Veiled Rose Read online

  “I’m practicing,” said Leo, rolling his arms and shoulders like he’d seen the guardsmen in his father’s yard do when getting ready to spar.

  “What for?”

  “For when I catch the monster.”

  They marched on up the mountain for almost five minutes before she spoke again. “You huntin’ for the monster?”

  Her voice was meek, nothing like the devil-may-care tone Leo was growing accustomed to. He had determined to not look at her anymore, thinking lack of attention might drive her away. But something in the way she spoke the question made him look around once more.

  She stood several yards behind him now, huddling into herself so that she seemed even smaller than before. Though he could not see her face, something in her stance suggested . . . fear? Or maybe nothing that strong. Maybe just worry.

  Leo licked his lips and frowned. She looked like she was about to run away, and inexplicably he realized he disliked that idea. Annoying as she was, she was company. Not the stalwart cohort he had always envisioned, but company even so. It was only right for an adventurer to have a companion.

  Leo motioned sharply with his arm. “Come on, keep up! You’re going to slow me down.”

  She remained still several moments, then shook her head.

  “Come on,” Leo repeated. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’m good at fighting monsters! That is, I beat my cousin at wrestling all the time, and I know how to take care of myself.”

  Still no response.

  “If I leave you behind, it might come eat you,” Leo threatened. Threatening seemed like a good idea; someone that small was bound to be scared into submission. “You need to stay close.”

  Her gloved hands reached up to touch the edge of her long veil, wringing it nervously so that water dripped to the dirt. “It’s not . . . You shouldn’t look for the monster,” she said in such a quiet voice that Leo had to step closer, and she was obliged to repeat herself a few times before he understood.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Folks say it’s bad luck. Bad luck to even see it.”

  “Not if I defeat it in battle!”

  “The monster won’t fight.”

  Leo’s frown deepened. “How do you know?”

  “I just . . . know.”

  Then the girl vanished.

  3

  IT HAPPENED IN A BLINK. One moment she was there, the next . . . gone. Leo stood openmouthed, staring at the empty place where she should have been.

  “I say.” He gulped. “That is . . . I say! Where are you?”

  The wind stirred the leaves, which dropped their burdens of water on Leo’s head almost spitefully. But he didn’t notice. He turned this way and that, casting about for the girl. Then he cursed, “Iubdan’s beard! Why didn’t I think of it sooner?”

  This high-country bumpkin was much more likely to know about the mountain monster than Foxbrush or the Hill House servants. She lived out in this wild country after all, didn’t she? And she’d probably heard stories that even Leanbear hadn’t.

  Leo shook his beanpole with frustration, then plunged into the foliage off the path, scrambling uphill as fast as he could go. He hadn’t the faintest idea which way the girl had gone, so thorough was her disappearance, but she couldn’t have gone far.

  The vegetation thinned the higher up he scrambled, and soon even the trees were little more than scraggly bushes. Leo climbed nearly straight uphill as far as the terrain permitted, still without catching a single glimpse of the girl. He called out now and again as he went, “I say! Girl, where are you?”

  She didn’t respond. Leo had left the path far behind. Not that he cared; nor did he care that he hadn’t the first idea how to get home, so intent was he upon his quarry.

  But thin air and soggy clothing soon took their toll. Leo used his beanpole as a walking stick, clambering up the mountainous terrain, still calling out to the girl without response. He thought perhaps he hated girls. Little ones anyway. He’d always figured they were all like the girls who visited his father’s house, all the pretty little Starflowers and Daylilies and Dewdrops, so dolled up in flounces that he couldn’t have told them apart for the world, filling the air with their silly giggles and games.

  This girl was nothing like any of them, which made her even stranger. He didn’t pretend to understand the girls back home, but at least he was used to them. They wouldn’t go disappearing on a chap on a mountainside in the rain!

  Huffing and puffing, Leo was both too hot and too cold out on that mountain. He sweated under the coat, but his wet face and hands stung every time the wind blew. At last he stood on top of a lichen-covered boulder that looked very much like an old man’s head with either bad hair or a still worse wig. He stopped to catch his breath and looked about himself for the first time.

