Chapter 20 Bloodline
Aranna’s workshop was so cluttered that searching for clues there seemed equivalent to looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack for lack of a more original expression, in particular because Brun was finding it very hard to concentrate on the task when Lizzie was standing so close to him and all he could think of was to toss everything from that dirty table on the floor and take her right there.
Again.
Brun could not remember harbouring the same intense feeling for Triarell. His mind had not been blown away by blinding desire in the same way he felt for Lizzie.
He had lusted for Triarell, of course: no warm-blooded straight man could have done otherwise in the presence of her unearthly beauty. Fae magic conferred an additional aura of allure which was nearly impossible to resist. During her time, many mortal men had courted her: Triarell’s parties and her visiting rooms were constantly filled with suitors and many had even been foolish enough to duel with Ryul over her, only to die quickly at his sharp blade or flawless aim.
When Triarell married Ryul, Brun had been jealous to the point of blindness – or perhaps he had envied Ryul’s luck in having secured Triarell’s affections – but those feelings now felt silly and childish, pale in comparison to what Lizzie had awakened in him.
And those feelings were scaring him half to death like nothing else did in his five centuries of existence.
He looked up from the notebook he was reading – or rather trying to decipher, because Aranna’s handwriting was abysmal – and studied Lizzie’s profile under the weak, flickering light of the lamps in the workshop.
She was standing in front of one of the bookshelves with a thick tome on her hands, dressed in her oldest and dirtiest jeans and black T-shirt. Her infuriating glasses were as per norm hanging for dear life on the tip of her nose and her brows were furrowed in concentration, as she strove to decipher the intricate Fae language.
Brun knew that she could not possibly be able to read more than a score of words after only a handful of days studying the language, but her determination was a wonder to behold. Lizzie could look exactly like Triarell, but where her ancestor had been austere and detached, Lizzie was warm-hearted and witty as Gweyir had been, yet also cunning and curious as Aranna.
It was almost as if she were a blend of the three Endellys sisters.
Fae bloodlines are a curious thing…
The sound of a book being slammed shut made him blink away his musings.
“Any luck?” her question was an impatient growl, as she sat next to him. For a moment, her scent made him forget what they were doing there. His mind was overtaken by the memory of the sweet feeling of being deep inside her when they made love over the kitchen island only a couple of hours before.
What manner of savage have I become!
“I spent the last hour trying to understand the first three lines of this book, but my knowledge of the Fae language is rudimentary to put it politely…” she whined, letting her back fall against the chair, “I am no closer to knowing whether this is about disembowelling whales or gardening than I was a week ago…”
He laughed heartily, waving the yellowed notebook in his hand. Crumbs of paper flew in the space between them like lifeless little moths, “I am not faring much better with Aranna’s scrawls. Most are reports of her experiments, but nothing that appears to be remotely related to the Dreams Thief or her trap, if it indeed exists.”
In reply, she pulled another leatherbound notebook from the pile he had gathered and carefully flipped its ancient pages.
“Aranna was quite the artist too,” Lizzie observed, pointing to a sketch. It was a charcoal drawing of Loch Tay displaying an astonishing amount of detail, from the smooth curves of the lake to the highlands surrounding it and even trees in the landscape.
Brun glanced at the sketch, before reaching for another notebook too, “Oh yes, she was very fond of–”
“Brun,” she cut in after turning another page, “Is this Triarell and Ryul’s portrait? The one hanging in my room?”
He leaned forward to examine the sketch. It took up the whole page, “Why, yes, it looks like… Probably one of her first drafts, I’d wager…”
“First draft? Did Aranna paint that portrait?” she asked and he nodded, “And what does it say here? Is this her signature?” Lizzie put her finger on a faint line of words on the lower corner of the sketch.
Frowning, he took the book from her hands and brought it close to his eyes, squinting. The words were so small and dim it was easy to miss them altogether.
