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Brandon blanched and widened his eyes, but I laughed. “He’s joking.” I was pretty sure, anyway. “Come out here, Brandon, and don’t be so scared. He’s not going to eat you.”
I was pretty sure of that too.
Brandon shot me a dirty look and stepped out from behind me. He held out his hand, as if to shake Grimora’s, and to my surprise, Grimora took Brandon’s hand and held it tightly in his. He gazed down for a moment and then took a step closer.
“May I touch your head too? It’s where the problem lies.”
Brandon flinched, but nodded, shooting me another alarmed look, and I tightened my grip on his hand, ready to snatch him away—just in case.
Grimora put both hands on Brandon’s head, moving his fingers gently over his forehead and then over the back of his head. Finally, he stepped back and looked over at me. “I need to take him to my cave, to examine him properly.”
“Can you help him?”
He lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know yet. I may be able to. Not as much as you can help him, however.”
“What are you talking about? What can I do?”
“We’ll talk about it. Come with me.”
He turned then and moved off to what I saw now was a trail through the trees. Was he planning on taking us up to Banshira’s Cave? Is that what he’d meant by his home? I was deeply uneasy at the idea, but I followed him, taking Brandon by the arm to make sure he didn’t stumble on the rocky ground. The path up to Banshira’s Cave was not one I’d ever attempted, but it certainly looked steep. I wasn’t sure Brandon’s bad leg would be up to the climb.
I knew better than to raise any such concerns, however, for fear Brandon would chew my face off for even suggesting it. I gestured for him to precede me and fell into place behind him. Plus, the view of his ass was amazing.
We began to climb, and Grimora put us both to shame with how quickly he ascended. Brandon did reasonably well, but I could tell he was tiring, so I called for a break about halfway up the rocky, nearly vertical trail. The thanks I got was a blistering glare from my captive and an interested look from Grimora.
I took the break anyway, sitting on a small boulder and looking out over the beach below. It was a lovely view from here, and I could see for miles. Or I would have been able to, if not for the fog that was rolling in off the sea. It was the way of the weather in Igella, which could be sunny one minute and rainy the next. The fog, which was dense, was coming in rapidly toward the cove from the sea in rolling, ominous clouds, like those billowing out of an erupting volcano. It was one of those odd occurrences you got sometimes near the ocean. In a nice blue sky, clouds would suddenly begin to pile up and dip down low overhead. Then a stiff breeze would start up and the clouds became thick fog that soon overtook the shore.
Grimora noticed what was coming too, saying only, “We better get to the cave.” I nodded, and took hold of Brandon’s hand again, ruled by an odd, irrational fear that I might lose track of him in the fog and never find him again. He looked down at my hand but didn’t pull away. By the time we reached the top, a little out of breath, the fog was already swirling at our feet. The landscape below us was gone, covered by the miasma below us that looked thick and solid enough to stride across.
Grimora motioned for us to follow him inside, and we stepped in the wide mouth of the vast cave. From deep inside, someone was moaning, sounding like a calf bawling for its mother, but it was low, distant and almost otherworldly. The voice echoed hollowly and mournfully off the walls, sounding like a chorus in hell. Grimora barely even seem to notice it.
About twenty feet farther inside, the space narrowed to a kind of short tunnel or passage, maybe five and a half feet high and about ten feet long. Once we’d traveled through it, bent double like old beggars with sacks, we came out into a large room, with a relatively low ceiling. It was warm inside, because of the fire coming from a deep niche in the wall of the cave. It seemed to serve as a natural fireplace and must have had a natural vent, because the cave wasn’t at all smoky. Scattered around it were heaped-up furs and blankets. On the vertical walls, a few wooden shelves had been built, holding books and a number of jars and bottles, which were full of things I didn’t wish to examine too closely. There were iron sconces on the walls of the cave that held torches. They looked ancient and I wondered how long men had been using this cave, and for what purpose.
Grimora motioned us toward a place by the fire, and I sat down on one of the furs, pulling Brandon along with me. I looked around with interest.
“How long have you been here?”
“A long time,” he replied, a little cryptically, I thought. Then he amended the statement. “Almost twelve years.” I’d first met him about six years earlier, so that seemed about right, but from the stories I’d heard, I thought Barnshira’s Cave had been called that name for a much longer time.
I jerked my head toward the deeper, darker tunnels leading off this main chamber, and the sounds still emanating from beyond them.
“What about… it? Banshira—the monster. What’s its story?”
Grimora shrugged again. “No story. No good one anyway.”
Frustratingly, he returned his attention to Brandon and gazed into his eyes for several long seconds. “Can you tell me how you sustained your injuries?”
Brandon glanced at me uneasily, and I nodded to encourage him.
“My king sent me and one of my cousins to the kingdom of Crillia, where his wife’s relative had disappeared. She’d gone there to marry a baron, but he’d claimed to her family she had never arrived. We thought he was lying.”
“We?”
“My pack brother and I.”
“Why did he send just the two of you?”
“He trusted us, I suppose, and larger groups had gone and not returned. King Harrison is my cousin, and we’re all close. He thought we’d be enough to find out what happened, and then if we needed help, we could send for some. He had no idea at the time how treacherous the baron was.”
