Thornbear (Book 1)

by Michael G. Manning

  There was no hesitation there, but he didn’t bother to deny being called a traitor, noted Gram. “She seemed surprised when he said that,” added Gram. “When she was here before, she told me that she had an uncle that abused her. T’lar said you had abandoned her.”

  “I have no children,” said the big warrior once more, but his eyes were thoughtful.

  “Maybe he lied.”

  “T’lar was many things, but he would not lie.”

  Gram’s stomach churned at the thought that T’lar had been completely honest. Some of the things he had said about Alyssa…

  “Ruth,” said Cyhan at last. “It could only have been her. She hid it from me.”

  “Can you find her? To ask…”

  “She’s dead,” said Cyhan, cutting him off. “She died at the hands of the shiggreth, while kidnapping the Countess.”

  “Oh.” Gram remembered the story. His father had tried to save her and been taken prisoner along with the Countess. Little had been said about the woman that led the abductors, but now it seemed she had been one of Cyhan’s lovers. What do I say to a man whose brother, daughter, and previous lover all were involved in kidnapping attempts against the Count’s family? What kind of place does he come from?

  “You killed T’lar,” stated Cyhan, looking directly at Gram.

  “Yes, Zaihair.”

  “Tell me how.”

  Gram described the fight, how T’lar had beaten him without killing him, how he had asked Alyssa to kill him instead, and how Gram had used Thorn to take him by surprise. At the end he included the fact that he had beheaded the dying man.

  “My brother was a fool,” said Cyhan simply. “You were kind to kill him swiftly.”

  Gram was feeling uncomfortable. I just told him I slew his brother and he thanked me.

  “You worry that I will bear a grudge?” suggested Cyhan, reading his face. “I will not. T’lar made his own choices. If I had been there, I would have done the same.”

  “Could you kill your own brother?” The words slipped out before Gram realized what he was saying.

  “I have done worse,” answered Cyhan. “T’lar was right to hate me. He had good cause to call me ‘traitor’.”

  “Why?”

  “You did not tell me everything T’lar said to you,” said Cyhan bluntly, ignoring the question. “But I do not wish to hear it. You said that he was my daughter’s teacher and I know what that means. I am glad that you killed him.”

  T’lar’s words echoed in Gram’s mind, ‘I taught her to fight, and I taught her to fuck’. He also remembered Alyssa’s words regarding her early life, ‘I was twelve’. The thoughts made him clench his fists.

  Cyhan watched his face and then continued, “My teacher had three students. I was the oldest and my brother T’lar was his second student. The third…” The big man’s voice caught in his throat for a second.

  “The third?”

  “The third was my sister. She was five years younger than me, and her name was Jasmine. I killed my master when I was seventeen.”

  Gram stared at the older knight, his mouth falling open. And T’lar named your daughter Jasmine as well… That’s sick! “I’m… that’s…”

  The old warrior looked away, turning his back to hide his face. “I will not mourn my brother’s death.”

  “Did your sister survive?” asked Gram.

  “She was killed, as a lesson to me, for interfering.”

  And then you killed your teacher, thought Gram. He was curious about the details, but the nature of the story was too awful for him to pry.

  They walked for a while longer, bound together by silence. They stopped when they had reached the side that faced away from Washbrook, looking instead down on a wide field that stretched away to the forest beyond. The wind and moonlight on the tall grass created the illusion that they were looking over a wide body of water.

  “Tell me about my daughter,” said Cyhan quietly.

  “You met her while she was here…”

  “I paid little attention. I barely marked her presence. I have lost many things in my life. Now I have lost something without even knowing it.” There was a rough sound to his voice.

  “She was strong,” said Gram. “That was the first thing I noticed. She was practical, confident, and strong.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “You saw her.”

  “But I didn’t look,” growled Cyhan with emphasis. “I hardly remember her face. Tell me what you saw.”

