Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) (4 page)

Chapter 4

Thomas Flynn bolted the worn wooden latch to his room at Mahoney’s Inn, then sat on the plump feather bolster, tasting the scent of a cold room that had been closed too long. It was a simple room—a chest of drawers with a small brass oil lamp on it, along with a white ceramic basin and pitcher of water should he want to wash off the dust from the road. He looked out the window with its old wavy glass, past the few small house-trees and sheds to the mountains beyond.

Everything in Clere seemed so normal, so restful. Yet he was the only guest at the inn this night—the only person brave enough to have stayed here in the past two weeks, so rumor said.

But Thomas Flynn knew a bit about people. Rumors of demons might keep folks away, but a demon itself wouldn’t—not if it was safely stored in a jar of brine. Thomas had seen oddities displayed that way—a cat with two heads, a midget child. And he wondered if he might be able to preserve something as large as one of these demons in such a fashion.

Thomas could imagine how the sign out front might read: Thomas Flynn’s Curious Inn. Aye, people were afraid to come around now, but in a couple weeks, he might have them pounding the doors.

Thomas had never believed in demons or angels, but something had frightened these people, and if a battle had been waged, then there would be corpses about.

It was early afternoon, but he had several good hours of daylight. He rested on the bed for a while, feeling his brain swim around in his skull from too much rum, then went downstairs to the common room. It had begun to fill up nicely. A good thirty men lounged about.

He managed to warm himself another bit of rum without falling into the fire, then drank it and clattered the empty cup against the bricks of the fireplace to get attention. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m after finding myself the corpse of a demon. I imagine they should be in the woods about, and I’m offering a bounty. I’ll pay twenty pounds to the first man who brings me one!”

One customer had been drinking, and he began coughing his beer up through his nostrils. Another had been leaning in his chair, and he barely saved himself from falling over backward.

“Uh,” one lanky woodsman said, “talk to Gallen. He’s the only one who goes about these days. He’s in the woods now. Some say he’s still hunting the last of the demons down!”

“Hunting demons, is he, eh?” Thomas shook his head.

Thomas looked out over the crowd. There were some stout men in the group, but none of them were eager to take him up on the offer. They stood drinking, studiously ignoring him.

“All right, fifty pounds, then!” Thomas said.

No one stirred, and frankly, he could go no higher.

“Man, you don’t have to kill the buggers, mind you!” Thomas said. “If I understand right, they should already be dead.” But no one budged.

“Och, there must be a trapper hereabouts, someone with the need and gumption to hike the woods?”

Several men shook their heads, and Thomas was a bit amazed at their lack of spine. “Then come outside and point the way to Geata na Chruinne for me. I’ll go myself!”

A couple of men led Thomas outside, pointed down to the ridge of a nearby mountain. “At the foot of the ridge is the gate. If you wander around enough, you’ll find it in a dark hollow there. It’s about four miles by foot, and no man in his right mind would get caught off the road there after dark. The wights are thick in Coille Sidhe.”

Several onlookers stopped to see what Thomas was up to, and Thomas said loudly, “Oh, sure I’ll be back by sundown. I plan to have a word with the man that wants to marry my Maggie.”

Thomas went to his wagon, got out his walking stick and half a skin of stale water. His joints felt loose, and his head was a bit foggy. And he found himself watching the gray woods, wishing that Gallen was here now. The men of town were spooked, sure enough, and he convinced himself that was good news, for it meant that perhaps there was something for him to find out in those woods. Perhaps he’d find more than he could handle.

He headed north, walking to the edge of the forest, and a shout went up from some of the boys. Soon there were forty people walking behind him, children and women, curious fold, but most of them stopped at the edge of the wood, frightened to go in.

Thomas turned and addressed them. “If any of you older boys have a mind to come with me, I’ve a mind to go and collect some artifacts. I’ll be looking for the skulls of demons or angels, any of their clothing or weapons. I’ll pay a pound for each boy that comes with me to pack the bounty out.”

Many of the boys looked around a bit as if trying to think what business they might have elsewhere, but one young lad stepped forward on shaky legs, a tough-looking boy with a broad chest and intelligent eyes. “I’ll help, for five pounds.”

“Five pounds then, if we find anything,” Thomas said.

