Betrayal In The Highlands (Book 2)

by Robert Evert

  Abby made a dismissive noise. “Oh, I know that. I won’t say a thing. Secrecy is the greatest strength.”

  “That’s one of Iliandor’s sayings,” Edmund said, astonished.

  And he certainly had his secrets, didn’t he?

  “What? Do you think that just because I’m a girl, I’m illiterate? I know who Iliandor was. I even know most of his stupid sayings.”

  “Stupid sayings?”

  Don’t get into this right now. Focus!

  “Just … just don’t tell anybody, please. It’s a matter of life and death—for all of us. You as well. You need to understand that.”

  “Is he always like this?” she asked Pond. “So emotional about everything?”

  Pond, face still damp with tears, shrugged. “Sometimes he sings and dances.”

  “Pond!” Edmund cried. “You’re not helping!”

  “Ed’s right, though, Abby. You’re in danger being with us, and there are fates worse than death. Believe me about that.”

  Hearing this, Fatty attempted to crawl underneath the far bed. The wooden frame lifted several feet off the floor, where it balanced on his tremendous girth, quaking and rattling.

  “All right,” Abby said, a bit more businesslike. “I understand. Go on. Tell me more.”

  Edmund rubbed his forehead then his neck and shoulders. All of his muscles were tense, like unseen hands were strangling him from behind.

  “You, you … you promise not to say a word about, about my … my abilities?”

  Abby nodded emphatically. “Yes, yes! Of course. I was just kidding before. I know how people feel about such things. I’ve read about the Great Witch Hunts. A few years ago, in a village not far from Dardenello, a woman was stoned to death for begin a witch. So I understand perfectly.”

  Stoned to death …

  “I promise, I’ll never utter a word,” she said. “Trust me.”

  Norb said the same thing.

  Abby leaned forward, looking intently into Edmund’s eye. “Trust me,” she said again.

  Edmund gazed back at her, overwhelmed by how beautiful she was and how wonderful she smelled. Then he realized he was putting her in grave danger and that if she died, it would be his fault.

  “Which, which brings me … which brings me to one of the problems,” Edmund said, getting his thoughts back on track.

  He stood and paced in front of them. It reminded him of his days in Rood teaching young children, and some adults, how to read. Back then he used to feel important and smart. Now he felt like a blind mouse.

  “Norb is apparently telling people what I can do.”

  “Who’s Norb?” Abby whispered to Pond.

  “The husband of Ed’s former love, Molly,” Pond replied. “He’s a drunk.”

  “Boy, he sounds like a real peach!”

  “He’s also telling people about our adventure in the northern Haegthorn Mountains,” Edmund went on, ignoring them.

  “Is that where you lost your eye?” Abby asked.

  “No,” Edmund said then immediately corrected himself. “I, I mean yes. But, but … but not on that trip.”

  “How many times have you traveled into those mountains? It sounds fantastic! Most of that range hasn’t been fully explored! Did you find anything exciting? Any ruins? Did you make maps?”

  “Will you just let me finish? Please?”

  Reclining again on the sofa, Abby gestured for Edmund to continue. “Sorry. Go on.”

  Edmund slumped into the chair across from her, trying not to betray the fact that she made him want to smile in so many different ways.

  “Look … Abby. I, I … I can’t tell you everything, not right now. But this is the short version.”

  The more you tell her, the more danger she’ll be in.

  “I know something,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “A piece of information that a lot of people would want.”

  “What? What is it?” she asked, excited. “Is it like where some priceless treasure is buried or something like that? Is it where the Lost City of Gold is located? Oh, that would be incredible to see, wouldn’t it?”

  Edmund shook his head in exasperation. “It’s something like that. But Abby, please understand—I can’t tell you everything. Not right now, anyway. If I told you, you’d be in even more danger. Do you understand?”

  Abby rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll find out from Pond later. Go on. People want what you know … Edith and her friends …”

  “And the goblins,” Pond told Abby. “Two in particular are hunting for us.”

