Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1)

by Leonard Wilson

  “Scarlet would never let them keep them.”

  Around them, a brisk autumn breeze stirred the branches of the apple trees, heavy with fruit for the harvest, and dislodged the occasional droplet of water that had managed to elude the light of the morning sun. The clouds had withdrawn before daybreak, but the air still smelled of rain, and another darkening cloud bank had just begun to threaten.

  “Then it sounds like this ‘Scarlet’ is the one we should be talking to. Does she hoard the books for her…” Sabina trailed off as a flash of red and a flutter of movement caught her eye. Neither one would have attracted attention on its own—the red was weathered and muddied, not so bright as the girl’s cloak, or even so bright as the apples in the orchard; and the fluttering barely exceeded that of the leaves on the trees—but together they did the trick, and gave Sabina a start to think that someone was standing there watching them.

  After a moment, though, the figure resolved itself into a scarecrow in a badly tattered red cloak. Sabina breathed an almost-inaudible sigh of relief just in time to get her second start, as the wind-tossed hood fluttered aside to reveal the face of the scarecrow. Atop the thing’s crudely constructed shoulders sat an actual human skull.

  “Ugh.” Sabina’s tall, blond companion wrinkled her nose at the sight.

  “It’s a scarecrow,” the girl said, as if speaking to someone very slow and stupid.

  “It’s a scarecrow with a skull on,” emphasized Baldassare.

  “Yeah?” the girl responded. It was the impertinent sort of query where one could practically hear her throwing up her hands and arching her eyebrow simply from the tone of her voice, begging to be told why this was not the stupidest observation she had ever heard. Indeed, it was so impertinent that Sabina found herself reaching across Baldassare to block his use of one arm and restrain the wrist of the other when she saw the look on his face—for concern he was about to strike the child.

  All moral concerns and protective instincts aside, there was no telling whose child this might be—certainly not some nameless pauper, given the quality of her cloak—and antagonizing the locals could end their search before it had begun.

  Sabina considered trying to redirect the conversation back to a more productive subject, but decided they’d be better off waiting to discuss such matters with adults—rather than risk another conversational spark that might set Baldassare off—so instead she began chattering with her tall companion, Evadne, about fashion, court gossip, and other random inanities that they’d already rehashed many times on the long journey, while Baldassare and the girl simply allowed them to chatter.

  After a quarter mile or so, with the laughter of the other children fading in the distance, they reached the far side of the orchard, where the girl ducked through a large but rough gap in the hedge. Sabina paused for a moment, peering into the dark opening before ducking in, but from somewhere beyond came the reassuring sounds of wagon wheels on cobbles, horses snorting, and voices competing with each other to be heard, in the manner of marketplaces everywhere.

  Halfway through the opening, Sabina’s cloak snagged on a brier. It took her a few moments to untangle, and she pricked her finger in the process, so she was a bit cross when she emerged sucking the blood from her fingertip and found that she still couldn’t see the market—and that their guide hadn’t waited.

  This was a wood, dark and ancient, grown up right to the hedge with trees so tall and so twisted that they’d surely been old when Sabina’s mother had been born. Their canopy so blotted out the sun that, with her eyes still trying to adjust, she could barely make out the little girl’s red cloak disappearing into the gloom ahead. Sabina called out as she stood waiting for the others to get through the opening in the hedge, but if the girl heard her, she showed no sign of it. Evadne, with her great size, had gotten well tangled by the briers, where Sabina had merely snagged, so by the time she’d carefully extricated her skirts and cloak, their guide had completely disappeared.

  “Small wonder most people stick with the road,” Baldassare remarked, but Sabina was craning her neck to stare up into the leaves of the dark forest, gazing around raptly like a sleeper who had just awoken to find herself in an unexpected and wondrous place.

  “We’re on the right track,” Sabina murmured. “So old. So wild. So powerful. This is a place where magic happens. Can’t you just feel it?”

