Hugh carefully backed around the corner he had just rounded and leaned against the cool stone, sucking a deep breath into his startled lungs. Eyes wide, he took another peek. The hole in the wall was still there. It definitely wasn’t there before. He trembled; his old nurse maid would have mumbled about witchcraft and made a ward sign with her gnarled fingers.
Hugh shook himself. Twelve winters was far too old for nursery superstitions. What would his father think to see him shrinking here? A hole in the wall meant a threat, and a man would face a threat ready to defend. He tightened his fist around the handle of the short blunt sword boys in training were allowed to carry.
His skin crawled at the unreasonably warm air pouring through the gap. The sides were too smooth; a ballista would have left broken edges and rubble, and would have sounded throughout the keep. He drew the sword and held it ready with both hands, staring at the lumpy green hill impossibly leading from the third story in which he stood.
Swallowing hard and refusing the urge to look down the corridor for help, he stepped through, head brushing the leaves of vines and bushes growing in illogically ancient cracks in the stone. The village that should have lain below had vanished, along with the valley overlooked by his father’s castle, replaced by a windbeaten plain studded with sparse weedy trees.
A figure even more bent and wizened than old Beatrice emerged from behind the nearest one, a crackling chuckle rolling from beneath bird-like eyes. “Wouldn’t it just be my luck to get a lad, after all! Well, no matter, perhaps you’ll do. Welcome to Oblia, boy.”
The Word Worker 