The Curse of Deadman's Forest (6 page)

“Exactly,” said Caphiera, smiling gruesomely at her sister. “Which is why
he
should be the one to find Lachestia and entice her to join our quest. Once our wayward sister has been so directed, I’m certain she will handle the killing of two mortal children with ease, and then we can carry on with our plans unhindered by Laodamia’s pesky prophecies.”

Magus’s cloak rippled with flames again and his eyes narrowed dangerously while he glared at his sister and fought to control his temper.

“Yes, Magus should be the one to find Lachestia,” Atroposa eagerly agreed again. “It is only fair, since he ruined the prophecy in the first place.”

Caphiera crossed her arms and stared at her brother contemptuously. “Shall we put it to a vote?” she asked.

Magus spat into the water near his feet, and his spittle hissed when it hit the sea. Caphiera had tricked him into this, and he knew that if she and Atroposa went before Demogorgon and told him of their suggestion, his sire would certainly order him to find and free his sister on his own. And Magus had also heard the rumors about the Witch of Versailles’s visions, but he’d ignored them, because Lachestia’s unpredictability made her a danger to him as much as anyone else.

Still, if those few lines from the scroll he’d stolen from
the burning tent of that archeologist were correct, and the Guardian’s death was the key to bringing down the One, then what choice did he have but to engage Lachestia in his plans? The dilemma was how to control the sorceress of earth once he rediscovered her. Past experience had proved that it would require a delicate touch, and Magus doubted that either of his other two sisters was up to the task.

There was the possibility that after three thousand years, Lachestia had gained some lucidity. Perhaps once the One and her Guardian were dealt with, he could convince Lachestia to join him in a secret alliance against Caphiera and Atroposa. When their sire escaped and the world was theirs, it would be less bounty to split between siblings, after all.

“There is no need for a vote,” he said finally. “I shall visit the Witch of Versailles and find Lachestia on my own.”

Caphiera smiled triumphantly. “Of course you will,
dear
brother,” she said. “Meanwhile, Atroposa and I shall retire to my fortress, as it is far too hot this time of year for me to be of any further service to you.” Turning to her sister, Caphiera said, “Come, dear, you look winded. Let’s get you to the mountain pass, where you can rest in cool comfort.” And with that the two sorceresses left Magus to smolder moodily and stare out to sea.

I
an rolled over onto his back and lay in the cool darkness for several long moments, his hand still gripping Theo’s arm tightly.

“You all right?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said, sitting up and coughing from the dust still swirling around them. “That was a close one, though.”

“Too close,” agreed Carl, and Ian noticed that his voice came from about five feet away.

“Is Jaaved all right?” Ian asked.

“Fine, thank you,” said Jaaved, and Ian was surprised to hear him just behind Theo.

“It’s pitch-dark in here,” Theo said. “Shouldn’t we be able to see some daylight?”

“I think the entrance to the tunnel caved in,” Carl moaned, and Ian heard him shuffling around in the dark. “Hang on,” he added, and then a light switched on and they could faintly make each other out.

Ian smiled gratefully at his friend, glad at least Carl had
had the good sense to hang on to his torch. “I lost mine in the cavern,” he admitted.

“No worries, mate,” Carl said good-naturedly. “One’s all we need, really.” Carl then got to his feet and attempted to wipe some soot off his trousers.

Ian glanced back at Theo, seeing for the first time that she’d lost her shoes. “What happened to your shoes?”

Theo blushed. “They slipped off when I was climbing up the rock,” she explained, accepting Ian’s hand. They both got to their feet. “What tunnel is this, do you think?”

Ian’s face brightened when he realized she knew nothing about what he’d discovered just before rushing to rescue her. “Oh, Theo, you won’t believe it! This tunnel leads right up to the tower room at the keep!”

Theo blinked. “It what?”

“We saw the cyclone from the window in the tower,” Carl explained. “And Ian pulled up the slats in the bench and a trapdoor opened to a ladder that led down to this tunnel.”

