Dark Emerald

by Lisa Jackson

  Now, with quiver, bow, and a second sword, Rhys was ready. He would storm the gates of Twyll if need be. For he intended to find Tara by the time the sun set. And no one—not Abelard and his greed, Lord Tremayne and his hatred, or Satan himself—could stop him.

  As God was his witness, he would find her.

  Within seconds he was closer to Twyll, and he felt a thrill of anticipation steal through him. Through the copses of pine and oak, he spied the behemoth of a castle, stretched like a spiny-backed dragon atop the hill. A bright standard, mounted from the highest watchtower, snapped in the breeze, and smoke from the ovens and fires within the thick walls curled upward toward the shifting clouds that covered a weak winter sun.

  Somewhere deep inside that monster of a keep was Tara. He knew it.

  Newfound fear gnawed at him. What if she had already been discovered by Tremayne? What if she’d become Tremayne’s captive? Rhys remembered the dungeons beneath the towers, the dank, rotting smell, the desperation of those imprisoned, the painful sting of a flogging.

  Not Tara, please, not Tara. He remembered the smooth lines of her back, her flawless skin.

  For the first time in years the bastard sent up a prayer to a God he didn’t trust.

  At the edge of the woods, he slowed his steed’s strides and guided the big bay around the perimeter of the castle, through the brush and trees, careful to avoid the main roads, searching for a place to hide his horse while he found a way to enter the massive stone fortress. He’d done it often enough and knew those inside who would help him, but he suspected that because of the impending war with Cavan, the guards, who were usually an easily distracted lot, would be doubly cautious. He would have to tread carefully.

  He rounded a bend, and his horse’s ears pricked up. The steed snorted, and his muscles quivered in anticipation.

  Through a curtain of ash, Rhys saw another stallion. Tethered to a sapling, one back foot cocked lazily, his sleek coat spattered with mud, Gryffyn lifted his huge head. A breeze ruffled his mane. He let out a soft nicker.

  Rhys’s heart soared.

  Mayhap Tara was nearby.

  There was a chance he’d caught her before she’d been foolish enough to enter the castle.

  He started to dismount. Surely Tara was nearby or planned to return to the horse …

  A prickle of dread slid down his spine as he considered that this might be a trap. A twig snapped.

  Tara?

  Was she safe after all? Hope surging through his blood, he glanced toward a shady open space where the barest bits of sunlight played in gloomy shadows.

  Every muscle in his body froze and hope dissolved into dread.

  Muscles coiling, ready to strike, he reached for his sword.

  Too late.

  Twenty soldiers stepped from behind trees and out of brush. Each and every man wore the colors of Twyll.

  Bloody hell.

  How had he been so damned blind?

  Gritting his teeth, he held his tongue. He refused to demand information about Tara. Mayhap they knew not of her.

  The archers were all at the ready, their bows fitted tight to their shoulders, twenty arrows aimed directly at his heart.

  “If you’ve got a brain in that sorry head of yours, you will not move,” a tall man, the leader, said. Rhys recognized him as Regan, Tremayne’s constable. With blond hair and cold, lizardlike eyes that squinted in an impassive face, he kept Rhys in the sights of his deadly crossbow. “Now, get off your stolen horse, outlaw, and be quick about it. The baron, he wants a word with you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tara squinted at the inside of the room she’d entered. It was dark as a tomb and smelled of hay and grain. Dusty. Dry. No light came in, but the sound of scurrying paws convinced her that the castle rats nested here.

  “This way,” Quinn said, and she felt his fingers lace through hers. With her free hand she touched the rough weave of sacks of grain that were stacked in this storage chamber. Quinn walked unerringly through the piled sacks and around wooden casks. She smelled onions and apples, stored for the winter along with the grain. Once in a while she felt a post, and a couple of times her fingers brushed the rough wattle and daub of a wall.

  Quinn moved quickly, his course changing direction often through a maze of stored provisions. Stumbling blindly, Tara followed him as he made his way to some unknown destination. Through passageways and doors, around support columns and crates, she allowed him to lead her.

