Vengeance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 1

  Vengeance

  The Umbra Chronicles

  Book 1

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sneak Peak!

  A Note from Grace

  EXCERPT

  About the Author

  Coming soon from Grace Martin

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Cairnagorn used to be a city, but it was nothing but a network of caves now. Elisabeth and I sped through tunnels that used to be streets, caves that used to be lined with laden bookshelves, caverns that used to be ballrooms. I held Elisabeth’s limp hand tightly. I was amazed she could still run. After the shock we’d had, it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other and follow my lead.

  I kept glancing behind us. If I caught sight of him, if he came within arm’s reach, I was going to bring the whole mountain down on top of us. My wand was in my hair, holding my long hair in place as usual. If he caught us, I would kill us all. We would be better off dead.

  ‘Come on, not far now,’ I gasped. For all the difference it made, I might as well not have bothered. She looked like she was still asleep. I began to breathe even faster. Just let him catch up to us, I thought. Just let him catch up to me and let him see what I can do.

  Oh, to laugh. I’m so terribly, terribly brave in my imagination. Not so much in real life. I glanced behind again and saw him round a corner past an old temple.

  I was so brave in my imagination. Do you know what I did when I saw him?

  I tripped. And I took Elisabeth down with me.

  By the time I scrambled to my feet and dragged Elisabeth up with me, he’d caught up to us.

  I ripped the wand out of my hair.

  ‘Don’t come any closer!’ I waved the little silver stick that was no longer than my hand.

  Maldwyn was faster than me. Maldwyn’s lightning had thrown me backwards even before my hair began to blow in the wind that is a side effect of magic. He grabbed Elisabeth, his arm going around her neck as he held her upright, pulling her close against him. He held his other hand out towards me, keeping the tip of his wand pointed straight at me. He was faster, he was more ruthless. I had one vulnerability and he knew that he had his arm around her right now.

  ‘Put the wand down, Emer.’ Maldwyn’s hand crept across Elisabeth’s chest, creeping towards her neck.

  Even in her passive state, her skin crawled. Her eyes met mine for a moment, dark and dull, before she closed them. She jumped when she heard the crack of lightning that leaped towards me from Maldwyn’s wand. I was barely able to jump out of the way in time.

  ‘I said, put the wand down!’ he shouted. His hand was under Elisabeth’s chin now, fingers curling around her neck.

  I opened my hand and dropped the wand. The little amethyst crystal at the end winked out. I kept my hands in the air. If he killed my sister, I would die. And, by God, so would Maldwyn.

  ‘I’m your guardian again, Emer,’ he said. ‘I won the lottery, fair and square. You and Elisabeth are mine until next year, so you might as well stop fighting it. You know there’s nowhere you can go. Make it easy on yourself and come with me quietly. Make it easy on Elisabeth.’

  He tightened his hand for a moment, only a moment, but Elisabeth jerked like he’d stung her with lightning.

  ‘All right!’ The words burned like acid in my mouth. ‘Stop it. Let her go. I’ll come. I’m the one you enjoy anyway.’

  Maldwyn loosened the hand around Elisabeth’s throat just long enough to crook his finger at me. When I was close enough, he let go of Elisabeth and grabbed me.

  He pointed the wand into my neck, the point pressing into my skin. I was afraid he was going to stab me with it, push the slender stick clear through my throat. It wouldn’t have surprised me. He’d always hated me the most. And Maldwyn was the type of man who got great pleasure out of my pain.

  He bent his head and kissed me. He hadn’t had his hands on me for four years, not since I was fourteen. It was even worse than I’d remembered. Because I wasn’t a fool, because Elisabeth was still so close, because that wand still stuck tight against my throat, I just stood there and let it happen, when I’d sworn I would never let it happen again.

  The ground rumbled beneath our feet. ‘What the hell is that?’ he muttered. There was a louder rumble and a light rain of dirt shaken free from the collapsed stones above that enclosed the remains of the city. Elisabeth sank to her knees and looked up at the ragged ceiling of the cavern, like a devout worshipper of an ancient stone god. When a third rumble knocked loose the smaller stones above us and opened up a crack wide enough to expose the sky, we all stared upwards.

  Elisabeth started to laugh.

  Above us, in that crack of light, a dragon appeared, its wings wide enough to block out the whole world. It swept its wings upwards and forced its feet against the crack, making more of the ceiling collapse. Maldwyn left us behind. He sprinted for cover deeper in the old temple. Elisabeth just knelt there, looking up at the falling rocks, laughing.

  I flung myself over Elisabeth, clutching her with one hand while I raised the other above our heads like I was going to catch the falling rocks.

  Maldwyn was faster with his wand, more ruthless, but I was more powerful. Even as a child I had been more powerful, but all he had to do was touch Elisabeth and I’d let him do anything he wanted to me. But Maldwyn needed a wand. He used the magic that was in the crystal at the base of the wand. I used the magic that was in my bone and blood. I held up my hand and the rocks fell all around us but not so much as the smallest stone grazed Elisabeth’s cheek.

  There was no silence to follow the cave in. People were shouting, their voices distant but determined beneath the roar of dragons that filled the air.