Theo’s eyes widened. “Incredible!” she said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Ian agreed. “I’d no idea there was a tunnel leading directly to the keep, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?” The land spreading out from Castle Dover and the keep was riddled with tunnels and hidden caverns. Some of these were natural, and some were man-made. Most of the latter were dug out by either the local population, who feared invasion from the sea, or the men in service to the many earls of Kent who’d held the land—providing each earl with an escape route should the keep or the castle ever be besieged.

“That might make sense, Ian, but I still find it hard to
believe there was a hidden stairway within the keep that we never knew about,” Theo said.

“Well, then, perhaps it should remain a secret,” Ian suggested, staring meaningfully at his three companions. Ian was worried that if the adults learned of the escape route, they’d order it blocked up.

“Might come in handy at some point to have a way out of the keep without anyone knowing about it,” Carl agreed.

“But the exit is blocked,” Jaaved said, gesturing to the large pile of rubble behind them.

“We can work on clearing that out later,” Carl said with confidence.

“Yes,” Theo agreed, and Ian noticed that her hand had moved up to clutch the crystal pendant she wore around her neck. “That might be wise.”

Ian studied her. “Theo?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Did you get a feeling about the cyclone before you went to the shore?” Theo’s ability to predict the weather was uncanny, and Ian was privately wondering why she hadn’t mentioned any ill feelings she might have had earlier. The only thing she’d said was that the day might grow windy, but she’d hardly looked concerned when she’d said it.

To his surprise, Theo appeared quite troubled. “I had no idea we’d be hit by a cyclone,” she whispered.

“What’s that?” Carl asked, leaning in.

Theo cleared her throat and spoke more clearly this time. “I didn’t know. I felt no warning at all. In fact, it was Jaaved who first noticed something wrong.”

Ian looked at Jaaved, who nodded. “Her crystal was pulsing red,” he explained.

Ian remembered that it was Jaaved’s grandfather who had told them about the magic of Theo’s crystal and explained how it would be able to alert her to evil by flashing red in times of grave danger.

“Until Jaaved mentioned that something was amiss, I’d no idea, Ian.”

“We saw the cyclone right after the pendant gave us warning,” Jaaved explained. “And by then, it was halfway across the channel and making its way directly to us.”

Theo nodded. “We knew we’d never get up the road in time, so Jaaved suggested we find shelter in one of the caves along the shore, and at first we took refuge in one of the lower caves, but the wind whipped the pebbles from the shore at us and we knew we couldn’t stay so close to the ground. That’s when we decided to attempt a climb up to a higher cave, but the cyclone reached us much sooner than we thought it would. It was almost as if it had a will of its own—like it aimed itself directly at us.”

A dark and terrible thought entered Ian’s mind. What if the cyclone hadn’t been just a freakish weather occurrence—but a product of more sinister forces at work?

He nearly voiced his opinion out loud, but one look at Theo’s troubled face and he decided she’d had enough to worry about for the day. “Well, you’re safe now,” he told her, forcing a smile. But Theo hardly looked reassured.

“Ian,” she said softly. “Do you think that cyclone could have been the work of Atroposa?”

“Atroposa?” Carl asked. “You mean the daughter of Demogorgon?”

Theo nodded. “She’s the sorceress of air, you know. A cyclone would have been well within her powers to create.”

Jaaved also appeared troubled. “It did follow us up the shore when we made for higher ground, Ian,” he said. “And I don’t really know how to explain it, but it felt sinister, as if it were a thing of dark magic.”

Carl ran a hand through his hair. “Crikey,” he said. “If one of them can create something like that—what chance does Theo stand against them?”

“That’s it,” Ian said firmly, fearing for her safety. “You’re never leaving the keep again.”

But Theo glared at him with firm determination. “Don’t be daft,” she told him. “Of course I’m leaving the keep. Remember Laodamia’s prophecy? We’re scheduled to go through the portal soon enough.”

“I don’t know how you’ll accomplish that, Theo,” Carl said. “The earl’s locked it up tight. No one can get past that iron gate without his permission and he’s certainly not going to let
you
go through the portal again.”

Shortly after they’d returned from their journey to Morocco, the earl had thrown an enormous padlock around the bars of the gate at the entrance of the tunnel leading to the portal. The earl had also gone as far as to expressly forbid the children to go near it, for their own safety.