  Drawing a breath was difficult, for the air was thick and unmoving—stale as death.

  “Wait here,” he finally ordered, and he released her hand for a moment, placing her fingers against the splintery side of a post. “I’ll be back.”

  “Nay—”

  But he was gone, his quick, nearly silent footsteps fading away. She coughed and tried not to let fear sink into her bones. If he left her she would never find her way out of this inky tomb—never again see the light of day.

  Of course you will, Tara. Fear not. Think of Rhys.

  She heard a grunt, then something heavy—mayhap a sack of grain or a cask—slid or was forced across the floor. There was a rattle of chain and the scrape of metal against metal. “Bloody damn,” Quinn muttered under his breath. Another scrape, and then the distinctive click of a lock and the creak of old, rusted hinges.

  Within seconds he was beside her again, taking her hand. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “To a safe place.”

  She wasn’t so certain as he took hold of her wrist and pulled her forward again. “Now, follow me,” he said. “Down the ladder.”

  He knelt and, with his hand guiding hers, let her touch a hole carved into the floor.

  “ ‘Tis an old entrance to the dungeons,” he explained.

  “And you have the key?” she asked.

  “Aye. I too be a thief.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I speak not of you.” He let go of her hand again.

  “Does anyone else have a key?” she asked.

  “Follow me.” Without answering her question, he slipped through the hole, his boots softly scraping on metal. “Close the door.”

  She hesitated but a moment. The boy knew his way around the castle, and she couldn’t take the chance of being found. Not before she discovered if Rhys had been taken prisoner … or worse. She gulped, set her teeth, and descended through the opening.

  The rungs of the ladder were rusted, the metal rough against her fingers. She heard the drip of water and smelled dank earth. “Careful,” the boy whispered as she pulled on a rotting rope handle and the door closed over her head with a soft but distinctive thud. If anyone set a sack of grain or a cask of wine over it, neither she nor Quinn would be able to force it open again. If there were no other exit to this tunnel, they would be trapped.

  Don’t panic. The boy seems to know what he’s doing. Aye, but he’s just a lad.

  Refusing to let the fear within her take command of her heart and head, she descended. When her feet touched down again, she realized that the floor was no longer stone but packed dirt. The walls were stone but crumbling. “Hurry,” he said, taking her hand again. She followed him, though he could be leading her into certain death. And her only defenses were her wits, her quick tongue, and the knife tucked inside her boot.

  They were beneath the castle, in a tunnel that split, veering off in two directions. They reached a set of stairs, this time made of boards. “There be thirteen of these,” Quinn said, leading the way. She nearly fell but counted the steep steps until she reached solid ground again.

  “Where are we?” she whispered.

  “An old part of the castle,” he said, and she believed him. The underground corridor was thick with dust that caught in her nostrils while cobwebs brushed her face and hair. She heard the sound of scraping claws and imagined rats scurrying out of their way. Her boots crunched on pebbles and debris. “Come on, make haste,” Quinn urged. She followed this strange boy, wondering if she
was being led to freedom or to certain death.

  “Where is this safe place?” The air was thick, dusty, and heavy to breathe.

  “Where there is someone we must meet.”

  “Who?” She nearly stopped, but his hand, now beginning to sweat, pulled insistently on hers.

  “You’ll see.”

  The tunnel traveled downward, and other corridors angled one way or another. Tara, one hand along the wall, wondered where each branch of this maze led as they passed openings with air that was cooler, fresher.

  She was beginning to think she would have been better off staying in the bailey in the light of day and avoiding the soldiers on her own. Why should she trust this boy? He was, after all, the baron’s son.

  Yet that was odd. Why was he not a page at another castle, learning the duties of a knight? Why was he leading her through this labyrinth beneath the keep? The tunnel jogged to the right and they began to climb steadily, without the aid of stairs.

