Bricrui (The Forgotten: Book 2) Page 13

  CHAPTER 9

  Lorcan smiled at the woman who hovered at the front of the library possessively. She glared back. He’d been trying to gain access to some of the older books, but she insisted on watching him like a hawk. She seemed convinced that he was up to no good, and simply refused to believe him when he told her he truly just wanted information.

  Raina had been successful in finding out some useful tid-bits from what her friends’ parents would say in front of them, but so far nothing concrete. And everything led to more questions. Lorcan found himself wishing that he’d paid more attention when the wise women had told their histories during his lessons.

  There had been mention of a stone that the statue of Sheila Greyclaw had once held, but the statue had been destroyed some time ago and no one seemed to want to talk about it. All of the adults seemed to be part of some conspiracy against the younger generation, intent to keep from them the truth of their past and the Elder’s real intentions.

  Lorcan wasn’t convinced that many even knew of the real intentions themselves, but all seemed to blindly follow the wisdom of the Elders without pausing to think about whether or not it was really wisdom or just revenge. He understood that the Dark King had done terrible things, but no one alive today could say that it had happened to them, and no one in the Lost Lands had actually done it to them.

  He backed out of the library again; with the woman watching him, there was no point. He strolled down into the Fourth Circle, hoping to run into Raina, and was not disappointed. He hailed her with a quick wave and she gave him a smile, extricating herself from the conversation she’d been in and coming over to him.

  “Did you get it?” she asked him excitedly.

  “Not yet,” Lorcan shook his head, “she’s been watching every move I make in there.”

  “We need to find a way to distract her.” She bit her nails.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Lorcan agreed, “and I also thought that it might be a good idea to get some of the others to join in.” At her crestfallen look, he quickly explained. “Not that I think that the two of us can’t do it, because we’re an amazing team,” he held out both hands. “But if even our parents don’t know about what’s really going on, we will need as many people on our side as we can get to convince them.”

  Raina looked thoughtful a moment, then her face broke into a smile. “We could be like a secret group!” she whispered, her eyes darting this way and that conspiratorially. “We should come up with some sort of name, like the Band of Truth, or the Truth-Seekers.”

  “Maybe we should be like the Book Club so that our parents won’t get suspicious if we use it in public. You know, because we’re trying to get a book?”

  “The Book Club?” she asked skeptically. “You don’t think Slade would be suspicious of you being in a book club?” She had a smile playing on her lips and Lorcan rolled his eyes at her.

  “Alright fine, not the Book Club. But this is serious. Isn’t it a little scary that the Elders have had this secret agenda they haven’t told anybody about?”

  She nodded, her expression sobering. “It is. Makes you wonder what else they are up to.” She scrunched up her face in thought. “I have an idea.”

  Her idea involved inviting a group of younger children to join their club. Being younger, they would automatically be more inclined to want to be part of an older kids club, but also, they had been spending their time of late at the waterfall. And the pool below it held all manner of slimy creatures…just the type of creepy-crawlies that the librarian was known to dislike.

  “Hey guys,” Raina called to them as they made their way down the slippery slope.

  “Boo!” a small boy with a face full of freckles jumped out at them and held a snake in Raina’s face. Lorcan moved forward to push it away from her, but stopped as he noticed her response.

  She didn’t budge, and just looked at the snake inches from her face. “Cool snake,” she commented, and held out her hand. “Can I see it?”

  Lorcan’s appreciation for Raina grew. He hadn’t realized she was so…he shook his head to clear it of the annoying thoughts. Though he enjoyed her company, he was beginning to be a little concerned about his feelings towards her. He should be the one putting snakes in her face, not getting upset when someone else did it to her. Girls were supposed to be gross, but the kiss the other night hadn’t been gross at all. In fact, he’d actually really liked it, and he wanted to do it again. Think happy thoughts. Yeah, the snake was really cool.

  The little boy wrinkled his nose and stuffed his hands – along with the snake – into his pockets. “What do you want?”

  “We’re hoping we can get you to join a little project we’re working on,” Raina began and launched into the explanation of what they wanted. They had decided to dumb down the details a bit for them, since they were a bit young yet to have to worry about important adult things.

  It didn’t take them long to convince the children, or to put their plan into motion. Now, not more than an hour later, Lorcan was in position outside the library, waiting for the signal. He crouched low under the window opening, not wanting to be spotted and ruin the whole thing.

  He saw several of the younger children skitter by, one of them pausing to give him a thumbs-up with a wide grin on his face. In his other hand, he clutched a disgustingly warty toad. Moments later, the librarian screamed.

  Lorcan waited.

  Another scream, louder this time, and on the move.

  He tensed in anticipation.

  The screams got closer, and he could now make out the words, “Get it off! Get it off!”

  Then he heard the distinct scream of Raina as she came to the woman’s ‘rescue’. The screams intermingled as the children let more and more of the slimy creatures loose in the library. Lorcan hoped that they wouldn’t do any damage to the books, but concluded that their mission was important enough to risk it.

