“That move was meant to save my life in the event of a skirmish with mainlanders. I never imagined I would be forced to use it against one of my own people.”
“Speaking of which, we should get off the streets before that guard alerts the castle to your escape,” her father said. “We will be safe with Teldus tonight.”
Teldus led them briskly through a maze of unlit cobblestone lanes to a small cottage at the far end of Tansk. He showed them through to the kitchen and pulled out a worn wooden bench from beneath the table. Orlla and her father seated themselves while Teldus lit a couple of candles and stoked the fire. When he was done, he sat down with a heavy grunt on a stool next to them. “Now then,” he began, “we need to talk about a plan to secret you out of here tomorrow.”
Orlla turned to her father. “First, I want to know how you suddenly came to remember me after all this time. It’s been so long since you’ve recognized me, and now, all of a sudden, you are coherent enough to travel to Tansk to find me.”
Her father raised his brows, forwarding her a helpless look. “I can’t explain it. I woke up and realized you needed me. I went straight to the Conservatory, but none of the Keepers were there, or at their homes. There was talk of arrests in the village, so I rode directly to Tansk to find out if Teldus knew of the Keepers’ whereabouts, figuring you would be among them. He told me you had been brought to the castle dungeon only an hour before I arrived.”
Orlla’s eyes lingered on him, her lips spreading in an ever-broadening smile. “I’m astonished at how articulate you are, Father. To think of all the nights I sat with you, and held your hand, and told you the details of my day, and you didn’t even know who I was.”
“It happens sometimes,” Teldus interjected in a kindly tone. “Eternal youth spawning unexplained periods of lucidity.” He pursed his lips and added more quietly. “You mustn’t expect it to last. Your father knows that as well as I do.” He got to his feet and paced. “Which is why we must act swiftly.”
Orlla leaned her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. “Can you smuggle me out of Tansk once the drawbridge is raised? I must get to the rune circle and meet with the other Keepers.”
Teldus’s forehead creased. “First things first. We need to find a safe place to hide you until morning. As soon as the castle guards discover you have escaped, they will go house-to-house searching for any trace of you.”
“Do you have a cellar?” Orlla asked.
Teldus pulled distractedly at his mustache. “The guards will search down there too. You will have to be well-concealed to evade capture.” He ran a calculating eye over her frame. “I have a barrel of pickled herring down there. You could fit inside it.”
“No!” Orlla raised her hands in protest. “I spent more hours than I care to remember hiding under moldy rags and moth-eaten blankets earlier today. The idea of being buried alive in pickled herring all night is abhorrent.”
“It would only be for a few minutes while they search the cellar,” Teldus said. “Your father can take the cot up here. I’ll make sure he’s covered up. They’re not looking for a man, so they won’t bother him if he pretends to be asleep.”
Orlla groaned, tugging her fingers through her hair. “I’m beginning to regret escaping.”
“Besides,” Teldus added with a contrite smile, “this will be a good test of endurance for how I intend to smuggle you out of Tansk tomorrow.”
Orlla wrinkled her face. “In a barrel of fish?”
Teldus chuckled. “Too obvious. No one would take a barrel of pickled herring to trade outside the township.” He rubbed his hands together decisively. “No, I will stash you beneath a pile of horse manure on my neighbor’s cart headed for the farms.”
Orlla let out a despairing squeak. She looked to her father for support, but he chided her with a gentle frown. “Thank you, Teldus,” he said. “We will comply with whatever plan you deem to have the best chance of success.”
Orlla swallowed back further protests, choosing to marvel instead at her father’s continued coherence—catching glimpses of the master mentor he had once been with his calm reasoning and gentle leadership.
Teldus got to his feet and reached for a candle. “Let me show you the cellar. Once we get wind of the castle guards and Protectors combing the town, I will send you down below as a precaution. They may only knock on doors and inquire if anyone has seen you. If they insist on searching the house, you will hear me thump on the trap door in the kitchen floor. That’s your signal to climb inside the barrel and cover yourself with straw and herring.”