  “Oh! I think I saw them!” Abby said.

  Pond sprang to his feet, hand falling to the hilt of his rapier. “Where? Here in the city?”

  Becky snapped up her head, suddenly awake.

  “No,” Edmund said. “Not here. It seems that Abby saw two figures entering our suite at Baroness Melody’s shortly after we left.” Relieved, Pond sat. “We really don’t know who they were.”

  “But they were short,” she said. “And they had long, muscular arms, just like goblins!”

  “You didn’t mention their arms before,” Edmund said.

  “Well, I just remembered!” She thought for a moment and added, “Then again, it could be just my imagination. Sometimes I remember things all wrong. I’m kind of crazy that way.”

  You’re crazy in a lot of ways.

  You’re getting off track.

  “Anyway …” Edmund put his face in his hands with a groan. “What, what I know … well, it’s … it’s dangerous.”

  “What do you mean?” Abby asked, confused. “How can what you know be dangerous?”

  Don’t tell her!

  I won’t be specific.

  “If others knew what I know,” he began slowly, “they could easily kill everybody and take over the entire continent.”

  Abby started to laugh then stopped. She looked from Edmund to Pond and back again. “You’re serious.”

  “Very serious,” Pond said, uncharacteristically solemn.

  “Abby …” Edmund longed to touch her.

  “I’m not going home,” she said. “Go on. Tell me more.”

  “Abby,” he repeated, feeling guilty that he wanted her to stay.

  “I’m safer here than I am at home. I’ve already told everybody we were running off to get married. It’s probably all over the region by now … crazy spinster Abigail Marie ran off with some strange old man. People all over the kingdom probably know by now!”

  Old man?

  “Married?” Pond raised an eyebrow at Edmund. “Can I be the best man?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Think of it this way,” Abby said. “These people, Edith and whoever is after you … they’re going to look for any weakness you might have, right? That includes capturing your friends and using them as hostages until you do what they want.”

  It sounds like she understands the situation all too well.

  “They’ll find me back in Dardenello without much of a problem,” she went on, “so you know that it’s better for me to be away from there. I’m safer with you two.”

  A loud whimper came from the levitating bed.

  “The three of you, I mean,” Abby said to the hiding Fatty.

  Edmund wondered if she really was safer with him or whether that was just wishful thinking.

  “So what’s our next step?” Pond asked.

  Edmund exhaled, a smothering feeling of desperation washing over him. “I think the first step is to convince Norb to shut his mouth.”

  “Does he know that you know this … this dangerous information?” Abby asked.

  “I don’t know,” Edmund replied. “He’s far smarter than I’ve given him credit for all these years. At the very least, he certainly knows that I found something underneath the cover of Iliandor’s diary, and that’s all Edith needs to hear. She’d figure out the rest.”

  “Iliandor’s diary?” Abby said, amazed. “You have his actual diary. His own diary. Not a copy, bu
t the original?”

  “I did.”

  “Holy cow! What else did you have?”

  “You know …” Pond fidgeted, evidently not wanting to bring up a painful point but feeling compelled to do so. “You told him before not to tell anybody about your … special abilities and everything. And he still did.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think that we’ll have to …” Pond tapped the pommel of his sword.

  “Have to what?” Abby turned back and forth from Pond to Edmund. “What?” Then she gasped, her tone turning conspiratorial. “You mean kill him, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” Edmund replied, even louder.

  It had been a very long day. He was tired and hungry and couldn’t concentrate. But his inability to think clearly might have been because of Abby’s sweet perfume or the fact she sat across from him, her knee mere inches away from his.

  “I just don’t know what to do,” he said with an effort. “But we have to do something. He’s the source of most of the trouble. At least the trouble we can avoid. If he tells people …”

  Edmund looked over at Abby. Her face radiated innocence, like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  He let himself smile at her.

  Then the smile disappeared.