But Theo crossed her arms and looked stubbornly up at Ian, as if daring him to agree with Carl. Ian decided not to argue the point with her and attempted to change the
subject. “Come along,” he said, waving for his friends to follow. “We’d best get back to the keep before anyone realizes we’re missing.”

But when they made their way to within ten meters of the ladder leading to the tower, they came to another barrier. A huge stone slab that had been set into the wall had fallen across the tunnel, dropping a good portion of the roof on top of it. Ian approached the slab and inspected it. “Blast it!” he groaned, surveying the huge pile of rubble heaped on the slab all the way to the ceiling, which effectively cut them off from the secret entrance to the keep.

“Would you look at that?” said Carl, and for a moment, Ian thought he was talking about the cave-in, but then he realized that Carl was actually referring to the slab.

“Look at what?” Ian asked.

“This stone,” Carl said. “Does it look familiar?”

At first Ian had no idea what Carl was talking about, but when he looked closer, he saw something on its surface that he recognized. Small angular letters ran down the flat side of the slab. “It’s a standing stone!” he gasped, utterly surprised to find one of the huge stones down there in the tunnel.

Ian and the others were very familiar with the stones; they’d been educated by Professor Nutley, who was something of an expert. Used for various religious purposes in Druid times, the stones were typically massive and used to mark an area of sacred ground.

In fact, the entrance to the magical portal a stone’s throw away from Castle Dover was hidden under three standing
stones, and Ian strongly suspected that those monoliths held a bit of magic in them as well.

Carl nodded. “The question is, why is this stone down
here
of all places?”

“To protect the keep,” Theo said, reaching out to touch the slab.

Ian’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean, to protect the keep?”

Theo smiled patiently at him. “Don’t you think it’s curious that none of Demogorgon’s brood have ever raided the keep, Ian? I mean, we’ve seen Magus’s hellhounds and that awful couple the Van Schufts, but neither Magus nor Caphiera has ever set foot on the keep’s grounds.

“Lady Arbuthnot and I have long suspected that the keep itself must be protected by some form of magic, something that keeps the likes of Magus and Caphiera out. And if this tunnel leads directly up to the heart of the keep, then there must be some magic associated with the standing stone.” Stepping closer to the slab, Theo ran her hand along the lettering tattooed into the hard rock. “I believe that these markings invoke some sort of protection which radiates upward and protects the keep.”

“But the entrance to the portal has those same standing stones and markings, and Caphiera had no trouble coming down there, now, did she?” Carl argued.

Theo sighed. “Yes, that
is
a valid point, Carl. And I said the same to Lady Arbuthnot, but then she pointed out that when we returned through the portal last year, only a few
hours had passed on this side of the portal, and both Caphiera and her icy deathtrap had completely vanished, as if all that ice had never even existed. Lady Arbuthnot thinks, and I agree, that the sorceress was unable to remain in the portal tunnel because of the magic of those stones. And that is why, since then, neither she nor any of her siblings has returned to destroy it.”

Ian thought about Theo’s logic, and it did make a great deal of sense to him. “She’s right, you know,” he said to Carl, who still looked a bit doubtful. “If I were Magus or Caphiera, the first thing I’d do is destroy that portal if I could. It’s at the heart of all of Laodamia’s prophecies so far and it seems to be the gateway to finding the rest of the Oracles. Magus has to know that, so the fact that he hasn’t attempted to reduce it to rubble says that it must be protected somehow.”

“Along with the keep,” Theo said, and Ian watched her lean forward and place a gentle hand on Carl’s wrist, moving the torch along the walls and revealing half a dozen more standing stones set at even spaces into both sides of the tunnel wall, beginning about ten meters back. All the stones were arched and marked with the same angular lettering, indicating they were set there on purpose. Ian marveled at the engineering required to set such large and heavy stones deep into an underground tunnel. He was surprised that none of them had noticed the stones until they’d come across the one blocking their exit.

“Yeah, well, a lot of good that protection is doing us now,” Carl grumbled as Theo let go of his arm and he turned back to the cave-in. He then ducked low and shone his
torch under the belly of the stone slab, pulling out a few smaller rocks so that he could get a better look. “It’s blocked all the way to the other side,” he announced.