My mind immediately jumped to the gang-related murder that Esteban, Vega and I had worked just recently. Only it hadn’t really been a murder. Rather, the death had been a cover for a different crime, one that pointed towards illicit drug dealing. Andeluvia had presented me with the exact same thing as Southern California. Thea’s supposed death had been a cover for the Noctua to imprison her and keep her out of sight.
But that opened up a whole bunch of other questions, ones that I couldn’t solve without a good deal of speculation, if at all. Why did the Noctua use a fire-breathing dragon to set the ‘death scene’, cover up that evidence, and pin the event on a wild wyvern? And even more pressingly, what purpose did imprisoning the Albess serve in the first place?
Imprisonment seemed like overkill to keep Thea from talking to me.
But it wasn’t just to keep her from talking to me. King Fitzwilliam hadn’t been able to speak with her either. And Xandra had indicated that none of the other owls knew where Thea was being kept under guard.
I decided to continue along that line of reasoning. After all, what if I had nothing whatsoever to do with what happened to Thea? Why would Raisah hold a holy figure like the Albess against her will?
The answer came in the form of a jaw-clenching click in my head.
Galen, when he first told me about the religious order of the Noctua, had said something that I hadn’t paid attention to at the time.
The anointed leader of their Holy Order of the Sepulcher is Albess Thea.
Shortly afterwards, both members of the Gruesome Twosome had said something to Raisah when they’d wanted to carve me into bacon strips with their battle talons.
Release this one, Anointed.
And what had Perrin said to me, before he had died of aggressive anemia?
Some of the Noctua say I might come back as Anointed again…
In my world, to ‘anoint’ something meant to consecrate or bless it. But here, among Andeluvia’s talking, tax-code writing owls, it meant something else. A claim to power, even holy dominion over the Hoohan.
A sequence of events flashed into high definition focus inside my head.
Thea grows old, unwell, and is restricted from seeing troublesome people like me or King Fitzwilliam. Raisah, who is called the ‘Anointed’ by her bodyguard, stakes her claim to power. Thea then disappears, and is claimed to have been murdered by some random, tragic accident. Finally, little Perrin – also one of these mysterious ‘Anointed’ owls – suddenly and rather conveniently dies after a long, wasting illness.
Liam and I were crossing rougher country now. The cliffs ahead began to draw near, but shrub and pine-choked gullies rippled out from the heights above, forcing us to scramble up and down steeper slopes. Shaw remained out of sight for the most part, sticking to what cloud cover was left, ranging slightly ahead of us but within headset range.
Something else occurred to me. Xandra had said that both Thea and Perrin shared what the Hoohan called the ‘Marks of the Anointed’. At the time I hadn’t known what that meant. But now that I’d met both of them, the marks were as distinctive as stigmata. They had similarly poor health, the same coloring, and most importantly, they had same thought and speech patterns that branded them as ‘insane’ among their own people.
Raisah lacked all these marks. But if she had the backing of enough of the Noctua on her own? It sure as hell looked like Raisah was staging a coup over the passive wings of the other Hoohan.
But I’d have thought that plotting and executing a coup should be a full-time job. Why was Raisah refusing to approve Fitzwilliam’s budget, threatening to throw his kingdom into chaos? She hadn’t made any demands. It was almost as if she wanted Andeluvia weak and divided.
Another click, and yet more things fell into place for me.
Xandra had warned us all. The Noctua sense that the time of the Past War is drawing near. One heard of rumors…of talks in the shadows with the ones who are now arisen from the dark.
All that was happening with the owls was yet another part of a grand plan to destroy Andeluvia, or at least one of the realms that would ally with it.
And that made stopping Raisah the top priority now.
“Look up ahead,” Liam said, quickly jerking me back into the here and now. “The Sepulcher of the Eight Talons. I see it up by the base of the cliffs.”