As they descended the stairs, the damp, musty air grew thick in Orlla’s lungs, sending a wave of panic through her at the thought of spending any length of time down in the cellar at all, let alone at the bottom of a barrel of pickled herring. She grimaced. If she survived this ordeal, there was always tomorrow’s equally foul-smelling escape plan to look forward to.
Teldus gestured to a barrel standing against the back wall, hung with spider webs thick as skeins of wool. “The barrel is only a quarter full. Pull out the straw and fish and pile it into one of those oilcloths folded up in the corner. If you hear me give the signal, jump inside the barrel.”
Orlla wrinkled her nose. “Let’s hope I can refrain from hurling the contents of my stomach while the guards are down here, or they may think you have live fish in a barrel.”
Teldus gave a wry grin as he helped her unload the herring and straw and heap it on an oilcloth. “At all costs, you must not be discovered. You are the strongest rune weaver of all the Keepers. They will need your skill to retrieve the Opal of Light.”
“Why are you helping me, Teldus?” Orlla asked. “You are retired and have served your time, yet you are putting your life in danger.”
He scratched his stubble, a look of regret in his eyes. “Our lives on Efyllsseum are stretched to a length where time is no longer precious, and everything has become meaningless. We experience no urgency to love and procreate because there is always tomorrow. We feel no empathy because we never suffer. We derive no satisfaction from our labor because the land produces without our efforts.”
He gave a heavy sigh before continuing in a chagrined tone. “Meanwhile, the mainlanders toil and die all too soon. It greatly saddens me that we waited until war was thrust upon us to right these wrongs.”
“But now we will,” Orlla said softly.
Teldus gave a distracted nod and turned back to the stairs. “Best not leave your father alone too long. His mind could fail him again at any minute.”
Together, they climbed back up to the warmth of the kitchen leaving the trapdoor open for easy access.
To Orlla’s relief, her father’s eyes were still clear and bright when they rejoined him at the table.
“Well?” he demanded. “How are your lodgings down below?”
“I’d hardly call a reeking barrel of fish lodgings.” She gave an amused huff. “Maybe the horse dung tomorrow will mask the odor of pickled fish.”
Teldus stoked the fire again and gestured to the cot against the back wall. “Orlla, you may rest here for now. I will wake you if we hear anything.”
She shook her head. “I need to practice my runes.”
Her father frowned. “How will you find the other Keepers?”
“They are assembling in the rune circle,” Orlla explained. “We will remain there until we are ready to make our move.”
Teldus scrubbed at his chin. “I can take you most of the way on the cart. My neighbor’s farm is located in the fertile plains.”
The sound of distant shouts interrupted them. They leapt to their feet and padded to the front door, peering around it into the inky night. The tromping of boots from several streets over drifted their way, followed by the pounding of fisted gauntlets on wood. Teldus closed the door, bolted it and turned to Orlla. “It’s time.”
Wordlessly, she reached for a candle and sped down the stairs into the basement. The trapdoor closed above her, and d
arkness filled the space, broken only by the breathy flicker of her solitary candle. She made her way to the barrel of fish, extinguished the candle, and leaned against the wall taking slow, shallow breaths as time dragged by.
A thumping sound upstairs startled her almost out of her skin. The soldiers were at Teldus’s door. She reached for the bundle of straw and pickled herring and stood there, shaking from head to foot as she listened for the signal to climb inside the barrel.
After an agonizing wait, the trapdoor was flung open. “They’ve gone!” Orlla’s father called down to her. “You can come up now.”
She tossed the herring and straw back into the barrel. Relief flooded through her as she clambered up the stairs on legs that felt altogether too weak to support her. “Why didn’t they search the house?” she asked.
Teldus exchanged a knowing look with her father. “The castle guards trust a retired Keeper. I am one of the king’s frequent advisors at court.”
Orlla sat down on a stool next to her father. “Now what?”
