The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) Read Free

smoke floated up from the skeleton’s ring and headed for the hole the men had blasted in the wall. It whooshed out of the chamber into the mining tunnel beyond, then headed for the world above.
    The hated world of light, and happy living things.

CHAPTER ONE
    Welcome to Wales
     
    Two Days Later
     
    It is a well-known fact that too many hours of travel can make a person silly. Especially if he is twelve and confined in a vehicle with three of his closest friends, one dog, and of course, his pet Gryphon.
    Thus, it was not surprising that after the past couple of days—including five carriage changes, a long steam-train ride chugging over the border from England into Wales, and their present slow, plodding slog, rumbling along in the coach sent from Jake’s Welsh estate in the mountains of Snowdonia to collect them—the passengers were very silly indeed.
    Boisterous laughter and the clamor of four young friends in a state of merriment came from inside the heavy coach winding its way up a hill through the forest.
    W hen the coach abruptly stopped, however, so did all the noise.
    “Hoy ! Shush, you lot!” ordered Jake, the twelve-year-old in question. “Why are we stopping?”
    “Are we there?” a piping voice exclaimed.
    “Dunno! Let’s see.”
    Four young faces, still shining with humor, promptly peered through the windows of the sturdy coach to find it had just emerged from the jewel-toned autumn woods.
    Now they were surrounded by broad open fields, beyond which lay breathtaking valleys and misty mountain vistas. But when the high-spirited travelers saw what had halted their progress up the road, their eager smiles faded.
    “Well, that’s grim,” decl ared Archie, Jake’s cousin, the boy genius, age eleven.
    The two girls , Dani and Isabelle, exchanged a startled glance. Then they, too, stared at the ominous scene ahead.
    A long, elaborate funeral procession was crossing the road in front of them, making its way toward the nearby cemetery that covered the bleak brow of a windy hill.
    Hundreds of people dressed in black marched slowly on foot all around the coal-black hearse, a solemn, stately carriage drawn by four black horses with ebony plumes on their heads.
    Under the cloudy October sky, the slow-moving funeral procession inched by in morbid quiet. Professional hired keeners followed the coffins, moaning and wailing in sorrow. Some slowly beat funeral drums.
    Unsmiling men in top hats walked by with clusters of crying women, their faces hidden by long black veils. In this sea of midnight, only the priest had some white on, his long cassock flapping in the breeze like a shroud.
    “Gracious, I wonder what’s happened,” murmured Isabelle, Archie’s sister. She was the eldest, at fourteen.
    “Derek will find out.” Jake nodded through the window at their escort on this journey, Guardian Derek Stone.
    Even now, the big, dark-haired warrior rode his powerful black horse ahead, reining in at the edge of the funeral parade. He dismounted and took off his hat in a show of respect for the dead.
    Meanwhile, Miss Helena, their half-French governess, looked on from her perch up on the driver’s seat of the carriage, where she had fled when the children had grown sillier than she could stand.
    To be sure, the grim sight before them quickly put a damper on their fun, especially when still more hearses came into view as the procession moved along.
    “Sweet Bacon!” Archie murmured. “One, two, three— four coffins! What the deuce do you suppose happened here?”
    “I hope there isn’t a fever in the town.” Dani O’Dell hugged her little brown Norwich terrier a bit closer. Teddy went everywhere with her, even on holiday.
    As for his own pet, Jake quickly turned to his Gryphon. The lion-sized beast was lying peaceably on his belly in the center of the carriage between the children’s seats, his scarlet wings folded against his sides.
    “Stay down, Red .” Jake threw his discarded greatcoat over the