Free The Priest of Blood by Douglas Clegg

Christian charity. They cling to sorcery.” His voice took on a distinct tone, as if he were afraid to speak like this surrounded by the trees. “My father told me once of these folk.”
    “I have seen them,” I said. “But they are not devils. They live more humbly than even my brothers and sisters. And yet they are richer than kings in some ways.”
    “If they live in this Forest, they are trespassers and poachers,” he said sternly, but again I detected a quiver of fear in his voice.
    I jumped over a mossy stone and stepped into the emerald darkness as trees began to block the sun above us. I cut my arms and face a bit on the brambles. Kenan drew his knife and slashed at the branches, which were full of a purple berry that I’d been told all my life never to taste. Then, past this sentry of Nature, we both saw the ancient stone wall. It had more gaps in its masonry than when I’d been younger, and the overgrowth of vine and fern had all but devoured it.
    “It is not too much farther,” I told him, and ran to the wall and scrambled over the top of it. On the other side of the stones, I glanced around the thickset trees, and located the mound that I believed to be the well. When Kenan and I stepped up to it, he said, “This is a Devil’s Fountain.”
    I laughed, and he reached out with his hand and slapped me so hard I fell to the ground. Rubbing my cheek, I looked up at him.
    “This is the well I have heard of,” he said. “It was sealed so long ago that I thought it was simply a legend. And you say there’s a gryphon at the bottom of it?”
    I nodded, rising, not sure whether or not I should near him again. “I heard it once. It wailed, but was weak.”
    He leaned over the mound and began tearing the vines from its top, using his knife to cut away at the roots from nearby trees. “Get over here!” he shouted. “Boy, get over here!”
    I did as I was told, and went to help him clean off the well. If there had once been a seal to this well to block its opening, it was long gone. Instead, we both looked down into its darkness. A stench unlike any I’d before experienced wafted up from that pit.
    He whispered, as if afraid of being overheard. “Are you certain there’s a gryphon?”
    I nodded and whispered to him, “With a huge wingspan.” Then, to prove something to him, I leaned over the edge of the well and shouted, “Gryphon!”
    My voice echoed back up to me, then faded.
    I watched the round darkness and thought that if I could not prove my gryphon to my benefactor, he would likely tip my legs up and throw me down the well as punishment for a lie.
    But as we both listened, a sound came back up from the depths of the well.
    It was a faint oooo, then a screech that truly might’ve been the rasp of a great bird.

    2

    Kenan organized a party to go out into the Forest the next day, with me, the captain of the hunt, running on foot beside them. Rather than merely cut the brambles of the Forest Door, they brought torches at midday and burned most of it, managing to contain the fire so as not to overtake the Forest itself. What had been the Forest Door was now a desolate, blackened floor that still smoked with ash as I walked through it.
    I had begun to think that I had done wrong by leading the huntsman there. I saw in his gang of hunters an odd blood thirst. They shot arrows at rabbits and other small animals they encountered, leaving the dying creatures where they lay—it was a pleasure kill, which I never understood, given the hunger and want of my own upbringing. Then, when they reached the ancient wall, rather than simply leaping over it, they wished to ride on through. So, with several of these fellows, I had to help pull down stones from the wall, which was heavy work, and which exhausted my body and spirit. But still, we pressed on, and came to the well.
    Kenan was the first down from his steed, then came a young man just married named Reinald, who had come from the southern countries to