The Deer Prince's Murder: Book Two of 'Fantasy & Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 2) (19 page)

It took me a moment to understand exactly what I was looking at.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The late afternoon sunlight cleaved through the fogbank that clung to the summit. It cast a bright yellow glow over a vine-draped granite boulder the size of a pretty hefty passenger car. A flash of amber and silver caught my eye.

A magnificent silver fox perched atop the rock like a king receiving visitors. The animal’s lush pelt carried patches of red against silver. A wise, knowing face framed amber eyes. The effect was spoiled a bit by its lolling tongue as it sat panting from some recent exertion.

I should have known. Little was as it seemed in the realm of Andeluvia, and I’d met more than one sentient animal in my travels. I bowed respectfully to the ‘Old Man’ and introduced myself.

“Greetings, wise one,” I stated formally. “I am a traveler from a world far from here, but I have come seeking your wisdom.”

The fox simply looked at me without a shred interest. It continued to pant.

I tried again. Maybe the animal was hard of hearing.

“Greetings, wise one!” I began, this time raising my voice to a near-shout.

But before I could go on, the fox scratched one ear with the stretch of a rear leg and got up. Without any ceremony, it wandered off into the surrounding mist. I called after it, not sure if I should chase it down. Somehow that didn’t seem all that polite.

Then I felt a strangely familiar movement of air. The warm, masculine voice of every kid’s favorite grandfather echoed in my ear.

“How curious,” the voice said. “Why in all of Andeluvia are you speaking to the fox?”

Startled, I looked around. No figure loomed up out of the fog, and yet the voice sounded very close.

“Um…I was looking for the Old Man of–”

“Yes, yes,” the voice said wearily, and with a touch of impatience. “The Old Man of the Mountain. You’d think that after all of these centuries, someone would come up with a better name. I mean, I’m not a man. Or a woman. Or anything else gendered, for that matter.”

I scratched my head in confusion. “But the fox…”

“Look a little lower.”

“But…I don’t see anything but a big…”

I almost smacked myself in the forehead right then.

“Of course. I should’ve figured that in this world, the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ would have to be a rock.”

“Spirit stone, if you please.”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude.”

“I don’t either. For example, I should offer you something to eat or drink out of common courtesy. But we’re pretty far from the nearest alehouse.” The grandfatherly voice dropped to a stage whisper. “And besides, I’m a
rock
. We don’t really get out and about much.”

I stifled a laugh. This whole scene was getting rather surreal, but I found myself liking the old codger.

“My name’s Dayna. Instead of just calling you ‘Old Man’, do you have a name I can use?”

“In Old Granite, my name is twenty-seven words long. Maybe you could come up with something better for our personal use.”

“Okay,” I thought furiously for a moment, and then settled onto the most obvious thing that came to mind. “How about…Rocky?”

At that, the spirit stone made something like a snort.

“Fine. A tad unimaginative, but fine. Well, I doubt that a yearling human cub like yourself just wandered up here for the fresh air. What did you come to see old Rocky for?”

“Well, I had a couple of questions. And I suppose the first is…look, are you going to try to harm me? Your reputation isn’t what I would call sunshine and rainbows.”

A sigh. “Please take a close look at me. Note the conspicuous lack of arms needed to swing a sword. Hands to thrust a spear. And in particular, the lack of legs to chase you with.”

“Yet people say that speaking with you is perilous.”

“Yes. It is.”

Prickles ran up my arm as the stone admitted it as plain as day.

The grandfatherly voice continued. “People say I’m perilous because I don’t tell them what they want to hear. And nothing is more perilous to a closed mind than the truth.”

True enough,
I thought, but did my best to keep my guard up.
This creature wouldn’t know it, but I’d learned from Liam and Destry that you didn’t need arms in order to cast a spell.

“You bring up a good point, Rocky. My second question is…what do you know about a dragon named Sirrahon?”

“My goodness! That is a rather dark thing to talk about. Why not instead ask me about how to make your own diamonds? All you need is some coal and a handy volcano–”

“Sorry, but I’ve been through a lot just to get this far. I need to know about this dragon.”

“Very well,” Rocky acknowledged. “Sirrahon is one of the oldest, mightiest of his kind. Truly, a dragon that one does not wish to oppose.”

I nodded. So far, nothing that I hadn’t heard before. Luckily, my stone companion went on.

