Eventide (Meratis Trilogy Book 2)

by Krista Walsh

  She held out one hand to help Jeff to his feet, the other hand stretched out to catch the first fat raindrop falling between the leaves, and they walked back to the horses. Swish was still shaking when Jeff found him and it took a minute to calm him enough to mount up. Somehow, though, he sensed the fear was residual, as if some of the nightmares that haunted this forest had been vanquished. With nothing more to say, they cut across the clearing and continued on to Treevale.

  Chapter Twenty

  The ruin of Treevale Fortress was a pathetic sight, made even more dreary by the curtain of rain washing over it. The stone walls, never in the greatest shape, lay crumbled in heaps. Of the eight towers, only two remained standing. One Jeff recognised as the tower he’d fallen from. Where Siobhan had died.

  He was glad Venn hadn’t come along. After the flurry of emotions in the clearing, he wasn’t sure he could handle another scene.

  The four soldiers waited with their horses by what had once been the front door when they approached.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” said Jasmine. “That so much happened here and none of it mattered. None of it lasted.”

  Jeff dug into the dirt with his foot, unearthing a step. “Just goes to show how insignificant we are, in the scheme of things.”

  “Looks liked the new tenant is away from home, at least.” She turned to the soldiers. “Have you done a search of the area?”

  “Best as we could, my Lady,” one of the men replied. “There’s not much left to search. But yes, Talfyr seems to be gone.”

  “Too bad,” said Jeff. “Would have liked to compliment him on what he’s done with the place.”

  Jasmine smirked and then refocused on the soldiers. “I want you to guard the perimetre while we’re inside. You see anyone or anything, give the alarm.”

  One of the soldiers paled slightly, fidgeted with his gloves. “M-my Lady?” he started. “If Talfyr should...”

  “You run,” said Jasmine, cutting him off. The others looked ready to argue with her, so she added a firm, “That’s an order. We may have considered him an ally, but I’d hardly call him a friend. Get back to the road and trust that we’ll stay out of sight until he’s gone again. Is that understood?”

  They bowed their heads, and Jasmine gestured for Jeff to lead the way. He took a breath and started walking, following the steps back into his nightmare.

  Wandering through the rubble, they heard the stomach-turning sound of bones crunching under their feet. Fortunately, Jeff saw no bodies, the site having apparently been cleared out by the queen’s men.

  In the remains of the foyer, with no roof to protect them, they considered their options.

  “What do you think?” said Jasmine. “Up? Down? Do we split up?”

  Jeff shuddered. “I think we should stick together. Two sets of eyes are better than one and all that. But we could start in the towers. That’s where he kept the source for the barrier spell, maybe he liked to keep them all together.”

  Jasmine’s eyebrow arched. “Wishful thinking?”

  “I like to start on familiar territory before exploring the unknown.”

  They started for the tower and Jeff sighed as, for the second time in his life, he climbed the steep, shoddy stairs to beat the sorcerer at his game.

  “Ridiculous that this could all be a waste of our time,” he said.

  “At least we’re doing something.”

  “And if we go home without finding anything?”

  Jasmine paused and looked at him over her shoulder. “We’ll have learned something else.”

  The first tower was empty and, by the time they reached second, they were drenched. The stone steps were slick under their boots, and Jeff held his breath all the way up, every second expecting to slip and slide back down.

  As they entered the room at the top of the tower, Jeff’s breath was caught not by the climb, but the memories. He saw Siobhan’s wide frame in front of the large gap in the wall that overlooked the river, once more swollen with rain. This time the rest of the room was gone, the pedestal that had once held the stone of the barrier spell crushed to nothing by the dragon’s weight.

  Because it was obvious this was where Talfyr had made his home. Jeff grimaced at the sight of bones and bloodied corpses strewn about the floor.

  “Sheep,” said Jasmine. “Mostly. I think that’s a cow over there.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you. See anything else that could be a spell?”

  He wanted to get away from the stench. Waiting in the doorway with his hand over his nose and mouth, he watched Jasmine step lightly around the gore.

