Forest of Ruin (Age of Legends 3)

It was as perfect a bedchamber as any girl of nine or ten summers could wish, filled with dolls from every part of the empire, every shade of skin and style of clothing. There were books, too, some of them simple romances but others more suited for children. An easel sat in one corner, with an inexpert watercolor of flowers on it. Gaily colored cushions covered the sleeping pallet. On a low table there was a collection of bright hair ribbons and jeweled clips and stones that seemed to serve no purpose but to be pretty stones.

When Gavril saw her staring at the room, he looked abashed. "My mother . . ."

"She is your mother. Nothing more needs to be said. She has not had an easy life."

"No, she has not."

"The house is empty then," she said. "That is why no archer attacked. They knew we were coming and left."

"Yes . . ." He looked about, his green eyes dark with worry.

"She's not here, Gavril," Moria said, her voice lowering. "If you are concerned that she is, and that harm has come to her, look about. There is no place for her to be."

"Yes . . ." His gaze still surveyed the room.

"Fine, we shall search. To ease your mind. Perhaps she hides--alive and safe--under a trapdoor or such

, and if so, we will leave her there, but you will know she is well."

"Thank you."

"I'll start in here. You take the kitchen."

He nodded and left. Moria began her search, and as she hunted and moved aside Kiri's belongings, a clearer picture of the woman formed. Alvar had said she was as "empty-headed as one of her dolls." Moria now understood what he meant, at least about the dolls. As for the rest, she did not think Kiri Kitsune was a woman of low intelligence. Gavril was proof of that.

Instead, she seemed a girl who had never quite become a woman, never been allowed to grow up, taken from her family and thrust into a loveless marriage where her only duty was to provide children, which she had not been terribly successful at. When she did give Alvar a son, any chance for her to mature with motherhood had also been wrenched away as her son was raised by others, returned to her when he was ten summers old.

From what Moria knew of Gavril, he would have been ten summers going on twenty.

"Where are you now, Kiri?" Moria whispered as she checked under the rugs and moved pillows, looking for a trapdoor. "You left quickly, taking none of your treasures. Did you leave willingly?"

Moria suspected that, whatever the circumstances, Kiri had left willingly, regardless of whether those coming for her were friends or foes. Her life was one of being guided, day by day, step by step, and perhaps even kidnapping might have seemed only like the possibility for a change of scenery.

At that thought, Moria looked about the dark and dreary room. Kiri's paintings did little to lift the gloom. Moria could not imagine Kiri stuck in this place, a woman who obviously loved color and beauty and worlds beyond her life's walls.

That's when Moria saw the peephole. She'd been thinking that Kiri might insist on more, and as Moria scoured the wall, she'd noticed one painting, hung oddly low and quivering slightly, as if from a breeze.

Behind that painting she found a hole, painstakingly dug into the mud wall. It was right beside Kiri's sleeping pallet, as if she'd lain here at night, staring out. Kept a prisoner in her own home, she'd had this one small act of rebellion, a peephole to freedom, perhaps even seeing haunting beauty in that desolate world. A lost girl who loved beauty and longed for freedom, had likely longed for it all her life.

Moria bent to get a glimpse at Kiri's secret world and saw--

A man's face. Moria fell back, her dagger raised. Then her mind replayed the image and . . .

By the ancestors, that expression. The horror.

It was not the face of a living man. His expression had told her that, as had the placement of his head, set below her direct line of vision.

A head. Lying on the ground. She swallowed and glanced over her shoulder for Gavril. He was still busy in the next room. Good. He did not need to see this. Nor did she. However . . .

She looked through the peephole again to assure herself she was correct. Yet she was not. She had imagined the poor man had been decapitated, but that wasn't the case. The case . . . She swallowed again and squeezed her eyes shut, but the image of the man's face was branded in her mind.

Whatever she had seen in the villages--the horror on the faces of those cut down by their own families turned into monsters--it was not like this. Their deaths were not like this.

The man had been buried alive to his neck. Then he'd been left there. Left to slowly die of dehydration in this desert-like wasteland. No one to hear his screams. No one to come to his aid. Trapped for days . . .

Moria pulled back from the hole, her breath coming hard. Then she spotted something behind the man. Another head and shoulders. Another man buried and dead. And beside him, an old woman, her face twisted in a final scream.

Moria raced from the room, stumbling over everything in her path. Gavril came running from the servants' quarters and she plowed into him, then pushed past.