  Finally, when Tara thought she could breathe the stale air not a moment longer, he reached another door, pushed it open, and walked into a room lit by three small candles. There, sitting on a pallet of old sacks, surrounded by stacks of weapons—crossbows, longbows, arrows, bolts, and piles of rocks, was a man she’d never seen before.

  “Who is this?” he demanded, jumping to his feet and eyeing her suspiciously. He wasn’t a large man, but in the wee light of the musty room he looked as tough as tanned leather, and his gaze was rock-steady. Confident. The barest breath of a breeze filtered through the cracks of mortar in the walls.

  “She is called Tara. ‘Tis said she be a witch. She was with Father Simon, and the soldiers were looking for her and the outlaw.”

  “You were with Rhys?” the man asked.

  “Nay,” she said, not trusting him for a minute. She heard the steady drip of water running down one wall. “I came alone.”

  “But the soldiers are seeking him,” the boy insisted. “Found the horse he stole from the keep.”

  “Then something’s amiss.” Hand on the hilt of his sword, the man paced from one end of the small cell to the other.

  Relief washed over Tara. “Then they will find Rhys not. I rode Gryffyn here.”

  “Tremayne’s horse? The one Rhys stole?”

  “Aye.” She nodded and felt as if a weight had been dragged off her heart.

  “And how did you wrest him from the outlaw?”

  “I—I tricked him,” she admitted, wondering how much she could reveal to this man who had befriended the odd son of Lord Tremayne.

  “Did ye? ‘Tis not an easy task.” So he didn’t believe her. Not that it mattered. “And how do ye know Rhys so well?”

  “I was his prisoner.”

  “And ye managed to escape?”

  “I told you. She’s a witch!” Quinn said proudly.

  “If she be a witch and has all these powers she can use—powers that helped her to elude Rhys, why be she here with you and me, Quinn-lad, eh? Why does she not call up the spirits and cast herself away from this place?”

  “Mayhap she wants to be here.” The lad was unmoved by the older man’s argument.

  Tara had no time to waste. “Who be you?” she demanded. “And why are you here, underground, hiding like a field mouse?”

  “I, lady,” he said, his white teeth flashing as he turned to face her, “am a spy.”

  Her muscles tensed. The knife pressed against her leg. “A spy? For whom?”

  One side of his mouth lifted in a cocky grin. “Whoever pays the most.”

  “A mercenary.” She spat out the word in disgust. She had no use for men who sold their souls for a few coins, warriors who had no cause, no faith, soldiers who would fight to the death but had no heart.

  “It could be said.”

  “Have you no name?”

  “James.”

  Had she heard Rhys mention this man? The name seemed familiar, as if she might have heard Rhys and Abelard discussing him. But James was a common name—shared by many. She could be mistaken. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting.”

  “For?”

  “Rhys, Aberlard, and Cavan’s army.” He rubbed his hands together and resumed his pacing. “I fear something’s gone wrong.” Turning on a worn boot heel, he looked her up and down and frowned in distaste, as if he didn’t like what he saw. “What brings you here?” he asked, his brow knitting in thought. “ ‘Tis known there will be war and yet you come to talk with the priest who does not speak.”

  “I thought mayhap he would give up his vow of silence for my request,” she admitted, knowing she was saying too much but unable to keep the words from tumbling out. She was worried for Rhys’s life. She needed an ally, and this man—this spy—was the only one she had. Well, unless she counted the boy.

  “His vow of silence?” The spy shook his head. “Never will he be able to.”

  She rubbed her arms from the cold—she knew what he was about to say. “He cannot speak, you know.” With a shake of his head he added, “Father Simon cut out his tongue … oh, about ten years back.”

  “Quinn told me.” She glanced at the boy, as the candlelight played upon his features. He was young but had endured much pain, she thought.

  “Yes. By his own hand, Simon silenced himself.”

  Again bile rose in her throat. “But … why?”

  “No one knows. Only Simon, but now he’ll never tell. Most people think that he speaks not because of some holy pact with God. The truth is, lady, that he keeps his silence because of some secrets he knows. Secrets he shares only with the devil.”

