On Wings of Time (Lochlainn Guardians Book 1)

by Linda Boulanger

  With Ami secured back behind her own room door, Luke decided it was time to broach the subject with Kiernan that had been bothering him.

  “In my time, Abra thought my brother Will was at the ruins when he didn’t come home after an outing Thursday night. He was supposed to have gone with his friends to a local pub, but when we called around late Friday, they all said he never showed. You were away, but Abra had us take her to Somerled, where we looked around, but found nothing. When we left, she didn’t seem overly upset, but she didn’t seem completely at ease either.”

  “We?”

  Luke nodded. “Mairi was with us. She’s…” He raised a brow, his mouth drooping downward. “I guess you’d say she’s your ward. She just kind of showed up not long after we came to live at the Manor, saying her name was Mairi McCollum. No one had ever questioned it, and after seeing Amileigh’s mother, I’d say that’s about right.”

  Kiernan motioned for Luke to continue when he didn’t.

  “Mairi and I went back on Saturday, and that’s when we noticed the lock missing on the door to the dungeon.”

  “The lock?” Kiernan frowned

  “I know there’s only a plank of wood baring the door now, but at some point between now and then, locks, two of them, were put on the door. In later years, you had locks put on all the doors of the rooms that remained intact to keep potential vandals out.”

  Kiernan nodded. “What about the second lock on the dungeon passage?”

  “Right. Well, Will and I had found the door…” He squinted, thinking. “Wednesday, I think it was. You see, after a lot of discussion with the state, we had been given the green light to begin the restoration of part of the old castle and Will and I had been up there working. When we left, we were joking around. I shoved him and he tripped, falling through a bush and careening into the old door with a metallic bang. If he hadn’t, we might have never known it was there. Anyway, we’d tried to get in, breaking one of the locks.”

  Kiernan raised a brow and Luke shrugged, giving him a lopsided smile.

  “So, what exactly does it mean when you get a green light?” Kiernan asked.

  Luke blinked a few times, running back over what he’d said. “Ah! Well, in my day, we travel by cars instead of horses, and when you come to an intersection there are lights that…” He laughed at the blank look on Kiernan’s face. “Never mind. It just means we were given permission to go ahead. Anyway, the next day, which would be today, Mairi and I went back to the ruins and she made me help get all the rocks and timbers that had fallen in the last tremors away from the door. We didn’t finish until close to sunset and even though she wanted me to go down and look for Will, I couldn’t do it. We did open the door and call down, but there wasn’t any response so I convinced her to wait.” Luke looked away. “When I saw Will here on Friday morning he was… he was heading down the hallway toward the door. If Abra and Mairi were right, then he probably did go down there. If I’d gone down that Saturday, I might have been able to save him and stop all this.” Luke made a circular motion in the air with his hand in front of him.

  “Don’t do that to yourself…”

  “No, Kiernan. I have to.”

  “No, Luke. You don’t. Did you not hear what Abra said at the Manor? You can’t live in the what ifs, only on what you have now. Trust me, Luke. I’ve lived enough lifetimes to know that if you do, you’ll be ineffective and no good to those who need you the most. Think about it.”

  Luke knew Kiernan was talking about future generations and those they, as Guardians, were sworn to protect, as much as he was Amileigh. Scrubbing his hands down his face, Luke blew out a deep breath. “When Mairi and I went back to Somerled on Sunday, the door was wide open even though I had pushed it closed the night before. Since I hadn’t put the bar back and the locks were broken, I had shrugged it off, even following Mairi down as far as the holding room when she demanded we go down to look for Will. He wasn’t there. Nothing was, except for the decaying bars of the cell. I don’t even remember seeing the other door.”

  Luke closed his eyes, trying to imagine the room. He envisioned himself staring at the cell where he’d been held and then turning around to see the guard going through the other door. I’ll be back to take ye to hell, the burly man had said before removing the huge bar that blocked the second door in the corner. “There wasn’t another door.” In his mind, he could almost make out where it looked like the upper section of the adjacent dirt wall had partially crumbled and the dirt and rocks had slid down to cover the door, solidifying over time to make it appear like a seamless, rounded corner. Luke opened his eyes and looked at Kiernan. “What’s behind that door, Kiernan? Besides the criminals left down there to die?”

