Veiled Rose

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Published by Bethany House Publishers

Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

www.bethanyhouse.com

Bethany House Publishers is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

E-book edition created 2011

ISBN 978-1-4412-3241-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

H
ILL
H
OUSE,
though abandoned, had remained unscathed during the years of the Dragon’s occupation. This pleased the young man as he climbed the forlorn path to that place where he had spent many happy months. He had feared that Hill House, despite its remote location, would have been one of the Dragon’s primary targets. But as he passed various shepherding villages and proceeded up the mountain road to the house itself, he felt his spirits lifting. And when he saw the house still standing and its sloping gardens yet unburned, something close to a smile touched his too serious face.

Of all the familiar haunts he had passed since returning to his homeland, this was the only one that bore no visible scars of the Dragon’s work.

His progress up into the mountains had been solitary. Companions had journeyed with him to the foot of the mountain road, but he had requested that they let him make the climb alone. This meant a long day of rough going with only a shaggy pony for company. But the young man was used to this kind of loneliness by now.

Lately, he felt far lonelier in a crowd than when left to himself.

The mountain air was clean compared to the stench that lingered behind every breath in the low country. The sturdy pony enjoyed it as well, wuffling to itself and shaking its mane with renewed vigor. The young man tethered his mount at the house gate and entered the overgrown gardens.

Hill House’s empty windows, like mourning eyes, gazed down on him. He sought the big windows framed by heavy curtains that belonged to the library; the smaller, set up a story higher, opened from his old bedroom. The glass panes were dusty with time and neglect, but at least they were not filmed over with ash, and the curtains did not reek with poison.

The young man did not enter the house, though a part of him longed to walk those corridors again, to feel a comfort that he had not yet felt since returning to his native land. No, he had made the climb to Hill House for a purpose, and he dared not linger.

He had a monster to hunt.

He found the garden shed, which was locked just as old Mousehand, the gardener, had always left it. The young man knew he would never get those complicated locks undone. When Mousehand died, his replacement had been unable to work them either and had been obliged to build a whole new shed. But the tools in that new shed would be insufficient, the young man knew. Some traditions must be maintained if one hoped to hunt a monster successfully.

The wooden door was soft in places. He kicked at it and pulled out several panels until he could force his way inside. He did not look around too carefully in that gloom, feeling as unwilling to disturb the old gardener’s secrets as he would be to desecrate a sacred tomb. He sought only one thing: the weapon of a warrior.

Which he found in the form of a beanpole.

Not just any beanpole. He recognized it the moment his fingers wrapped around the thin wooden rod. This was the beanpole of all beanpoles, mighty in purpose and fell with use. Another smile tugged at the young man’s mouth as he climbed back out of the shed, his weapon in hand. In the daylight, one could see the rough carvings that ran up and down the pole’s length, jagged and unlovely but made with care. And at the tip of the pole was tied a faded red scarf.

So armed, the young man made his way to the far garden gate, which these days was encrusted with rust. It squeaked in lazy protest when he opened it to step onto the trail that led farther up the mountain.

It wouldn’t be much of a hunt. He had a fair notion where his monster was to be found. This was by no means the first time he had pursued this quarry.

The first time, he had been no more than eleven years old.

T
HEY SAID A MONSTER
lived in the mountains.

They couldn’t say where it hid. They couldn’t say when it had come. They certainly couldn’t say what it looked like, though they had plenty of conflicting ideas on that subject. But they all agreed that it was there. Somewhere.

They
being no one in particular and everyone in general who lived and worked at Hill House, where Leo spent the summer of his eleventh year. At first, Leo assumed it was simply another one of those sayings that grown-ups liked to bandy about, such as swearing “Silent Lady!” when frightened, or “Dragon’s teeth!” when angry.

“Best come in, it’s almost dark,” his nursemaid would call from his bedroom window when he was playing out on the sloping lawns and gardens of Hill House. “You don’t want the mountain monster to carry you off.”

This wasn’t true. Leo wouldn’t have minded much if the monster did carry him off, or at least made the attempt. He put off coming in until the very last minute, just before his nursemaid would feel obliged to sally forth and fetch him. But no matter how long the shadows in the mountainside garden grew, he saw neither hide nor hair of anything monsterlike.

Then one day he took the servants’ stairway down from his rooms, for it was a quicker route to the gardens. He overheard furtive voices and could not have stopped himself from eavesdropping for the world.

“I swear on my hand, I saw it!” said the voice Leo recognized as belonging to Leanbear, the carriage man. “I was on my way up the mountain trail to my old granna’s house, and I saw it clear as day!”

Leanbear was a strong man, used to working with the tough mountain ponies that pulled the carriages in this rough part of the country. But his voice quavered and remained low as he spoke.

“What did it look like?” Mistress Redbird, the cook, asked in a tone rather too dry to be sympathetic. “Was it big and shaggy? Did you see the Wolf Lord’s ghost? He was said to prowl these parts back in the day.”

“This was no wolf, Redbird, I’ll tell you that straight,” said the carriage man. “I’ve hunted down my share of wolves, and I’m proud to say I’ve yet to feel even a twinge when they set up their howling on winter’s nights. But this was no wolf.”

“What, then?” demanded Redbird. “A troll? A goblin? A sylph?”

“More like . . . a demon.”

Leo shuddered in his dark stairway, a delightful shudder of terror such as only boys of a particular spirit may experience. But Mistress Redbird laughed outright. “I’d have sooner you said
dragon
, Leanbear.”