  He had come much farther than he’d thought.

  The forest was far down the mountainside, and he stood exposed among the rocks of the higher slopes. This mountain was not the highest in the range, but Leo was certainly higher now than he had ever before climbed. Not high enough to see anything beyond the tree line, however, save more trees. The sister mountains loomed menacingly above him, like giants with disapproving faces. Out here in the open, Leo felt very small indeed. The sun was starting its downward dip, and he realized that he would likely be out after dark.

  If he made it home at all.

  “Iubdan’s beard!” he growled, turning to look down the way he had come. Or the way he thought he had come. It all looked the same from here.

  “Oi!”

  He whirled about, clutching his beanpole, and saw the little girl appear in the rocks overhead. The wind caught at her veil, but she grabbed it and held it in place. “There you are! I thought maybe you’d gotten lost.”

  Leo growled and lowered his beanpole quickly so she wouldn’t think he was scared. “Why did you disappear on me?”

  She shrugged. “I led you up the mountain.”

  “No you didn’t!”

  “Did.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  She shrugged again. “Ain’t you comin’ up?”

  “Coming up?” Leo looked at the climb between him and her. He felt elevated enough as it was, perhaps even a little dizzy with altitude. But the girl shouted down to him from a good twenty feet higher still, up what looked to him like a sheer rock face. Besides, now that he’d stopped to catch his breath, he was getting cold. “What for?”

  “I got somethin’ to show you.”

  “I don’t want to see it.”

  “Ain’t you huntin’ the monster?”

  Leo stared up at her. He knew as sure as he breathed that he was being manipulated. He also knew that it was working.

  Not liking to lay down his beanpole, he clutched it tightly in his left hand while using his right for climbing. The rocks were cold under his fingers and felt like knives as he gripped them. He made it perhaps two feet up before his foot slipped and he skidded back down, panting with fear. The ground was solid beneath him, but a few false steps and he had a long fall behind him.

  “What’re you doin’?”

  Leo glared at her, with her head tilted to one side. “I’m coming up, like you said!”

  “Why don’t you use the Path?”

  “What path?”

  Then, much to his surprise, she came skittering down the rocks, fast as a beetle down a wall. Before he quite knew what was happening, she had taken his hand in one of her grimy gloves and was leading him up that sheer wall, following a path that, even while he stood upon it, he could scarcely see. But it was there; he felt it under his feet, real as anything. And if his head spun while he climbed and his eyes felt fuzzy and strange, well, that must be due to the height.

  They reached the top, and once more Leo looked out across the way he had come. But now, only twenty feet higher, his perspective changed.

  The whole world seemed to spread beneath his feet. From here he could see beyond the mountain range to the south
ern ocean. The forest spread like a thick rug across the mountain’s lap, smoke rising from the villages in the valleys. He could see the low country, where the Baron of Blackrock’s grounds, shrouded now in heavy rain clouds, began at the base of the mountains and stretched all the way to a marble-white bridge. To his left and his right, the mountains continued in a vast ring all around the kingdom, the largest mountain range on the entire known Continent. The Circle of Faces, it was called, for legend had it that giants once dwelt here and, because of a great sin, were turned into stone and had at last crumbled into mere mountains. Now only their faces, on certain spellbound nights, could be seen in the rocks.

  But most important, Leo could see the higher gables of Hill House peeking through the trees below, and the twirling smoke ascending from its many chimneys.

  “Silent Lady,” he breathed, in awe rather than fear.

  The little girl let go of his hand, and though Leo hated to admit it, he felt momentarily lost without her grip. Disoriented, as if suddenly plunged into the middle of a maze. He turned to her, and though her face remained covered, he could almost feel her smiling.

  “A fine sight, what?”

  He gulped. “So where is this monster?”