  “All I feel is tired and sore and hungry,” Evadne said. “Maybe a little creeped out, I guess. If I found myself here alone, I’d be not here just as quickly as I could manage it. Is that magic?”

  “Even granting your instincts the benefit of the doubt,” Baldassare said, “why would you think it’s the right magic? One does not generally store books in the middle of a forest.”

  “Do either one of you have an ounce of poetry in your souls?” Sabina answered crossly, planting her hands firmly on her hips.

  Evadne patted a hand experimentally around her face and chest before shrugging. “No. I don’t think so.”

  Sabina threw up her hands in disgust and turned to march off down the trail the girl had taken through the wood, in the direction of the sounds of the market. “This entire journey is a quest of faith. Even the church likes to think the Grimm Truth doesn’t exist.”

  “And you know better because…?” Baldassare asked.

  “Because it bloody well has to!” Sabina rounded on him so viciously that the larger man tripped over a tree root in his haste to back away from her, and he sprawled backward onto the ground. “Because you’re a damned wastrel and because our father is just as much a politician as I am a blacksmith!

  “Get it through your head, little brother: Our fortunes—maybe even our lives—are hanging by a thread. We have until the new emperor is crowned to set things right; I’m the only one trying to do anything about it; and this is the only go’ss-forsaken plan I have! So you will stop questioning me at every turn and you will start having the good grace to pretend you believe in me, or I’ll be going my way without you, and I will conveniently forget we’re related when I come out all roses and you’re being thrown in some debtor’s prison to rot.”

  Sabina didn’t wait for her brother to answer. She didn’t wait for him to climb to his feet, much less to dust himself off. She just turned on her heels and stalked away down the trail, still seething. Red rage blinded her, driving out every other thought from her head and obliterating the passage of time, so that it might have been but a moment later that Sabina found herself sitting on a fallen log, somewhere in the shadows of the forest, with tears streaming down her face.

  Perhaps she should have been alarmed that she seemed to be quite alone; perhaps she should have been alarmed that she saw no sign of a path and heard no sound from the market—nor any other sound at all, save the gentle rustle of the wind through the trees—but however fleeting it might prove, at that moment she felt only gratitude for the concealing embrace of the forest.

  Eventually, when the anger had completely drained from her and she had once again began to ponder a future that involved something other than sitting on a log, Sabina roused herself to stand and look around the still forest, to truly take stock of her situation. It was then that she had to admit to herself that she’d no idea which direction led out of the forest and which might lead further in. No sight, no sound offered her the least clue.

  Ah, but smell! It suddenly dawned on Sabina that the subtle-but-enticing aroma of something baking was being carried to her on the breeze, and despite her history as a life-long urbanite, it didn’t take her long to orient on which direction it must be coming from. If following it did not lead her straight to the inn, it would certainly lead her straight to someone who knew the way. So it was a short walk later that found her standing in front of a rather fine little cottage in the woods.

  The building sat by itself, beside a little brook in the middle of a sunlit meadow, surrounded by a pastel rainbow of wildflowers. Ivy twined about white stone walls in a most picturesque and f
riendly embrace; sweet-smelling wood smoke curled out from the brick chimney and wafted about the clean thatched roof before being lifted by the breeze and carried away over the treetops. To it all clung the tantalizing perfume of fresh, hot apple pie. Even before she’d set out to cross the meadow toward the little building, Sabina found herself dearly hoping that this would be the promised inn, despite the lack of signage advertising it as such.

  As she reached for the door, a sound from the edge of the trees behind her drew her attention before she could knock, and she paused—with her hand still poised—to look over her shoulder. In the split second it took her to turn, her mind painted a picture of her tall friend and her contrite little brother emerging from the forest to join her here for a welcome rest, but whatever had caused that loud rustling was nowhere to be seen. Biting her lip in disappointment, she turned her attention back to the door, only to find herself interrupted once more.

  This time, it was the door itself that interrupted Sabina, swinging inward just before she could rap at it.

  “Oh, just come in already,” the young woman behind it greeted her with good-natured vexation.

