Lichgates: Book One of the Grimoire Saga (an Epic Fantasy Adventure) (4 page)

When he smelled a rosy combination of lilac and pine, he jumped to his feet. That meant she was an isen—a soul thief. She could steal his magic and trap his soul for centuries with a single prick from the barb hidden in her right palm.

“How did you find this place?” he demanded, drawing his sword.

His mind tensed. The familiar heat that fueled his magic raced through his body as he focused. Black flames erupted in the spaces between the fingers of his free hand.

“What with all the yelling and rocks smashing it wasn’t that hard to just follow you.” She spoke slowly, as if tasting every syllable before it was released from her pink lips.

The isen shifted her weight, examining her nails, and the golden glint of a cross around her neck caught his eye. Her white shirt billowed over her shoulders but clung to her waist, accentuating the curves of her body.

Sunlight reflected off of his blade, pulling his mind back into focus. This was an isen. This was the enemy.

“Well, I feel like killing something, so this is convenient,” he said.

She chuckled. “You’re more adorable than I thought you’d be, but I didn’t come for banter. I’m here to take you home. Your father wants to talk to you, especially since you let him think you were dead for twelve years. I’m fairly certain sons aren’t supposed to do that to their fathers.”

“I have no idea who you are or how Carden found me, but I will never go back.”

A hazy, distant memory of a square made from black thorns flitted through his mind. It was the Stele kingdom’s coat of arms, painted onto the side of the carriage that had smuggled him out of the castle and out of his father’s control. The isen’s voice drew him back to the present.

“Carden figured you’d say that.”

Braeden spun the sword in his hand. “That life is behind me.”

“I think I can make you change your mind. If not, though, I hear these gentlemen are very convincing.”

She gestured into the darkness and at her command, dozens of figures materialized from the shadows. Each uniformed soldier had dark gray skin and a wide face with eyes that had no whites to them. Smoke billowed from the pores on their arms and necks, snaking around the silver and black tunics of Carden’s army as they approached in a thickly knit formation. Braeden’s mouth went dry, and he backed against the wall. There were easily sixty of them. He was outnumbered.

“Steady, boys. Don’t touch him unless I tell you to.” She shot a look to them over her shoulder.

“Do they know you’re an isen?” His grip on his sword tightened with the hope that they did not.

“Of course they know, peanut. That’s what makes us all such great friends.”

“How could Carden trust you? Has he gone insane?”

“Probably. Your father has become a little, well, eccentric since you left. Now come along. I’d hate to have to hurt you.”

She grinned. The smirk cast dark lines across her beautiful face and suggested that she would actually enjoy following through on her threat. He dug his heel against a small shelf in the floor. If this was his last fight, then he was ready. He had nothing left.

The isen just laughed. “You can huff and puff all you want, boy. It’s useless. Carden already told me about the one thing that scares you.”

She lifted a set of steel wrist cuffs from the pack on her belt and dangled them from her index finger. Thin spikes, just long enough to cut into the skin, bore inward on the shackles. Their tips glimmered with the green poison that could subdue even the strongest king and make him a compliant pawn.

Braeden’s heart skipped a beat out of habitual fear. He took a deep breath to fight the growing panic as he tried—and failed—to smother the sparking embers of childhood memories: a dark dungeon, rank with rotting bodies; the piercing agony of the cuffs; Carden’s laughter as Braeden, eleven, screamed and was forced to endure pain for refusing to torture a prisoner. He had to learn the ways of ruling a nation, Carden had said, and their nation excelled at punishing others.

With a deep breath, he snapped back to the present. Dust stung his nose, and his heart slowed as the memories vanished. He needed to concentrate. Killing isen was what he did best.

He settled into his stance and, with an unseen twist of his hand, shot six dark bolts of smoke from his palm. Each was aimed for the woman who had again glanced down to her fingernails, but she ducked out of the way without looking up, her gold cross glinting as she traveled.

The smoky curse landed instead on the unfortunate guards who had flanked her when she first appeared. It took root in their pores. Black vines sprouted from the smoke and raced up their necks. It choked them, spreading over their skin like a virus that forced itself into their mouths and came out their ears. They fell to the cave’s floor, thrashing as they tried to scream.

The isen sidestepped a fallen guard and drew her sword. Braeden swung. She parried. Her elbow cracked on his face.

Agony splintered across his cheek and forehead, but the skin began to stitch itself back together as soon as the pain spread. The stinging thawed. He grabbed and twisted her arm, forcing her to her knees. His hand shot for her now-vulnerable throat, but she wriggled free and his fingers slipped through her cold, soft curls instead. Guards ran toward their fight, but the isen held up her hand and glared at them.

“He’s mine!” she snapped.

Braeden grinned. She was arrogant. Good.

The isen turned back to him. “This is far more entertaining than I expected, little prince!”

She shot her fist into the cavity below his throat too quickly for him to block. He couldn’t breathe. He lunged for her neck to return the favor. She ducked out of his reach, and he snatched the gold cross instead. Breath returned to him. She backed away, and her gold chain broke as she disappeared into the darkness with a wink.

He threw the cross to the ground and scanned the shadows as he searched for her. The world returned around him in a sudden wave of screams. As he’d fought the isen, more of the guards had fallen prey to the curse. At least half of them writhed on the floor, wrapped in black vines that pulsed with their every movement.

A rush of gray in the corner of Braeden’s eye captured his attention. A soldier stumbled into the far wall, glaring as black vines climbed up his arm. Black smoke billowed from the soldier’s ears and mouth. He yelled and ran for Braeden.

Thunder rumbled through the tear in the roof. Braeden looked upward and caught sight of a dark cloud brewing in the sky. He reached for it, focusing his mind on the storm outside, and churned the cloud from afar with the heat that raced through his body.