  “She had smooth skin, darker than mine, but not quite your tone. Her eyes were dark, soft around the edges, and they always held a certain light, as though she was looking at the world and seeing something I had missed…” Gram talked for a while, until he could no longer continue, and then they watched the grass in silence.

  ***

  The next morning Gram rose early and immediately after breakfast he joined the Countess, walking with her to the courtyard. She stopped them there and they waited.

  “Is she coming?” asked Gram.

  Penny nodded, “Yes.”

  “How do you talk to her?”

  “It takes some getting used to. I hear her inside here,” she tapped her temple.

  “Matthew and Moira can do that too,” said Gram.

  “It’s almost natural for them,” said Penny. “They’ve been doing it since they gained their powers. I still find it disconcerting.”

  “They can talk to their dragons that way now as well,” commented Gram. “I wonder if it gets confusing, having so many voices in their heads.”

  “They can talk to Layla too,” said Penny, “not just their own.”

  “I think I’d go crazy.”

  “Moira tells me that it’s a matter of attention. They don’t hear or project to each other unless they do so on purpose.”

  That made sense to Gram. “What does Matt say?”

  The Countess frowned, “He doesn’t describe things like that very often. If I ask he’s likely to just say, ‘it’s fine Mom’.”

  Layla’s shadow fell over them then, and a moment later the massive dragon had descended, sending up gusts of dust and wind as her wings beat the air. She bent her forelegs and lowered her body to make it easier for them to climb up.

  Gram hesitated, causing the Countess to look at him curiously. “Are you coming?”

  “I’m a little nervous,” he admitted.

  “You rode home with Matthew. This is no different.”

  He had been half dead then. Falling from the back of a dragon had almost seemed like a welcome thought. Now he was merely stiff, sore, and bruised. He very much wanted to live. “Shouldn’t there be a saddle or something?” he asked.

  Penny smiled. “Mort kept saying he wanted to wait until she had finished growing. There’s not much help for it now. Sit behind me and hold on. Layla will be careful with us.”

  Gram thought about Matthew and Desacus, spiraling down from the sky after Chel’strathek’s attack. Neither he nor the Countess were wizards, and he doubted they would be able to recover from such a fall. Sighing he climbed up and put his hands around her waist. Layla’s wings began beating powerfully and he closed his eyes.

  A few minutes later he reopened them and immediately regretted it. That was a mistake, he thought as his stomach flipped over. The ground was far beneath them, moving by with a slowness that belied their actual speed.

  It was hours before they reached the place where he had left Alyssa, but where he had expected to find a body, there was nothing. The sword he had given her lay discarded on the ground. T’lar’s body still lay where he had fallen, a hundred yards or more in the distance. Buzzards circled and hopped around his carcass.

  “Could she have walked?” asked Penny.

  “No,” said Gram.

  “Perhaps she wasn’t as badly wounded as she seemed.”

  “She had two arrows in her. She could barely sit,” he replied. “The last time I looked she had fallen over. Let me look around.”


  The ground had been churned up by the horsemen’s passage when they had been chasing Gram and Irene, but he knew some of them had returned after their fight with him. Ten or fifteen of them had survived, at the very least. After Chel’strathek had been destroyed, he and Matthew had gone directly to Castle Cameron but the last of the riders had to have returned this way.

  He spotted some tracks that indicated horses going the other direction, confirming what he already knew. They left T’lar and his archers, but they took Alyssa. Why?

  Had she still been alive? If that had been the case, she would surely have died soon after, being jostled around on horseback. Maybe they thought she would live. If so, they probably dumped her body somewhere out there in the Northern Waste, after she died.

  Layla carried them along what he thought would be their route of escape, but while she flew as low as she could, Gram spotted nothing. At his request she circled, moving outward in a slow spiral, but after a few hours he still found no sign.

  “Can you leave me where her body was?” he asked.

  “Why?” said Penny.

