Twenty-two
The trickling of running water came from far away. I tried to collect my thoughts. Was I dead? I remembered Geth. I remembered Heidel rescuing us.
I opened my eyes. A wooden-beamed ceiling with logs the color of honey spanned overhead. It was the kind of thing you’d see at one of those upscale ski lodges. Somehow, I knew I couldn’t be in a ski lodge. Wrong planet.
A woman’s face blocked my view. Her thin nose and high cheekbones were reminiscent of Heidel’s, though her bright gray eyes and blonde hair were more similar to Kull’s. She smiled as she stretched a blanket over me.
I tried to sit up. When my muscles refused, I attempted to make my voice work. “Where am I?”
“In Danegeld.”
“Where?”
“The Wult fortress.”
I focused on the room around me. A window sat close to my bed. Through the glass, I spied fog-covered mountains surrounding a lake of dark water. Green foliage peeked through gaps in the mist as it weaved slowly over the mountaintops.
A little girl coughed quietly. She stood next to the woman. Her round face peeked from her mother’s skirts.
“I am Kull’s sister. I am called Eugrid,” the woman said. “And this is my daughter, Freydil. How are you feeling?”
My head throbbed, and I tasted blood when I swallowed, though the pain in my side had dulled. I pulled back the blanket to find my abdomen wrapped with bandages. “I am well enough. Did you do this?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
I pressed my fingers to my broken rib. It felt whole again, but how? I was certain I had broken it. “You healed me? Did you use magic?”
“My talent is in healing. Not in magic.” She showed me a wooden bowl with brown flowers inside. I didn’t recognize them. “Although, I have come across certain plants that can be used to speed the healing process.”
The little girl stirred. “Soup, Mother?”
“Yes, I nearly forgot. Can you fetch it for me?”
The girl skipped to a bowl sitting atop a table. She brought it to her mother.
“Thank you,” Eugrid said. She offered me the bowl. “Eat this. It will help.”
I took a small bite. Thick vegetable soup warmed me. The taste was heavenly.
“You are fortunate Heidel found you,” Eugrid said.
“Yes.”
“Kull is too reckless. I tell him he must stop and think before he makes decisions, but I am only his sister. He should never have traveled into the goblin lands. We know so little about them. He could have been killed, and you with him. We are lucky Heidel found you when she did.”
“I agree. Although I wonder how she found us. I thought she’d been captured.”
“Indeed. The goblins captured her, but they made a fine mistake. She escaped and killed the lot of them. Heidel has a talent for evasion. If you ask me, the goblins picked the wrong person to capture.” She placed the bowl with the brown flowers on the table. “Kull will speak with you. But you must rest first.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes, he recovered quickly. At least, that’s what he claims. He’s hunting now. I couldn’t make him rest.”
That sounded like Kull.
Eugrid handed something to me. “Heidel recovered this from the goblins. She said it was yours.”
I focused through bleary eyes and realized she held my pack. I took it and checked inside. My mirror. I’d thought it was gone for good. But where was the dream catcher I’d found in the temple ruins?
Eugrid must have seen my questioning glance. “If you’re looking for the goblin’s loom, my sister has it. She said it was cursed.”
This wasn’t good. Touching it could bring out the magic. I hoped she had sense enough not to handle it. I had to get it back.
“Where is Heidel?”
“She’s in the library.”
“Library?”
“You’ll find it just out this doorway and down the hall.”
I peered out the open door and spied a long hallway.
“You must rest before leaving your room. You’re most likely suffering from a brain injury. Also, your bones need time to recover. My healing will only help you as long as you keep still. My sister can wait,” Eugrid said.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’ve been through some tough scrapes before.”
“But surely never like this?”
I smiled. “I assure you. I feel fine.”
She sighed. “You sound just like Kull.”
“I have spent the past week with him.”
She patted my hand. “You are called Olive, correct?”
“That’s me.”
The little girl tugged on a strand of my hair to reveal my ears. “They’re pointed!” she whispered.