  Finally, he heard the signal he’d been waiting for. Raina yelled out frantically, “Quick! In here!” Followed by the crashing of a door slamming shut as she shut the librarian into the closet.

  Lorcan leapt to his feet and squeezed in the window. He sprinted towards the back, where the really good stuff was kept, and scanned the volumes for the ones of interest. He had been able to determine the titles that would be useful to them from his research in the front of the library, so all he had to do was find them.

  “Hurry up!” whispered a hushed voice and Lorcan glanced over his shoulder to see a cute little girl standing in the doorway. She had one hand on the doorframe and was looking from him back out into the larger main room.

  He gave her an annoyed look for distracting him, then finally found the titles he was looking for. He quickly snatched these from their shelves and raced back to the window. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw many little children rushing about the main room, scooping up the offending creatures.

  The librarian was banging on the door and he saw Raina watching the window for him worriedly. He stepped into her line of sight, and held up the books for her to see. She smiled broadly. Just as he disappeared out the window and the last of the younger children gathered up the rest of the little beasties, Raina opened the closet door, freeing the librarian.

  Lorcan heard her saying through the window, “Whew, I think it’s okay now. Where did they all come from?”

  “I don’t know,” sputtered the woman, who Lorcan imagined was glaring around the place, searching for more of the creatures. “But the library is closed for the day.”

  Lorcan heard Raina being shuffled out and the door slammed shut behind her. They could hear the librarian mumbling to herself, letting out a squeal every now and again as she came across a missed creature.

  The group swarmed around the side of the building and followed Lorcan and Raina up a level, where their laughter wouldn’t be heard by the woman. There they fell into a heap of hysterical children, the giggling of the younger children seemingly contagious. Soon, however, the th
rill wore off and Raina and Lorcan both looked excitedly at the books. The younger children were not as impressed, and the boy with the freckles spoke up.

  “Let’s go do it some more!”

  Lorcan tried half-heartedly to dissuade them from causing more mischief, but Raina just shrugged. “It will make people less suspicious of it happening at the library,” she suggested.

  “As long as I don’t get blamed for it,” Lorcan mumbled.

  “Come on,” Raina said, ignoring his comment. “Let’s go somewhere and read!”

  *

  Katya entered the dark cave behind the door carefully. Stones lit up at her passage, glowing magically. They were embedded into the wall and created a calm ambiance. She made her way down the corridor, searching for signs of malevolence. By all accounts, the place seemed to be made more to please than to keep away, a far cry from the fields of burnweed to get to the place. The walls of the cave had been polished to the same gleam as the columns outside and Katya had to admit that the result was beautiful.

  She felt a strange sensation as she moved into the dark, but nothing happened. After a moment or two in the pitch black, more of the stone lights sprang to life around her. She glanced back, and did a double-take. The opening she had just walked through was gone. Apparently it had only been one-way.

  She ran a hand over the now-solid wall and sent a magical probe through. It encountered only rock. It wasn’t illusion. These people must have come up with a way to harness a transportation spell into the landscape to create a permanent gateway. Katya was impressed.

  She turned and moved forward. There was no going back now, she’d just have to see where it took her. This passageway was more beautiful than the last, the stones that lit the way only the beginning of the decoration. Around each of them were intricate mosaics of smaller stones, making designs that captured the light and seemed to make the images come to life. She touched one of the rubies that made up an eye of a lizard depicted there and gasped as it came loose and clattered to the ground. Katya glanced behind her in alarm, hoping that the touch hadn’t set off any sort of trap. She hurried on her way.

  At the end of the hall, the path widened suddenly and forked off in two different directions. Katya paused and looked at both entrances. Each had a symbol painted above it, the one on the left was a deer and the right was a snake. Both passages faded so quickly into darkness that Katya could not see more than five feet into either, the light from the stones behind her angled in such a way to prevent their light from reaching beyond.

  Finally, Katya shrugged and picked one. Her pursuers were likely to come pounding down the door any second. She made for the right-hand cave and walked through. She found herself in a passageway much like the first and she moved through this quickly, hoping to find a place she might be able to hide in. Unfortunately, it was just a hallway.

  At the end of this hallway, Katya came upon another choice. It had once again split into two caves, one marked by a turtle on the left and by a horse on the right. Once again, she picked one and walked through. She repeated this process three more times, becoming worried that it would be a never-ending passageway that she would travel through until she died of starvation.

  As she moved through the fifth opening, she stopped short as she reached the end. The symbols were that of a deer and a snake. Wasn’t that the combination of the first hallway? She wrinkled her brow in thought and made her way back to the picture of the lizard. Sure enough, the ruby eye was missing. She glanced around the floor and found it, pressing it back into place on the off chance that having removed it had caused some sort of loop to have started with the spell.

  She looked at the completed picture. The lizard was wound around the light and when Katya peered closer she could see that there was a faint picture of something else behind it, artistically done as though it was the lizard’s shadow. But it was the semblance of a dragon.

