Bricrui (The Forgotten: Book 2) (25 page)

“He’s alive?” Katya asked excitedly, but the
look on Hunter’s face staved off the shout of joy that had bubbled
to the surface. She bit her lip awaiting his answer.

“No,” he told her regretfully, “He didn’t
make it. He never even woke from his coma. Lorcan said it wasn’t
your father, but he had an arrow wound…I thought you would want to
know.”

Katya was silent. She had already believed
him to be dead, so it wasn’t like this was new news, but it still
constricted her heart.

“I also thought you should know about your
history: Lorcan said that Gareth, your father, was descended from
the Greyclaws, as in Sheila Greyclaw who founded the Myaamia tribe.
He seems that he used to be respected within the tribes and was
thought of as a great man until the day that he went mad. I suspect
that is when he was forced to throw you out and lost your mother as
well.”

“Thank you for telling me,” she stated
neutrally, unsure of her own emotions. They stood silently for a
moment.

“So I hate to bring us back to reality,”
Hunter said, “But you did just give them the stone that will
solidify the curse on the Princess Phoenix so that everyone with
the Dark King’s blood will be sterile.”

“I just what?”

“The Myaamia Elders apparently told the tribe
that the reason they wanted to take the baby was to cure it from
some ailment so that she could start a new age without the taint of
the Dark King. What the Elders didn’t tell them was that this
‘ailment’ was any trace of the Dark King’s blood in someone’s
veins. Each of the tribes has a piece of a powerstone – like the
one they sent you to get from the Dena’ina – which when used
together can make any spell virtually indestructible.”

“How do you know that?”

“Your friend Lorcan has been quite busy. He
has been spying on the Elders and reporting back to me. He seems to
have taken quite a fancy to you. Do I have a little competition
with the young man?” he asked jokingly, but Katya thought she
sensed a bit of seriousness.

She shrugged noncommittally, saying
teasingly, “He is pretty helpful. He broke me out of prison, you
know. I had to go on a special quest to get you out…”

“Which just gave my captors the means to ruin
a lot of people’s lives.”

“You’re worth it,” she joked, but when he
just continued to stare at her with his big brown eyes, full of
concern for all the people, she relented, abandoning her teasing.
Sighing, she told him, “I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t really
give it to them then.”

He wrinkled his brow. “What do you mean? I
saw you hand it to her.”

“You saw me hand
a
stone to her,”
Katya clarified. She launched into the retelling of her story of
the events that had happened with the Dena’ina. Soon she got lost
in the memory…

…As she had been preparing to take the
Dena’ina stone, a man had appeared behind her once the fire barrier
dissolved.

“Please,” he beseeched her, “take the stone
if you must, but hear what I have to say.”

Katya did not move, but watched him carefully
as he approached. When he came within ten feet, he stopped.

“How do you know my name?” she inquired.

“The Myaamia sent you?” he asked rather than
answer her question, though it sounded more like a statement.

She nodded, seeing no reason to deny it.

“We have been forced to keep an eye on all of
their dealings, so we noticed when you joined up with them. I am
fairly surprised that they chose to send you here, you didn’t seem
to be on their side.” There was a slight questioning tone to his
voice.

“I’m not,” Katya supplied, “They are holding
my friend hostage.”

“Ah,” the man nodded his head.

“Why do you keep an eye on them? Because of
the incident? You’re afraid of their retaliation?”

The man sighed. “I fear that it has been
going on for far longer than the incident. And the true events of
those days are nothing like what the Myaamia believe them to be.
You see, the Dena’ina do not hold the same distaste for the marked
as the rest of the tribes. We welcome those who are thrown out by
the others to live in our special sanctuary here.” He waved his
arms out around them, to the crowd of people that was gathered
around. Katya eyed them warily, but they stayed a fairly safe
distance away, and not even the guards who had been chasing her
moved any closer while the man spoke. “The Myaamia Elders, and the
leader in particular, feel that this is some kind of blasphemous
place, and because of this belief, have tried to send in assassins
to wipe out the marked many times. The ‘incident’ of which you
speak is the final outcome of two such attempts which ended in the
regrettable deaths of several of the Myaamia tribesmen. We tried
our best not to harm them, but their single-minded obsession with
eradicating the marked had to be stopped. They forced our
hand.”