  “Nothing here. If there were I think it would be crushed by now?”

  “Moving on then.”

  He rushed out of the room and faced the even more treacherous journey back down the stairs. On the main floor, they followed what corridors remained, both feeling the deja-vu of their last search in the rooms. Then it had been a race against time before the guards, bewitched by the Sisters, returned to their posts. This time there was a different guard and one that could potentially turn them into cinders.

  Most of the surviving rooms had been overrun with mould and mildew, although untouched by animals thanks to Talfyr’s presence. But no shimmering spell to smash, no matter how many trunks and dressers Jeff and Jasmine threw open.

  The rain fell hard and heavy, flooding the open rooms, and leaving the covered rooms damp and cold. Jeff pulled his collar closer around his neck and wished he’d brought a coat.

  “I almost miss the heat wave,” he grumbled.

  “They’re your weather patterns,” said Jasmine.

  “Tell me, why is it that all the good things in this world are thanks to yourselves, but you’re generous enough to credit me with the faults?”

  Jasmine flashed a quick grin his way. “Because it makes the most sense.”

  Not much remained of the main floor except for the library, which Maggie and Brady had already gone through when the Fortress was first raided. Neither Jasmine nor Jeff thought it worth their time to give it more than a cursory walk-through.

  “If Maggie sensed any sort of magical aura in here, she would have told us,” said Jasmine, poking at the dusty contents of a broken display case.

  “So what’s next? The guardroom? Think he’d trust a bunch of sweaty armoured oafs around something as precious as his zombie pet machine?”

  “Come on, Jeff,” Jasmine scolded. “Think creatively.”

  “Oh, all right. Well maybe he left it ...” Jeff let his sentence trail off, glowering at her.

  She bit her cheek. “Right. Sorry. All right, well what about some sort of lab. Like the one he used to have in the Haunt. Maybe on the lower levels?”

  Jeff’s head grew light as all his blood drained to his feet. He had to swallow a few time to remember how to make words. “I’m not going down there.”

  Jasmine’s expression softened and she came closer, resting her hand on his shoulder. “Maybe it will be good if you do. And if the spell is down there, won’t it be worth it?”

  He allowed her to take his hand and pull him out of the library, down the corridor and in front of a heavy wooden door.

  Jasmine squeezed his hand. “I’m with you, Jeff. There’s nothing down there but memories.”

  “Sometimes those are enough,” he murmured, “to push someone over the edge.” She pulled him gently to the first step and he stopped again. “It’s so dark.”

  Letting him go, Jasmine went down a few steps and grabbed a torch from the wall. It took a few tries with the flint in her pocket, but once lit the flame cast shadows down the stairwell, cutting through the darkness to show the cold, grey stone. She stretched her hand back out and Jeff reached for it, more for the support to stay standing than a desire to descend. But she pulled him forward, and he walked, taking each step with the reluctance of a man about to be imprisoned again.

  The floor came into view and for a brief moment Jeff thought maybe he could face it. Maybe he could see the
cell where he’d spent almost a month, where he was still trapped almost every night. But when they reached the corridor leading to the place he’d called home for twenty-one days, he couldn’t make it. His small breakfast came up and he huddled against the wall, shaking so hard he couldn’t see clearly.

  Jasmine wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “It’s okay. It was a room. The ghosts don’t exist the way you remember them. Do you trust me?”

  Jeff didn’t know how to answer. Trust didn’t stand up against the nightmare he faced. Had faced. He had to remember that it was over now.

  With the torch ahead of him, and Jasmine close at his side, they walked down the corridor. Nothing else on the way except another corridor with one lonely door at the end. The torch lit just enough to see the reflection of the bars, but Jeff could picture the rotten straw and old waste.

  “See? Nothing here,” said Jasmine. “The people who did this to you are dead. There’s nothing more to fear.”

  The panic in Jeff’s chest eased, but only slightly. While he knew he was safe, it wouldn’t stop the walls from closing in as he slept. But it was a start.