  “You’re in danger being with us,” he told her. “You know that, don’t you? Not just a ‘running away from home’ kind of danger. There are people who’ll torture you to get to me. They’ll burn out your eyes. They’ll hang you from a hook and make you watch as they rip out your intestines and dangle them to the ground. This isn’t some book you’ve read or some campfire story. It’s real.”

  Abby patted his forearm; her hand lingered a bit longer than necessary. For a hopeful moment, Edmund thought she might kiss him.

  “You worry too much,” she said.

  If she dies, I’ll slit my own throat.

  He studied the gentle curve of her eyelashes, wondering why women had such striking eyes.

  Abby was talking.

  “I can help you,” she was saying. “I’m not a silly little girl like everybody says …”

  She is just a silly little girl.

  Yes, but she makes me forget my misery. And I’m tired of being miserable all the time. I want to be happy.

  Abby kept going on and on about how she could sneak around like a cat and how nobody had ever caught her. Her voice, excited and alive, bounced around Edmund like music. He closed his eye and listened. He wanted to take her hand and dance.

  “Ed?”

  Edmund opened his eye.

  Pond was looking at him.

  “How about it?” Pond asked. “It makes sense to me. But it’s up to you, Captain. What do you think?”

  Edmund wrenched himself from his thoughts. “Huh? What?”

  Pond grinned, evidently guessing what Edmund had been thinking.

  “Ms. Abby here suggested that we relocate to her room.” He winked.

  “My quarters are right down the hall.”

  “Down the hall? Here?” Edmund said. “How did you know we’d be at this inn?”

  Abby held up two fingers. She touched the first. “One, it’s the best place in town, which seems to be your style.” She touched the second. “Two, I knew you’d want to be as secluded as possible. So when I beat you here, I asked for a private room on the top floor.” She lifted her shoulders, as if having just added one and one together.

  “Wow,” Pond said. “Good thing you’re on our side!”

  “But what about … you know, your … your … privacy?” Edmund asked.

  Abby snorted a laugh. “I have five brothers! If you don’t turn away when I tell you, I’ll blacken your eye.”

  She probably would.

  “So we’ll move our things?” Pond asked.

  “We’ll move some of them,” Edmund replied, trying to hide his pleasure at the thought of staying in Abby’s room. “I want anybody who comes in to think we’re still here but just out at that moment. Ruffle the beds like they’ve been slept in.”

  Still levitating off the ground, the far bed rose and fell with each of Fatty’s rumbling snores.

  “Move all the important stuff: the gems, the jewelry, the weapons, my book—”

  “You wrote a book?” Abby asked, delighted.

  “What? No. No, not yet, at any rate. It’s, it’s just a book I found.” He pointed to the black tome strapped to his pack.

  “And then what?” Pond said. “Do you still want me to sell as much as I can?”

  “Yes. And get horses and supplies.”

  “It’ll take a couple of days. I can’t just walk up to rich people and ask them to buy our gems. I’ll need to get appointments and so forth. Then there’s the haggling. It may be a week before we sell enough.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll go as soon as we can. And see if you can find out if there’s a monastery somewhere close by.”

  “There’s one two days’ ride west of here,” Abby said, “on an islet in the Halverese River. Why? Do you think they’ll give you sanctuary?”

  I’d give my right eye for sanctuary.

  “No,” Edmund said. “We wouldn’t be safe there. Goblins don’t care about sanctuaries; they’d bust right in. So would witch hunters.”

  He got up.

  Suddenly awake, Becky leapt from the sofa, alert and ready to attack something.

  “But I want to see if they’d help us,” Edmund continued. “Grab our valuables and the book. Abby, use your gift for snooping and see if anybody’s out in the hallway. We can’t let anyone know where we are.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  That evening Edmund, Pond, Fatty, and Becky sequestered themselves in Abby’s small room at the other end of the hall. While Pond and Fatty slept on the floor by the open window, Edmund and Becky lay on the sofa pushed up against the door.