“The Myaamia act as though the Dena’ina
attacked them.”

“I assure you, that was not the case. We have
wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Those who are exiled for
the mark are welcome to come here. It is what this village was made
for. We are forced to hide them up here rather than allow them to
live amongst us only for their own safety. They are hurting no
one.”

Katya thought about this. The safe-guards
that were put into place to get here were designed to frustrate and
slow those who didn’t already know the way, but any who did would
be able to pass quite easily. It was not built to hurt or kill.

The man seemed to sense her contemplation and
he paused, beginning again when she looked up at him expectantly.
“The stone that the Myaamia have sent you to retrieve would not
only result in grave consequences for the Dena’ina, but would also
give the Myaamia great power. We do not know what they are up to,
but we have felt pulses of magic and it has reeked of the power of
all of other tribes’ stones. If they are to get hold of this one,
whatever spell they performed could become unbreakable.”

“They sent out a summons to all the tribes.
Everyone but you sent a party for what they called ‘the
Arrival’.”

“Do you know what this ‘Arrival’ was?”

“They kidnapped the Princess of Gelendan and
presumably put some sort of spell on her before they allowed her to
be returned to the King and Queen.”

“They cannot be allowed to finish whatever it
was. The future of the people of Gelendan could count on it. I
don’t know where you are from, but I can sense the mark on you
though you have hidden it with a scar. The Myaamia, or at least
their leaders, have been quite intent on ridding the world of every
last trace of the Dark King, blaming every evil of the world on
him, forgetting that he is long dead.”

“Why would it be grave consequences for the
Dena’ina to have the stone removed? I assume you mean more than
just losing a source of power.”

“Indeed, the powerstone keeps the chaotic
magic at bay. Surely you have felt the order of this place, in
comparison to the magic beyond. It keeps things like the spell to
bring water to the top of the mesa in place. Without it, many
spells we rely on for our daily lives would suddenly cease to
function.”

Katya was brought out of the memory and
retelling by Hunter’s voice.

“Lorcan mentioned that too, though he didn’t
seem concerned about the Dena’ina’s fate. He still believes that
his parents were killed in cold blood when they were sent to the
Dena’ina supposedly on a peaceful mission. I guess they were
captivated by Kali’s lies as well.”

“Kali?” Katya questioned.

“Yes, the leader of the Elders with the
braid, the woman who sent you on the mission.”

“Oh, so that’s her name.”

“So the stone you brought back wasn’t their
powerstone?”

“No,” Katya confirmed, “Nor did it contain
its essence, which would also have allowed them to complete the
spell. The Dena’ina have dedicated their lives to magic involving
stones and said that they were able to create a stone that would
fool the Myaamia for long enough for us to escape. I agreed to
bring back this fake stone so that the spell would not be made
permanent and the Dena’ina would not lose their powerstone. The
Dena’ina are planning on sending a group to meet with the Myaamia
to try and figure out what they are doing and hopefully enlighten
the rest of the tribe to what the Elders are up to. They also
healed the Bloodstone, the stone that carried the essence of Nuko,”
she said, bringing it out from under her tunic to look at it.
Having found Hunter and Gareth – who had also helped her heal – it
was no longer nearly as painful to look at the stone and remember
Nathair. “They removed all of the darkness from it, erasing the
years of evil that it has done.”

Hunter seemed to sense her intense connection
to it, though she had not yet told him the whole story behind it.
She would tell him someday. She would tell him everything, because
he was her other half. She had known it when she was little, and
the loyalty she felt for him now was more than words could
describe. Had the Dena’ina not offered her the fake stone in its
place and the only way to save him would have been to bring Kali
the stone that would mean the world’s destruction, she would have
done so.

