Veiled Rose by Anne Elisabeth Stengl
Prologue
HILL HOUSE, though abandoned, had remained unscathed during the years of the Dragon’s occupation. This pleased the young man as he climbed the forlorn path to that place where he had spent many happy months. He had feared that Hill House, despite its remote location, would have been one of the Dragon’s primary targets. But as he passed various shepherding villages and proceeded up the mountain road to the house itself, he felt his spirits lifting. And when he saw the house still standing and its sloping gardens yet unburned, something close to a smile touched his too serious face.
Of all the familiar haunts he had passed since returning to his homeland, this was the only one that bore no visible scars of the Dragon’s work.
His progress up into the mountains had been solitary. Companions had journeyed with him to the foot of the mountain road, but he had requested that they let him make the climb alone. This meant a long day of rough going with only a shaggy pony for company. But the young man was used to this kind of loneliness by now.
Lately, he felt far lonelier in a crowd than when left to himself.
The mountain air was clean compared to the stench that lingered behind every breath in the low country. The sturdy pony enjoyed it as well, wuffling to itself and shaking its mane with renewed vigor. The young man tethered his mount at the house gate and entered the overgrown gardens.
Hill House’s empty windows, like mourning eyes, gazed down on him. He sought the big windows framed by heavy curtains that belonged to the library; the smaller, set up a story higher, opened from his old bedroom. The glass panes were dusty with time and neglect, but at least they were not filmed over with ash, and the curtains did not reek with poison.
The young man did not enter the house, though a part of him longed to walk those corridors again, to feel a comfort that he had not yet felt since returning to his native land. No, he had made the climb to Hill House for a purpose, and he dared not linger.
He had a monster to hunt.
He found the garden shed, which was locked just as old Mousehand, the gardener, had always left it. The young man knew he would never get those complicated locks undone. When Mousehand died, his replacement had been unable to work them either and had been obliged to build a whole new shed. But the tools in that new shed would be insufficient, the young man knew. Some traditions must be maintained if one hoped to hunt a monster successfully.
The wooden door was soft in places. He kicked at it and pulled out several panels until he could force his way inside. He did not look around too carefully in that gloom, feeling as unwilling to disturb the old gardener’s secrets as he would be to desecrate a sacred tomb. He sought only one thing: the weapon of a warrior.
Which he found in the form of a beanpole.
Not just any beanpole. He recognized it the moment his fingers wrapped around the thin wooden rod. This was the beanpole of all beanpoles, mighty in purpose and fell with use. Another smile tugged at the young man’s mouth as he climbed back out of the shed, his weapon in hand. In the daylight, one could see the rough carvings that ran up and down the pole’s length, jagged and unlovely but made with care. And at the tip of the pole was tied a faded red scarf.
So armed, the young man made his way to the far garden gate, which these days was encrusted with rust. It squeaked in lazy protest when he opened it to step onto the trail that led farther up the mountain.
It wouldn’t be much of a hunt. He had a fair notion where his monster was to be found. This was by no means the first time he had pursued this quarry.
The first time, he had been no more than eleven years old.
1
THEY SAID A MONSTER lived in the mountains.
They couldn’t say where it hid. They couldn’t say when it had come. They certainly couldn’t say what it looked like, though they had plenty of conflicting ideas on that subject. But they all agreed that it was there. Somewhere.
They being no one in particular and everyone in general who lived and worked at Hill House, where Leo spent the summer of his eleventh year. At first, Leo assumed it was simply another one of those sayings that grown-ups liked to bandy about, such as swearing “Silent Lady!” when frightened, or “Dragon’s teeth!” when angry.
“Best come in, it’s almost dark,” his nursemaid would call from his bedroom window when he was playing out on the sloping lawns and gardens of Hill House. “You don’t want the mountain monster to carry you off.”