“Even his name is fraught with meaning. In the Old Speech, ‘Sirrahon’ means ‘standard-bearer’. Or ‘herald’ if you will.”

I was starting to get that sinking feeling again. The feeling joined the chill I’d gotten earlier and decided to time-share my stomach. “Herald for what, exactly?”

“Why, the rest of his kind, of course. That he has awoken is no accident. And like the other horrific beings of the Dark, if one falls, others will rise to take their place.”

That almost made me let out a groan. Yeah, I was pretty sure that those very words would surface in some later nightmare.

“Okay. Let’s just put aside the whole ‘rising beings of the Dark’ thing for a moment. It’s too much for me to even consider for the moment.”

And oddly enough, that
was
exactly how I felt. The events of the day had begun to blur in my mind. Robbed me of some of my sharpness. I wanted nothing more than to just get this whole thing over with, and to do that, I only had one question that mattered a damn.

“Look,” I said, with as much firmness as I could muster, “How do we stop Sirrahon?”

Silence fell heavy as Rocky seemed to ponder his answer.

“There is only one way I know of…and it will require death, perhaps many deaths, in order to acquire it.”

Normally, a pronouncement like that would have given me a bad case of the chills. But again, whenever I tried to think off the beaten path of ‘stopping Sirrahon’, things went fuzzy.

“In ages past, there was a book. A recounting of the last Great War of Andeluvia. It is the
Codex of the Bellum Draconus
, and it contains both the secrets of that war, and a prophecy.”

This time I really did let out a groan. “Oh, come on. Why is there always a prophecy tied into these kinds of things?”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” Rocky pointed out, “the Codex was written long in the past, so the ‘prophecy’ should be the same as present-day news.”

“I never thought of it that way. I guess to someone in the past, the present was somebody’s future prediction.”

“Those who wrote the Codex hid it near what is now called the Grove of the Willows. It is where the centaurs and the humans gather to make their treaties and alliances.”

“I’m familiar with the place.” I pushed back against the fuzzy feeling in my brain enough to ask, “Why doesn’t anyone know about this? I mean, this sounds like a pretty important book. People working for Benedict or Fitzwilliam, or the archivists in the kingdom’s library…”

Another snort from the spirit stone. “Only humans have the arrogance to assume that they are the sole people who have created books. The Codex is from a time long ago. So long ago, that it was the time before humans or centaurs were doing more than scratching out a living on the barren plains and fields far to the south. Their kingdoms are mere striplings compared to the Old, Dark Powers!”

“Well, if this book contains secrets from that war, we need to get our hands on it. I know where this grove is, but can you get any more specific?”

“Alas, yes. For that is where death must pay for life. Look into the recent past with me.”

The air next to me swirled as the mist coalesced into a mirror-bright surface. In it, I saw the cover to a huge moss-green book. A pair of female hands grasped it, pulling it out from where it rested in a stone chamber under the gnarled roots of an old willow tree.

The view pulled back to reveal the woman who held the book. Lady Behnaz’s ice-gray eyes gleamed in triumph as she held the book aloft. She let out a raw cackle of triumph.

“Of course it would be her,” I mused. A peaceful warmth flooded over me as I said the words. “Her husband’s lands border the Grove of the Willows. But where did she take the Codex?”

“Again, watch carefully.”

The view shifted again. Sturdy castle walls, lower than Fitzwilliam’s palace and made of brick, enclosed a wide courtyard. Lady Behnaz walked through the courtyard’s garden, book clutched in her arms, and stopped in front of a room-sized stone vault. She entered, placed the text on a bookstand and then went back outside.

Lady Behnaz took an amulet in the shape of a bat in flight from her pocket. She strung it on a silver chain, placed it around her neck, and then pinched the bat amulet at the neck. A slab of white stone slid into place, sealing the vault, while a purple glow briefly illuminated the amulet and its chain.

“That vault is located inside the courtyard of Castle Behnaz,” Rocky informed me. “Did you see the amulet around the Lady’s neck? The chain is magic, of course. It won’t come off her neck while she’s alive.”

“What are you saying?” I breathed.

“Do you think she will let you gain access to the Codex if you ask her politely?”

I shook my head, as much to clear it as to acknowledge what I was being told. But everything sounded correct to me. Lady Behnaz’s face swam into view, screaming at me that I’d killed the man she’d loved.

