Chapter 17
Seconds later, she landed on her knees, not hard but enough that she had to put her hands in front of her to keep from falling on her nose.
Blinking to get her eyes to focus, she scanned the area around her. She had landed on a landing of sorts. The floor had fallen away behind her but the railings in front of her were still intact. The railing on one side of the stairs was crumbling away while the other looked hardy enough.
Another set of stairs led upwards. She tipped her head back and looked up. The roof looked solid enough—amazing paintings filled in the areas between the vaulted wood ribs, stars, birds, foxes, and dragons. Although they were faded and crumbling, she smiled. Garrett would kill to see that.
She must have landed in the ruins. She said a silent thank-you to her aunt and uncle and kept her head down. Who knew what kind of reception she’d receive.
“Princess Morla, Princess Morla.”
Bree widened her eyes in surprise. A child’s voice.
“What is it, child?”
Bree slid as quietly as she could to the railing where two floorboards had fallen away and peeked down to what was once a great hall. She slammed her hand over her mouth. The child was the little girl who had traveled there with her and Horland. She could speak.
“It’s Sir Garlain. He won’t eat his soup and it’s getting cold.”
Of course, she could speak, and although Bree had suspected she could, it still surprised her to actually hear the little girl.
The woman the child called Princess Morla picked up a long eyeglass and jogged to the stairs. The delicate combs in her hair fought to keep her light brown locks in place.
“Go sit with him, Kieri, and I will be there in a moment.”
Kieri. What a lovely name, and Bree thought it suited her perfectly—except she wasn’t lovely, she was a little bug for not speaking before.
Bree scrambled behind a statue of a knight as Morla bounded up the stairs. Once she passed, Bree knew she should go to her father, but her curiosity had her carefully following Morla.
The princess crept out onto the roof of the highest building and put the eyeglass to her eye.
Bree slithered along the walled edge of the roof, ducking into a cutout every now and then.
At one she stopped and looked down. She didn’t need an eyeglass to see a group of men below, and she recognized the man in the center of the image immediately.
She smacked her hand against her mouth to stop any noise escaping. Horland.
He was surrounded by bandits, some of whom were the same ones who captured her and the little girl. One had a sword aloft, ready to slice Horland’s head off.
“Sir Horland,” the girl gasped. Bree snapped her head around. Kieri was standing next to the princess. Bree pressed her body against the huge stones.
“Princess Morla, they are going to slay Sir Horland,” Kieri said.
“I think they’re just trying to scare him.” Morla placed her glass against her eye and looked out over the east.
Kieri stood on tiptoes, her attention on the scene below.
Bree resumed studying Horland and his surrounds. Two wagons and horses stood at the edge of the clearing and one of the wagons held a cage full of people. It was the very same cage in which she was installed after being captured.
She directed her gaze to Morla, who was still looking intently through her glass. What was she looking at?
Bree inhaled a quick breath and held it, slithered with her back against the stone and shuffled as fast as she could to the other side of the roof until she could see where Morla had her glass pointed.
Letting out her breath, she narrowed her eyes and peered at three bandits standing on the bank of a river. One pointed and Bree turned her gaze in the same direction. Upriver, a ship sailed toward the thieves.
Horland had said there was a river behind the castle ruins; so had Uncle Mark and Aunt Di.
Bree shook her head. That wasn’t going to happen.
She was there now, and her father would be safe.
The bandits were going to ship the caged people off to become slaves.
Her heart leapt in her throat. Were they going to kill Horland or sell him as a slave too?
With her heart beating a drum solo in her temples, Bree retraced her steps to her first hiding place.
The man holding the sword was talking. Bree wished she could hear what he said but by the look on his face, it wasn’t a friendly conversation.
Morla’s voice carried to Bree’s ears. “Come.”
“No, I’m staying here,” Kieri said.
“Do whatever you please.” With that, Morla swept to the doorway and disappeared down the stairs.
Bree looked at Horland just as the man Bree was certain was Drimpal drew his arm back and whipped the sword in a slicing motion toward Horland’s neck—
“Sir Horland,” Kieri cried.
Bree let out a cry.
The man stayed his hand and looked about for the source of the noise.
Kieri ducked and turned to where Bree hid. Bree held her breath, dropped to her knees, and backed out of sight. However, she knew she wasn’t quick enough. The girl had seen her.