“We wait until it is light out and the drawbridge has been let down,” Teldus replied. “Your father will depart town first on horseback. The guards won’t hold him up—they will be searching for someone traveling with a woman. An hour later, you and I will leave with the cart and join up with your father on the road.”
Teldus cracked his knuckles. “If there are no more questions, I suggest we retire for a couple of hours and get some rest.”
At first light, Teldus was up and pottering around the kitchen. Orlla sat up on the cot and rubbed her eyes. Teldus greeted her and woke her father, who had fallen asleep in the rocking chair by the fire. After serving him a boiled egg and some rye bread, Teldus sent him on his way.
Orlla turned down breakfast. Her nerves were already taut and she didn’t want to risk losing the contents of her stomach under a pile of dung and add to her discomfort.
“It’s time we got you in the cart,” Teldus said.
Reluctantly, she followed him around to the back of the cottage where his neighbor’s cart stood half-loaded and hitched to a doleful-looking bay. A woolen blanket lay stretched out in the center of the cart. Teldus threw her an apologetic look. “Climb aboard. I’ll cover you up.”
Orlla wrapped her cloak tightly around her and threw up her hood, before clambering up on the cart. Gingerly, she stepped over the steaming manure and lay down on her stomach on the thin blanket, heart pounding erratically.
Teldus laid a second blanket over her and then took a pitchfork and made swift work of burying her, being careful to leave enough vents for her to breathe fresh air through. “We’re off then,” he called back to her as he flicked the reins.
A moment later, Orlla felt the cart lurch forward in time with her stomach. It probably didn’t matter if she hurled, it couldn’t smell any worse than it already did.
The murmur of voices grew louder as they merged with the steady stream of people exiting Tansk. When they reached the drawbridge, the pace slowed and Orlla could hear the guards questioning everyone as they let them through one-by-one. Peering out from her pungent hiding place, she eyed the wagon behind them precariously loaded with crates tied down with fraying rope. She sincerely hoped the load didn’t topple over and kill her.
Teldus called out a greeting to a guard.
“Well met, Teldus.” The guard saluted him. “Where are you off to?”
“My neighbor’s poorly. I’m taking this load of dung out to his farm for him.”
“You haven’t heard any talk from the common folk about the escaped prisoner, have you?” the guard probed.
“Not a word.”
Orlla heard the guard’s footsteps walking around the cart, as if inspecting the load from all angles.
“Bring me a pitchfork!” he yelled.
Chapter 27
Suppressing a gasp of horror, Orlla instinctively curled in on herself beneath the steaming pile of manure. Her pulse clattered in her ears like thousands of hooves pounding across the drawbridge. Time dragged by at an excruciatingly slow pace until the first thrust of the pitchfork impaled the dung to her left. Blistering fear lit up her veins. The crunch of the guard’s footsteps on the gravel road indicated he was walking around to the far side of the cart. Orlla held her breath, surreptitiously wriggling a few inches in the other direction.
Teldus mumbled something to the guard, his voice too low to make out the words, but a moment later, the guard walked off, bellowing at someone. “Search the crates!”
Cautiously, Orlla peeked out at the overloaded wagon in line behind them. The red-faced merchant jumped down from his seat, arms flailing and protesting loudly as several guards began disassembling his load.
Teldus flicked the reins and their cart rumbled forward with a welcome lurch. Orlla closed her eyes, weak with relief. Teldus must have planted a seed of suspicion about the merchant in the guard’s ear. And as one of the king’s advisors, Teldus’s qualms would not be taken lightly.
Orlla uncurled her stiff limbs. Prying open the crates and searching them would occupy the guards long enough to allow them to be safely on their way. By the time the crates had been reloaded and lashed back down on the wagon, the guards would be far too busy handling the long line of vexed merchants, tradesmen, and farmers to wonder if they should have searched a cartful of manure more thoroughly.
Teldus pushed his horse to its limits through plains of scattered farmsteads, trying to put as much distance as he could between them and Tansk. Orlla endeavored to make herself as comfortable as was humanly possible in a mound of horse manure as they trundled laboriously over rocks and through potholes. The pungent odor no longer bothered her the way it had when she’d first crawled under it. Or maybe she was simply too tired to care, drifting into a blissful state of unconsciousness.