“No… How curious…” he muttered after a while, “It says Look up.”
Lizzie’s heart began to beat faster. That ought to be a clue.
“What if this means something? What if there is a message hidden in the actual painting?” she suggested.
“Well,” Brun stood up matter-of-factly and stretched a hand for her, “Only one way to find out.”
She clapped her hands, excited, “Oh, this is starting to feel like The Da Vinci Code!”
He blinked at her, “Leonardo Da Vinci? What does he–”
She waved a hand cutting his words before he spoiled her fantasies by saying he had met Leonardo Da Vinci. She took a mental note to add a few more titles to her list of Books and Movies for Brun to Catch Up with the Twenty-first Century, and then reached for his fingers, “Never mind, I’ll explain later.”
Holding hands as if they had done it a thousand times, they climbed the stairs towards her room.
While Lizzie threw her curtains wide open, Brun pushed away her solid mahogany desk as if was a child’s table and then grabbed the ancient frame, unhooking it from the wall. He carefully placed it on her desk, and she bent over to examine it, barely containing her excitement in finding their first possible clue.
She was no great connoisseur of arts like her mother claimed to be but considered it to be quite a good piece. There was a lot of detail, from the variety of the flowers surrounding the couple to the intricate brocade on their clothes.
“Look,” Brun pointed to the corner of the painting, “Here are the words again! Heavens! I never noticed this before!”
Together they bent over the painting and carefully examined every inch of the canvas searching for any other hidden words. They tested the intricate wood of the frame searching for secret compartments, and Brun went as far as getting tools from the kitchen to remove it from the frame and search on the back of the canvas. They palmed inch by inch of the wall behind it but found nothing out of the ordinary.
No hidden messages. No secret compartments.
Sighing in frustration, Lizzie let her body fall on the armchair.
“So much for my sleuthing abilities…”
“Don’t be discouraged. Perhaps Aranna scribbled those words on the sketch for another reason… There are still hundreds of books and notes down in her workshop.”
She nodded, fixing her gaze on the painting again and from that angle where she was sitting, something became obviously odd to her.
“Have you noticed how they are not exactly looking at the painter?” she pointed to the faces of Triarell and Ryul.
Brun stared at the painting and his brows arched, “Heavens!” he gasped.
It was very subtle. Triarell and Ryul’s eyes were slightly tilted upwards, as if their attention had been caught by something happening above their heads.
Lizzie went on, “I mean… It could’ve been just a minor mistake…”
“Oh I think not,” he chuckled, “Knowing Aranna, this is exactly the kind of game she would love to play.”
“A game…” she muttered, “Hide and seek…” she jumped to her feet again and pointed at the painting, “That tree! The one behind them – it is an oak, right? Is it still there?”
He nodded, “It is indeed… Do you think Aranna hid something in it?”
“Only one way to find out!” she repeated his words, smiling at him.
Thegarden that had served as background to Aranna’s painting was kept in pristine shape by Mr Clisham and the gardener, who kept an astonishing variety of flowers along with a small orchard. The bench where Triarell and Ryul had posed for the painting was long gone, lost to time, but the oak tree was still standing.
“Well, if memory serves the bench used to be here,” Brun made a broad gesture to a spot where there was now a life-size statue of the Greek goddess Artemis with a doe standing by her side and her bow ready to shoot.
The Goddess of Hunting! Quite fitting!
Lizzie squeezed between the tree and the statue and Brun mimicked her gesture, standing right in front of her, chest to chest. Together they looked up.
Directly above them was a straight branch that pointed in the general direction of the loch.
“I don’t see anything unusual…” she started.
But he chuckled, “Oh Aranna, you cunning fox!”
“What is it?” she still could see nothing out of the ordinary.