“I thought not,” Rocky said, his voice dripping with regret. “If you are to save your friend, you need that book. If you want that book, you have no choice. Lady Behnaz must die tonight.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

My three companions and I picked our way along the slope of the mountain switchbacks in moody silence. The weather was pretty much the same coming down as when we were going up. Yet somehow, everything seemed colder. Darker. The winds sliced more deeply. Even Shaw was having difficulty navigating the updrafts.

We came to the pebbly banks of the three streams. I dismounted and led my horse over to where she could get a drink and rest for a moment. Shaw made a final sweep of the woods ahead and came to land nearby. The rush of water over the stones forced even the normally gruff-sounding griffin to raise his voice.

“Thy path is clear,” he stated crisply. “For the remaining leagues, I have espied no traffic upon the road before us.”

“The path is clear? I wish that were the case,” Liam muttered, but I ignored him as Galen spoke up.

“Castle Behnaz lies due west of these streams, along the road towards the Grove of the Willows. While it commands the approaches to the Western Reaches of Fitzwilliam’s realm, the lords of that realm wisely placed their headquarters close to the king’s palace.”

“Easier to show up at court that way, no doubt,” I agreed.

“Shall we rest here, and consume the remainder of our provisions?” Galen asked, as he reached to place a hand on one of his saddlebags. “Your mount in particular could use a meal.”

Part of me wanted to say ‘yes’, but a stronger impulse overlaid it, smothered it. “No. There’s no time left. We have to be at that castle tonight.”

Liam looked at me curiously. “Do we have anything resembling a plan to get this mystical text from Lady Behnaz?”

“I do.”

“Then will you share it with us?”

Again, part of me wanted to, but a stronger impulse overcame it. I wasn’t sure why exactly, but I followed along with that impulse.

“I’ll share it when we arrive outside the castle’s demesne,” I said curtly. “Not before.”

I fetched my horse, and all four of us trotted down the forest lane. Shaw kept pace beside us as best he could, though he started to lag to the rear whenever we hit a rise or a patch of rough ground. As Shaw began to fall further and further behind, Galen began shooting me odd glances. I didn’t rein up, but I did finally speak my mind.

“What is your problem?” I snapped.

“I humbly beg your pardon,” the wizard said after a moment. “I thought you would recall that a mature griffin cannot hold the ground speed of an equine mount, a centaur, or Fayleene.”

“The sky’s still up there. If his legs are tired, he can fly for all I care.”

“Quite true. But the griffin has divined enough of your intention so that he fears that he will be spotted at a distance if he remains aloft. He is expending his energy by running on the ground in order to give us the element of surprise.”

“Fine, fine. But we’re not talking about him. I asked what
your
problem was.”

“Our problem,” Liam said, as he put on some speed to talk with us, “is that you need to call a halt so that Grimshaw can catch his breath.”

“But…I need us to get to that damn castle tonight,” I said peevishly.

“If we keep this pace, we’ll arrive without our griffin. Or he’ll be senseless from fatigue. You saw how well we fared without him against our foes.”

I didn’t like it, but I called a halt for a few minutes. We pulled up, and I slid out of my saddle, pacing restlessly until Shaw limped in to join us. I managed to keep my mouth shut, even though I was burning with impatience. Galen administered both water and a restorative spell to the griffin. Then it was off on the forest road again.

We didn’t halt again until I caught sight of the castle’s façade glinting through the dense forest cover. The setting sun turned the rough-sided bricks that made up the castle wall a bright shade of burnt orange. I dismounted and led us forward until we came out into a small clearing just within bowshot of the walls. Shaw looked around uneasily, as did Galen. Liam, perhaps because he was smaller, didn’t share the same unease. Instead, he scowled at me, waiting for me to explain myself.

“All right,” I began, “I know that I’ve kept quiet about what needs to be done to get this Codex. That’s because I needed all of you here, ready to move on what I tell you.”

Shaw still looked winded, but he thumped his paw on the ground in emphasis. “Thou hast but to command us.”

“That’s what I like to hear. The fact is, we have no choice ahead of us but one. Lady Behnaz must die tonight if we are to retrieve that book.”

Shaw’s beak froze, half-open, as if he’d turned to stone. Galen’s hand flew to his mouth in shock. Liam said nothing but continued to watch in silence.

“Truly, there is no love lost between us and the House of Behnaz,” Galen finally said, “But I hardly feel sanguine about this. We centaurs kill relatives and neighbors with relish, but humans are a bit…touchier about it.”

