The Monster Of Selkirk Book 2: The Heart Of The Forest Read online

  Losing herself in a moment of despair, she whispered, “We’ve come all this way just to be stopped now by some stupid tavern brawl.” She couldn’t keep the anger and bitterness from her voice. As much as she loved Rosslyn and her carefree spirit, it was the reason they had been arrested.

  Crossing her arms, Rosslyn turned away from Tallis, her shoulders sagging in defeat. “I know. I’m sorry. This is all my fault, and I know it changes nothing, but I am sorry, all right?”

  Tallis wanted to say that it wasn’t her fault, but she could not lie like that, not yet, anyway. Instead, she said, “It just doesn’t seem fair. You’d think that the barons, the dukes, even the king himself would give us an army or something for our journey, rather than arrest us. If the elves want me so badly, you’d think they would do whatever they could to keep me from them. If the tremps want something this desperately, it can’t be a good thing. Instead … instead, one little man’s jealousy will now be our doom. And on top of all that, now I’ll die without the one thing I had to remind me of my mother. Sometimes Wodan sure does have a twisted sense of humor.”

  Rosslyn kicked at a loose stone on the ground, then attempted to laugh, but it came out more like a sputtering gasp. Leaning her head back and focusing on the cold stone around her, Tallis said, “I wish I understood any of this, you know? Why this, why me, why now? All my life I just wanted to be normal, to fit in like everyone else. I’ve been fighting against … something that I don’t understand.

  “I didn’t want the death and destruction that’s come along with trying to find out why the tremps are hissing my name, but I can’t seem to keep any of the devastation from happening, either. Maybe if I hadn’t tried so hard to just be a normal girl I could have seen this coming. I could have done something. I could have done more to protect all those innocent people who’ve lost their lives and everything they hold dear.”

  Sighing, she continued in a dejected whisper, “It’s not your fault Rosslyn, it’s mine. There must have been something I missed, something that would have prevented all this from happening in the first place.”

  Rosslyn was silent for a moment, absorbing Tallis’s words. It was the first time Tallis ever seemed to really complain about the situation they were in, and it was the first time Rosslyn truly grasped just how much weight and pressure Tallis had placed upon herself.

  Rosslyn shook her head. “Oi, and what would you have done differently? There was no way you could’ve known any of this would happen. There was nothing more you could’ve done besides get yourself out of Kincardine safely. The people you saved along the way, that’s all just a bonus.”

  Shrugging, Tallis said, “I don’t know. I just … I should have known. There was more I could have done, more people I could have saved.”

  “Aye, and you’d be dead in the process of doing it,” Rosslyn said, planting her hands on her wide hips. “Thinking you could have stopped any of this from happening, like you should’ve just known the elves would all go mad at the same time, that’s just stupid, Tallis. Even for you.”

  Tallis couldn’t help but chuckle at Rosslyn. She wasn’t sure she completely believed her, but her confidence that this chaos was not Tallis’s doing was refreshing, nonetheless. “Be that as it may, it won’t matter for long if we can’t find a way out of this mess.” Tallis rose to her feet, gingerly touched the barred door, and desperately tried to think of a plan.

  Tomas and Donovan paced their cell racking their brains for anything they could do to get out of imprisonment. They were in a regular cell with a window that looked out to the empty side alley and a door they could easily pick if they had the tools. But the guards had taken their meager possessions, including their belts, when they locked them in, leaving them nothing but their chewed fingernails at their disposal.

  However, Raghnall had not been the only one to take an interest in their confinement. A rail thin man draped in a dark gray coat two sizes too big for him, an old bronze-colored jerkin, and stained trousers approached their window. Donovan had seen the man earlier from the corner of his eye, shadowing the guards as they brought them to the prison. Donovan had thought the man looked familiar, but before he could get a good look through his bruised eye, the old man had vanished. It was seeing him again that made Donovan suspicious as to who he was, and those suspicions only grew as the man stopped beneath their cell window, his face concealed in the shadows of the prison.