  Katya sorted through her memories quickly, sure she had come across something like this before. Her eyes lit up as she realized what it was. When she had sat listening to the fables of the tribes, there had been one about a powerful and mighty dragon who had been brought down by elder who wanted her to learn the value of respecting others. The dragon had lost her horns, claws, wings, scales, and finally her massive size by the elder’s punishments…effectively turning her into a lizard.

  She reexamined the first symbols: A deer and a snake. The dragon had lost her horns because of a deer. She stepped through the left-hand opening with confidence. The second set of symbols she was presented with was a lion and an opossum. This further bolstered her theory. Sure enough, after choosing the lion the next choices were a bird or a dog. Then a fish or a cow. And finally, a mouse or an elephant. She chose the mouse.

  The chamber she came out into was round, with a small pedestal on which rested a tiny statue of a lizard. Katya couldn’t help but smile. There was only one passageway leading out of this room and she held her breath as she went through.

  She let it out as this time she emerged into fresh open air. She stopped short, however, when she realized that there was only a small ledge between her and falling several tree-lengths to her death. She backed up a pace and glanced down. Far below, she could see that her pursuers were still positioned outside of the door, their attention towards the surrounding brush. They apparently hadn’t realized that she’d made it inside. That was good news for her.

  She had another thought. Or perhaps they just weren’t worried. The labyrinth of caves went on forever…

  She shook the thought aside and turned her attention back to the path in front of her. The ledge led to another cave farther up the cliff face. These must be the cave openings she had been able to see when she had stood outside. There had been four, making a diamond shape, on either side of the doorway. At the moment, she was at the farthest left-hand one. Hugging her body against the wall, and hoping that none of the party below looked up and spotted her in the dim light, she made her way to the next opening above her.

  She slunk inside – and immediately found herself back out on another ledge. She looked down and had a wave of nausea rush over her. Heights were not her strong suit. She waited until the moment passed and she got her wits about her once more. She was now one cave down, the right-hand point of the left diamond. This pathway led to a cave below, which she followed and entered.

  And was led straight outside once more. This time she ended up even higher on the opposite side of the door; the top point of the right-hand diamond. She gulped and moved forward again, down the path and to the right.

  This one jumped her down to the bottom of the diamond on the right. She sighed. Was this getting her somewhere? She moved through the cave and had to pause a moment as her eyes adjusted to the sudden light of the brightened cave. Her eyes focused on the statue of a lizard in front of her.

  She ground her teeth in frustration. There didn’t need to be any dangers along this path, the confusing passageways probably made people so irritated they simply threw themselves off the cliff! She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. There must be something she had missed.

  She went back out on the ledge and looked around. She coaxed Marak down into her hand and straightened him into a pen shape. Then she spelled the tip of his tail to create a temporary mark where it touched her skin as though he were a pen. She used him to create a diagram of the caves. Hopefully, the spells that decided where they would take a person were the same each time. Soon she would find out.

  She retraced her steps, documenting where she was taken each time on her arm and found that they did indeed appear to have set direction. That was some good news, except that it still led her straight back to where she started. As she emerged from the cave above where the beginning cave was, she accidentally kicked a loose stone down off the ledge.

  It clattered loudly as it bounced its way down the cliff-side. Katya hastily backed up back into the cave. And emerged out in another one. Only it wasn’t the one that she had ended
up at the last time she went through this cave.

  She pondered this for a moment before deciding that maybe going through the cave from another one versus back onto itself caused a different result. The guards down below had spotted her, and were pointing arrows in her direction. She’d have to figure this out quickly.

  She backed through a few cave openings, and wrote them down, finally finding herself back in the room with the little mouse on a pedestal. She hurriedly reviewed the notes on her arm, which was completely covered in blackish ink now. Letting Marak resume his normal position, she memorized the route she would need – which was ridiculously easy once she figured it out – and stepped back onto the ledge.

  And immediately stepped back in, finding herself at the complete opposite side of the door and at the far right cave of that diamond shape. Then she did it again, stepping back into the same cave. This time she had to walk through about ten steps before she emerged on yet another ledge, and she found herself in a completely different area. She seemed to be about half-way down a gorge cut through the mesa, a sheer cliff face above and below her, and another across the way.

  There was another cave visible on the opposite cliff, directly across from her over a large chasm. She backed through the cave, testing it, but only found herself back out at the original caves where the guards seemed to now be entering the caves after her. It wouldn’t be long now before they caught up to her.

  She looked around for some other means of crossing the gap. There were vines on some of the cliff, but not close enough for her to reach, and even if she could use magic to get them, they weren’t long enough, nor could she attach them anywhere to be of any use.

  She put a toe out onto the air in front of her. It hit something hard. She tapped her foot around some more and found that it appeared to be solid, though invisible.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me…” she mumbled to herself. She could hear the shouting of the guards in the cave behind her and she steeled her courage. Of all the things… she thought as she stepped out onto thin air.