  She turned and led the way. For while they had come a long way, there were yet higher slopes to this mountain and still more sheer climbs than they had already traversed. But she didn’t lead him toward these. Rather, she picked her way among the stones around the side of the mountain, veering to the right rather than continuing the ascent. Leo followed slowly, for he was not surefooted among the rocks. So focused was he upon his feet that he nearly ran into her when she stopped abruptly.

  “Do you see?”

  His heart pounding, Leo looked where she pointed. At first he didn’t see it; then his eyes seemed to squint and adjust on their own, and he saw the monster’s mouth.

  He sucked in a sharp breath and held it for several seconds before he realized that what he saw was only a cave. The rocks around it formed the shape of a great beast, perhaps a wolf, but unlike any wolf Leo had ever seen brought back by hunters, slung on a pole. This stone wolf was also frighteningly like a man.

  But it was still just a cave. Leo sagely stated as much.

  The girl tilted her head at him. “Shows what you know.”

  Leo shifted his beanpole from hand to hand, squaring his shoulders. “It’s just a cave,” he repeated as he took several steps forward. And it was. But it wasn’t as well. His imagination worked powerfully on his mind, and he could almost swear he felt the pulse of air flowing to and from that gaping maw. And were those merely trails of moss and stone, or were they teeth?

  He stood at the threshold and peered inside. There were signs that a stream had once issued from the cave mouth down the mountainside, but it had long since dried up. The light ended only a few feet in, leaving a blackness so absolute that, just by looking at it, one could almost forget what daylight meant.

  Something tugged at his memory. “I know this place,” he whispered.

  “Not likely,” the girl snorted. “No one finds this place who don’t know the Paths.”

  Leo shook his head. “I don’t mean I’ve been here. I just know what this is.”

  “It’s called the Monster Cave by folks round here,” the girl said. “Though none of them knows how to find it no more.” She crossed her arms and stuck out her skinny chest with pride. “I’m the only one what does.”

  But Leo wasn’t listening. His mind was furiously at work, struggling to recall tutorials and lessons he’d spent the last several summer weeks trying to forget. “Ashiun!” he declared at last.

  “Bless you,” said the girl.

  “No!” Leo glared at her. “No, the Legend of Ashiun. That’s what this is . . . or could be right out of. It’s the cave from the Legend of Ashiun!”

  She shook her head, bewildered.

  “You don’t know the legend?” Leo grinned, self-importance momentarily eclipsing his fear as he stood at the mouth of the cave. “The Brothers Ashiun were sent from the Far World to help the mortals of our world when it was new.”

  “What’s the Far World?” the girl asked.

  “The Faerie Realm,” said Leo. “It’s not real. At least, I don’t think it is. The Legend of Ashiun is one of the oldest Faerie stories there is. I have it in a text back home. One of the engravings shows the older brother approaching the gateway to Death’s Path. It was a cave that looked exactly like this. . . .”

  Leo’s voice trailed off, and he shivered. When he backed away from the cave mouth, the girl said nothing, only followed him quietly. It was just a cave, of course. Dark, dank, mysterious . . . but just a cave. Leo took a seat on an obliging boulder. The girl sat beside him, folding her knees up to her chest and wrapping her twiglike arms around them. “There’s a stream inside,” she said.

  “A stream?”

  “Yup. Deep down, but I think you can hear it if you listen close.”

  Leo strained his ears but heard nothing from that distance. He felt no desire to draw closer to the cave’s mouth again. “You went in there?” he asked, his respect for the girl rising despite himself.

  “Yup.”

  “Isn’t it . . . dark?”

  “Yup. But not too bad.”

  Leo made a face. If that wasn’t too dark, what by all the dragon’s teeth was? He shivered again and hoped the girl would think he was merely cold.

  “So what did they do?” the girl asked.

  “Who?”

  “The brothers you were talkin’ about. What did they do what made them story folk?”

  Leo thought back over his lessons. The Brothers Ashiun featured in many of the oldest stories in the history of the Near World. The earliest ballads attributed to the famous Bard Eanrin were about the brothers and their great gifts. Leo preferred the legends of his own kingdom, in which the heroes had names he could pronounce and the locations were familiar landmarks. But he recalled what he could of the Legend of Ashiun.