  “I’m sorry,” Sabina found herself apologizing as she stepped into the little entry alcove. She’d gotten a fleeting impression of the woman as being yet another red-head, and possessed of a very pleasant countenance, but that was quite all she’d noticed before the interior of the cottage itself commanded her attention. Along the walls of the room just past the entryway, she could see shelf after shelf lining the walls, all crammed floor to ceiling with dusty old books.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Cat and Mouse

  “I hate to have to tell you,” Keely said quietly, “but the Inquisition’s not far behind us.”

  “I know.” Elissa sighed. “I saw that inquisitrix back at the castle. Did she bring company?”

  “Yes. That is…Well, she did, but that’s not what I mean. Look…” Keely nodded toward the side of the road, just off of which the ground fell rather precipitously away toward the lower end of the switchback they were climbing. Not thirty feet away, as the stone drops, rode a knight of the Inquisition and a black-clad priestess, urging their mounts patiently up the long and winding road that led up the Wolf’s Tooth to the cathedral site.

  “I spotted them the last time we stopped so you could catch your breath,” Keely whispered. “At this rate, they’re going to reach the top well ahead of us.” The obvious problem wasn’t so much who should arrive first at the cathedral site, though, as it was the proximity it would force when the riders passed them. The long and winding road up the northern face of the Wolf’s Tooth offered almost nothing in the way of cover or places to duck off to, and even less in the way of forking paths.

  It was also sparsely traveled. They’d been passed a couple of times by carts full of building supplies, and a few more by travelers riding or leading donkeys, but there would be no bustle of passersby to blend in with. Nothing could look more suspicious when the riders passed than if the supposed priestess and her entourage failed to look them in the face and offer some manner of respectful acknowledgment.

  “Can you walk faster?” Keely asked.

  “I can try.” Elissa nodded.

  “Do that,” Keely said. “Because that knight…”

  “I saw,” Elissa assured her. “It’s Riordan.”

  The women exchanged glances that silently agreed it would be a very poor sort of grudge for a knight of the Inquisition to hold should he not know Keely by one glimpse of her face after the way she’d made a fool of him back at Belgrimm. Perhaps they might have found a spot to hide from him still, were it not for their bodyguards, but the very presence of the two men would serve to confound all manner of otherwise clever plans.

  The little group continued on without altering its overall pace until the riders were safely out of earshot, then Elissa announced—directing her remark toward no one in particular—that this climb was taking entirely too long, and at this rate they would never reach the top. So saying, she set off with the speed of determination, though her legs ached and her breath grew short. Life in a library had not much prepared her for such a climb.

  Together, they rounded another switchback, and Keely watched as the riders passed just below them again, but even if Elissa could manage this pace all the way to the top—which Keely sincerely doubted—it was becoming alarmingly clear the riders would still overtake them before they reached the plateau of the construction site. And while a couple of carts could be seen in the distance on the long tail of a road that fell away toward fields below, no sight nor sound offered any hope that someone would be descending from above that Keely might be able to turn into a distraction for the riders.

  Watching over her shoulder as the riders once more headed away from them down the switchback, Keely finally snorted.

  “What?” Elissa asked a little worriedly.

  “I can’t do this,” Keely answered in a hushed tone of disgust. “I’ve let myself get cornered into playing someone else’s game by someone else’s rules, and it’ll lead me into mistakes that will get us both killed—if I don’t die first from the sheer boredom of trying to blend into the rocks, or from mortification thinking about what my mother would say.”

  “What are you going to do?” The look of concern on Elissa’s face noticeably deepened.

  “I don’t know. But you’re about to fall and twist your ankle.”

  “I am?” The prediction did nothing to make Elissa look less apprehensive.

  “If you think you can pull it off convincingly,” Keely said.

  “No,” Elissa said with incredulous certainty.

  Keely shrugged. “Let me know when you come up with a plan, then.”