  “I can’t track from the air. It’s been a few days, but I might be able to follow their course across the waste,” he said.

  “Gram—Sir Gram,” she corrected for emphasis, “I understand your desire to find her body, but we have larger concerns. Cameron is without its lord and I am without my husband, who is presumably still alive.”

  Gram grimaced, he probably didn’t survive either.

  She sensed his doubt, “Even should I fail to find him, I have a duty to my people, and a duty to the crown.”

  “But I…”

  She held up a hand to forestall him, “I didn’t knight you as a ceremonial reward. Your duty is to me now, and to the people that depend on us.”

  He clenched his jaw before dipping his head, “Yes, my lady.”

  They flew back, but not on a direct course to Cameron and Washbrook, instead they followed the stony valley in the direction of Penny’s former home. “You said you saw Mordecai pass by. Can you direct me to the area you think he fought in?”

  “I think so,” he answered.

  They flew on and he directed her to stop when they reached the low ridge where he and Grace had watched the Count fly over. Taking to the air again, they made their way to where he had spent the night and he tried to gauge the direction he had seen the lights coming from during the battle with Celior. Using those two references, they flew toward the area he thought represented the site of the battle.

  At first it seemed that they would find no sign. The mountains and surrounding tree cover showed nothing to indicate the titanic battle he had witnessed, but then they crossed another mountain and found the valley beyond marked by the evidence of a colossal explosion. The trees were flattened in every direction, as though a powerful force had emanated from the center of the valley floor. The rocks had been scattered and boulders shattered. Lightning had left black scorch marks on the trees where they had fallen.

  “This must be it,” said Gram.

  “I’ve seen Mort’s work too often to think it anything else,” said Penny.

  “You and the Count went through a lot of this back then, didn’t you?”

  She chuckled, “Ha! You think this is bad? I have to clean up after him at home.”

  Gram laughed at that, but he couldn’t help but wonder at her calm. As they dropped down to survey the central point he said as much, “How can you stay so composed?”

  Layla landed and they climbed down before she answered, “I gave up on him once, and I’ve regretted it ever since. I won’t make that mistake again, not until I see his body with my own eyes—and maybe not even then. But don’t mistake my self-control; inside I am anything but composed.

  “Practicality was a lesson I learned from your mother,” she said after a minute, while they were searching. “When I was younger I was wild, but Rose taught me a lot about the power of a level-head.”

  Their search proved fruitless. The broken ground held no clues that Gram could read and there was no sign of a body. Celior had taken to the air when he left. They had no trail to follow.

  As the shadows lengthened in the afternoon they climbed onto Layla’s back and headed home.

  “What will you do now?” asked Gram.

  “What I must,” said the Countess. “Care for my people, protect my family, and prepare for war.”

  “We don’t even know who is responsible.”

  “We will,” said Penny. “Your mother is already working on it. All we need is patience.”

  Chapter 40

  That evening Gram went looking for Grace. He hadn’t seen her since they parted in the mountains, and although he had been told that Moira had brought her back, he had yet to see her with his own eyes.

  The Illeniel family was actually living in the castle now; the rooms that had been a decoy were now in use. There were four guards posted on the door, rather than the usual two, but they recognized Gram.

  “Sir Gram,” said one, dipping his head in respect.

  That’s going to take some getting used to, thought Gram. He nodded in return and passed through the door into the antechamber. Peter Tucker answered the inner door, ushering Gram inside.

  “I’d like to offer my condolences,” said Gram. “About…”

  The chamberlain held up a hand, “I understand. You did what you could. Lilly would have been grateful to you for saving the children.” His face was a study in controlled pain. Peter Tucker was a bachelor, and for most of his life he and his sister had been a team, working for the Illeniel family.

  Gram couldn’t begin to understand what he might be feeling.

  “The Countess is with your mother in the library upstairs. Matthew is in his workshop, but Moira, Conall and Irene are here,” said Peter, summing up the current occupancy for Gram.