The boy nodded in agreement.

“Good lad,” Thomas said, and he turned, leading the way. The boy rushed across the street, grabbed a hatchet from the doorstep of a house-tree where someone had been chopping kindling, then hurried up, walking right at Thomas’s heel, gripping the hatchet in white fingers.

They walked under the pines for a hundred yards, until the limbs of the tall trees began to block the sun. The humus was thick and held a print, and in no time at all, they came upon a trail that held stunningly odd prints: some of the tracks came from booted feet that couldn’t have been less than eighteen inches long and ten wide. Other tracks were handprints of some creature with a span of twenty inches, but the monster had only four fingers.

Thomas stopped and surveyed the prints for a long time, found his breath coming ragged, and his mouth felt dry. He took a swig of his stale water.

“Those are demon tracks, certain,” the boy said. “The ones that look like handprints are from the creature that walked on all fours.”

“By all that’s holy!” Thomas mouthed. “To tell you true, I wasn’t certain we’d find anything.”

“What do you plan to do if we get a demon skull?” the boy asked.

“I’ll mount the damned thing on a wall in the inn,” Thomas said, perhaps being too forthright.

“Aye,” the boy breathed, “that would be something! I’ll tell you, the reason I came is I want some of this stuff, too. A demon head maybe, or something from an angel. When the angels came through town, I climbed the steeple of the church and looked out over the woods. That night, there was smoke and fire coming from the forest, flashes of lightning. I reckon there was a fearsome battle, and I prayed to God and the saints something fierce. But what happened out here, no one knows—only Gallen O’Day. He came out to battle with an angel at his side, and he’s not breathed a word about what happened. But no angels came back, and no demons, either. I figure Gallen bested them all.”

Thomas glanced up at the boy, saw that his face was pale, frightened. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Chance,” the boy answered.

“Well, Chance, if we find a demon skull, it’s mine and I’ll pay you the five pounds I promised. But if we find two, the second is yours. Beyond that, if we find the mother lode, I’ll give you some of the booty.”

Chance smiled at that, and they took a pee, then hurried down the trail.

Thin high clouds were coming in, making it darker and cool, promising rain. Thomas hurried, and the forest went silent. No birds sang, no squirrels leapt in the trees. It was a strange, ominous quiet. Even the trees seemed to refrain from creaking in the small wind.

Thomas had been in the woods plenty of times when the forest was just as quiet, but this silence got his heart beating. He kept stopping, looking behind him. He felt as if he were being watched.

“Sure this is an unholy silence,” Chance breathed at one point, loosening his collar.

And Thomas stopped, his heart was beating too hard. He kept thinking of that nice warm inn, with its mugs of beer, and he wished he was back there.

But they followed the tracks over a long hill, up a ridge, and back down to a creek. There the trees opened up, letting in more light. Still, the deathly silence reigned in the forest.

Chance began slowing, and to hurry him, Thomas said, “Pick up your pace, you old cow—it’s not as if you’re pulling a plow!”

The boy picked up his pace, and ten yards farther he grabbed a stick and walloped Thomas in the back of the head.

Thomas turned so fast that he fell on his butt. The boy was so mad he was in tears. “I’ll not have you talkin’ down to me, like I was some cur. My name is Chance O’Dell, and you’ll address me proper, or you’ll find yourself in trouble with me and my clan! I’m
Mister
O’Dell to you!” The boy shook his stick in Thomas’s face, and Thomas took a moment, trying to think how he’d offended the boy. His mind was still foggy from too much rum, and it took a few seconds for understanding to burn through the haze.

“I’m sorry if my rudeness wounded you, young Mister O’Dell,” Thomas said. “I meant nothing by it. I say such things by force of habit. And if you think me evil for it, think on this: what is in another man a vice, is in me a virtue. As a satirist, I walk behind the proud men of the world, making rude noises. And the louder and ruder I get, the more good folks like you pay me. So, it’s true that I’ve got no common sense when it comes to addressing decent, honorable folk like yourself.”

“Well,” Chance growled. “If you make more rude noises about me, I’ll pay you fair, all right. I’ll pay you with a stick!” He shook the stick in Thomas’s face, then threw it aside.