  They arrived at the next-to-last switchback before reaching the top, and paused for an appraising look up and down from the curve. “They are going to catch up to us, aren’t they?” Elissa sighed.

  “Yeah.” Keely nodded.

  “Maybe I could…” Elissa began—but whatever she was about to say as she started on up the trail got cut short when she tripped over something she would later come to suspect was someone’s foot—and she went sprawling onto the rocky ground.

  “Omigo’ss!” Keely gasped, bending over Elissa and rolling her over onto her back as their escorts came running up from the discrete distance they’d been following. “Sister! Are you hurt?”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Elissa said.

  “Are you sure?” Keely asked, glaring pointedly. “It looked like your ankle took a very nasty turn.”

  “Oh, I…aaaah!” Elissa yelped, involuntarily wrenching her foot away from Keely’s cruel but surreptitious pinch. “Ow…ow…ow…Yeah, it’s bad,” Elissa said. Her gaze flickered darkly back at Keely for only a moment before she looked pitifully to their two escorts, who were crowding around her now. “It might even be broken,” she whimpered with a convincing grimace, biting her own lip so hard that her eyes began to tear up.

  “Let me…” Ulric began, but Keely quickly cut him off.

  “Here; help her up. One on each side…There we go. There must be someone at the site who knows how to deal with injuries like this and someplace she can have a proper lie-down. Let’s just stay focused on getting her there.”

  Keely followed closely behind as they set off, helping the limping Elissa up the trail, chattering advice a mile a minute as she went. Gradually, though, she let the chatter dry up and allowed herself to lag further and further behind, until she stood watching with satisfaction as the trio climbed laboriously away without her. After a few moments, she turned and walked unhurriedly back down to where a leafy bush up against the rocky inner wall of the switchback actually grew higher than her knee, and she stepped carefully behind it. Taking a deep breath, she wriggled her shoulders to loosen them, then vanished into the depths of her robes as they collapsed with her wig in a heap behind the bush.

  “…And so the abbess leads us to this little empty room that looks like
a pantry that’s had all the food pulled off of the shelves and carted away, and Jane just turns and looks at her. You know, the look?” Riordan said. The big, broad-shouldered knight would have towered over his petite companion even if they’d been standing side by side. With the priestess astride her sleek, black courser and Riordan seated on an enormous chestnut destrier that might have been bred for the sole purpose of making people look up nervously at its rider, her head barely came up to his rib cage.

  “The, ‘Seriously? Don’t you think your own life is worth a little more effort than this?’ look?” the priestess asked.

  “That’s the one. Anyway, Jane gives her enough time to start squirming, then says all slow and deliberate, ‘I said take me to the library.’ And the abbess squeaks, ‘This is the library.’ Of course, Jane comes back with, ‘I thought it was generally customary for libraries to have books in.’”

  “She used ‘the voice’ there, too, didn’t she?” the priestess laughed.

  “Oh, yeah,” Riordan nodded. “The voice.”

  “I can just hear it.”

  “And so the abbess says that all the books are out just now, being read. The entire library. Whatever Jane was thinking at that moment, I was tall enough that I could actually see a wheel of cheese that had gotten pushed to the back of a top shelf and forgotten, so…” Riordan reined up his horse, suddenly realizing that there was a little, white, long-haired cat, with brown socks on its hind toes, sitting there in the middle of the road, placidly watching them approach.

  “Oh!” the priestess cooed, her attention drawn now to the cat, too. “What a…”

  “Hyah!” Riordan spurred his horse forward again, urging it to trample Keely, but she was gone over the edge of the road in a flash, already having scouted out a series of cat-sized ledges she could use to hop down to the stretch of road beneath in four easy bounds. She paused to look back at the knight, only to see the silvery flash of Riordan’s great battle axe hurtling toward her. That might have been the end of her had the thing been balanced at all for throwing. Instead, Riordan had thrown it as the only weapon that came immediately to hand, trusting that even a wild impact from the heavy wooden haft would do a cat grievous harm, but it struck the ground beside her and bounced harmlessly away.