  Standing on the tips of his toes, the man hissed up at them. Donovan looked down warily and was greeted by the graying soft brown hair and dim blue eyes of none other than his Uncle Jon. “Uncle, what are you doing here? I thought you’d died in the elf attack….”

  Jon gave a mirthless smile. “Wasn’t at home when the bloody tremps hit. Managed to get out with a few of Baron Maric’s guards, no thanks to you, nephew. And that fool of a knight, what was his name? Raghnall? Yes, well, that barmpot isn’t all that good at hiding his excitement when he thinks he’s got the world bent over a barrel. I heard him mumbling about Tallis as he walked through the streets, and figured that if she was here, you wouldn’t be far behind. Looks like I was right.”

  “I’m sorry, I just assumed…,” Donovan said with a deep frown lining his face. Then he pressed on: “Where is my da? Is he here?”

  Jon shook his head. “No, he’s gone to Isildor to be with that Nessa lass you seem to be so sweet on. Gone to keep an eye on her, something you should be doing, rather than getting yourself in trouble like this.”

  There was a sharpness to his uncle’s tone that Donovan did not like. Lowering his voice even further, he asked, “What are you doing here, Uncle Jon?”

  Jon glanced around quickly before sliding a key through the bars for Donovan to catch. “It’s a gift from the other knights. They aren’t too keen on locking up one of their own order just because some fool of a baron’s son has it in mind to arrest you for some slight done in a town that no longer exists. Use it and get yourself to Isildor, nephew. Go and take care of your father and marry that nice girl. Baird’s been worried sick about you, afraid he’s lost his only son on some nutter’s quest.”

  Donovan narrowed his eyes at his uncle. “And by nutter’s quest, you mean helping your daughter stop whatever caused the tremps to rise up and cry her name?”

  “Wodan’s Pits, boy, she’s not my child!” Jon said with such hatred that Donovan was taken aback. He was not sure what happened to his uncle between that final day at Kincardine, when he had last seen Tallis, and now, but he assumed it had to do with his departed wife. The elves warring like this and destroying people’s homes and families must have brought up old wounds that had never healed.

  “How can you even say that?” Donovan glowered through the bars. “Why did you even come here?”

  “Because it would kill my brother if I didn’t try and talk some sense into you,” Jon said, coldness flashing in his dim blue eyes. “If I didn’t try and get you to give up on this and go and protect him and Nessa like a proper son and knight should do. You owe it to them, boy. Don’t disappoint them again.”

  Donovan pushed away from the cell bars, key in hand. “I would be more of a disappointment to them if I let my little cousin go off on her own just to be slaughtered.”

  “She isn’t your kin,” Jon growled. “Your father is, and you would choose her over him?”

  Donovan hesitated as he looked down at the key. Part of him longed to go to his father and hold Nessa in his arms once again. Just thinking about her brought to his mind the clean scent of her unruly red hair and the cute way her brown eyes twinkled whenever he kissed her. It was only the uncomfortable shuffling of Tomas as he skulked behind him that snapped Donovan out of his daydream.

  As much as he wanted to go to Nessa and protect her, he knew she was safest in Isildor. Tallis, however, was in constant peril from people and elves alike, and had no one to protect her. If he failed to do that now and left her on her own, he could never live with himself again.

  Shaking his head
and closing his hand firmly over the key, he said, “Thank you for your help, Uncle Jon. Please tell my da I’m alive and well, and tell Nessa that I’ll see her as soon as I’m able. But I can’t abandon Tallis, your daughter, whether by blood or no—not with so much at stake.”

  Snarling, Jon threw his hands in the air in frustration. “She got Lana killed, and she’ll get you killed, too, nephew. Never doubt that. Aye, I’ll deliver your blighted message, but I’ll tell Baird and your Nessa how you chose that evil orphan over your own family. And heed my words, if I hear the alarm, that that evil wench of a girl who you claim as a cousin has gotten out, I’m pointing them in your direction. She can’t be allowed to roam free. She’s a monster in league with those evil creatures, and you’d be the wiser to let her rot in whatever hole they tossed her in.” Turning on his heel, Jon once again disappeared into the darkness, as if he had never been there at all.

