Bricrui (The Forgotten: Book 2) (3 page)

She found her mind wandering towards other
directions, not wanting to think too hard about Alina and end up
upsetting herself in front of the Knights. She wondered what Hunter
was up to. She had grown accustomed to traveling with him and had
hoped that he would have chosen to accompany her on the rest of her
quest. Unfortunately, he had decided that he had to go back and
rescue the mysterious woman who had given them the means to escape
with the baby.
I don’t know why he cares about some faceless
woman in prison
, she thought bitterly, and immediately felt
ashamed. Just because she was jealous that someone else would get
to enjoy his company…But why did she care, anyway? She was still
mad at him for keeping the secret of Hardonia. He had known all
along what had gone on there and had chosen not to share it with
her.

Natalya reined in her horse and pulled out a
rolled up map from the saddlebag. The Knights closed in around her,
forming a protective circle, and she sighed irritably and tried to
ignore them. Unfurling the map against the horse’s neck, she found
the point that marked the crossroads they had just passed and she
counted the number of finger-lengths until their destination.

The Queen had not been able to tell her where
Alina had been taken since Lord Telvani had been carrying out his
own secret agendas behind her back, but she had given her a list of
possible Order fortresses and she and the Knights were currently
checking them all out. So far, they had searched three of them and
found only a handful of escaped prisoners, but no signs of
kidnapped children. Natalya was beginning to worry. She had been so
sure that once she spoke to the Queen, everything would be alright,
but that hadn’t been the case. And now, it had been weeks since
Alina was taken. Who knew what atrocities had been done to her. The
Queen and Lady Katrina had uncovered several documents suggesting
that others had been taken from other towns as well, though none of
the other towns had been so completely demolished afterwards.

Natalya felt tears welling up in her eyes and
she roughly wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. All the
Knights were purposefully looking in other directions, and she
scowled. Now she knew how the Queen felt, constantly attended. It
was rather annoying.

She rolled the map back up and stuffed it
unceremoniously into the bag, urging her mount forward. The Knights
fell into step around her. One of them, a young man by the name of
Jeremy, came to ride next to her.

“Think we’ll find anything interesting at
this one?” he asked, a bit too excitedly for her liking. She
understood his youthful eagerness, but in light of events that had
happened to her, she felt her own enthusiasm wavering. She was
content to find nothing interesting but her sister. She tried not
to let her mood rub off on him though.

She forced a smile. “I don’t know,” she
answered in a light tone, “I thought the last one was pretty
interesting. We got to bring two criminals to justice.”

“Yeah,” he agreed in a whining voice, “but
they came so
peacefully
.”

Natalya laughed despite herself. “And you
would have preferred them not to?”

“Then I’d get to show you how good I am with
my sword,” he grinned at her with a suggestive look. The eyebrow
tilt that accompanied this statement was so comically dramatic that
she couldn’t help but smile – this time for real.

She shook her head, still smiling. Despite
his joking tone with her, he was quite the ladies-man. She had
witnessed him sweet-talking several of the maids at more than one
of the manors they had stayed at. She was appalled, but impressed,
at how often it worked. She was a bit young for him to be seriously
pursuing her, but she was not so naïve that she couldn’t still play
the game. At the moment, however, she was not in the mood.

“I just hope that we find something to lead
us to my sister,” she sighed now, her thoughts swinging back to
reality.

“We will,” Jeremy reached over and patted her
on the arm. “You’ve got the best group of men riding with you a
girl could ask for. We’ll find her.” He gave her a lop-sided grin.
After a moment of silence, he dug around in his saddlebags. He
lifted something out and handed it to her. “Here,” he offered.

Natalya looked at the item in his
outstretched hand. It appeared to be a long necklace of difference
colored beads. “What is this?”