Small footsteps pounded the roof top until she stood over Bree. “Briana. What are you doing here? Sir Horland is going to be killed by brigands and he needs your help.”
Bree got to her feet and placing her hands on her hips, scowled down at Kieri.
The girl’s face went red as a cherry. “Ah.”
She averted her eyes and spoke quickly. “I am sorry. Princess Leeta told me not to speak to anyone except Princess Morla or Sir Garlain. I couldn’t tell you that or who I was, so I pretended to be unable to speak.”
“We’ll talk about that later, right now, Horland needs all our help. Where’s Garlain?”
“Sir Garlain will not help.”
“How do you know that? Horland’s his friend. Let’s go ask him, shall we?”
They descended the stairs and Bree came face to face with Morla. Bree raised her brows. “Princess Morla, I presume?”
“I am she.” The princess narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m Briana Brockhurst, Garlain’s daughter. Where is he?”
She scoffed. “Garlain’s daughter. How preposterous.” She whipped a pointed blade out of her robes and shouted in Bree’s face, “Who are you?”
“Princess Morla,” Kieri wailed. “Sir Horland.”
“Shut up,” Morla grumbled. “He’s fine.”
“How about we make sure of that, huh?” Bree’s voice rose in tone and volume with every word until she screeched, “Where’s Garlain?”
Kieri clasped Bree’s hand and tugged at it. Bree let her lead her away from Morla and toward the adjoining room.
“No, Kieri,” Morla yelled.
Once over the threshold Bree planted her feet. A great red-haired man sat at a long table, head bowed, staring unseeingly at the stone floor.
Kieri whispered. “That is Sir Garlain.”
Morla entered the room and immediately went to the table, placing her hand on Garlain’s shoulder as if she was his protector.
He didn’t appear to notice her touch. Bree strode to him and fell to her haunches. “Dad?”
The man who was her father sat before her, his tunic crushed like it had been slept in, his red hair long, messy, and knotted. His emotions, if he had any, were hidden behind the rampant facial hair.
“Garlain,” Bree said, hoping his birth name would rouse him. “Horland needs us.”
No recognition at the name showed in his eyes; they still stared at her, vacant and dark.
“He doesn’t understand you,” Morla said, her gray eyes the color of a stormy sky. “He was lucid earlier, but it never lasts long. In his grief, he goes to a place where none can reach him.”
Bree shook his knee with her hand. “Garlain.”
But he still didn’t look at her, preferring instead to keep staring at the floor through her.
Bree stood up and moved to Morla. “It’s a long story, but I am his daughter. You’re supposed to be a seer or something like that, aren’t you? Why don’t you read my mind?”
“I cannot read minds.”
“But you can decipher if someone is telling the truth, my lady,” Kieri said, her eyes wide with hope. “Please, see that she is an honest woman so that we can help Sir Horland.”
Morla threw a sad glance at Garlain and sighed. “All right.” She held out her hands. “Take my hands.”
Bree did and Morla seemed to search Bree’s eyes, her face, the shape of her head, but after long minutes, her gaze returned to Bree’s eyes.
“I sense great heartache and your visage is very much like Patricia’s.
Your hair is much like Sir Garlain’s. I know of Mark and Dianne’s arts.
” She let go of Bree’s hands and shook her head.
“Perhaps you tell the truth.” She again searched Bree’s face and her eyes widened.
“Patricia was your long-gone mother. You are Garlain’s daughter. ”
“I told you that. Now can you use your powers for good and get my father to help Horland?”
“I have tried for four seasons to encourage Garlain to stay in the land of the living, but he prefers to stay with Patricia.”
“Why is he even here? Why isn’t he at the castle being tended to by a physician? You do have physicians in this time, don’t you?”
“When he first left Pradwick castle, we thought he had returned to the future to be with Patricia and his child. We were happy for him. It was only by chance I found him here. This is my place, my sanctuary from society and family. Imagine my surprise when I arrived to find Garlain here.”
Morla sucked in her lips and her eyes saddened.
“In those first several days, he talked to me, told me how he couldn’t imagine living his life without Patricia, but as the days wore on, he became more and more reclusive, preferring to keep his own company and avoiding me.
Then one day, I found him, staring without seeing and no matter what I did or said, I couldn’t reach him.