  With a shaking breath, he straightened his shoulders. “Let’s keep going. If there’s a lab down here, it won’t be in the dungeon.” He shuddered. “Although it would make sense that Raul would keep his lab close to where he kept his test subjects. It’s probably down this hallway.”

  The hallway seemed to stretch for ages, twisting and turning, but Jeff knew it wasn’t as long as it felt. Even with the torch, the darkness pressed on him until he wanted to make a break for it.

  He took a few deep breaths and tried to focus on the positive. “At least we’re out of the rain.”

  “Thank the gods for small mercies,” Jasmine murmured, and then let out a sound of satisfaction as the torch lit up a wider space. “You were right. He hid down here with the rats to work.”

  “Can you think of a better place for him?”

  Jeff started to wander the room as Jasmine lit the torches in the wall sconces. The room lit up like daylight, and Jeff’s jaw dropped as he took everything in.

  “What in all the unimaginable fuck went on down here?” he murmured, leaning over a large coppery vat in the middle of the room. Tubes stretched from it into a few large cages, the equipment now quiet and lifeless.

  Jasmine shivered as she stared at a heap on the floor, and Jeff peered closer to see the bones of some large beast, long since rotted away. They could see the restructured skeleton, the metal claws fused into the bone, the elongated incisors, the curved spikes rippling along its spine.

  “What do you think it was?” asked Jasmine.

  Jeff edged away from it. “I don’t think I care to know. Just as long as it’s dead.” He turned in a circle and noticed at least three more skeletons of varying sizes. “I’d rather not stay down here longer than we have to. You take that side of the room, I’ll take this one, and we’ll meet in the middle.”

  They split up, and Jeff grabbed one of the torches off the wall to better search the shadows. The barrier stone had carried a pink aura that made it easy to recognise, but he had no idea if that was the norm or the exception. Was he looking for a lump of coal, or something glowing green?

  He pushed some old equipment out of the way and buried his mouth and nose in the crook of his elbow to block out the stink of mould and rot. This room had obviously been missed or ignored in the raid, and he wondered what else they’d find.

  “Brady would have loved this place,” Jeff said, peering into another vat, its contents black and sludgy.

  Jasmine smirked. “Yes, he really would.”

  Jeff thought he caught a tightness in her words, but she didn’t elaborate, intent on flipping through a notebook on the large oak desk.

  Before he could return to the search, she closed the book and said, “I know it’s ridiculous and really self-centred—I mean, how long can a person wait?—but even though I know all of that, it still bothered me that Brady never came to see how I was doing.” As soon as she said the words she laughed. “Gods, I sound so pathetic. Like a vain young woman who’s lost a suitor.”

  “I don’t think it’s ridiculous,” said Jeff, returning his attention to the crates and cages. “But I don’t think you should take it personally, or as a sign that anything has changed. Brady’s … going though some things right now. He’s not really himself.”

  “How do you mean? Now I feel selfish because I haven’t noticed.”

  “To be fair, you were unconscious in hospital for most of it. He’s working on some kind of trance ritual or something, trying to communicate with Talfyr. Maggie tells me it’s not dangerous, but the man’s been locked in the library going on two days now. I don’t think he’s slept. He didn’t even know you were hurt until this morning.”

  “At which point he …” Jasmine prompted.

  “Retreated back into his library,” he replied reluctantly.

  Jeff felt for her. With everything else she was feeling, Brady’s rejection was an added stressor. But he saw the other side as well: although the scholar never officially announced his feelings to her, he hadn’t kept them a secret. For most people, there was only so long they were willing to keep the candle burning before they moved on. He didn’t think that was Brady’s situation, but maybe the scholar wouldn’t have delved so deeply into ancient mysteries if he’d had something more real to focus on.

  “I’ve asked Maggie to talk with him. No matter what’s going on, we can’t afford to have our best mind locked up in a room.”

  Something skittered behind him, and Jeff froze.

