. Maybe gray. Black? They had horns. Tails.” He gulped at the memory and held up his hand, curving his fingers into hooks to show them. “Claws. They were…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Starc
hwort put his hand on the traumatized pixie’s shoulder. “We believe poor Wake-robin stumbled onto a nest of dragon hatchlings.”

“Baby dragons?” Dani whispered.

Starchwort shrugged. “Wales used to be infested with dragons, long ago. The glowing eyes. Horns and so forth. It adds up!”

“Did any of them breathe fire?” Jake asked.

“The young ones don’t, until they reach a certain age,” King Furze pointed out.

“W
ell, what about wings?” Jake asked.

Wake-robin s
hook his head, looking desperate. “Can’t be sure. I think they might have had them. Please, no more! I can’t bear it.”

Just then, a
clamor in the distance drew everyone’s attention.

“
Look! The pit ponies are escaping!” Dani cried, pointing toward the entrance of the Harris Coalmine.

She was right.
Jake turned and scanned the landscape, then squinted at the strange sight.

A large herd
of ponies was fleeing out of the mine. They had broken free and were stampeding right down the main street of the town.

Jake stared with a chill
of realization down his spine. “Something must have spooked them.”

Dani
turned to him, wide-eyed. “Maybe there’s been another attack in the mine!”

He
believed she was right. Indeed, maybe this time, the gray beasts had tried to eat one of the pit ponies.

Then Jake
gripped the ropes of the snare. “Please, you have to let us go.”

“Oh? Why
is that?” King Furze replied.

“So we can get down there and do something about this!”

“Er,
we?
” Dani looked askance at him.

He glared
at the king. “Haven’t you realized who I am yet, Your Majesties? I am Lord Griffon of Plas-y-Fforest, the Lightriders’ son, and this is my friend, Dani O’Dell. Now put us down! Unless you want those dragon hatchlings growing to full size in your back garden?”

King Furze considered this, then finally
relented. “Very well—since this has all been a misunderstanding, I will let you and the orangey girl go. But take care to pay the forest folk the proper respect when you venture into our territory again, or next time, you might not be so lucky. Goodbye—and good riddance,” he added under his breath.

Then he nodded at his head
of security. Coltsfoot lifted a tiny flint hatchet with a gleam in his eyes and chopped away a few fibers of the main rope holding up their net.

Loosened, the rope slipped throu
gh the pulley, running them down the length of the tree at top speed. They held on for dear life.

A moment later, Jake and Dani tumbled out onto the ground in a heap atop the soft leaves.

“Blimey!” she exclaimed, looking up at the height from which they had plummeted by a few strands. “We’re lucky we didn’t break our necks.”

Jake grabbed his jacket and jumped to his feet, giving her a quick hand up. “Come on, no time to lose!” With that, he was up and running back to the path, then racing down it toward the Harris family mansion.

Dani was right behind him. They pounded over the packed dirt trail, leaped the fallen logs, and carefully dodged over the rocks that littered the path here and there.

A few minutes later, they burst out of the wo
ods just in time to see a lanky uniformed messenger from the telegraph office arriving. It was not difficult to guess the contents of the telegram he was bringing Mr. Harris—news concerning whatever had just happened at the mine.

Pink-cheeked with exertion, Jake and Dani exchanged a worried glance as they jogged toward the stately manor house. The messenger was already knocking on the door.

“Sorry to interrupt, ma’am. Message for Mr. Harris. It’s an emergency,” he told the unsmiling housekeeper, who had apparently refused to be forced to dress up like a pirate crewmate.

The stern, black-clad woman instantly opened the door wider and showed the messenger into the house.

Jake and Dani followed, unnoticed.

But as they hurried to the door, a honeyed voice called his name with cloying sweetness. “Oh, Lord Griffon! Would you like to help me look for treasure?”

Jake scowled straight ahead, refusing even to look over at Petunia, who was waving at him from across the lawn and starting to hurry toward him.

“Act like you don’t see her,” he said to Dani through gritted teeth. Then they slipped into the house.