The thundercloud swirled and darkened until the ceiling’s edges caved and dirt fell to the floor without a wind to push it. A boom shook the cavern. He grunted and pulled harder on the cloud with his mind. A bead of sweat ran down his nose.

The cloud gave in.

Brilliant green lightning flashed and filled the room, freezing the chaos in a blinding flare of grass-colored light. Thunder rattled the cave again. The air hummed. Everything froze in the blast until, like a sudden breath, the soldier slumped on the floor.

Sunlight glinted off the Grimoire’s clover symbol on the wall. Braeden’s stomach twisted one last time. For a second, he forgot the murderous din and the death all around him.

A flicker of movement sped by in his peripheral vision, and he turned in time to catch the shadow of long, curly hair running along one of the side tunnels. He bolted toward it and into a dark tunnel, which was lit only by the thin wisps of light that poured from occasional adjacent passageways.

His footsteps reverberated down the hall, mingling with the fading screams of the chaos he’d left behind. He paused, sniffing the air for pine or lilac. All he smelled was dust.

A low chuckle rumbled past him, surrounding him. It came from ahead and from behind, from above and below, but he was somehow still alone in the passage.

Something shifted its weight in the shadows of a dark side tunnel to his left. He narrowed his eyes and pressed himself against the jagged cave wall, his lungs pausing in the suspense. Heat coursed through him. He took a deep breath and peered around the corner into the vacant darkness.

The cold metal hilt of a sword struck his jaw. His jawbone cracked. Skin split, and blood rushed down his neck. He fell to his knees. Breath came in ragged gasps. He gagged. His vision blurred. Numbing warmth pooled on the broken bits of his bone as the skin, once again, began to heal.

His arms were pulled behind his back, and a new agony bit into his wrists. He stifled a yell. Bile and stomach acid bubbled along the back of his teeth, but he kept it at bay. An icy torment throbbed in his veins and pooled in his chest, stopping his body from healing. Blood trickled in hot rivers down his neck.

The isen squatted beside him, but he couldn’t lift his head to see her face.

She sniggered and pinched his nose as if he was a child. “These cuffs are extra potent, in case you get any ideas.”

She hoisted him to his feet, and a fresh wave of searing pain shot through his body. His chest ached. Blood dripped from the spikes in his wrists and fell in thick drops to the floor.

“Who are you?” he asked through gasping breaths.

“My name is Deidre, darling”—she brushed some dust off of his shoulder—“and I always win.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE GRIMOIRE

Kara rubbed her temples and leaned on the submerged library’s stone desk, her eyes unfocused as she stared at the letter she could now magically read. She didn’t try to tell herself to calm down, to chill out, or to breathe. Her only thought was of how royally she’d screwed herself over by walking through that gazebo or lichgate or whatever it was.

She had walked through a door in a mountain. A ten-by-ten dirt closet had swallowed her phone. Her pack and stun gun had probably already been eaten by a bear. She had heard whispers while alone in a massive, underground library and opened a secret book called the Grimoire, which was apparently pretty important. She’d discovered a hidden pocket of Earth called Ourea.

In an effort to stay calm, she took deep breaths. It didn’t work. Each breath became a panicked gasp as she tried to figure out what was going on. Only, she couldn’t figure out what was going on. That’s why she was panicking.

It was a vicious cycle.

The
flick, flick, flick
of the Grimoire’s turning pages stole her focus. The last page lingered in the air as it fell to reveal a small block of red text on the otherwise empty beige paper.

I wish I could have caused no pain or fear, but such isn’t a reality of life. A treasure has been awoken within you—you are now a vagabond of Ourea.

She groaned. “Yeah, thanks, I gathered that much. So what happens now?”

The pages flipped to another image of the hooded figure, but this time he wore a thick leather band wrapped around his wrist. Spidery red text adorned the paper beside him. Something was off about the drawing, and she leaned in for a closer look. It took her a second to realize the clover pendant in her hand was also drawn into his wrist guard.

The last blood-red rays of the day poured through the skylight. She sighed. Her dad’s search party would head out any minute, scanning the ditches for her body. Oh, he was going to love this story.

She resigned herself to the impending lecture and leaned in to read the red text besides the drawing.

This is the Vagabond as he was in life. He wrote the observations of his travels here, creating me over his lifetime. The trials he faced were treacherous, and you will fare the same. The life of a vagabond isn’t an easy one.

I was made to open only for the gifted and the strong. Be patient in the times to come and trust yourself, for you are worthy of the power here.

Though it may sometimes seem as if life is decided for us, remember that in all actions before this, you made the choices which brought you here. You alone decide where to go next. There is always choice.

“Freaking awesome.” She rubbed her eyes. Apparently, it was her fault she’d been dragged by a root down a dirt closet.

She fiddled with her locket and looked down once again at the tiny clover amulet. Its diamond wasn’t blue anymore, though it did shimmer. She slid it over her head with a quiet sigh, and the clover dangled just above her collarbone.

“Look, I just want to get home. How do I get out of here?”

The pages flipped toward the back, where a sketch of the library consumed the page and more spidery red text described how to open a secret door in one of the shelves. She lifted the book and carried it with her as she looked for the way out. At least using the Grimoire was easy enough. That had to be some small compensation for the unrestrained hell it had already brought upon her.

Kara scanned the shelves for a few minutes, browsing through titles like
The History of Isen Guilds, Earaks are Evil,
and even such treasures as
All Anyone Will Ever Need to Know about Beer
before she finally found
The Ways of Peace
, the green cover mentioned in the Grimoire’s instructions. It was the last on its shelf to survive the gale from earlier, as the rest of its neighbors littered the floor. She took care not to step on them as she reached for the green book and pulled, rolling it back on a hinge. The crack of splitting rock broke across the room.