Bricrui (The Forgotten: Book 2) Read Free Page A

with its bare hands
and was gnawin’ it apart, eatin’ the little beastie alive while the
poor thing was screamin’ like you woren’t believe.”
    “Some kind of sickness?” Layna asked, her
forehead creasing in worry. They certainly didn’t need an outbreak
on their hands as well as everything else.
    “I don’ know. But you can take a looksee for
yourself.” He stood up straight, looking proud. “It attacked me but
I was able to subdue it and bring it in for you to look at. I
thought it’d be somethin’ worth your while to check into.”
    “It certainly sounds that way,” Layna
acknowledged, laying a hand on his upper arm. “Thank you.”
    “It’s quarantined in the old dungeon where
the healers and mages are taking a look at it,” Gryffon reported.
He glanced down at Phoenix and added, “And they also looked Charles
over and assure me that he’s not carrying any sort of infectious
contagion, or else they wouldn’t have let him in here.”
    “Do you think this is something connected to
Telvani?” Layna asked, directing the query to Gryffon.
    He shrugged. “We know he was working on
something, but this? What purpose would it have? Creating a plague
to kill off the people he wanted to control? It doesn’t quite sound
like him.” He looked thoughtful. “Although it does have the stink
of blood-magic about it, so I wouldn’t rule his involvement out
just yet either.”
    “Perhaps it is just some new illness,” Layna
suggested hopefully. If it was to be between a sickness and
blood-magic, she’d take sickness.
    “Can we see it now?” Gryffon looked past
Layna and Charles towards where one of the royal mages was
standing. The man nodded and started moving towards the door.
Gryffon looked at Phoenix worriedly. “Just in case, maybe we should
leave the baby up here.”
    Layna nodded. She hated to be parted from the
babe for even a moment, but it would probably be better than
bringing her to see a monster.
    They left Phoenix with Amelia back at the
nursery and the three of them followed the train of guards towards
the dungeon. The old dungeon was the section which Layna had termed
too unfit to house prisoners, and she felt a twinge of guilt that
anything should have been put in here. When she set eyes upon the
beast, however, her guilt evaporated. It was the most grotesque and
frightening countenance she had ever laid eyes upon.
    It paced back and forth in the cell,
glowering out at them with its red eyes, snarling every now and
again. Layna probed it gently with her magesight, automatically
connecting to Gryffon’s power. Its aura was a mixture of red and
black, the poison in its blood pumped around through its veins with
every heartbeat. But there was no discernible point of infection,
no clue as to what exactly was causing it. There was a definite
feel of magic about it, but again, nothing that would explain what
had happened to it.
    One of the guards suddenly gasped and put a
hand over his mouth, nearly losing the contents of his stomach. All
eyes flew to him. When he had regained control of himself, he
spoke. “I know who that is,” he said softly, swallowing hard.
    “Well, who is it?” Gryffon asked when a few
moments had passed with the guard simply staring at the thing in
disgust.
    “Lord Telvani,” the man replied softly.
    “What?” Gryffon exclaimed.
    “How do you know?” Layna asked, appalled at
the thought. Granted they had just spoken of the possibility of his
involvement…but to have it actually be him?
    “Either that or it killed Lord Telvani,” the
guard amended, and explained, “The amulet around its neck. The lord
took to wearing it all the time the last few weeks of his being
here. He wouldn’t take the thing off for anything.”
    “Lord Telvani,” Gryffon repeated, astonished.
He moved slightly closer to the thing and peered in, narrowing his
eyes in an attempt to make out some recognizable feature. The
creature stopped its pacing and watched him warily, the red