They saw the housekeeper showing the messenger down the hallway to the oak-paneled library, where Mr. Harris had sought refuge from the party with the other children’s fathers.

A mirror in the hallway offered a perfect angle
, allowing Jake and Dani to see into Mr. Harris’s stately library, even as they kept a safe distance back, remaining unnoticed.

The wealthy gentle
men were lounging around on brown leather club chairs, smoking cigars and drinking port, when the housekeeper knocked thrice on the open door.

Mr. Harri
s glanced over, a portly, red-faced man with impressive muttonchop sideburns. “Yes?”

“Telegram for you, sir. Sorry to di
sturb, but the lad says it’s an emergency.”

“Very well.” Mr. Harris
waved his chubby fingers, summoning in the messenger to bring it to him.

The
lanky lad with a silly pillbox hat crossed the room and handed the message to the coal-factor.

“Egads!” Mr. Harris shot to his feet and turned pale, then looked away and let out a harsh curse under his breath.

“I say, what is it, Harris?” one of his gentleman friends inquired as their host crumpled the note in his hand.

“No use hiding it. There’s been another attack in the mine.” Mr. Harris glanced grimly at the gentlemen, who let out varied exclamations of shock.

“Did anyone see what it was this time?” one of them asked.

Mr. Harris
shook his head. “Blast it, I thought it had surely moved on by now. But whatever’s down there, it just attacked one of the pit ponies, and now the whole herd has escaped.”

“Now, see here, Harris.” An aristocratic fellow in a red coat stood up, ready to take matters in hand. “I am the president of the
local foxhunting club, I host shooting parties throughout the autumn at my country estate, and I daresay some of the chaps here are jolly good shots, as well. Why, Carrington is our most avid sportsman. He just returned from a lion hunt in Africa, didn’t you, old man?”

Carrington nodded, then pointed at the man by the window. “Thurlowe over there has shot bears in the Alps.”

“You see? You must let us help you eradicate this creature,” the foxhunt president informed Mr. Harris. “So here’s what we shall do. First, you must evacuate your workers, and then, we shall form a hunting party amongst ourselves. We will hunt this beast and destroy it.”

“
Capital sport, old boy!” Thurlowe exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “My new rifle just arrived, imported from one of the top gunsmiths of Switzerland. I can hardly wait to try it out in the field against worthy game.”

“Jolly good
!” Carrington replied. “Whoever fells the beast gets to keep the brush!”

“What does that mean?” Dani whispered.

“I think they cut the tail off and keep it as a hunting trophy.”

Dani wrinkled up her nose. “That’s disgusting.”

But the great British hunters were growing more enthusiastic by the minute for their quest.

“Better still, why not have the beast
stuffed and mounted once we’ve felled it for you, Harris? You could hang the head up there.” The foxhunt president pointed to an empty spot on the oak-paneled wall.

“
I don’t think I’d, er, quite like to see it every day.”

“Not a sporting fellow, eh?” one teased with a condescending smile.

“But if you think you’re able to track the creature down…” Mr. Harris said hopefully.

“Of course we can
, old man!”

Mr. Harris already seemed half
persuaded by these worldly fellows. After all, they outranked him by a mile.

The word “Lord” in front of their names seemed to
guarantee that they must know what they were talking about on any subject.

Mr. Harris had lots of money, but they had all the class. Filthy rich as he was, a
coal-factor was merely a great merchant. With no title of any kind, he might as well have been (horrors!) middle class.

No wonder Petunia was
already hard at work trying to land a young lord like Jake for her future husband. Her papa’s money wasn’t much good without “class”; but then again, class was hopeless without money. Lots of the aristocrats’ lives revolved around hiding the fact that they were nearly bankrupt.

“There, Harris,” Lord Carrington decreed. “You see? Leave it to the aristocracy to look after the safety of the lower orders.” The foxhunter-in-chief raised his glass to his fellow noblemen with a smug smile. “Tally-ho, gentlemen.”