We’d come to the edge of a thick copse of fir trees and a stand of thorny shrubs dappled with bright red berries. The afternoon had melted away. Now the sky had begun its turn from bright slate gray to the steel gray of an evening filled with snow flurries. I knelt among the shrubs so as to be a little less conspicuous, and then pulled a small pair of binoculars from my pack. My fingers were a little numb and fumble-prone on the focus knob, but I soon dialed it in.
The opening to the sepulcher was a twenty-foot high trapezoid. A single piece of jet-black stone made up the lintel. That stone rested atop a pair of columns that sloped gently inward, making the bottom narrower than the top. The columns were covered in rounded, scoop-shaped marks that had been carved into the rock and colored with specks of long-faded paint.
Shaw’s voice crackled urgently in my ear.
“Dayna,” the griffin said, in a harsh whisper, “Keep to thy cover and do not move! A pair of the Noctua are on patrol, and moving with the speed of the wind towards thee!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Noctua were moving with the wind. The same wind I felt gently blowing against my cheeks as it flowed off the heights above. That meant the two owls were just leaving the sepulcher.
It also meant the owls would be passing overhead any second.
Liam must have been in the same state of mind. Instead of making a run for the deeper woods, he sank down next to me, eyes anxiously scanning the sky. We sat and waited as the breeze kicked up a little, pelting us with a flurry of white flakes.
Given the rough terrain, we’d come up on our destination almost unexpectedly. I didn’t think that there was much more than two hundred yards to the door at this point. At best, there was a 50-50 chance that using any magic would set off an alarm that would rouse the rest of the owls in the sepulcher.
However, if I had to use my gun, there was a one-hundred percent chance of everyone hearing the shot. So I slowly moved one hand inside my cloak and rested my forefingers against the smooth handle of the stun wand. I focused on my breathing and staying absolutely still. All while praying that the bright silver line of duct tape that I’d wound about Liam’s head would look like just another patch of slate from above.
The seconds ticked by. More snow fell, pricking my skin with little icy needles.
Shaw’s voice buzzed faintly in my ear. “They have passed thee by.”
I let out a deep breath. “Gotcha. We’re going to–”
“Bide!” Shaw let out a hiss. “They are circling.”
More seconds ticked by. The soles of my feet threatened to cramp up, so I flexed them as best I could inside my hiking boots. Shaw let out a squawk that I recognized as a griffin curse.
“The Noctua have spotted thy heel print in a patch of snow. Were it not for our mission, I would applaud their skill.”
“Great.” I gritted.
“They are doubling back towards thee,” Shaw said resignedly. “I shall strike thy opponents down from above, ‘lest they harm thee and mine own vulnerable Fayleene friend.”
“I am quite capable of protecting both Dayna and myself,” Liam objected. “The thin air must be affecting your mind and giving you heroic delusions again.”
Nice to see how technology changes things, I noted. Now Shaw and Liam could insult each other over a longer distance.
Aloud, I said, “Stay where you are, Shaw. I have a hunch we’re going to need to put our next part of the plan into action very quickly.”
“Art thou sure? We have seen neither horn nor wing feather from Xandra or her–”
The Noctua appeared like ghosts beside us.
One moment earlier,
the branches in the fir tree to my side were empty. Now they bowed under the weight of two large owls. Their plumage was a mix of yellow and brown, with the occasional gleam of metal.
Not only did both wear battle talons, they also sported a pair of bronze-colored strips that ran the length of the front edge of each wing. I had no idea how these birds could fly with steel or bronze plate strapped to their bodies and feet, but the creatures in Andeluvia played by their own rules.
Rules which meant that we were fair game, right now.
“One has trespassed upon the sacred domain of the owls,” one said, in a gruff female voice. “Make peace with the foul gods your worship, for you shall be cleansed from this earth.”
“Well, that’s certainly direct enough,” I muttered.
“I am the Protector of the Fayleene,” Liam stated sternly. “Among my kind, we frown upon threatening those we meet in the wild.”
“We of the Noctua are not your kind, and we do not recognize the people of the fey here,” rasped the other one, in a nasally male voice. “If one wishes, one is allowed to run from us first. Then we cut each of you down by the neck.”