Her mother pulled her back. “Forgive her. She’s only five.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got a godson. He’s seven.” I exhaled. Bringing Jeremiah up only made me realize how far I was from finding him. At least I’d made it to the tombs. I had Kull to thank for that. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt I needed to defend him.
“Kull isn’t always a fool,” I told Eugrid. “He meant to help me find my godson. He nearly gave his life to do it. Yes, he is stubborn. But he’s also brave. You’re lucky to have a brother like him.”
Eugrid stared at me as if seeing me for the first time. Her eyes narrowed. “You are new to our lands?”
“Yes.”
“And are you familiar with our Wult culture?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then I will speak with honesty. Kull is a Wult. When he gives his word, he follows through, no matter the circumstances, no matter who he gives his word to, be it you or anyone else. You must not mistake his loyalty for something it is not.”
I blinked. “I’m sure I wasn’t.”
She didn’t look convinced. “Rest,” she said, then turned and left the room. Freydil gave my ears one last glance before trotting after her mother.
I laid my head on the pillow. The ceiling spun overhead. Eugrid seemed to know more about me than I did. Just like her brother. How convenient.
I glanced at my room. I’d never been inside a Wult fortress before. Turning my head, I focused on the lake outside the window. Maywelters flitted over the water, leaving streamers of light in their wake. Their rainbow of colors reflected off the water. I’d never seen so many maywelters in one place. My heart gave a tiny flutter at the sight.
After finishing my soup, I climbed out of bed and felt grateful that my mind felt like my own again, though my lungs hurt when I breathed.
I hoped Heidel was okay. She seemed to have some knowledge of magic, but I doubted she knew how dangerous that dream catcher could be. I had to find her soon. No, I had to find her now. I didn’t have time to let my bones heal.
I headed for the door and peeked outside. The empty hallway stared back. Good. Eugrid couldn’t follow me, although I suspected she would find out sooner or later that I’d escaped. The stone tiles felt cold under my bare feet, and windows, similar to the ones in my room, sat in recesses along the walls. Pale sunlight drifted through them, painting warmth across the chilly floors.
As I walked through the hall, I decided that if I ever settled down, I’d like to have a view like this. If I got into an awful mood, which wasn’t hard for me to do, I would stand in front of these windows until I calmed down. Or if that didn’t work, I could at least pound my head against the glass.
I found the library. The doors were slightly ajar, so I pushed them aside to enter a room large enough to rival Fan’twar’s chambers. Smells of worn leather and careworn paper greeted me, and I breathed them in. This room reminded me of the libraries in the dragon cave. I’d spent hours there as a child, never feeling as if I’d soaked in enough knowledge, always feeling as if a new adventure waited behind the cover of another book.
The number of books in this library rivaled the dragons’ collections. I had no idea the Wults were so interested in books. The shelves spanned a
ll the way to the ceiling—at least two-stories tall. My footsteps echoed over the huge, marble tiles.
“Heidel?” I called. My voice bounced off the walls, though I got no reply. I searched through the stacks but found no one.
Where was she?
I followed the stacks until I found the back wall. A fireplace as tall as two men and with a wooden grate took up most of the wall. Odd. Why would anyone use a wooden grate in a fireplace?
I stepped closer and noticed stones of differing colors made up the flu’s back wall. They formed an arch and reminded me of a doorway. I stepped past the grate and stood in front of the arched stones. A handle had been worked into the bricks.
Before deciding to blow the thing up, I tried the door handle. With a grating of stone, the door swung open. I entered a small chamber.
The dimly lit chamber looked dungeon-like with its low ceiling and smells of rot. Sconces made from animal bone lined the hallway. Firelight flickered from the wooden torches, putting off a smell of wood smoke.
I glanced back at the library. Would Heidel be back here? It seemed an odd place to wait for me, but if she had my dream catcher, I had no other choice but to find her. My bare feet made little sound as I crossed over the stone tiles.
Pain stitched through my side. I winced with every step, but continued on until sunlight replaced firelight. Leaving the hallway, I stepped into a cavernous room.