He brought his eyes back to her, “You know how sometimes objects affixed to a tree end up being stuck within the bark,” then he pointed to a section of the branch, which was thicker than the rest, bulging down like a small bowl, “I suspect that Aranna used magic to dig a groove into the trunk and protected it with charms, to prevent someone from unintentionally finding it, trusting that nature would take care of hiding it.”
With the agility of a boy, Brun climbed the tree, reaching the branch as if he were an assiduous parkour practitioner. Then he pulled a pocket knife from his trousers and began to gently peel away the bark. He sweated with effort as he reached the older layers and the bark became harder.
After about twenty minutes digging, his knife hit something metallic.
Wrapping his legs around the branch, he hanged his torso nearly upside down to reach the object and carefully carved around it, until a small metal box appeared. It was square in shape and the intricate bas-relief which only Fae artisans could produce was still visible.
When finally all bark was gone, he inserted his knife under it and tried to push it free.
But it would not budge.
“I will need to use magic to set it free,” he wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, “Stand back!”
She took a couple of steps back and he closed his fist summoning his magic.
His hand grew hot and glowed and then red sparks burst free from his ring, hitting the branch sideways. A chunk of wood flew away, carving a crescent shape on the branch, sending splinters in all directions. The little metal box flew in an arc, bounced on Artemis’ head and clattered on the floor.
“Bloody hell!” she cried staring at the partially exploded branch, “What are we going to tell Mr Clisham?”
He shrugged, “We can tell him you had a shooting accident.”
“Me?” she cried in outrage, “But I don’t even know how to hold a gun!”
“Exactly!” he chortled maniacally, jumping from the branch and landing perfectly on his feet like a big cat.
Her eyes widened, “Bloody hell!” she exclaimed again, gaping at him, “How can you jump like this? You could have broken a leg from that height!”
“Do not worry about me,” he reassured her, even as he felt his heart warm with her worry. No one has ever cared for him like that before, “Look, you were right: Aranna hid something on the tree.”
Her eyes sparkled with excitement and he could not resist lowering his lips to hers to steal a kiss.
“Brun!” she scolded, panting a little and he felt oddly proud at his ability to disconcert her.
“My apologies, Lady Lizzie, but you are far too beautiful for me to resist your allure.”
She blushed prettily and he had to take a deep breath not to kiss her again. Then she narrowed her eyes at him in warning and turned to where the chunk of wood had fallen.
“Well let’s find out what the next clue in this treasure hunt is!”
“No!” he bellowed.
Too late.
Her hand closed around the box and its protective charms flared to life with a haunting keening that filled the air, making his skin crawl. It sounded like the air raid sirens from the Second World War.
Out of nowhere, two glittering vines burst free from the box and snaked around Lizzie’s arm. She screamed in terror and he bellowed her name, reaching for the power in his ring.
Resembling the tentacles of a mythical beast, the vines wrapped around Lizzie’s torso and neck, faster than any protective spell he could conjure, quickly climbing around her face, its small roots clinging to her skin like shimmering leeches. He hesitated, afraid of hurting her should he tried to hit the vines.
Brun watched helplessly as the creeping enchanted plant tightened around Lizzie while she squealed and squirmed trying to shrug free of them.
“Lizzie!” he cried again. He would need to take the risk and blast the magic vines before they crushed her.
He allowed the power to fill him and pointed his fist at her, trying to decide where it would be safe to hit.
“Lizzie, stay as still as you can!” he tried to sound calm, deciding that her arm was possibly the best option.
Heavens, what if I rip her arm off?
He lowered his fist to her leg, but if he missed the vines and hit her thigh, she could bleed to death. He aimed back at her arm and held his breath.
Here goes nothing!
But just as he was about to release the magic, the oddest thing happened.
She began to giggle.
“Oh God, it’s tickling me!” she cried out, squirming and laughing till tears began to roll down her cheeks, “Dang it, I hate tickling!”
He gaped and blinked, unable to understand what in heavens’ name was happening.
As fast as they appeared, the vines dissolved into sparkly mist as if someone had just shot a glitter bomb over her.