Thomas laughed. “Well, next time I want a good spanking, I know who to come to. Come now, friend, help me up, and let’s go find us something grand!”

The boy gave him a hand up, and they hurried along, and the boy seemed to calm down quickly. In minutes the whole incident was perhaps forgotten by the boy, but Thomas filed it away in his brain. A boy who was that brutal and quick to take offense likely came from a family with a strong sense of honor, and it wouldn’t be wise to ever cross one of them O’Dells again, or else Thomas would end up in a blood feud. And with only two Flynns left in the world, it would be a short feud.

At the foot of a mountain, in the shadow of a glade, they came upon some booted footprints that were more proportioned to the size of a man.

“See,” Chance muttered. “This is where the angels came on their track. It looks like there were four, maybe five of them, and they came stalking the demons.”

“Some say that it was the sidhe who came, not angels,” Thomas ventured.

“Angels, I think,” Chance whispered. “You’ve never seen people so beautiful, so regal. And Gallen said it was the Angel of Death that walked at his side.”

Thomas just grunted. He had a hard time imagining angels that wore boots—slippers maybe—but he didn’t want to argue. Besides, he wondered, would an angel even need to walk? Didn’t they have wings? He thought it more likely that they would just flap about like giant white crows.

They followed the trail along the creek, both of them stalking warily, looking about. Suddenly the brush exploded just before them, and Thomas’s heart nearly stopped. A stag leapt off through the forest, but Thomas had to stop to let his pounding heart rest.

He looked back, and poor Chance had a face whiter than sea foam. “Come on,” Thomas said. “Let’s look just a bit farther.”

A hundred yards on, they smelled the scent of burnt brush and left their trail to find a large circle of scorched earth. There, in the center of the burn, lay a huge pile of bones from some manlike thing that would have stood nearly nine feet tall. Its flesh had melted into the bones, and for all the world it looked as if it had been struck by lightning.

Thomas walked around the thing, afraid to touch it. The giant was sprawled out flat on his belly, arms wide. He held a long black rod in one hand. Bits of metal were fused into his bones in some spots, as if necklaces and bracelets had melted into him.

“So, this was a demon?” Thomas asked, circling the thing.

“Aye, that was one.”

Thomas went to the head, kicked it off, then rolled it over to look at its face. The skull was covered with a black tarry substance from the melted flesh, and the eyes had burned out of their sockets. The eye sockets were large enough so that Thomas could easily fit his thick fists into them. But it was the massive jaws and teeth that attracted him. Those teeth were big enough for a stallion, and twice as yellow.

“They had orange eyes,” Chance said, “and skin as green-gray as a frog’s.”

Thomas just knelt there, shaking his head in wonder. “Who’d have thought? Who’d have thought?” He sighed. “Well, here’s one oddity for my inn.”

He tried to lift the head, but there was still a brain inside, and the thing was as heavy as a good-sized boulder. They rolled it over to the edge of the creek, onto a worn path, and determined to leave it while they searched ahead.

They hiked along for an hour heading up Bald Mountain, finding nothing more, and Thomas began to feel doubtful, and he began to rest more easily. They’d been out for hours and seen nothing horrific. He hoped, he’d hoped for the mother lode, but all he had to show for his day’s work was one misshapen skull.

They finally climbed up past the road to An Cochan, and near the mountaintop they came to an old burn where there were no trees. The air was cold up here, and chunks of ice lay in the ground. Even now, it felt as if it might snow. It was beginning to get late, and Thomas was thinking of heading back, but they climbed up onto a log, looked up over a little valley where a fire had burned off the larger trees years earlier. Many great logs lay fallen, and ferns had grown chest-high in them. Here and there were clumps of snow from the two storms that had swept over the countryside in as many weeks. Thomas looked for any blackening in the ferns, any sign of a recent fire.

They stood, heaving from effort, looking up the little valley to the mountain beyond, and a few pigeons began cooing from their roosting tree at the edge of the forest.

It was silent, peaceful. A cool wind played with Thomas’s hair, and his breath came out and blew away in a fog from his mouth.

Then for no discernible reason except to ease his stress, Chance let out a long howl, as if he were a wolf. In the center of the clearing below them the ferns erupted and a jaybird flapped into the sky, chattering angrily, searching for the source of the howls.