“Grimm?” Jillian croaked his name. Ruins? Her brow furrowed in consternation as she wondered how this could possibly be. Was it possible Grimm had misunderstood who lost that fateful battle years ago?
A huge banner with bold lettering rippled above the entrance to the castle. Jillian narrowed her eyes and squinted, much as she chided Zeke for doing, but she couldn’t make out the words. “What does it say, Grimm?” she managed in a hushed whisper, awed by the unexpected vista of peace and prosperity stretching before her eyes.
For a long moment he didn’t answer. She heard him swallow convulsively behind her, his body as rigid as the rocks Occam shifted his hooves upon.
“Do you think maybe some other clan took over this valley and rebuilt?” she offered faintly, latching on to any reason she could find to make sense of things.
He released a whistling breath, then punctuated it with a groan. “I doubt it, Jillian.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” she insisted. If not, Grimm might genuinely suffer his da’s madness, for only a madman could call this magnificent city a ruin.
“No.”
“Why? I mean, how can you be certain from here? I can’t even make out their plaids.”
“Because that banner says ‘Welcome home, son,’” he whispered with horror.
CHAPTER 28
“HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO MAKE SENSE OF THIS, GRIMM?” Jillian asked as the tense silence between them grew. He was staring blankly down at the valley. She felt suddenly and overwhelmingly confused.
“How are you supposed to make sense of it?” He slid from Occam’s back and lowered her to the ground beside him. “You?” he echoed incredulously. He couldn’t find one bit of sense in it either. Not only wasn’t his home a ruin of ashes scattered across the valley floor as it was supposed to be, there were bloody welcome banners flapping from the turrets.
“Yes,” she encouraged. “Me. You told me this place had been destroyed.”
Grimm couldn’t tear his eyes away from the vision in the valley. He was stupefied any hope of logic derailed by shock. Tuluth was five times the size it had once been, the land tilled in neatly patterned sections, the homes twice as large. Weren’t things supposed to seem smaller when one got bigger? His mind objected, with a growing sense of disorientation. He scanned the rocks behind him, seeking the hidden mouth of the cave to reassure himself that he was standing upon Wotan’s Cleft and that it was indeed Tuluth below him. The river flowing through the valley was twice as wide, bluer than lapis—hell, even the mountain seemed to have grown.
Castle Maldebann was another matter. Had it changed colors? He recalled it as a towering monolith carved from blackest obsidian, all wicked forbidding angles, dripping moss and gargoyles. His gaze roved disbelievingly over the flowing lines of the pale gray, inviting structure. Fully occupied, cheerily functional, decorated—by God—with banners.
Banners that read “Welcome home.”
Grimm sank to his knees, opened his eyes as wide as he could, closed and rubbed them, then opened them again. Jillian watched him curiously.
“It’s still there, isn’t it?” she said matter-of-factly. “I tried it too,” she sympathized.
Grimm snatched a quick glance at her and was stunned to see a half-smile curving her lip. “Is there something amusing about this, lass?” he asked, unaccountably offended.
Instant compassion flooded her features. She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Oh, no, Grimm. Don’t think I’m laughing at you. I’m laughing at how stunned we both are, and partly with relief. I was expecting a dreadful scene. This is the last thing we expected to see. I know the shock must be doubly hard for you to absorb, but I was thinking it’s funny because you look like I felt when you first came back to Caithness.”
“How is that, lass?”
“Well, when I was little you seemed so big. I mean huge, monstrous, the biggest man in the world. And when you came back, since I was bigger, I expected you to finally look smaller. Not smaller than me, but at least smaller than you did the last time I’d seen you up close.”
“And?” he encouraged.
She shook her head, bewildered. “You didn’t. You looked bigger.”
“And your point is?” He tore his gaze from the valley and peered at her.
“Well, you were expecting smaller, weren’t you? I suspect it’s probably much bigger. Shocking, isn’t it?”
“I’m still waiting for your point, lass,” he said dryly.