  “Thank you.” Gram went through the door and found Moira and the others in the large front room.

  “I was hoping you’d come,” said Moira.

  Irene was more direct, running to him and throwing her arms around his waist. She didn’t say anything, but she squeezed him with all the strength in her slender arms.

  Gram stroked her hair, feeling awkward. “It’s alright, Rennie.”

  The girl shook her head, “No, no it’s not. I’m so sorry.”

  “None of it is your fault,” said Gram. “All we can do is live our lives the best we can.”

  Moira peeled her sister away from him, “We all miss Lilly, Rennie.”

  Irene nodded, “It’s not just that, though. Alyssa is gone too.”

  “She’s the one that made this mess,” said Conall harshly.

  “She didn’t want to,” insisted Irene. “She was kind to me. Of all of them, she was the one that made sure I was alright. She was just doing what she was told.”

  “Lilly’s dead and Father is gone too,” growled Conall. “I’m glad she’s dead. In fact, I wish she was still alive, so we could kill her all over again.” The boy stood and left.

  Moira gave Gram a helpless look.

  “He doesn’t understand,” said Irene. “She saved my life. You were there, Gram, you saw it, right?”

  “I saw, Rennie. I know. I loved her,” answered Gram, fighting to control his own emotions. Looking up at Moira he asked, “How is Grace?”

  Moira’s expression changed, becoming smooth. “Rennie, I’m going to take Gram out. I need to talk to him. Do you mind?”

  Irene shook her head and Moira led him out into the hall. Gram was growing steadily more alarmed. Don’t tell me we’ve lost Grace too. Please, don’t say that.

  “Let’s go find Matthew,” she said.

  “Is Grace alright?”

  She gave him a strange look. “She’s different now.”

  “What does that mean?!”

  “She will be glad to see you Gram, but Matthew wants to be there too—when you meet her.”

  “Is she alright? Dammitt, Moira, don’t play
games. You’re pissing me off!” said Gram angrily.

  “I understand,” she said calmly. “Trust me, though. Be patient and we’ll take you to see her.”

  He glared at her but followed anyway. She hadn’t given him any choice. They walked downstairs and went out to the workshop. Matthew had been locking himself in every evening after they finished searching for their father.

  Moira knocked on the door, “Matt, it’s me.”

  “Go away. I’m busy,” came her brother’s voice.

  “Gram wants to see Grace.”

  A heavy clunking sound passed through the door, followed by the sound of breaking pottery. “Shit.” After a minute Matthew opened the door. He stepped outside and locked it behind him before they could see inside.

  “What are you doing in there?” asked his sister.

  “Mind your own business.”

  Gram sighed heavily. Matthew had a long stubborn streak when it came to his sister, a stubborn streak matched only by her temper. He held up a hand, “Can you two wait to argue until after I visit Grace? Please?”

  “What’s this?” said Moira angrily, pulling up her brother’s loose sleeve. The skin on his arm was lined with small cuts.

  Matthew jerked his arm free, “That’s from the jar I just broke.”

  “Liar,” she accused. “You broke that thing as an excuse. You were working on that trans-dimensional enchantment again!”

  “Just stay out of it Moira,” growled her brother. “And it’s a spell, not an enchantment.”

  Gram was completely lost. “Can you two do this later?”

  “The dragons are already coming,” said Moira matter-of-factly, before adding, “Did you know he cut his arm off yesterday?!”

  “What?!” exclaimed Gram.

  “I did not!” barked Matthew. “It was still attached.”

  “If Father was here he wouldn’t want you working on that thing,” she rebuked him, getting red in the face.

  Matthew’s eyes were tense, a sure sign he was about to lose his temper. Moira started to say something else but Gram put his hand over her mouth. “Enough. Let me talk.” Turning back to Matthew he asked, “What are you working on?”

  “Remember our fight with Chel’strathek?”