Page 28 of Once Upon a Castle
CASTLE DOOM
Jill Gregory
To Marianne, Nora, and Ruth—with love
1
Danger rode themoonless night like a witch as the slender, cloaked figure made her way through the gloom-shrouded countryside. The dark road was deserted, the woods flanking it silent but for the rustling tree branches and the moaning winter wind. Yet the gray night was fraught with peril. Arianne felt it in her bones. Fear prickled down her spine as she hurried along the road toward the Briar Knoll Inn. She glanced this way and that and tightened the snood that hid her fiery hair, but she never slowed her pace.
Once her fingers brushed the jeweled dagger hidden within her cloak, and the fear subsided a little. But her breath came in short, rapid bursts, and her skin beneath the dark woolen cloak felt clammy.
The fear was not for herself but for her brother, Marcus, the imprisoned Count of Galeron. And for the kingdom she’d left behind and the shattered lives of her people. All depended on her now, on what happened this night.
If she failed to free Marcus from the dungeon of Castle Doom this eve, all would be lost. He would be hanged in three days’ time, and their distant cousin Julian would then have succeeded in cruelly subduing both his own lands of Dinadan and those of her beloved Galeron. Whatever these neighboring kingdoms had once known of peace and prosperity would be lost from that time forward. If she failed…
You shall not fail,Arianne told herself, quickening her pace as the shadowy outline of the inn’s stables came into view. Her soft lips pressed together in determination.Duke Julian will find that Marcus and I are not to be betrayed and bested so easily. He will discover that despite his treachery he has not yet won.
A sudden pounding of hooves sent her dashing for cover behind an oak tree, her heart skittering as she scrambled to conceal herself.
A pair of destriers ridden by Julian’s black-masked knights came up the road, less than a stone’s throw from her hiding place. Arianne crouched, scarcely daring to breathe, as deep voices reached her straining ears.
“‘Tis a night for sleeping in a soft bed with a pretty maid,” one of the soldiers grumbled, “not for patrolling when the whole damned countryside’s asleep.”
“Me, I’d rather be here than inside the walls of the castle.” His companion’s voice rumbled through the woods. “The duke heard a report earlier that Lady Arianne of Galeron had been found at the border. It proved false, but that, taken with the gypsy’s prediction in the square yesterday about Lord Nicholas returning to wrest the kingdom away, put the duke in the devil’s own black rage. Word is he struck down the minstrels playing at his supper and had the gypsy woman whipped and locked in the dungeon.”
The soldier beside him gave a snort of laughter. His companion joined in and then continued, “Heard tell he imprisoned the messenger bearing the false report as well. He ordered that none of the prisoners in the dungeon are to be fed for three days.”
“He needn’t be so nervous. Lady Arianne will be found,” the other soldier said with comfortable assurance, his voice fading as the horses moved off. “She can’t stay in hiding forever.”
The other man’s reply was drowned out by the clatter of hooves as the horses turned onto the paved road to the inn.
Arianne drew in her breath. She found that she was trembling with rage. No food for the prisoners for three days!
Marcus,she thought, choking back a cry of despair for her brother. So Julian planned to starve him right up until his hanging.
Fury rose in a bitter tempest within her. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to drive her dagger through Julian’s heart herself, plunge it deep until his life’s blood spilled across the castle floors.
But she quickly gained control of her emotions. If all went as planned tonight, Marcus would be freed within the next few hours. They would flee together, hide, and make their way to the secret camp where Felix, the captain of Galeron’s troops, was gathering Marcus’s scattered knights. Then they would plan how best to recapture Castle Galeron from Julian’s marauders—
Arianne’s thoughts broke off suddenly as black wings beat the sky above her head. She glanced up to see the crow wheeling, cawing harshly, toward the looming towers of the castle.
Arianne shivered. For a moment she feared that the crow was spying on her, carrying tales of her presence just outside the castle walls to Julian himself. But she shook off that absurd idea. Julian knew nothing, not even that she was here in Dinadan, for she’d been in disguise. No one, perhaps not even Morgana, her own lady-in-waiting, would recognize Lady Arianne of Galeron in the plain-gowned tavern wench who served ale and mopped floors at the Jug and Spoon Inn near the river road.
Standing in the windy darkness, the trees bending and sighing about her, Arianne stared for a moment at the castle that the villagers had of late dubbed Castle Doom. Even through the gloom, the outline of the towers and turrets seemed to glimmer with a cold white mist that chilled her to the bone. How strange that as children she and Marcus and Julian and Nicholas had all played and hidden and frolicked there, that once the gleaming stone fortress had been a place of rich beauty and gaiety, where minstrels performed and banquets were held and the people came and went in peace and harmony. Under Archduke Armand—Julian’s father and a distant cousin to Arianne and Marcus—it had been a shimmering place where the duke ruled with wisdom and tolerance and an eye toward the welfare of his people.
But the good Duke Armand was dead now, and Julian, his son by his second wife, had succeeded him upon the throne.
Julian was a very different sort of man than his father had been. A lying, cunning villain who even as a child had cheated at games in order to win, Arianne remembered scornfully.
If only Marcus had not left Galeron to try to forge a peace treaty with Julian. If only Nicholas had not been banished…
Nicholas.
No use thinking ofhim, Arianne told herself angrily as she spun away from the castle and headed swiftly toward the stables behind the Briar Knoll Inn.Lord Nicholas of Dinadan has chosen not to return to Dinadan in its time of need, ignoring the plight of your brother, whom he claimed as his closest friend, she reminded herself. Do not think of him. He is not what you imagined him all those years ago, when you were naught but a silly child.
A month ago, Marcus had come on his peacemaking mission to Duke Julian, to negotiate a treaty that would end the border raids into Galeron. Instead, he found himself imprisoned and his lands viciously attacked. Since then Arianne had been able to think of little else besides Nicholas, Duke Armand’s oldest son. As boys, Marcus and Nicholas had been the best of friends. They’d sworn allegiance to one another, pledged to stand by one another through fire and famine. But now, though she’d had Marcus’s captain send messages far and wide, Nicholas had not returned or responded.
He’d disappeared ten years earlier, after Duke Armand banished him, and no one had heard from him since.