  Edmund, however, didn’t get much rest. He kept thinking about Abby and how headstrong and naïve she was—and how pretty. From the corner of his eye, he watched her petite breasts rise and fall beneath the blankets as she snored lightly in her bed. He knew it was wrong; gentlemen shouldn’t leer. But he couldn’t help it. The torment of his yearning distracted his mind from the perils that pursued him. It also gave him a sense of purpose—he had to protect Abby and, if he could, win her heart.

  When fatigue finally overpowered him, disturbing dreams plagued his sleep. In one, Kravel had captured Abby, hung her from a tree, and slowly cut off her hands and feet as she screamed and pleaded for mercy. Edmund woke drenched in a cold sweat, Kravel’s laughter still stabbing at him. He spent the rest of the night sitting in the dark, quietly crying.

  In the days that followed, Edmund hid in Abby’s room, teaching Fatty how to play checkers. When Fatty won his first game, the big man actually wept, tears of joy pouring down his ample face. Edmund was so touched he began to teach Fatty other games like Nine Men’s Morris and Knucklebones. Surprisingly Fatty was fairly good at some of them, and together they’d played the days and nights away.

  Meanwhile, Pond and Abby had traipsed around Long Ravine, selling some of the gems and jewelry from the troll’s lair. Finding buyers wasn’t always easy, and Pond drove a hard bargain; but by the evening on the third day, they had amassed over seven thousand gold pieces—enough for the four of them to live comfortably for many years. They had also purchased two draft horses and enough supplies for their long journey northward to Rood.

  “So what now?” Pond asked as they ate in Abby’s room.

  It was the dinner hour of their fourth night in Long Ravine. Somewhere in the lush forest along the river, people were singing. The merry music of flutes floated up to their window as a group of girls cheered and clapped.

  Edmund didn’t want to leave. Long Ravine had everything he’d ever wanted in a home, including wonderful food and music and scenery he’d never get tired of looking at. But he knew they had to get to Rood. Sooner or later, Norb was going to tell somebody about the diary and the fo
rmula, and Edmund had to get to him before that happened. What he’d do when he saw Norb, however, he hadn’t yet decided.

  “Ed?” Pond prodded.

  The spoon slipped from Edmund’s hand, falling into his bowl of bean soup with a clatter.

  “I suppose it’s time.”

  “Not anxious to leave Long Ravine?” Abby asked, shoveling marinated fish into her mouth like a cattleman who’d been without decent food for several months. Only Fatty, who used his hands instead of utensils, had more disgusting table manners; he slurped his soup directly out of the bowl, letting most of it dribble onto his protruding stomach, and tore at his chicken like Edmund did when he had been held captive in Thorgorim.

  Edmund stared at Abby as she devoured the trout.

  “What?” She hunched over her plate, mouth full. “I’m hungry.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine!” Straightening her back, she began to take more ladylike bites. She sneered at Edmund.

  “Ed?” Pond prodded again.

  Edmund pried his attention from Abby and stared out the window. Daylight was just about gone. Lights from the city twinkled in the growing blackness, and the air smelled sweet and warm, like spring after a very cold winter.

  “We’ll leave tomorrow,” he said, wishing he could stay longer.

  “Before dawn?” Pond asked.

  Edmund shook his head and sipped another spoonful of soup. It was too spicy for his taste but after eating his magically created biscuits for so long, he appreciated any real food he could get.

  “No. In every book and in every tale, people trying to escape from someplace always leave before dawn. Edith will be expecting that.”

  “Good point,” Pond said, cutting his steak. The knife scratched against the bottom of his plate in a rhythmic screech.

  “We’ll leave at noon,” Edmund said. “The city will be busy, and we’ll be more likely to slip out unnoticed.”

  “So are we headed to the monastery or not?” Abby asked.

  Edmund regarded her, not really having heard what she’d asked.

  Abby rolled her eyes again. “Look,” she said, still chewing, “I eat like a boy. That’s not going to change. Now”—she swallowed hard—“where the hell are we headed?”