Free The Emerald Forge (Pilgrennon's Children) by Manda Benson Page A

way.”
    After another twenty minutes of wobbling on the back of Eric’s bike, and thumping Eric on the shoulders to indicate which way to turn and when, as neither of them could hear the other through their helmets, they found themselves at a hedge secluding a garden and driveway from the road in a quiet cul-de-sac . Eric switched off the engine and kicked down a spring-loaded rubber-footed prong to balance the bike on.
    Dana pulled off her helmet and handed it back to him. “This is it.” The sun had set and dusk was closing in. Whatever house might lie behind the hedge was completely hidden from the road. The place was too private, foreboding, almost. How might Osric react when he saw her? She didn’t want him — or herself — to blurt out something in front of Eric that he might ask questions about, something about Jananin, about what had gone on back around the time of the information terrorist attack on London before the Meritocracy was voted in. “Maybe it’s best if you wait here while I speak to him first.”
    The boy snapped up his visor. “Well, all right then. But I don’t see how this is going to help us or the wyvern.”
    She wondered if Eric was getting annoyed as she walked up Osric’s drive. Dana wasn’t very good at guessing what other people were thinking. A pang of doubt hit her. Was she doing the right thing? After all, Doctor Osric had been part of the conspiracy to kidnap her at the hospital.
    A security light clicked on as she approached the porch, a blinding glare in her face like the beacon of the lighthouse of Eilean Mor, that cut through the dusk and cast a long shadow behind her. Pinned to the window beside the heavy wood door was a small placard that proclaimed in bold writing: NO HAWKERS, NO JUNK MAIL, NO RELIGIOUS REPRESENTATIVES.
    Dana would have hated the idea of going alone to the front door even of someone she knew, but considering this was someone she had met once and not made a good impression of made it even worse. She tried to recall a moment in which Osric had shown any hint of concern towards her, but all she could bring to mind was how clinical he had been and how driven to find out the origins of the device in her head. He’d informed Jananin that Dana was at the hospital; he’d probably watched her sneak out of the back exit and told Jananin where to go so she might catch Dana, and he’d destroyed the CCTV evidence of the incident afterwards. He told her where I was because she is my genetic mother and she was looking for me , Dana reassured herself, but she knew the truth was not as simple as that.
    For a moment she hesitated. She almost went back to the hedge, meaning to ask Eric if he could think of any alternative suggestions. No, she told herself, she had to get word to Jananin about the wyvern. Jananin was the only person she could trust, and Osric was the only one she could contact her through. Osric didn’t care about her, but he was loyal to Jananin, and Jananin was the only person Dana felt she could trust with the wyvern.
    Dana reached up and banged the brass doorknocker twice. She stepped back and waited, the security light in her face blinding her. Her pulse thumped in her neck.
    She saw the inner porch door open through the window, and the shape of a man, indistinct from the contrast of the spotlight, came to the door. When the door opened, she struggled to fit the face of the man — curly-haired and with metal-framed spectacles — with her own memory from the hospital.
    “What do you want?” he demanded. The glare above his head made his face craggy, ravaged with deep lines and hollows.
    “Doctor Osric?” said Dana.
    Osric’s expression changed. “How do you know my name?” He reached to his side and seized the handle of an umbrella. He brandished it at Dana, the lenses of his spectacles flashing, his eye sockets and mouth dark circles in his towering face. “You’re trespassing on private property! Leave, or I’ll call the