“That’s kind of you,” I said coldly. “It this a custom of yours?”
“Owls are not kind. And it is custom for predators to enjoy chasing prey before they kill it.”
I grimaced. “How long does one get to run?”
A shrug. “It shall all end the same, but we are feeling generous. Ten seconds this one shall give.”
“I’ll make use of it,” I said.
I stood up and moved as if to turn around and run. My fingers tightened on the grip of my wand. Liam coiled his legs under him, ready to spring.
I flung my cloak out as I whipped back around.
Wand in hand, I fluttered my eyes at the male owl.
I felt the slightest kickback as the wood twitched silently in my hand. The raptor fell like a stone.
The female owl leapt into the air. Liam sprang to cover me in case she dove at us. I raised my sights. Blinked three times in quick succession. I caught her just before she cleared the treetops. She plummeted to earth and hit the hard ground with a whump.
That wasn’t all. The air rang with a SCREECH-SCREECH-SCREECH that couldn’t have been anything but the Noctua’s magical alarm system.
“It was a boring conversation anyway,” I said wryly. “Shaw, we’re going to have company!”
“Then I shall begin thy deception,” he said confidently.
High overhead, Grimshaw switched on the second electronic device I’d brought to Andeluvia. This was a combination speaker system and vocal modulator, both powered by a six-volt lantern battery the size of a small brick. I’d already set the system to lower the griffin’s already raucous growls another couple of octaves while jacking up the bass to ‘seismic rumble’.
Liam and I quickly turned the volume on our headsets down to the minimum as Shaw inhaled. Then, from high above, he let out a bellowing roar that sounded like the second coming of Sirrahon!
I stuck the wand back in my belt and then put out a hand to Liam’s shoulder. Together, we crouched back down in the brush. The Noctua, who I could make out as yellow dots in the distance, had already started to pour out of the trapezoidal entrance in the cliffs ahead. Now they gathered into a swirling, hooting swarm and arrowed themselves towards the source of the threat.
Inside, I let out a cheer. Earlier, I had asked myself what would pry the owls out of their crypt-like fastness to defend their holy space. And I’d already witnessed the answer when Liam’s first Fayleene Ranger had decoyed the Gruesome Twosome from their perches on Sir Talish’s estate: the sound of a wild dragon.
The owls shot upwards into the sky. I counted ten separate blurs as they disappeared into the cloud cover. Including the two that lay stunned nearby, that meant the Sepulcher of the Eight Talons lay completely open and undefended.
“Let’s go!” I cried. Liam and I set out at a run.
Well, Liam set out at a run. With that effortless bounding gait that the Fayleene had, he left me behind in an instant. The best I could manage was a kind of shambling lope as I fought my way up and down another pair of wooded slopes. I’d been hoping to get a lot closer to the sepulcher before unleashing Shaw’s surprise, but so long as nothing else went wrong, we were still okay.
I staggered to a stop as Liam stood in my path ahead. He had his noble stag head raised, nose sniffing the wind.
“Something else is wrong,” he said, divining the exact worst thing to say to me at that moment.
“What…what is it?” I huffed.
“I smell more owls.”
We picked our way forward up the last few yards to the top of the rise. I got my binoculars out and immediately spotted Raisah’s mask-like markings and another whole quartet of Noctua warriors. Beyond the top of the ridge Liam and I crouched on, the ground sloped steeply down. A wide, flat open area had been cleared in front of the stone opening leading inside the sepulcher. Raisah and her companions slowly orbited the open area, scanning for additional threats.
I bit my lip. I had thought about what I might do if this happened, and I still didn’t like the odds. But it was better than anything else we’d ever get.
“Liam, I need another decoy,” I announced. “This is going to be up to you.”
He cocked his head and looked at me with his one bright green eye. “Are you sure? I know Thea’s scent. If you go in without me and they’ve moved Thea from the room Xandra showed us…”
That was a serious risk. I had light sources with me, but that would make me a slow-moving target if any Noctua remained inside. And without Liam’s nose to lead me back, it would be a hell of a lot easier to get lost in the labyrinth down there. But my decision was still an easy one.