“Thou speakest truly, wizard,” Shaw said ruefully. “Striking at the wife of a powerful lord smacks of dishonor, and I shall have no truck with it.”

I looked at the two of them, shocked to my core. “Have you two turned cowardly on me? I told you, this book is in a vault. A vault that can only be opened with an amulet that Behnaz wears around her neck! An amulet which can’t be removed without killing her!”

“There must be another way!” Galen protested, and Shaw let out a squawk of agreement. “As much as I dedicate myself to our cause, this talk of cold-blooded murder is needless and loathsome!”

“You ungrateful sons-of-bitches!” I fumed, “you’d each be dead or outcast, without my help! I’ve given you the only family you’ve ever known, and you turn your back on me right when I need you most?”

Liam chose that moment to clear his throat and speak. His words were flat, calm, and they struck me like a physical blow.

“It is funny that you should say that, Dayna.” He turned to look at me face-on. “For those are my words. You were the one who gave me a family. This family. And this crime you propose is for my benefit. Should I not have a say in it?”

“Of…of course,” I stammered.

“What if I tell you to call it off? That this is not a price I am willing to pay?”

“You’d betray your own people, like Wyeth?” My hands were clenched into fists now. “Then if none of you will help me, I’ll go and kill Lady Behnaz myself!”

“As I thought.” Liam nodded to himself. “Very well. I shall follow your commands.”

“Damn straight you will. About time one of you magical creatures showed a lick of sense.”

“On one condition. That you touch my antlers first.”

I frowned. “Why? Another needless delay!”

“It is my price for my service.” The Fayleene stepped in front of me, barring my way towards the castle. “Pay it, and we can be on our way.”

Galen blinked, nodding suddenly in understanding. “Yes, Dayna. Do it, and I’ll follow you as well.”

“Thou hast taken leave of thy senses!” Shaw sputtered, but Galen held a palm up towards the griffin.
Wait
, the gesture said.

Annoyed, I touched a finger one of Liam’s antlers.

The bony nub lit up with a sapphire sparks. I staggered backwards until Galen caught me around the shoulders in one muscular arm. Sound of breaking glass in my head. All the feelings of impatience and annoyance and confusion vanished like mist in the morning sun.

“Oh. My. God.” I brought my hands to the sides of my face, as if to check that nothing had been permanently broken. “What the hell have I been saying? How could I…”

My brain flew through all of the problems with what I’d had in mind. Snapshot quick, making connections like a piece of equipment that had been newly machined and de-greased. Killing Lady Behnaz wasn’t only morally questionable. According to Fitzwilliam, Lady Behnaz’s family was the real power in the Western Reach. Killing her would plunge the region into lawlessness, maybe even civil war. And Fitzwilliam would likely ban me from ever returning to this world. Returning to my friends.

“As I thought,” Liam said, with no small amount of satisfaction. “You’ve been under a kind of geis, or ‘spell of obligation’. Luckily, the touch of a Fayleene can neutralize many kinds of magic.”

Liam’s power made sense. I’d seen him deflect a magical firebolt cast by the wizard Magnus Killsheven. And I knew what a geis was. Galen had cast one on me, to ensure that I’d keep the medallion that would transport me to Andeluvia. But I never thought that one could be so subtle, and so deeply implanted. My hands shook. I felt dirty, somehow violated.

“My friends,” I gasped, “if it weren’t for Liam…I’m so sorry for what I’ve been saying.”

Galen smiled warmly, and Shaw nuzzled up to my side. Liam bowed before me, and it was all I could do to stop myself from letting tears flow.

“We knew,” the wizard reassured me. “Somehow, we knew. You weren’t yourself since you came back from the summit.”

“Yes. Since I came back from seeing the Old Man of the Mountain,” I concluded frostily. “What was it that the legend said? That seeing the Old Man put one in the utmost peril?"

“Aye, that it was,” Shaw growled. “Methinks that I would like to take a sledgehammer to that spirit stone. In fact–”

The griffin might have said more, but his words were cut short by the sudden whisper of bows being drawn from all around us. The ring of swords coming free of their sheaths. And above it all, the all-too-familiar voice of Lady Behnaz.

“Be still if you value your lives, brigands! Should I give the word, then the penalty of intruding upon my Lord’s domain is death!”