Stone Sacrifice ✔️Chronicles of Grey BOOK ONE [COMPLETED]

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Once we ate (vegetables mostly, and jerky from our packs) we all sat around together - though Arion stayed standing behind my chair as if still protecting me, and Jazera was laying on the ground tossing arrows in the air like a juggler. I had my cloak around me again and fought the urge to lift my hood over my head.

Orro began without prompting.

"I was one who worked with the scrolls for your father." He explained. "I researched legends and the Old Kings, trying to find ancient artifacts and such. Eastwood had grown enough to hit the edges of another town and so your mother feared for the future and wished to find a way to stop the spread. That was my original purpose anyway, but I also found contacts in the north with my son, which is what I was doing when the Beoworth's attacked the castle." He was quiet a moment, mind drifting back, then started again. "There were many guards with us in town, and the Knights came for them with the dragons. It was then that I knew the Beoworth had finally succeeded and knew I must flee and so those with me who had your mothers blood around our neck did just that.

"For a few months, we traveled along, looking for others, but after there was'a few close calls, we thought we'd leave Nahdiera and go to some other land, one far from here and never return. Oh, what a forlorn group of men we was right then." He shook his head and he and Roriq shared a sad smile of remembrance. "But then luck seemed to come.

"See," he leaned forward, "a young scullery maid had taken it upon herself to serve this new king, because she thought there was something a little... off about him. Something about the way he seemed afraid of every shadow made her b'lieve that someone had survived of Greyov blood.

"She had been just a scullery maid, yes, but she had had the smarts to hide away some of that queens blood during the battle in case the battle turned sour, and so she couldn't be heard by the Grey Stone at all.

"Good that," he said, shaking a finger, "because she found out the someone had smuggled the princess out during the battle. Carigus Beoworth didn't know who or how, and so he was nervous of every shadow, thinking it must be a Greyov or someone close to the king. He had a good amount of Knights loyal to him for sure looking for you, girl, but he just couldn't find you.

"The maid, Latra was her name, found our group just outside of Eastwood." He smiled at me then. "Well, we had a new purpose then. We knew it would be some time before you could come back, wherever you'd gone, but that gave us much time to find out where you'd go when you needed the strength. I'd been doing research, as I said, and so I knew what the king and his closest knew because I was the one that told them, and I suspected that eventually, you'd need at least one of three things. Two of them were in places we couldn't get to, but here?" He motioned to the room we were in. "Well, we could get here just fine, so long as we could find the way."

"Took us a few days." Said Roriq, then, "and we lost a lot of men. It was about thirty of us to start, twelve of us made it through and that was with the help of your uncle who we'd found along the way."

"My uncle?" I straightened. Who was my uncle? I had more family?

"Dead now." Roriq said. "His magic lead the dragon Knights to us and a plague started out. Suddenly we found half of us dying."

Orro's nodded. "Only four of us survived it. Roriq, his son and my granddaughter. Myself, too, of course."

I looked around at the others in confusion. "Then how..."

"These tunnels, we've found, were not only storage, as we'd first thought, but was used as an emergency escape for the royals and lords. No one knew, I suspected, because it had never needed to be used, but these tunnels lead out to the twenty third circle. Still a bit of a run to get out, but much easier then from here.