  Kiernan shifted, shuffling from foot to foot, his blue eyes locked with those so similar to his own. He squinted, his hand coming up to stroke his chin before he sucked in a deep breath that he slowly pushed from his lungs.

  “The first son was born almost nine months to the date after the union of Nicholas and Helaina, some fifteen hundred years from your time…”

  “I don’t have time for a history lesson, Kiernan. I already read about them in one of those big books. They got married. People were killed.” Luke practically growled.

  Kiernan crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his future great grandson, saying nothing else until Luke rolled his eyes and told him to go on, even though he was sure he knew everything his great grandfather was about to tell him.

  “Nicholas and Helaina were believed to be the first perfected Blend and Prihom. Their union was heralded and celebrated from the time of their births. They’re the ones we read about in the tomes. Only the year before they were to be married, great unrest occurred. King Nicolai’s power hungry brother secretly joined forces with the Dubhagan to help them kidnap Helaina. The plan was to do it when she was escorted home after the annual Gathering of the Hearts so that she might be mated with Ekbatair Drahgan’s son. He too was believed to be a most perfect Blend from their side.

  “When the Dragon King announced the couple was to be married the night of the annual gathering instead of the next year, an all-out war began. Rurardi Ruthven—the King’s brother, believed to be his second in command, had not even been told because King Nicolai already suspected him.” Kiernan tapped his temple. “Even then, he was filled with wisdom beyond his years.”

  Smiling, though more from polite habit than anything else, Luke absently nodded. “Nicolai and his brother… they were actual dragons, right?”

  Kiernan nodded. “It was nearing the end of the time when men and dragons walked the earth together.”

  “Helaina and Nicolai obviously got married though.”

  “Nicholas,” Kiernan corrected. “Nicolai is the Kedan Dragon King. Nicholas was the perfected Blend, named after the old dragon by his father, Christos Tavish.”

  Luke sucked in and Kiernan nodded.

  “Yes, Luke. We are direct descendants of the first perfected Blend. That’s why I have always believed Fate has had something spectacular in store for my offspring, the reason I’ve had to fight off disappointment when my sons’ Prihoms have not materialized throughout the years.” He stepped forward, placing a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “It’s why there is no doubt Fate has something spectacular in store for you.”

  Luke stared at Kiernan. He wouldn’t disagree. He only wished he knew what it was. “The door, Kiernan. What’s behind that second door?”

  Motioning for Luke to follow him, Kiernan turned toward the hallway that led to the dungeon door. “It’s not the second door, Luke, for behind it lies only those who have wronged this family. What you’re asking for is what you will find behind the door that’s beyond that.”

  Chapter 15

  When the guard with the missing teeth and the body filled with scars pulled open the door between the holding cell room and the beginnings of the actual dungeons, Luke was glad they had yet to eat because he was sure he would have lost it.

 
; The stench of years of death and decay swirled around them, mixing with a hair-raising dose of pure evil. Luke could feel the goosebumps prickling his skin, the cold fingers walking up his spine. He tried not to look at the faces pressed up against the bars closed over low, floor-level openings into these dark, earthen cells, but it was hard not to. Desperation showed on some, hatred on others, and then there were those who had already checked out while waiting on a certain fated death. Luke shook his head and watched the guard kick back a bony hand that reached out as they walked by, covering his ears against the cries. The rights’ activists back home would have had a field day with this, he thought.

  “Lord McCollum is a fair man, Luke,” Kiernan whispered. “Everyone here deserves his fate.”

  Luke nodded, but inside he was thinking that no man deserved to rot in a dark cell.

  Kiernan knew what his great grandson was thinking. He also knew Luke may have thought differently if he’d known what some of those men had done, especially those caged behind the door at the end of the long passageway. The thought of many of those, tried and sentenced long before the current lord of the castle ever existed, had his hackles rising.