  “They were two Faerie warriors,” he said. “The great Prince over all the Faerie folk sent them to aid mortals when the Near World was newly created. You see, there was this Dragon . . . not just any dragon, mind you, but the King of all dragons, and he hated the people of the Near World. So these two warriors, two brothers, were sent by the Prince to rescue mortal men and to teach them to fight the Dragon. And the Prince gave each brother a gift to use on his mission.

  “The younger brother was given a sword. Let me think, what was the name? Hasli . . . no, Halisa, maybe? Something foreign. It translates as Fireword, though. And the older brother was given the Asha Lantern, which means hope, or life, or something like that.”

  Leo saw he was losing his audience’s interest. The girl began to fidget, her veiled face tilting to one side as though she was ready to fall asleep. This would not do. Leo narrowed his eyes. Perhaps he wasn’t the greatest hero in the world, nor the most successful monster hunter. But by Iubdan’s beard, he was a masterful entertainer!

  He leapt to his feet, brandishing his beanpole as though he bore the famed Fireword itself.

  “The younger brother became a great hero in the Near World, and he trained other heroes like him. He fought back the monsters of the Far World that tried to cross over and devour the weak mortals.” Leo stabbed at the air and twirled about, drawing the girl’s attention once more. She ducked to avoid a blow, but Leo heard her laugh as well.

  Stopping for breath, Leo continued. “Together, the brothers built great houses over all the Continent. These were enormous halls with doors opening east and west. And when the older brother shone the light of his lantern inside them, the glow remained for years afterward.”

  “Was it pretty?” the girl asked.

  Leo nodded. He indicated the orange sun, which was beginning to set heavily, casting saffron light upon the clouds. “Do you see that sunset? Imagine that, only a hundred times prettier! That was what the Asha Lantern was like.”

  “Coo,�
�� breathed the girl.

  “The Near World became prosperous under the brothers’ care. People felt safe and happy.” Leo crouched down suddenly, his beanpole behind him, and jabbed a finger at the girl’s veil, startling her. “But it couldn’t last.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “The Dragonwitch.”

  “I heard of her. She lived in these here parts once, didn’t she?”

  “I think so. Not really, of course. Only in stories. But they say she came to this land. Twice, actually. But that’s not part of this story. In this story, she came bursting from the Far World in a great POOF !”

  “Poof?” The girl looked unimpressed.

  “You know what I mean,” Leo said. “The sound fire makes.” Then he roared, his very best dragon imitation . . . which was pretty good considering he had never heard a dragon. “She was the firstborn child of the Dragon King, a Faerie queen herself once upon a time. And she hated mortal men! So she set upon the Great Houses built by the brothers, tore down the doors, and burned the rooftops. She lit them up like so many bonfires across the Continent!”

  “Sad.”

  “Not just sad,” Leo declared. “Terrifying! Of course, the brothers set out to stop her. It was the older brother who tracked her down, using the light of his lantern. And then the younger brother—I believe his name was Etanun. It means strength. Anyway, he fought her.” With more roars and an appropriate amount of spitting, Leo struck the air with his beanpole. “Fireword plunged into the Dragonwitch’s heart, and she fell down dead.

  “The older brother found Etanun nearly killed from the wounds the Dragonwitch gave him in battle. A dragon’s claws are poisonous, you know, even more poisonous than its breath. Some of the dragon poison got into the younger brother, and though the older brother—his name was Akilun—though he tried to heal him, a trace of poison remained in Etanun’s veins.”

  “So what about my cave?” asked the girl. “How does it fit into this story?”

  “Just listen!” Leo sprawled out on the stone, pretending to be badly wounded, gasping for breath and pressing a hand to his neck. “Etanun was weak, but he would recover. He said to his brother, ‘I have killed the Dragonwitch!’ ” Then Leo changed his tone to be the deeper voice of the other brother. “ ‘No, Etanun,’ said Akilun. ‘You have only destroyed her first life.’ ”