Brun stared from her to the box, dumfounded.
“How did you do that?” he muttered and realised that he was trembling.
“I didn’t do anything!” she was still giggling, wiping tears from under her glasses, “I cannot even think when I’m being tickled!” Then as an after-thought, she stared at him seriously, “Don’t even think about it!”
He raised his hands in mock surrender, “I would not dream of it, Your Ladyship,” then he pointed to the box in her hands, “Aranna must have bound the box to the Endellys Clan,” he concluded, astonished by the shrewdness of Triarell’s sister and her skill in weaving magic spells, “She must have tuned her protective spells to be able to recognise her bloodline. If someone else had found it…”
She swallowed hard at his words, surmising that those vines had been designed to crush anyone else who tried to open the box.
Chasing away the disturbing image, she studied the small metal box in her hand with fascination,feeling like a child who is gifted with a new toy. It was a perfect square block, about the size of a Rubik’s cube, and on each face there was a different intricate bas-relief in black, silver and gold. The first side had a richly dressed woman with her hands folded over her lap, the second a sun hovering above a mountain, the third had a black circle over a lake and the fourth looked the depiction of a cloudy sky.
The bottom was a bare black surface and on the top, there was a golden bird perched on the edge of a goblet.
“A nightingale!” Brun muttered, peering over her shoulder, “This was Aranna’s personal sigil,” he explained, anticipating her question.
“But what is this? Is it a box? It does not seem to have any opening…”
He stretched a hand, “Allow me.”
Hesitantly, she placed the cube on his hand, worried it might have other magical traps, but nothing happened.
He turned it around like she did, a frown creeping between his brows, then he shook the box close to his ear, “There is definitely something inside, but I do not have the foggiest idea of how to open it! However these bas-reliefs… They are familiar… Yes, there was a poem… Aranna used to scribble it everywhere…”
He studied each image again and began to recite:
Behind the silvery mountain, the sun went to hide.
While the moon, white faced, awaited.
A chirp broke the silence of the eventide.
Go to sleep! The Fairy Queen berated.
A wand in her hand, all it took was a whisper.
And the stars began to glister.
“That is… cute,” she said slowly, “but how–”
However, Brun was not listening. He was touching the sun on the fourth face of the cube and Lizzie gaped when he slid it easily behind the etched mountains.
They heard a very audible click.
“Behind the silvery mountain, the sun went to hide,” he whispered and then gasped in awe, “This is a puzzle box!”
Lizzie’s eyes widened and she thought she would pass out with excitement.
“Oh my God! Now it’s really a treasure hunt!”
He turned the box clockwise, “Look!”
Sure enough, what had been just a black circle, now had a white crescent.
“Holy cow!” she whispered.
“While the moon, white faced, awaited.”
With a smile on his perfect lips, he put two fingers on the crescent and pulled it down, causing the dark circle to fully disappear, revealing a white one.
They heard another click.
His eyes were so wide now that she could clearly see little flecks of green amidst the deep blue.
He turned the box a second time.
Now in front of the woman’s face there was a wand floating mid-air.
“A chirp broke the silence of the eventide. Go to sleep! The Fairy Queen berated. A wand in her hand, all it took was a whisper.”
He put a finger on the woman’s arm and slid it up until her hand touched the wand.
The third click sounded and he turned the box to show the final side. The clouds seemed to have parted about a quarter of an inch.
“And the stars began to glister!” he murmured, holding the parting clouds with his thumbs, and pulling them asunder.
The clouds disappeared into the sides of the box and silver dots began to surface at the same time, until they heard the final click and the nightingale’s side of the box popped open.
“There is a note there,” she reached inside the box and pulled a small roll of paper, “It feels surprisingly well preserved for something that is over three hundred years old,” then she handled it to him, “I reckon it will be in Fae language, so you should do the honours.”
Brun took the paper and unrolled it.