  Tomas scratched the back of his head as Donovan turned to look at him. He knew he just heard something he should not have and it made him terribly uncomfortable. “So, um, Tallis … Tallis isn’t actually your cousin?”

  Donovan shook his head, dazed by his uncle’s bitterness. “No. My Aunt Lana found her in the forest when she was just a week old.” Shaking his head, he frowned. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  Tomas looked down and pressed on before the moment was gone and they were running for their lives once again. “You two are awfully close for not … not really being related. Have you, I mean to say, do you … I don’t know, do you love Tallis? More than just as a cousin, I mean.”

  Donovan’s head snapped up. “Absolutely not. Tallis is my family no matter what her father says. I’ve never thought of her as, well, as anything else. That’s just—” Donovan made a face of distaste before he shrugged. “Tallis is more of a little sister to me than a cousin, and she will always be that way.”

  “Does she know? I mean, she must know about being found and all that?”

  They had come too far and seen too much together already for Donovan to lie to Tomas now. He believed Tomas needed to know the truth about Tallis as it very well may have something to do with their current situation. Tomas might very well care for Tallis, but he also didn’t know some very important details about her life. The ex-initiate still had a chance to decide he did not want to be a part of their journey now that they entered Fordoun, and Donovan did not want to deny Tomas that opportunity by further withholding the truth.

  Donovan nodded, and said almost sadly, “Aye, she knows.”

  Continuing, Donovan said, “You deserved to know the truth about such things, Tomas. You still have a chance to go about what you’d consider a normal life to be, whether you go back to the monastery or not. If you wish to follow us, or Tallis, really, you need to understand that her being found in the forest may be the reason all of this madness with the tremps got started in the first place. It may even explain why those foul beasts hissed her name and why she was able to kill so many all on her own in Dumfry. If you decide to stay, make sure you accept that fact. And, if you decide not to leave, it may be best if you didn’t tell Tallis that I told you any of this.”

  As Tomas nodded along with Donovan’s words, the knight pressed on, “You know I give you a hard time over Tallis because you need to be strong for her. Tallis doesn’t need someone to follow her around like a doe-eyed puppy. She needs a man who will rush into battle alongside her, and think of nothing but protecting her above all else. Do you understand me, Tomas? If you stay, she has to come first. Always.”

  Tomas nodded and said without a hint of hesitation, “Yes, I understand. She will always come first.”

  Donovan gave him a deft nod before moving to the cell door.

  Their portion of the prison was momentarily unguarded, giving credence to what Jon had said about the other knights feeling it wrong to have him incarcerated. Carefully, Donovan turned the key in the door and pushed it open, wincing as its light squeaking sounded like it could be heard all over Fordoun in the silence. Waving Tomas forward, he whispered, “Come on, we need to get them out before Rosslyn gets us into even more trouble.”

  Tomas followed Donovan as he quietly led him through the torch-lit hallways. “Which way did they take her?”

  Donovan hesitated momentarily. “I don’t know. They took her down further than I could see. My guess, though, is if they really wanted to keep her safe and away from everything else, she’ll be towards the bottom.”

  Donovan looked down the corridors for a moment before coming to a decision and grabbing one of the torches. Pressing it into Tomas’s hands, he said, “Hold this, I may need you to hit someone with it if we get in trouble.”

  The prison was surprisingly deserted. Most of the cells were empty, as if the dungeons now were only used for the most grievous of offenses. Most of the guards were out patrolling the streets and trying to keep crime to a minimum, preferring to toss those responsible for disturbances into the outdoor cages where they could better watch them and the influx of refugees at the same time rather than actually locking any within such an ominous building.

  With the guards out on patrol, the prison was eerily silent, sending a shiver of foreboding cascading down Donovan’s spine. Stopping at the last of the windows before he plunged further into the pitch-black dungeon after his cousin, he looked out onto the sky. The sun was just starting to lighten the horizon, meaning whoever was out patrolling the streets would soon be back as morning fell upon Fordoun.