A domed ceiling soared overhead. Glass panels replaced the walls and ceiling. I’d thought the view out of my room had been beautiful, but this view was breathtaking. The mist burned away from the mountains. Tree branches swayed under a sapphire sky. Maywelters made ripples in the water.
“Didn’t you read the sign? Death to those who enter?”
Kull’s voice. I focused on a leather chair near the back of the room.
“My Wultish is rusty. Aren’t you supposed to be hunting?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”
I walked around the chair to face him. He was wearing actual glasses—the nerdy kind that made his eyes bulge. His knit turtleneck sweater made the glasses look even nerdier. He sat comfortably in his chair, a tumbler filled with an amber-colored liquid next to him. I wondered if I’d stumbled on Kull’s smarter, less arrogant, more cultured twin brother.
He closed the book he’d been reading to stare at me.
“You look confused,” he said.
“I’m wondering what happened to the sword and blood-soaked animal skins.”
His grin looked rakish. “You preferred me in that?”
I couldn’t answer. What was it with him that made me so tongue-tied?
“You’re trespassing. Most people who come in here leave as corpses.”
“Sure they do.”
Nope, still arrogant.
He took a sip from his tumbler when I noticed the cover of his book. When Dreams Cometh.
I gasped. “Where’d you get that?”
He inspected the book. “Boring as hell, but I’ve read everything else in this library.”
“You stole it from me.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions. It’s been in my library for years.”
I crossed my arms. “Did Heidel manage to smuggle that away along with us?”
“She might have. I might have borrowed it from her. I was curious to know why you felt the need to steal it from Geth. But I’ve decided that you must find something more exciting to read. Like the romance category—very stimulating—and I’m sure you’d discover it to be very educational.”
“I’ll have you know that I have a boyfriend.” One that I hadn’t talked to in a week, but he didn’t have to know that.
“Heidel says the same thing when I prod her. But, you know, she’s never introduced me to him. Makes me wonder if she’s lying to me.”
“I am not lying.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You implied it.”
He stood slowly, and stopped next to me. I flinched when he pushed my hair away from my ear. “Are elven ears always so pink? Or is it only the half-elf sort that changes this color?”
“Why don’t you ask Euralysia?”
He laughed.
I stepped toward the window. Being close to him made me feel too volatile. “I’d like that book back, if you don’t mind.”
“Do you know what you’re asking for?”
I sighed. He wore down my patience. “Of course I do.”
“No.” His voice took on a somber tone. When he removed his glasses, he somehow seemed more menacing. “Do you know what you’re asking for?”
The warning in his voice made me hesitate from snatching the book. “You know something about that book that I don’t?”
He pointed to the author’s name on the cover. LM Peerling. “How much do you know about him?”
Not much. There was no such thing as the Internet in Faythander, and those who had knowledge tended to keep it to themselves. I was lucky to have more knowledge than most, but my dragon stepfather was the king of Faythander. Still, I knew little about the author.
“He was a Wult, Olive.”
That surprised me. Not because Wults weren’t intelligent, but because most found plundering to be a more lucrative career than book writing. “How do you know?”
“He comes from a well-known family. Some of his family’s journals are in this library.”
“What do they say?” This was huge. I had no idea those journals existed.
Kull hesitated. “They aren’t very straightforward. I get the impression that some things in that family were meant to be kept secret. But I can tell you this—the Peerlings weren’t like any Wult family I’ve ever heard of. There’s no record of them before the crossing.”
“Nothing?”
“No journals, no records. Wults take pride in mapping out their genealogy. During the crossing, most of the families risked their lives to preserve their family pedigrees. But the Peerlings—it’s almost as if they didn’t exist until after the crossing.”
“Do you think someone destroyed the records?”
He shook his head. “Impossible to say.”
“What else do you know about them?”
“I know Peerling wasn’t the original name. The first records of the family date back to right after the crossing, but strangely, the family went by another name.”
“What name?”
Kull exhaled a nervous breath. “They were called Mog.”
Dreamthief Page 29