“It’s a worry-bracelet; my sister makes them.
When you’re worried about something you’re supposed to rub one of
the beads and put all your worry into it so that the beads carry
around the burden instead of you.” He shrugged, looking a little
embarrassed, and quickly glanced around to see if any of the other
Knights were within earshot. “I’ve always thought it was a bit
hokey myself…” he trailed off, shoving the beads towards her.

She took them with an affectionate smile.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely, “that’s very kind of you.”

He smiled; a genuine smile, not one trying to
impress a lady. “Here, let me help you.” He took her hand and
draped the beads around it three times to make it snug enough on
her slender arm. When he had finished adjusting them, they fit
nicely; she could wiggle her hand upside-down without them falling
off.

She rubbed one of the beads between her
fingers and thought of Alina. They would find her. She was sure of
it.

When they reached the next manor on their
list, they were immediately greeted by a welcoming party at the end
of the long drive-way snaking up to the house. Their approach had
been detected.

The staff was cordial, and the lord of the
manor seemed open in his answers. He seemed to be sincere, in
Natalya’ opinion, of having no desire to harbor any such criminals
as those they were searching for. He gave them free range of the
house.

Natalya followed Jeremy down into the cellar,
looking around the room carefully for the signs of secret rooms and
trapdoors they had been told to watch for. The first few storerooms
yielded nothing, and Natalya followed the Knights tramping back up
the stairway.

Halfway up, her foot accidentally clomped
down on a step rather harshly, and it made an odd echo. All the
Knights immediately stopped their movement and Natalya backed down
a step, stamping her foot on the previous one again. It connected
with a solid sound. She tapped her foot on the step above it again,
the one that had made the odd noise, and was rewarded with a hollow
sound. The steps above this one sounded hollow as well.

The Knights swarmed back down the stairs,
holding their weapons drawn towards the cowed servants who had led
them there, and surrounded the stairwell.

“How does it open?” demanded Jeremy, who had
taken it upon himself to be the leader of their group of
searchers.

The servants looked around at one another
with frightened looks, but no one spoke up. Natalya joined the
Knights in searching for the secret handle. Sometimes it was a
candle-holder that needed to be pulled, a pressure plate in the
wall, or simply a hidden string that needed to be pulled to unlatch
something. A few minutes of searching still revealed nothing, and
Jeremy turned back to the servants once more.

“Someone is going to tell me how to open
this,” he stated, fixing them each with an intense stare and
gauging their reactions.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,”
one stammered from the end of the line.

Jeremy stalked over to the man and stared him
down. “How long have you been here?” he asked him.

“Four years, sir,” the man answered.

“Four years,” Jeremy repeated, “and you don’t
know that there’s a secret passage underneath these stairs? You
expect me to believe that?”

“It’s the truth!” The man looked genuinely
convinced of his words.

Something caught Natalya’s eye and she moved
forward towards it. She could feel the eyes of Knights and servants
alike watching her. The wine rack on the opposite wall held many
different varieties of the stuff in seemingly random assortment.
But on the bottom row, there were five of the same all right next
to one another. She bent down for a better look.

There was a light covering of dust on all of
them, all of them but one. Natalya grabbed hold of one of the dusty
bottles and tried to pull it out to examine it. It didn’t budge.
She tried again, but it was quite firmly attached.

“Those are the lord’s special bottles, you
can’t touch them!” the servant who had introduced himself as the
valet in charge of the wine said frantically. He seemed to boss
around the other servants quite freely, and Natalya could easily
imagine how no one else had ever happened upon the secret entrance
if he was the one who knew of its existence.

She moved her hand to the one without the
dust and gently tugged. It moved a few inches and stopped. For a
moment nothing happened, then several of the Knights moved
hurriedly out of the way as part of the staircase swung upwards to
fold in on itself.

Another staircase, this one leading
downwards, was revealed, and the Knights immediately sprang to
action. The valet tried to flee, a clear admission of his guilt,
but Jeremy grabbed hold of him roughly by the arm, forcing him to
stay put. Natalya waited with Jeremy and the servants at the top of
the stairs for the other Knights to return. Shouts rang out below
and Natalya could see Jeremy fairly twitching to get in on the
action.

