The Book of Lies by James Moloney

Author:James Moloney [James Moloney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007515110
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter 13

Long Beard

THEY REACHED THE BASE of the great escarpment just as the sun was setting. It can be a long, uneasy night when dawn promises such danger. Marcel might have lain awake through most of it if the day’s journey through the dusty farmlands had not been so exhausting. But before he knew it, the sun was stabbing at his eyes and it was morning.

They hid the carriage as best they could and released the weary horses from where they were tethered. The chest would have to be left behind, though Eleanor insisted upon her silver brush and mirror and Starkey was hardly going to abandon the Book of Lies. Their only other luggage was the sack of provisions, which Hector slung over his shoulder. Of all the wary faces that set off on the climb that morning, his was the most anxious.

The track Starkey found for climbing the cliff face had been made by wandering sheep. For human feet, it was narrow and treacherous. The weary struggle uphill, combined with the nameless dread that had settled on them all, made their trek twice as arduous as the descent three days earlier. Eleanor had exchanged her white gown for one of deep blue velvet, but its hem was quickly soiled. Her face wore an expression of disdain that clearly told them she found this upward toiling unfit for a princess.

Slowly, though, the valley began to recede below them and the air grew cooler, until finally they emerged on to the lower slopes of the mountain itself.

Hector put an arrow to his bow. That same sense that they were being watched took hold of Marcel.

“Careful you don’t shoot one of us with that,” Damon scolded him. “What’s so frightening about this place, anyway?”

He soon regretted those words when a rustling noise echoed through the trees. They looked up the steep slope on their left to see a stone, no bigger than a man’s fist, tumbling towards them.

A warning.

Soon after this, a second rock came crashing through the undergrowth, closer and more threatening.

Next there was a mighty roar, as frightening as Termagant’s growl. It resounded off the trees, so that it was impossible to judge where it had come from. Was it the mountain itself, calling down to them from its invisible summit?

“We have to go back,” asserted Hector, who looked ready to drop his sword and run.

“Hold your ground!” Starkey roared at him.

It was too late to run. The air was suddenly thick with arrows flying in every direction, and all they could do was wait to feel their deadly sting.

Eleanor pressed herself against the trunk of a tree. To her obvious relief, an arrow merely found the wedge of space between her splayed fingers. Another landed in the ground between Fergus’s feet. As for Marcel, he heard an arrow lodge in the tree above him. He even felt the faint breeze it created. When he dared reach up and touch it, he discovered that it had missed his scalp by less than an inch.

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