  “Jax,” he hissed. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” she asked, not following his cue to lower her voice. She continued to poke around through a pile of herbs and vials on a bookcase.

  Jeff strained his ears, but the sound didn’t repeat itself. Until he started moving again. A distinct clicking of nails on stone.

  He grabbed the torch with both hands and turned his back to the wall, sweeping his gaze across the space in front of him. A quick shadow darted towards the wall, but it could have been torchlight.

  And then he was side-tackled to the floor. The sound of bones rattled with every movement as what felt like four paws pressed down against his shoulder blades and hips, the sharp claws digging through his shirt.

  He tried to push himself to his knees and crawl for the torch he’d dropped, while the beast leaned forward on his front paws, pushing Jeff’s face into the stone. He caught a whiff of old rot that tickled his nose.

  Jasmine sprinted across the room, but before she could reach him, another beast leapt at her, and they crashed onto a large desk. The few contents left on it clattered to the floor, releasing a sharp acidic smell, steam drifting upwards from a growing hole in the stone. and Jeff heard the clash of metal against bone as she drew her daggers to fight back.

  Jeff’s fingers finally curled around the torch, and he twisted his body around, using the torch as a club to beat the beast on the head. With some creative shuffling, Jeff managed to free himself and scramble to his feet, ready to swing. The fire didn’t harm the creature, but with one lucky shot, Jeff clocked it across the face, dislocating its jaw. He swung again, but this time the beast raised a paw and met it halfway, the metal claws cutting through the base of the torch so the fire tumbled to the floor, lighting the oily residue of the broken vial contents.

  The fire grew, and the air in the room grew heavy with smoke, making it harder to see in the shadows. Jeff and Jasmine backed away from their fights until they were back to back, one with a useless half-torch, the other with two daggers and a healing injury.

  The beasts circled around them, eerily silent except for the claws clicking on the floor, and the bones scraping together. Not two of them but three as the last skeleton joined the fray. The third was smaller than the others, but larger than it should have been. An oversized rat.

  “Open to suggestion right about now,” said Jeff, beating
out with his stick to fend off the approaching dog-shaped skeleton.

  Jasmine coughed against the rising smoke. “We need to find the spell.”

  The second creature-cat-like if he were forced to describe it-jumped at her, and she spun and ducked out of the way, raising the daggers to slash at its elbows. One leg clattered to the ground.

  “And if it’s not here?” asked Jeff, treating the rat to a well-aimed kick to the torso to send it flying into the wall.

  Jasmine grabbed a heavy marble mortar off the bookcase and heaved. It hit the cat-beast in the skull, denting it, but not taking it down.

  “Then we pray these things can actually die.”

  “Again.”

  Jeff spun around. He’d lost track of the dog skeleton while kicking the rat. His stick out in front of him, Jeff backed towards the wall. As he scanned the room, his gaze fell on the bookcase Jasmine had searched. He hadn’t seen it before, but as the smoke from the papers crept up the shelves, he noticed how it skirted around one item on the second shelf. A simple glass paperweight. The hint of a red shimmer through the haze.

  With a grin, he bolted for it, not making it three steps before the dog creature leapt out from under the desk, teeth tearing through Jeff’s shirt and into his arm.

  “Son of a monkey’s ball!” he cried out, grasping his arm. Blood seeped through his fingers onto the floor. He didn’t have any time to brace himself as the dog snapped at his leg. Jeff kicked, but the dog wasn’t as light as the rat and the kick did nothing but create easier access. The dog bit his leg, teeth grazing his skin as Jeff hopped out of the way.

  The bookcase was closer, but still half a room away.

  “Jeff!” Jasmine cried out. The cat had knocked her on her back, paws on her shoulders to keep her down.

  Jeff started to run, but the dog jumped, for the second time throwing Jeff face down to the ground and standing on his back. Its teeth closed around his shoulder, the jaws squeezing slowly until Jeff cried out at the pressure. With the little clear-headedness he still possessed, he reached out for the bookcase, his fingers brushing the wood. He latched onto a shelf and dragged them both forward.