Tyler's Dream Read Online Free

weakly, apparently exhausted.
    “Please, sir, listen to me ,” Hargill worded carefully. “Your companion is dead. I need to know, what is your name ?”
    “Inn …” the stranger said. He licked his cracked lips and tried again. “Innor,” he rasped.
    There was a collective gasp from the hall.
    “Innor Fisher? From the quarry? Dear God, I didn’t recognise your face!” cried someone out of sight.
    Tyler shuddered from his vantage point. He had met Innor before: he was a quiet, thin man. The person in front of him bore little resemblance to this memory.
    “Found him in the woods. Attacked us … A ghatu”
    A voice said, “It cannot be. No ghatu has ever—” Hargill raised a hand to silence whoever had been speaking.
    “He k-killed …” Innor’s face contorted with emotion. Agatha tenderly wiped his brow.
    “What happened to the ghatu?” asked a female voice.
    Through his grief, Innor smiled, or at least he tried to. “Cage,” he said softly, lifting a shaking finger to the back of the hall. “Cage.” With that he sighed so deeply that he must have emptied all the air from his lungs. Agatha felt for a pulse and shook her head.
    Tyler heard a heavy set of footsteps coming towards him. Tyler held his breath and withdrew so that the thin line of light from the hall slipped from his face to be replaced by darkness. The footsteps drew closer. It was Hargill; Tyler could see the lower part of his body, his brown and copper robes.
    Hargill stopped so close by that his fox-skin hide must have tickled the door handle. There was a scrape of an object being drawn from its hold, and then Hargill turned away. Tyler let out a gentle sigh of relief. Hargill had only been fetching a torch from the wall.
    The footsteps stopped. Had he breathed too loudly?
    Move on. J ust walk away! Tyler willed, but the footsteps returned, and this time the lock to the door was lifted with a bang. The bench leaning against it was tossed to one side. Panicked, Tyler took to his feet. He should run back into the cellar, hide behind a keg. Too late. The door to the hall was already edging open. The crack of light widened and then lanced revealingly through the spinning cellar dust. Tyler stood frozen, frightened out of his wits.
    “We have a vermin problem.”
    Hargill was calm, but there was an anger in his eyes that Tyler had not seen before. The man grabbed Tyler by the jacket and pulled him out of the cellar like a weed.
    The hall was a mess. This most splendid venue for the winter feast had been transformed into a dump. Great dishes of cake, meat, cream, and wine had churned together into an unhealthy-looking puddle and squelched like mud as Tyler passed.
    Quite a company was present: Weaver, the village baker; Glivin and Annie, who were in charge of maintenance around town; old Trandle; Roy, the maintainer of law and order; Agatha; and of course Hargill himself. They were the most important seniors of Elliun, and none of them looked pleased.
    “Tyler?” queried Glivin. His open face set grey with disappointment. “I would have expected more from you.”
    “How much did he see?” asked Weaver.
    “Everything, I would imagine,” answered Hargill flatly on Tyler’s behalf.
    Tyler’s eyes caught a crack in the wooden panels below him. He stared at it, transfixed.
    Agatha gasped. “He must have seen me with Innor.”
    A hand slid under Tyler’s jaw and pulled his head up quickly so that his dark hair swept from his brow.
    Glivin said, “Do you realise the enormity of what you have done, Tyler? Why ? What possessed you, boy?”
    For a moment Tyler looked into Glivin’s eyes. “I’m not sure,” he said uncertainly, which was the truth. He opened his mouth to say something else, but words failed him. He remained silent.
    Glivin withdrew his hand with an angry flick and turned his back. “All we have worked for over these many years …” His two heavy eyebrows snapped together to form a single, dark line. “At any