  Elisabeth squeezed my hand. ‘This is our chance,’ she whispered. ‘We need to go through the dark door now.’

  I only hoped that Maldwyn’s head was stoved in by a very large, very sharp rock, but it seemed too much to hope for. The only thing I would like better than his accidental death would be to kill him myself.

  Elisabeth and I clambered over the rocks. Some of them were enormous, as large as horses, as large as houses. Somewhere under there was my wand. I longed to look for her. She had never spoken any other word than my name, whispered in my mind, but she had made her feelings clear on more than one occasion. I already felt lonely without her, but I had no time to stop and look for her. It was the wand or Elisabeth. Elisabeth was my twin. I didn’t hesitate, but I still regretted leaving the wand behind.

  Maldwyn must have seen us as we climbed over the top of the mound of rocks that had fallen around us. He shouted, ‘Emer, you treacherous bitch, you come back here!’

  This was not language likely to induce me to return. I took a moment to shout back, ‘Not if it meant giving up the last breath in my body!’

  ‘What about the last breath in Elisabeth’s body?’ Maldwyn shouted back. I glimpsed h
is wand still in his hand. He cast lightning towards me, but I had Elisabeth. He had no power over me now. I just flicked my finger towards him like I was getting dust off my tunic and he flew backwards the whole length of the street.

  We ran. We didn’t have the witch light of the wands to light the dark tunnels anymore, but the dragons had caved in the roof over such a large area that we could see for what seemed like miles.

  We could see – and could be seen. There was still shouting from soldiers and roaring of dragons, but I heard a recurring sound in the soldiers’ shouts. ‘Emer!’ and ‘Elisabeth!’ I didn’t know if it made me feel better or worse to know that soldiers knew our names.

  Then the soldiers shouted, ‘Hawk!’ and ‘Sparrow!’ and a chill ran down my spine. Those were the names that Elisabeth and I used among ourselves, and only in private. Every year the creepyguardians gave us new names. We had to have something to call one another. Elisabeth was a gentle sparrow. I was a hawk that liked to taste blood.

  I’d heard about magi in ancient times, when magic was more plentiful – and not against the law. They’d been able to change themselves into birds. That kind of skill was lost long ago. Elisabeth and I clambered our way over the rocks and I just hoped like blazes that neither of us hurt ourselves because healing magic not only took a lot of energy but also took a lot of time.

  We had an advantage over the soldiers and Maldwyn. We knew where we were going.

  We’d been here before, the last time Maldwyn had won the draw and became our guardian for the year. He’d kept us inside Cairnagorn, so no one from the outside would know what he was doing to us. But we found a secret place. We planned to escape.

  I terrified Elisabeth half out of her wits when I first took her there. We were still only thirteen, and Maldwyn had only been our guardian for a few weeks. Already it was obvious that this year was going to be a very bad year. It started bad, and it was going to get worse.

  Every year, at the winter solstice, we’d go back to Caillen, the village that had sprung up when the city of Cairnagorn was destroyed a few months before Elisabeth and I were born. The person who looked after us in the preceding year took us to Caillen. I always described them as creepyguardians if I managed to say it before Elisabeth could stop me. She was always the mature one, not that I set a very high bar for maturity.

  I found the secret place first. I was the one who explored. Elisabeth would follow, but only if I went first. Cairnagorn had been a Library, still famous the world over but no one dared venture into Cairnagorn for that kind of knowledge anymore. Magic was illegal, and the punishment for any man, woman or child found to be using it was being burned at the stake.

  The Library was ruined now. Even before the avalanche that covered the city, the Library had been deep inside the mountain, accessible by tunnels that would open only if you knew the right words – or if you had enough magic in your bones. The gates would never open for Maldwyn.

  Inside the Library was a series of large rooms, many with ceilings collapsed. The ornate stonework lay in crumbled piles among heaps of scrolls and books. I’d wandered along the piles and picked up a book or two on the first day. And then I’d come back the next day and read a bit more. I’d gone every day after that. I didn’t tell Elisabeth about the Library until I found the Portal, too many months into the year.

  The room with the Portal was enormous and virtually untouched by the damage caused by the avalanche. The Portal was a large, upright circle of darkness that whirled with shadows deep within its surface. It didn’t have a border or anything to make it stand up and when I walked around it, I saw it was a narrow slice of darkness, as thin as a sheet of paper. The back was the same as the front.

  I stuck my arm into it, standing at the side, and watched my hand disappear into the surface of the dark… and not come out the other side. Feeling terribly brave, I stuck my face into it.

  There was no more darkness. There were colours, more colours than I’d ever seen before. They moved toward me, around me, engulfed me. I drew my head back smartly.

  ‘Wow,’ I said to the empty room. ‘I’ve got to get Lynnevet to see this.’

  Elisabeth’s name that year was Lynnevet. Mine was Emer that year, too. Our creepyguardians chose our names. For whatever reasons, Maldwyn decided that I looked like an Emer and my sister looked like a Lynnevet. We were careful never to call each other Hawk and Sparrow in front of the creepyguardians. They would have punished us.

