Blood of Wonderland (Queen of Hearts Saga #2)(20)
Sir Gorrann smiled and stroked his beard with disturbing fondness. Dinah was suddenly very afraid of him.
“I stalked and killed one each night, so that the rest might live in fear before their death’s imminent arrival. They called me the Night Ghost and wrongly assumed that I was a Yurkei assassin. When at last my vengeance was complete, I left their bodies in the Twisted Wood, just like they had left my Amabel to die. I lived for months in these hills, eventually finding the will to continue on living.I made my way to Wonderland proper. There was nothing left for me in the Twisted Wood. I never wanted to see those places again, those places in my memory where I had first seen my wife, or where we had conceived our child.”
Sir Gorrann cleared his throat and blinked before continuing along the uphill trail. His voice steadied. “I made my way to the palace, where I was blindsided by its size and wealth. I fell in with unsavory bedfellows, and soon was stealing to eat, then stealing to live. I was a good thief when I wasn’t drinking, but unfortunately that was more often than not. I was caught breaking into a lady of the court’s house while attempting to steal her jewels, so drunk I could barely stand. Her husband was a beast of a man and rightly beat me to a bloody pulp. I was thrown into the Black Towers.” Dinah’s mouth fell open, and he managed to give her a rough smile.
“Yes, Princess, yeh aren’t the only one who has seen the horrors of the Black Towers. Luckily for me I was in the Thieves’ Tower. I was never strapped against its terrible roots.” Dinah said a silent prayer that Harris was not being strapped to the tree. Seeing him devoured from the inside as Faina Baker had been would surely be enough to break her.
“I was imprisoned in the Black Towers for two years. It was a dark time, but I managed to befriend a young Club who told me everything he knew about Wonderland, the Black Towers, and the Cards. I was forced to join the Spades, for which I am ever grateful. Thanks to the Spades, I had food, a place to live, and a purpose. Eventually I became the lead tracker for the king, and that led me to being here with yeh now.”
Dinah frowned as she sent a scattering of pebbles rolling down the steep mountainside. “I still don’t understand why you sought to help me. You’re a Spade. Therefore you are loyal to the king and the Cards. You have betrayed your oaths in a grand way.”
The Spade climbed up onto an overhead ledge to view their surroundings and then looked down on Dinah, who observed him with confused admiration. Leading Morte, she scrambled up the path behind him, finally approaching the summit of the mountain.
The Spade stood before her, his stare intense. “Indeed. I have broken my vows by helping yeh. Surely yeh’ve assumed that there was something I left out of the story. One man remains, just one left, and my vengeance against him will be a prize above rubies. A young man, a young king, recently crowned by his father, who ordered the raid on my village, was present for the murder of my family before he was called back to Wonderland on royal business. This man I could not kill silently while creeping through the woods, for he was guarded night and day by fighters more skilled than I. To take his life is not enough. I must see him fall, to see everything that he loves stripped from him, which as far as I can see, is only power.”
Dinah stared at the Spade as fat drops of rain drenched them both. Lightning snaked across the gray sky. “Vengeance. This is why I help yeh, and this is why we hike endlessly through these mountains. So that someday we will both have justice for the loved ones taken from us.”
Dinah stared at the Spade, not sure what to say while her head reeled with potent thoughts and emotions. An empty hiss of air escaped her lips as she wiped a stray tear from her eye with the back of her hand, mingling with the rain that was now coming in sideways. Her pain was nothing compared to his loss, and yet she felt a sting of anger burning through her. His motivations had finally shown, and she was aware of just how close she was to a man who could have taken her life a dozen times before she woke.
Finally, she found the words she was looking for and began to speak. “Sir Gorrann, I am sorry for the loss of your family, but I have no intention of returning to Wonderland Palace. Not tomorrow, not ever. Now, if you will please tell me where you are leading me, I’m certain we can—”
“Be silent!” hissed the Spade, his head turning swiftly to the west. Morte’s ears perked up. There was only silence, and then the crunch of a leaf, the sound of a step on the trail below them. “Hurry!” he whispered. “Someone’s following us. We must pass over this summit, and quickly.”
Fear churned through Dinah as she gripped the leather reins, urging Morte as quickly as she dared up and over the rocky slope. Coming over the rocks, the pair ran into a sheer cliff face. An enormous slab of gray rock loomed before them, extending its jagged ends into the noon sun. Hundreds of boulders filled the small space, as if a giant had been playing with his toys and left them in a terrible pile.
“We’re trapped!” Dinah snapped. “Where did you lead us?”
Sir Gorrann was scanning the face of the wall, searching for something Dinah couldn’t see. There were several footsteps now, echoing off the ledges below, the sound of more than a dozen men inching ever closer. At first Dinah was confused as to why they had not been swarmed over already, but then she understood. Whoever tracked them wanted to push them over the cliff face. Sir Gorrann continued to search between boulders.
“What are you doing?” Dinah screamed. “We have to fight!” Finally, Sir Gorrann found what he was looking for. Two boulders, perfectly aligned, of equal shape and size. Upon first glance, there was nothing extraordinary about them, but on further inspection, their identical shape, marking, and color was unnerving. Dinah ran to Sir Gorrann, her sword drawn.