It wasn’t long, however, before they
returned, dragging behind them two unpleasant individuals who
glared haughtily around.

“Names?” Natalya asked them, pulling out the
list of escaped prisoners to compare their answer to. The glares
both whipped around to land on her and she stared coolly back.
“Names?” she repeated and the Knight holding the woman, who
happened to be closer to Natalya, shook her rather roughly to get
her to respond.

“Lady and Lord Esquire,” she spat out through
gritted teeth.

Natalya ran a finger down the list, searching
for the name. “Ah-hah,” she said after a moment, “here you are.
Serving your sentence for possession of a book on blood-magic and
ties to the Order.”

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be,”
whined the man from behind her, “I don’t belong here.”

“Shut up,” his wife snapped at him, “This is
all your fault.”

“Don’t worry,” Jeremy told him, spinning the
man around so he could place irons around his wrists, “we’ll get
you back where you belong.”

CHAPTER 2

“Please tell me you are joking,” Layna
implored her aide.

“I’m afraid not, Your Majesty; all of the
Council members’ households have sent messages that they are unable
to travel.”

“This can’t be a coincidence,” she sighed and
rubbed her eyes. It seemed she was doing more cleaning up after
Telvani’s messes, and less what she needed to be doing to rebuild
the people’s confidence in her reign. “Where is Gryffon?”

“The King is in the library, My Liege,” he
answered and correctly assumed that was a dismissal. He bowed and
left her to her thoughts. All six members of the Council were too
busy to answer a summons? That was extremely unlikely, even given
the circumstances under which she was calling them together. The
latest sessions had all been far too compliant to Lord Telvani’s
wishes. Even the meetings they’d had since Telvani escaped had been
far too subdued and none of the members had been able to offer any
suggestions on what to do. This was very unusual, and she and
Gryffon were suspicious that Telvani had somehow found a way to
influence each of them.

They had found no evidence of blackmail or
subversion so far, but the fact that all of them supposedly
couldn’t get to the palace – all at the same time – only further
proved to her that there was something amiss.

She strode through the castle purposefully,
almost unaware of the many feet that were constantly behind her.
Almost, but not entirely. She had grown much more accustomed to the
constant barrage of guards, aides, and maids who followed her every
movement, but it was tiresome.

Gryffon was sitting at the center table
poring over documents. He squinted at them, from hours of focusing
too closely, and she felt for him. Both their lives had been turned
upside-down the moment that she had been recognized as the heir for
the kingdom. The hunts he used to be able to take alone, now came
with an entourage of guardsmen. Layna had spent no few nights
listening to him complaining about how much harder it was to be
silent in the woods with ten men following behind you. And armored
men make quite a racket.

“Gryffon,” she interrupted his work, laying a
gentle hand on his shoulder.

He looked up at her gratefully, obviously
glad to have been given an excuse to stop. “My love,” he greeted
her, standing to give her a quick kiss.

The touch still sent shivers through her, and
she watched the people around them out of the corner of her eye.
They were all pointedly looking elsewhere for their privacy.

“We may have another problem,” she told him
regretfully. “None of the Council members are able to come to the
palace. I’m afraid it may not be as simple as we first
thought.”

“Not as simple as Telvani having somehow
finding a way to convince all the Council members to agree with him
on every subject?” he said sarcastically, but then immediately
scrunched up his face and apologized. “Sorry, I just feel like
we’ve had nothing but one problem after another. Why did you have
to go and be the Queen?” He sighed with exaggerated
exasperation.

Layna gave him her best mad face, but
couldn’t hold it for long before it transformed into a smile. He
always had that effect on her. She leaned forward and kissed him
instead. “Come on, let’s go spend some time with Phoenix while we
discuss our options.” She took him by the hand, and led their now
twice-as-big entourage to the nursery.