Lila crawled over my shoulder and whispered quietly, “Wanna bet the Beast from the East has something to do with this?”
I snorted. “I’d not bet against you, that’s for sure.” Because like Lila, I thought the same thing. We’d barely stepped foot toward the east, and our welcome had been set out.
If only we understood how very wrong we were about what we were up against, we might just have gone running the other way.
5
Insha, a cherub who I was sure wasn’t, was correct in his directions to the east. He led us into a valley of naturally made standing rocks curved in the middle with wide flat tops. For a moment, I worried they would have some connection to a higher power as had those that I’d encountered in the past, but they were just rocks that had been carved away by time, wind, and water. I reached up and touched one of the red stone formations as we rode under it. The rock just a rock, smooth in some places and rough in others.
“We are almost there,” Insha chirped excitedly. “Safety is a boon in this place where the desert meets the mountains and the jungle.”
“He talks weird,” Lila muttered, gripping the front of my saddle hard enough to make it creak. “I don’t trust him.”
“We aren’t trusting him, not really,” I said. “Just letting him lead us through a maze of rocks to a place we don’t know while believing he is telling us the truth. That’s hardly trust.”
She shot me a look, her eyebrows dipping low over her violet eyes. “Don’t be saucy with me. You know what I mean. This whole thing gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
I sighed, agreeing. Also knowing that we needed a place to rest. “If there is anything dodgy about it, we’ll leave right away, and we’ll leave him behind. Okay?”
Lila tucked her wings tightly to her body and shivered. “Yeah, okay.”
We wove our way deeper into the canyon of rocks, the formations towering over our heads. Barren, desolate, empty of life.
Maks rode a little ahead of us, Insha chattering away quietly enough that even I couldn’t hear the words though the tone was pleasant enough. Excited. Happy.
I felt the pull to go closer, to bend my head and listen to whatever it was Insha wanted to tell me. Crap. Was he putting Maks under some sort of spell?
“Maks,” I said, “look at me.”
He slowly turned his head and lifted an eyebrow. “What?”
I stared hard into his eyes, and they were as clear and blue as any other day. “Never mind, getting my knickers in a knot.”
That was all I got to say because we rounded another formation and ahead of us was a stone castle. There was no other word for it. Circular, the castle was a single turret, easily three hundred feet across and the same in height if I were to guess.
The structure sat at the intersection of two roads running the cardinal directions. “Anyone else seeing the similarities to the crossroads?” I muttered.
Lila squeaked. “Yes, too much.”
I blinked and saw movement in the windows and then a flurry of little red-robed ghouls came rushing out of the castle toward us.
Maks twisted in his saddle as Insha slid off to the ground. “What do you think? Do we stay? Or do we go?”
I watched as Insha was welcomed by his fellow ghouls, all of them excitedly smacking him on the back, then finally lifting him over their heads as if he were a returning hero and not a survivor of his group being slaughtered. I mean . . . the behavior was strange at best, and it gave me a shiver of apprehension.
“You aren’t under some sort of spell?” I asked. “He was talking away. I couldn’t hear what he was saying.”
Maks winked at me. “I’m just a human to him. He wasn’t trying to spell me, but convince me that he was to be trusted, and that he was one of the good ghouls.” He paused and edged Batman closer to me so he could scoop up my hand. “Not everyone is out to get us, Zam. Sometimes people are just what they say they are. He spoke of the Jinn, and not in a good light, so let’s keep that part quiet for now.”
I grimaced. “Fair, but sometimes people are liars and thieves and they really are out to get us.”
Lila grunted. “I agree with both of you. So, which is it?”
I made myself get off Balder but kept close to him. “No matter what, we don’t let them separate us from the horses, even if it means sleeping in a stable,” I said.
Just in case I was right, and Maks was wrong, I wanted a quick escape. I didn’t see any other livestock that could be ridden; drawing close to the circular castle, I saw only a few goats and a scattering of chickens around the side of the structure. There was no scent of animals, just the ever-present heat and the aroma of hot sand. Which, yes, does have a smell all its own.
The lack of other horses or anything that could be ridden was good. It meant there would be no chase to speak of should we have to make a go of it and leave in a hurry.
Lila crawled closer to me, up onto my shoulder, and dropped down my back a little. I pulled my hood up and she cowered inside it. “I hate feeling vulnerable again. It’s almost worse than before,” she said softly.
I reached back and touched her on top of the head. “We’re together, it will be okay, Lila. We’ll figure this out.” Yes, I was repeating myself, but she needed to hear the words again.
I knew exactly what she was feeling. For just a moment, we all had enough strength that we felt like we could face anything that came our way, and then . . . that rug was yanked out from under us like a flying magic carpet.
The red-robed ghouls danced and cavorted, singing in a language I didn’t know, across what was, I assumed, the courtyard of the circular castle. They chanted and sang, their words tumbling over one another yet still sounding melodic despite the strangeness of their language.
“You getting any of this?” I asked Maks under my breath.
“Nope. I don’t speak Ghoulish,” he said. “And none of my memories show any interaction with them.”
It took a solid ten minutes of dancing and chanting for the little buggers to slow themselves enough to put Insha on the ground. He waved us forward with both hands, wiggling his fingers. “Come inside, come inside!”
The other ghouls stepped to either side, creating a channel for us to walk down.
Lila shivered against my back. “Creepy.”
“Creepy doesn’t mean evil,” I said, but even I didn’t believe my own words. “That being said,” I swung back up onto Balder’s back, “thank you, but no. We’ll pass.”
Maks didn’t question me and Lila breathed out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I don’t like it here. There is a feeling of . . . anticipation that is crawling around my head.”
For me, it wasn’t a matter of like or dislike so much as it was recognizing that we didn’t have a leg to stand on if we went into the structure. We’d be trapped with a single door shutting behind us and no way to easily get out.
I turned Balder around, heading back the way we’d ridden in, and my breath caught in my throat as I stared at the image in front of us.
The circular castle was—impossibly—right there. I looked over my shoulder to see the castle behind us, then to the front again where it also sat.