  He could feel his dragon straining, his own blood boiling as they closed in on the large, triple thick, wooden structure. As the trio approached, the two men guarding the door bowed, then stepped back, each grasping hold of thick ropes hanging down on either side of the door. In perfect unison, they pulled, straining muscular torsos and arms to lift the door from the ground just enough for the three men to bend down and slip under before it slammed down again.

  When Luke gagged, he turned to him, trying to fathom what all of this must be like for a man who hadn’t even known dragons existed before he was sent back in time. Kiernan pulled a piece of cloth from his pocket and pressed it into Luke’s hand. “Hold it to your nose. Inside, there’s mint from Abra’s garden. I’d planned to have it in my tea later, but I think you’d better have it.” Luke nodded, holding the cloth to his face and breathing deeply a few times. When he whispered that he was okay, the trio continued.

  “What is this place?”

  Kiernan looked at Luke taking in the partially dug out empty caverns lining one wall of the walkway they were headed down.

  “It almost looks like…” He was eyeing the small alcoves and ledges along the opposite wall, then staring up at the way the structure curved above them. “It’s not manmade like the part we just came through. This… this is part of the caves below, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the cámara da maldición de mil durmir—the chamber of the curse of a thousand sleeps.” He chuckled under his breath, but there was nothing humorous about it. “I guess they were off by about a century though.” When Luke frowned, Kiernan went on. “In the battle on the night that Nicholas and Helaina were united, the Dubhagan king, Ekbatair Drahgan, was captured. The Nebrani wizards that had crossed over to their side centuries ago declared that if he was not released they would curse our people, and after a thousand sleeps, the Dubhagan would rise up, wiping out any remaining Kedan Blends, leaving them free to enslave mankind and rule the existing universe.”

  “But a thousand sleeps is only, what… a little over two and a half years? So how…”

  “Dragon sleeps, Luke. In our time, a sleep was equivalent to a year. We’re at nine hundred years now, today.” Kiernan tapped his finger against the opposite hand. “Nine hundred sleeps, not a thousand. It doesn’t make sense though. The timing…”

  “Maybe it does,” Luke interrupted. “Maybe when we found the dungeon door and opened it, something happened that set events in motion before it was time, but once they had begun, there was no stopping them.”

  Kiernan stared off into the darkened passageway, his hand absently stroking his chin. “What else happened when you returned to Somerled on Sunday?”

  Luke thought for a few minutes. He ran over the events… he and Mairi driving to the ruins, her freaking out when the metal door was open and running down the earth-hewn steps without knowing what might be down there. He’d followed her down with the big flashlight they’d brought since he’d already told her they’d have a look, but hadn’t expected her to just run blindly down into whatever lay below.

  Nothing had come of that anyway, so he’d shrugged it off. When they got back up to the top, they’d decided to move some of the fallen rocks toward the back of the castle where they were working on the reconstruction of the old staircase, the one that went up to the rooms that had remained intact. It would never be a whole castle again, but using materials from the original structure on the reconstruction made it seem more authentic. Anyway, they’d moved the rocks, hopeful that by working in the area, if Will was there, they might hear him or something. Luke frowned.

  “It was a sunny day, but the sun kept dipping behind the clouds, only I remember now looking up at one point and seeing nothing but blue skies for miles and miles around. And we kept hearing noises. Most of them we could explain away, but toward the end of the day, there was a strange sound on the second floor. It would have been in the section where the family’s bedrooms are.”

  Kiernan nodded. “What did you do then?”