  As they crept farther down, they could hear the voices of the few guards left. Pushing Tomas against the wall, they crept sideways down the staircase, listening to the guards as they spoke:

  “Don’t think I’ll get much for it, ain’t much of a ring.”

  “You can always see if that pretty blonde will ask you nicely for it back, she seemed to be partial to it,” another said over the sound of shuffling cards.

  “Nah, Lord Henrik won’t let anyone touch her, in any way. Rather not get strung up over some tavern scrubber just because she wants some trinket back. Better sell it and buy me a pitcher of the good ale, none of this piss water they serve near the walls.” The two guards laughed as Donovan and Tomas exchanged knowing looks.

  Donovan glanced at the walls around him, the only thing he had at his disposal was Tomas’s torch, and that would do little good against two fully-armed knights. Just as he was about to toss it at them and hope for the best, they heard a distant bell clang, the guards pushed away from their table, and walked up an unseen staircase. Tomas raised a questioning glance at Donovan, whose brow crinkled in confusion. His eyes lit up as he realized that the guards were changing the watch, which gave them mere moments to break Tallis and Rosslyn out of their cell.

  Rushing down the hall, Tomas called out as loudly as he dared, “Tallis? Tallis, where are you?”

  Donovan and Tomas stopped as they strained their hearing, hoping they had come to the right part of the dungeon. Tomas’s heart caught in his throat as he finally heard the muted pounding on a door and Tallis’s muffled voice, “Tomas? Tomas! We’re in here!”

  Tomas rushed to the thick, bound door and pressed his ear against it. “Are you all right?” he asked, the relief in his voice palpable.

  “Yes, we are just fantastic, but would like to be out of here, if that’s not too much trouble,” Rosslyn said, voice sounding sarcastic, even through the thick door.

  Tomas could hear Donovan growl behind him, his anger over Rosslyn’s antics reaching a boiling point. “Right, then, just … just give me a minute,” Tomas said as he knelt in front of the door.

  He examined the door as he fiddled with the heavy metal lock. Furrowing his brow, he mumbled, “I’m guessing it would be too much to ask that the guards left behind keys to the door?”

  Donovan gave him a flat look. “You decide now to be funny?”

  Turning his attention back to the door, Tomas examined the lock more closely, frantically trying to remember if he’d ever read anythi
ng about picking a lock.

  “Hurry up, Tomas, we haven’t much time before the change of guards notices we’re gone and makes their way down here.”

  Tomas shushed him. “I need pins or-or pliers, anything I can try and pick this with.”

  Without questioning him further, Donovan scoured the little room, found nothing, then called through the door, “Rosslyn, you have any more pins in your skirts?” There was silence for a moment before Rosslyn pressed a pair of pins underneath the door.

  Without wasting time thanking her, Tomas went to work fiddling with the latch. He began to sweat, as he felt like hours were passing as he carefully tried to free the clasp. If it had been Rosslyn on the other side of the door, she would have been able to pick the lock in a matter of moments. Tomas, however, was too honest of a person to know how to properly pick a lock. Inhaling deeply, he cleared his mind and focused on just getting Tallis out of the prison before the guards returned.

  Wodan must have been smiling on them, as it was by sheer luck that Tomas finally managed to free the latch. As the door creaked open, he got to his feet and wrapped his arms around Tallis the moment the firelight from the brazier hit her gentle face. He held her in his arms and was awarded with the gentle pressure of Tallis returning his hug. When he realized what he had done, he released her, but perhaps a little too quickly to be natural.

  Tallis gave him a confused look before smiling gently. “We’re fine, Tomas. Thanks for getting us out of there.”

  Donovan gave them a hard stare before turning his ire on Rosslyn, who was doing her best to avoid the knight’s cold gaze. Pushing himself from the wall he was reclining on, he growled, “As much as I hate to break up this touching moment, the guards will be back any moment. We’ll talk when we get out of here.”

  Donovan was about to lead them back up the stairs, when Tallis gripped his arm. “They took my mother’s ring. Have you seen it?”