“I think perhaps it deserves a new name,”
Katya said, stroking the stone which had faded from the blood red
it used to now be completely translucent. “I will call it the
DragonStone.”

*

Layna and Gryffon called to Katya and Hunter,
hoping that one of them would hear the summons. The Knights who
were stationed in the forest had reported that they had found their
way to them and were currently hiding out in case of a search party
from the tribe. Layna had witnessed the flare in the sky and felt
the spell. If he and Katya were free, it could mean that the stone
had been delivered, and their curse permanent. She held her breath
waiting for a response. After a short while, the mirror shimmered
and was replaced by Katya’s face.

“Layna,” she greeted her with a smile, “It’s
so good to see you!”

She looked like the weight of the world had
been lifted from her shoulders, and the haunted look she used to
carry was no more. The smile was genuine and reached to her eyes.
Layna smiled sadly back, glad that her friend seemed to have found
her happiness, though afraid of its cost.

Katya was pushed good-naturedly out of the
way by Hunter, who the woman gazed at with such affection that
Layna could guess the reason for her good mood. Apparently it
wasn’t just the fact that he possessed information about her past
that held her so attached to him.

“Queen Layna,” he addressed her much more
formally, “we have much to report to you. And good news.” His eyes
twinkled.

Layna’s heart lifted. Perhaps Katya hadn’t
sealed their fate after all.

They filled her in on the events, including
the fact that Katya had not, in fact, delivered the stone that
would have sealed their fate to the Myaamia.

“I could kiss you!” Layna said happily,
gripping the edges of the mirror.

“Good thing you’re on the other side of the
mirror then,” Katya said with a feigned disgusted look.

“But I’m not,” Hunter told her impishly, and
then drew the woman in for a passionate embrace.

Layna averted her eyes until the extremely
long and drawn-out kiss ended, leaving Katya speechless and shocked
– a state Layna didn’t think she’d ever seen the girl in before.
She let them bask in the moment for a while before regretfully
turning the tide of the conversation back to the seriousness of the
situation.

“Unfortunately,” she pointed out, “that still
leaves us with the fact that Phoenix has already been cursed. And
an unknown number of others have already had it spread to them.
We’ve sealed off the palace already, but we fear that it may have
already reached the city. We have no way to tell. Really, we need
some way to completely isolate the city and as much of the
surrounding area as we can until we can find a way to break the
spell.”

“Are you sure it can be broken?” Katya
asked.

“There has to be a way,” she said firmly, not
allowing any doubt to creep into her voice. Until there was no hope
left, she would be strong. “The tribe was so unsure of it being
permanent that they sent you to retrieve the stone. Since you did
not give them the means to strengthen it, I am sure that it means
there is a way to break it.”

“But while you’re working on breaking it, it
will be spreading even farther,” Hunter said practically, “So you
need some sort of way to contain it.”

“Gryffon and I have been working with the
royal mages and we think that there’s a way we can form a huge
bubble, in essence, around the city. The only problem is, Gryffon
and I have enough power to create this spell, but maintaining it
would require all of our attention. Attention that is desperately
needed elsewhere at the moment.”

Katya looked thoughtful for a moment. “What
if you anchored the spell to something else – like a stone – to
maintain the spell for you? Would that work?”

“I suppose,” Layna agreed hesitantly, “but I
don’t know of anything that would be able to handle that kind of
power for long periods of time.”

“What about the Bloodstone?” Katya asked.

“I don’t-” Layna began, but Katya cut her
off.

“The Dena’ina healed it. They sealed the
crack that Leoht put in it and drained it of the evil taint of
Nuko.” She drew the stone out from under her tunic and held it out
for Layna to see. Indeed, the stone had turned completely clear and
Layna could sense no more of the dark aura in it.

“Would that be able to hold the type of power
we’re talking?” she asked skeptically.

“It held the essence of a dragon,” Katya
retorted a bit sharply. Layna knew her past with Nathair and
understood the significance of the stone to her.