  I brought Lynnevet to the Library. She was strange when she saw the Portal. ‘I know what this is.’ She stood in front of the sheet of darkness and stared at shadows as they moved. ‘These take you places ‒ they take you to different times. Our last guardian mentioned it – she didn’t know I was listening – when she was talking to the Master. No one has the power to make them anymore. We could leave. We could leave now.’

  Before I could stop her, she stepped through the Portal. At the last moment, I managed to grab her wrist. I was left holding an arm unattached to anything else as Lynnevet vanished into the Portal. I pulled Lynnevet’s arm with all my strength. I was afraid I was going to pull her arm off, or the Portal would close and I would be left holding an amputated arm.

  My feet skidded towards the Portal. I threw my weight backwards and fell to the stone floor. My momentum pulled Lynnevet back with me. She landed on top of me. I started shouting because Lynnevet was screaming.

  When I got her calm enough to use words, she shouted at me about colours and dead people and three of me, and a magic wind so strong it created first one vortex then another until a dozen tornadoes were twisting around the room like mad dancers.

  Lynnevet never went back to the Library. I did, though. I had more and more incentive to find something to help me use my magic against him. In the end he broke me. Then he took the most precious things I had away from me and broke them too.

  As we ran deeper into the ruins, deeper into the mountain, I thought of how Elisabeth had described that other place. Colours and the dead and me, surrounded by tornadoes of magic wind. It wasn’t the kind of place a sensible person would flee to, but we were out of options.

  We came to the gates of the Library. I opened my arms and held my hands closed into fists, out towards the stone doors. They only opened for the right words, which I didn’t know, or for magic in bone and blood. I opened my hands.

  The gates slid open, rolling along a track on the floor as they opened into the Library’s entrance room. Elisabeth and I hurried through when they were open wide enough for us to slip through sideways. I turned, just beyond the doors, and closed my fists to them. They slid shut again.

  That had to buy some time. The soldiers were the ones who would burn a child at the stake for having magic. They wouldn’t be able to open the gates. Maldwyn had no magic in his bones and if he tried to open the gates with magic the soldiers would arrest him – maybe even kill him on the spot. I could but hope, anyway.

  We were safe. Exhausted and gasping for breath, I sank to my hands and knees. Elisabeth folded up neatly into a cross-legged position on the floor, then bent in half at the waist until it looked like she was trying to tie herself into a knot.

  Finally, she raised her head.

  ‘He can’t get through the gates, can he?’ she asked. She hadn’t even caught her breath yet. I was a little better. Last year’s creepyguardian did not encourage exercise, so naturally I was as fit as I had ever been in my life.

  ‘He can’t get through the gates,’ I said. I bent over her, resting my head on her shoulder blade. We sat like that for long minutes. The soldiers shouted beyond the gates. They couldn’t get through. And with any luck, they’d kill Maldwyn.

  ‘We can’t stay here forever,’ Elisabeth said.

  ‘Neither can they,’ I whispered.

  ‘Don’t make me go back through that Portal, Hawk.’

  I didn’t reply.

  We caught our breath. There was a new voice beyond the gates. The soldiers had stopped shouting. It was
a woman speaking, her voice low and confident. The soldiers cheered.

  The gates began to open.

  Elisabeth and I scrambled to our feet and ran for our lives. I didn’t look back. The soldiers were close behind us. I could even hear them breathing.

  As we gained the final chamber where the Portal stood, a streak of lightning sparked through the corridor and struck Elisabeth in the back. She arched and stopped like she’d been pulled backwards by a string, then she fell forward, her hands raised, like the string had been cut.

  I turned to fling fire at Maldwyn. The fireball had already left my hand by the time I realised it wasn’t Maldwyn who had sparked lightning at my sister. It was a woman, one who looked so much like me, she might have been my own reflection in 20 years’ time. But I had never looked like that.

  Her white gown and silver cloak still swirled from the winds caused by magic. Dark hair was piled into a roll on the top of her head surrounded by a silver crown that sparkled with diamonds. It could only be the White Queen, the Thief of the Throne.

  We were dead, yeah. We were dead. The White Queen and her guards were the only people in the world allowed to use magic, and she was a very, very powerful mage. The whole country saved money on executioners when the Queen could incinerate the guilty with a wave of her hand. All we needed was a good dustpan and brush.

  Elisabeth was flat on the floor and I’d just flung fire at the White Queen.

  Yeah. Dead. Since I was probably dead anyway, I plucked another fireball and raised my hand ready to throw it.

  ‘Get away from us!’ I shouted. ‘Or so help me I’ll throw it!’

  The Queen glared at me. ‘You are always so dramatic, Emer,’ she spat. ‘Even now, you’re being theatrical.’

  The White Queen knew my name? I hardly had time to wonder before the Queen threw up her hands and arched backwards, just as Elisabeth had. Behind her, riding in a chariot drawn by a Pegasus, wand pointed at the falling woman still sparkling with lightning, was the Dark Queen. She was dressed all in black and her long dark hair flew in the wind as her Pegasus sped closer.