” Tears brimmed in her eyes and flowed down her face.
“I used my gift and tried to bring him back but no matter what I did, I could not penetrate the fortress he had built around himself. He was but an empty shell of the man he used to be. He has returned several times, but for short periods only. The last time was the longest he was himself, but still he lapsed back into his own world.”
Bree glanced at Garlain. “I’m sorry. I know you care for him a great deal.”
She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “I fancied myself in love with him at one time, but when he married Patricia and I saw how happy he was, how in love with her he was, I grew out of those young girl fancies.”
“What about a physician?”
“Father brought one here, but he could do no more than I. His only prescription was to leave Garlain be and he would return when the time was right.”
“Well the time is right now.”
Bree moved to the front of Garlain and again squatted before him. “Garlain. Father.”
His eyes, his entire face was vacant of emotion, vacant of feeling.
She slapped his face, not hard but enough to sting a bit.
He kept staring, unseeing.
Bree slapped him again, harder.
Garlain’s aspect didn’t change but he said in a grating voice, “Do that again and I will kill you.”
Bree sat back on the stone floor. “So, you can hear me. I’m Briana Brockhurst, your daughter. You told, no, you promised my mother, promised Patricia, you would come for me, but you never did.”
He blinked. “My Patricia is gone.”
Bree wanted to haul him to his feet, put a sword in his hand and demand he help Horland, but she sensed he was straddling a great abyss and one wrong word or action could send him hurtling down into the darkness for all time.
She had to take it slowly. “Yes, and for me that was twenty-one years ago, but for you it’s been little more than a year, is that right?”
“I know not, but I can still see her face, feel her touch, taste and smell her as if she had only left the room. I want her to come back, but she refuses my pleas.”
“She can’t come back, but I am here. Do you remember me, Garlain?”
No reaction. Bree fished the locket out of the pocket on her black cloak and held it up in front of her father’s face. “You remember this?” She opened it and said, “That’s us. You, me, and Mom. Remember?”
He stared at the picture and Bree was certain something shifted in his eyes. She pulled out the white orb.
“You know what this is, right?”
He regarded her and the life gradually returned to his eyes. He slowly reached out and touched her hair. “Briana?”
“Yes, Father, it’s me.”
Withdrawing his hand, he shook his head. “My Briana was...” He stared into space. “Six years old the last I saw her.”
“It is me, Father. I have waited to come here, to this time, since I was six. Try to understand, it appears time has passed differently for us. Twenty-one years for me has only been one year for you, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I am Briana, yours, and Patricia’s daughter.”
His gaze searched her face and pierced her eyes. A hint of recognition lit his face. “Briana.”
Briana leapt up and caught his hands in hers. “Yes.”
He stood up and wrapped his arms around her. “Briana.”
Bree dropped the orb on the table and hugged him. “Dad.”
Garlain chuckled and looked at her, tears welling in his eyes. “How I have missed hearing you call me that.”
Bree hugged him close. “Dad,” she said again.
“Please, Sir Garlain,” Kieri said. “Sir Horland is in great danger.”
Garlain turned to the girl but kept his arm around Bree’s shoulders. “Horland?”
“Yes,” Morla said. “Bandits have arrived on our doorstep and have him surrounded.”
“My sword.”
Morla trotted to the wall and pulled a sword from its brackets.
“Where are they?” Garlain asked.
“Out front beside the courtyard,” Morla said.
He strode out of the room. Bree hurried after him.
“Stay here,” he said without turning his head.
Bree kept after him. “No.”
He whirled around on his heels, a scowl on his face so dark, Briana stopped dead in her tracks.
“You will stay here.”
Bree swallowed. Even though he must have been half the man he used to be, he was still big and broad. She shot him a rebellious look. “I can help. And anyway, you can’t order me around. I’m a grown woman.”
“You very well might be a dead woman if you come with me.”
She skipped to his side. “Come on, we’re burning daylight here.”
He chuckled as they walked side by side out of the castle ruins.
He gave her a sideways look. “You might have inherited my red hair, but I see you have your mother’s stubborn temperament.”
“That’s what my aunt Di said.”
“Ah, Dianne and Mark. They said they would return for me.”
“I’m afraid a lot has happened. I’ll tell you all about it after we save Horland.”
“Agreed.”