  Luke frowned. “I told Mairi to stay there. That if someone was up there, I’d yell and she was to get the hell out of there to go find help.” He bit at his lower lip. “When we got to the ladder—it was an old wooden ladder that was normally kept behind one of the partially crumbled walls. We’d put it up to gain access to the second-floor hallway. Anyway, it was already in place, only the bottom few rungs were broken and when I tried to pull myself up past them, my jean pocket caught and ripped, so Mairi told me to give her my phone and wallet.” He looked down, walking through the hallway in his mind. “There was nothing amiss, no one around, nothing out of place that I could see, other than the fresh pile of empty beer bottles I assumed Will had left. The rooms were all locked up just like they were supposed to be… Wait. The weathered chair by the table across from the one room, Amileigh’s room… it was over on its side so I picked it up and put it back beside the table, then climbed back down. I think both mine and Mairi’s nerves were rattled so we were cutting up, trying to cover with our crazy bantering. We decided to call it a day. That’s when we rounded the corner and ran into Amileigh.”

  “What was the sound that caught your attention?”

  “The sound?” Luke frowned. “Huh. There was a thud and then something that almost sounded like a muffled cry followed by… a dragging sound. I think.” Luke shrugged and Kiernan held up his hand as they neared a slight bend in the tunnel and Luke stopped talking. He was surprised to see another set of bars blocking their way and was thankful for his dragon-bred night vision, because the closer they got to those bars, the more the hair stood up on the back of his neck. He didn’t want to walk into anything he couldn’t see, that was for sure. He jumped when the guard who had escorted them down jangled the keys attached to his belt, pulling them loose and sorting through them before plunging one into the lock on the entrance in the bars. After turning it, the screeching sound of the old lock making Luke cringe, the guard handed the keys to one of eight other guards standing at attention outside the smaller tunnel and motioned for Kiernan and Luke to go through. Luke would have given anything to have remained where he was, especially when both Kiernan and the guard unsheathed their swords.

  The sounds of dragging chains, moans, growls, cursing, and crunching bones began to fill the air as the bars swung shut behind them. Luke’s eyes widened as they walked along the corridor that began as a narrow passage before widening into a hallway similar to the one they’d just passed, with the jutting rocks and alcoves on one side and the large, open chambers on the other. Only these chambers weren’t empty.

  “This is the actual sleeping chamber,” Kiernan whispered. “There are many chambers like this in the cave where the Kedan Dragons would come to sleep… a hibernation of sorts, only different than what animals experience. Some of these sleeps would last for a
few years, others for centuries, depending on the needs of the dragon and the command of the Universe. They were used as a time of healing and restoration, and for the imparting of wisdom.”

  Luke nodded, still trying to take it all in. He was overwhelmed by all he still had to learn.

  “When the need to expand the dungeons led to them stumbling on the part we just left, no one thought too much of it. They were, after all, just empty spaces, albeit strange to those who had no idea what they were. Still, few know of the existence of this place, and even less are the numbers that have any idea about the existence of dragons. The men you saw as we walked down, myself, Gairlich… Thankfully, Carvic here was in charge of the excavation, and as soon as he realized what they’d hit, he came to me.

  Luke scratched his head. “So, you just dug through a wall and there was this passage?”

  The guard who now had a name turned to look at Luke before grunting and turning back. Luke raised a brow and Kiernan chuckled quietly.

  “It took nearly a year, but yes. They had to clear part of the passageway from debris and fallen chunks of earth and rock, but they found this second part by chance.”

  Chance? Luke doubted that. None of this seemed anywhere near left up to chance. “You seem to know a lot about the battle. How did you not know where this Chamber of Curses was?”

  “We did. Or they did… our ancestors. Only they accessed it from below. At least they did before it was believed to have collapsed. The old Dubhagan King and the others imprisoned with him were assumed to have perished, not too unlike King Nicolai’s brother in the Room of Embers.” Kiernan shrugged. “We know that at least a third of it did collapse, and no one expected that the chambers would ever be accessed again. It simply wasn’t considered.”

  “Wow.” Luke realized his head was pounding badly. He’d have much rather this venture stay within the confines of his trip back in time and the enjoyment he found with Amileigh. He’d even settle for having found out he was a dragon, but to learn there was a curse and all these captured dragons could rise up against them was more than he could process. Them, Luke thought, currently consisted of him and Kiernan… daunting. “How many are down here?”