The jarring sound of her father’s panicked voice woke her. “Orlla! Can you hear me?”
She frowned, disoriented by the darkness, and by a voice she was unaccustomed to hearing. Was she imagining it? She broke into a coughing fit and heaved a few breaths, suddenly unnerved in the claustrophobic space. Her mind scrabbled to recall where she was. The cart! They must have traveled miles already.
“We need to get her out of there,” her father said in an urgent tone. “The fumes are getting to her.”
In her fog of confusion, Orlla heard Teldus jump down from the cart and land with a heavy thud on the road. A moment later, the manure around her began to shift and the weight on her back eased. Someone grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her to the edge of the cart, then lifted her to the ground. She blinked, squinting against the blinding sun, her legs unsteady beneath her. Her head spun, and she reached for the side of the cart, retching on an empty stomach. Her father put an arm around her and helped her over to a boulder in the grassy embankment bordering the road. “Sit down and catch your wind.”
Orlla put her pounding head between her knees and gulped several deep breaths of the sweetest fresh air she had ever breathed. After a few minutes, she straightened up feeling considerably better.
Teldus walked around to the front of the cart and slid a waterskin out from under his seat. “Drink your fill,” he said, holding it out to her. “There’s a stream on the other side of this embankment where you can rinse off. We’ll keep watch to make sure no one sees you.”
Orlla gulped down several mouthfuls of water and then got to her feet and made her way down the embankment, her legs shaking like saplings in the wind. She cleaned off her boots in the gurgling stream as best she could, and then rinsed off her face and hands. The cool water felt refreshing on her skin after the sulfuric stench of the steaming manure. When her head had cleared, her thoughts turned to Erdhan. Had he found the other Keepers, or was he hiding somewhere too? Guilt plagued her as the picture sat in her mind. It would be her fault if anything happened to him—after all, she was the one who had brought him to Efyllsseum.
“We need to keep moving,” Teldus called down to her.
&n
bsp; She hurriedly refilled the waterskin and climbed back up to the road, stomach growling for the breakfast she had turned down earlier.
“You can sit up front with us now that we’re far enough out of Tansk, but keep your hood up. We can’t risk anyone recognizing you.” Teldus wrinkled his nose as she clambered up beside him and her father. “You’ll be needing something stronger than water to rid yourself of that smell.”
“Right now, I’m more concerned about satisfying my stomach,” Orlla replied.
She gratefully accepted the jerky her father offered her as they settled in for the remainder of the journey to the fertile plains. They passed several other traders and farmers along the way and exchanged a few pleasantries in passing. But once Teldus made it clear that he was late to deliver his load, no one held him up for long.
Darkness was gathering in pleated shadows by the time the lush forests and thickly-covered rolling green hills of the volcanic plains came into sight. Orlla inhaled the clean scent of the foliage around her, coated with a light evening dew, and sighed contentedly.
“Do you remember our trip here?” her father asked, the touch of a smile in his voice.
“I will never forget it.” She inclined her head to him. “It was after that trip I swore I was going to become a master mentor and devote my life to defending Efyllsseum. You told me discipline was the bridge that would get me there.” Her voice wavered. “You were right about that. But it turns out it was all for nothing.”
Her father directed a stern look her way. “Make it mean something. Crossing the bridge is not the end of the journey. The world will always need those who dare to defend it.”
Orlla blinked back tears as she rested her head against her father’s shoulder. He was living on redeemed time, but the wisdom he had sown into her life would live on forever.
Teldus veered the cart off the main road and took them along an overgrown trail deep into the cover of the trees. “From here we walk.” His brow furrowed as he scanned the shadows. He untethered the horse from the cart and hobbled it, allowing it to graze. It whinnied softly, elated at the rich grass it found itself standing in.
Opal of Light_An epic dragon fantasy Page 23