  Tara nodded tightly and felt an unwarranted sense of guilt, for she knew at least one of the secrets he meant—that she was the daughter of Lady Farren and Lord Gilmore. Simon had saved her life, stolen her away as a babe.

  But if this were his darkest secret, why wait nine or ten years to cut out his tongue? She shuddered and closed her mind to the thought.

  “Why did you wish to speak to Simon?” James asked.

  “He knew my mother.”

  James studied her in the flickering light. “If you were just speaking with Simon, why did you follow Quinn into the catacombs?”

  “She thinks she is the daughter of Lord Gilmore,” Quinn blurted out.

  “You heard that?” Tara asked, surprised. The boy had given her no indication that he knew she thought she was the rightful heir to a castle his father now ruled.

  Quinn raised his chin a notch and set his jaw with pride.

  “Is this true?” James demanded.

  “Aye.” No reason to lie. Not now.

  In the flickering light James’s eyes narrowed. “Then you have the stone? The dark emerald of Twyll?”

  “It was taken from me,” she said bitterly, though her heart had softened a bit where Rhys was concerned.

  “Then what of Caven? Why thinks he that he be the son of Gilmore?”

  “Lord Innis told him so,” Quinn said. “I heard it discussed.”

  “Christ Jesus, have you ears within the walls?” James asked, and the boy’s expression turned dark.

  “Mayhap I be a better spy than you, Sir James,” he said indignantly. “At least I be not hiding underground like a scared rabbit.”

  “Nor will I. Not much longer,” James assured him.

  Tara didn’t understand the bond that held these two unlikely allies together. “Are you not loyal to your father?” she asked Quinn.

  The boy’s face was grim. “I be very loyal to him,” he said fervently and James laughed.

  “You see, m’lady—daughter of Lord Gilmore—his father is not the baron of Twyll.”

  “But—”

  “Why think you Father Simon cut out his tongue?” James taunted. “Because of you—if you really be who you think you are—or because of something else, something mayhap a little more dangerous?”

  She was beginning to understand.

  “Aye, Quinn here, he be Rhys’s son.”

  Sh
e didn’t know what to say, for a pain, an unlikely ache that had no bond with sense, attacked her. The thought that Rhys had fathered a child, any child, with another woman burned through her soul.

  “What do you think would happen to the boy if Lord Tremayne found out, eh?” James asked.

  “He would be killed,” she whispered, thinking of Tremayne’s cruel reputation while staring into the eyes of a child—Rhys’s child. The boy at the center of all this. The person in most peril.

  “At the very least. Now, m’lady, we have a job to do. Somehow we must save Quinn’s hide, warn Rhys that he is about to be ambushed— for if the sentries have found his horse they will lie in wait for him. Then we must release the prisoners from the dungeons—the ones who were taken from Broodmore.”

  “Broodmore?” she whispered. “You mean …” Her voice faded as she understood.

  “All of the men who had bound themselves to Rhys and Abelard are now in these very prisons.”

  “And the women?”

  James nodded darkly. “No one escaped. Except me. With Quinn’s help I was able to sneak off in the confusion of locking up so many.”

  “And now you feel an obligation to free them?” she asked.

  “Nay. ‘Tis part of the job. I help them, we save Rhys, open the gates of Twyll for Cavan, and I accept payment. You have provided it, you see, for I think for all my service I should be given the dark stone.”

  Tara was tired of the gem and the stories of magic and inheritance that surrounded it. As far as she was concerned, the ring was cursed. Whoever had it fought to keep it; whoever wanted it was willing to shed blood to obtain it. The dark emerald of Twyll was only good for causing heartache, jealousy, and greed. “If you can get it from whoever now holds it, so be it,” she whispered. “But let us not get the cart before the horse. First we must save Rhys and the prisoners.”

  “Aye.” He reached into his pile of weapons and handed her a sword. “As soon as darkness falls, we will strike and release the prisoners.”