Mostly because I didn’t have any choice.
“I might miss Thea, and I might get lost,” I admitted. “But I sure as hell can’t outrun an owl in mid-flight. And if I use my gun to start shooting Raisah’s people down, it may attract the other Noctua back here.”
Liam nodded. “You’re right, Dayna. No worries, I can lead these birds a merry chase through the woods like only a Fayleene can.”
“Get ready, then.” I pulled out Galen’s wand, which was now down to its last charge.
I was tempted to stun Raisah, but I was worried that the Noctua would remain to guard their leader’s body. Instead, I picked one of the Noctua at the far edge of their clearing, off to the right by some thicker forest cover.
A squeeze and a triple-blink, and the owl went down. Liam vanished in a fawn-colored flash. He reappeared next to the clearing as his voice rang out bell-clear through the air.
“Are owls as blind in the day as bats are at night?” he taunted.
Raisah and her remaining three raptors screeched in reply and took off after the retreating stag. Further off, I heard yet another dragon-sized bellow as Shaw continued our original ploy to hold the Noctua’s attention.
In one motion, I threw Galen’s wand aside and drew my firearm. Then I shuffled my way down the final slope and came out into the clearing. Skin crawling, I crossed the wide expanse of flat, snow-lined gravel. I left a bunch of shoe tracks now, but I was beyond caring about that. If I found Thea, nothing else would matter.
The opening to the Sepulcher of the Eight Talons seemed to frown on me as I stood before it. I took my gun’s safety off. I was out of magic now, and out of options.
I took a breath as if diving into water of unknown depth.
Then I charged across the sepulcher’s threshold and into the darkness within.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The long, darkened hall led arrow-straight into the core of the cliff face. Distant roars projected by Shaw’s dragon act did a weird double vibrato in my head. I could just make out the griffin’s bellows in my earpiece, and I also heard it echo faintly along the stone walls of the entry chamber.
I skidded to a stop as the light failed. I definitely didn’t want to end up tr
ipping over or running into something. Reaching out with my left hand, I found the wall. The rock face felt corpse-skin clammy to my touch. I crouched down and got ready to hunt for the flashlight I’d stuck in one of backpack’s pockets.
It turned out I didn’t need anything.
I waited there in the gloom. The entryway lay far behind, a distant smudge of iron gray. The air hung heavy with the smells of damp earth and even damper stone. It took until my heartbeat stopped pounding in my ears before I realized what I was seeing.
All around me the same mossy lichen I’d seen in the Roost of the Star Child lit up the walls with powder-blue bioluminescence. There wasn’t a choir to back up the lightshow this time, but I was glad to see it all the same. It allowed me to focus on keeping my firearm at the ready while I went over the map in my head, concentrating on fighting back the panic of being lost or trapped down here. The scrape of my boots was as loud as the tramp of elephants in the near-darkness.
The entry chamber funneled into a tight ‘choke point’ of an opening, one where I could reach up and touch the ceiling with my outstretched hand. Soon after the air took on a brand new feeling of vastness, as if I were standing in an empty cathedral. The blue iridescence of the lichen faded away into the blackness above, and I hurried on through. I passed two more side-passages before coming to the third, where I bore first to the right, then to the left.
At one spot, Xandra had described crossing a band of ‘soft stone’. When I crossed that point, my feet sank into a spongy, wet bed of moss. Icy water flowed up over the tips of my boots, drenching the toes of my socks.
The sudden soaking almost made me cry out. But I clenched my teeth as I spotted a change in the light up ahead. This light shone yellow, not blue. It flickered from one of the openings in the rock on the left.
I checked it out against my mental map. It lined up with where Thea was supposed to be kept. I flattened myself against the right-hand side wall and eased my way forward as quietly as I was able. When I got close enough, I tried to peer inside.
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