Chapter Five #3
In his eyes she saw a bone-deep weariness and was reminded again of the weight he carried—the weight of an entire clan.
She sometimes found it exhausting trying to look after her little family and there were only the three of them—herself, Elise, and Jenna—so how much more taxing must it be to have the weight of an entire people on your shoulders?
Cailean’s shoulders were broad, true, but nobody should have to bear the weight of such responsibility alone.
After a moment, he stepped aside. “I will leave ye to yer work,” he said. “Send word if ye need aught.”
She nodded and watched as he strode away. She sighed, blowing out a great breath. So much for this being a quick and easy task. Whatever this sickness was, it seemed it wasn’t going to play nice.
She looked around, spotted a fallen tree trunk nearby, and perched atop it, pulling Cailean’s plaid around her shoulders to keep off the morning chill.
Carefully, she untied the string from around Beatrice’s bunch of notes and examined them.
Beatrice’s handwriting was scrupulously neat and filled the page in orderly rows.
There was only one problem: It was written in Gaelic.
She was sure Beatrice would be able to translate the pages for her if she asked, but there was no time for that. Instead, she tapped into her power, wove a spell, and the words on the page shifted and blurred, translating themselves into English.
This done, she leaned over the first page and began to read.
It soon became apparent that this sickness did not follow the pattern of any epidemic she’d ever encountered.
There seemed to be no pattern to who contracted the disease and who didn’t.
There was no correlation with either age or gender.
Nor did there seem to be the usual seasonal pattern of the infection dying off a little in warmer weather and returning when the weather turned cooler.
According to Beatrice’s notes, the sickness seemed entirely random.
Rose put the pages to one side, frowning. No. She did not believe that. Every illness had a pattern. Every disease had markers that could be recognized, rules that it followed. She just had to figure out what this one’s were.
Clasping the notes in her fist, she made her way back into the infirmary.
There was no sign of Beatrice or Maggie, but she could hear their voices coming from a room at the back and smelled the scent of medicinal herbs wafting from the open door.
No doubt they were busy preparing some treatment or other.
Good. It would give her the chance to examine Drew alone.
His condition hadn’t changed, for which Rose was grateful.
At least it meant her spell was holding.
She seated herself on the stool and laid her palm on Drew’s forehead.
Closing her eyes, she sent her senses questing deep into his body.
She traveled deeper than she’d gone before, beyond the stasis she’d placed him in, beyond the pump of his blood and the beating of his heart.
She wanted into the core of him, to where the sickness was hiding.
Where are you? she thought. What are you? Show yourself.
She let her awareness expand, taking in not just Drew’s body but the deep, almost invisible life force that powered it. Gradually, that life force became visible to her mind’s eye, a myriad of glowing lines of light that spread through his body like tree roots and encased it in a cocoon of energy.
Then suddenly, something slammed into her. It was as sudden and shocking as a snakebite and with a gasp, she broke contact, snatching back her hand. Glancing down, she saw that her palm was red and angry, as if burned.
Perhaps hearing her gasp, Beatrice and Maggie came rushing in from the back room. Rose hastily curled her fingers, hiding her burned palm.
“What is it?” Maggie asked. “Is something wrong?”
Yes, there is most definitely something wrong, she thought. She swallowed thickly and looked up at the two healers.
“Other than the sickness,” she said, “have there been any other strange occurrences recently? Anything out of the ordinary?”
Maggie glanced at her sister, a wary expression crossing her face.
“What?” Rose demanded. “What is it?”
“There are rumors of odd things happening around the coast,” Maggie said carefully. “Fishermen have reported the currents changing and taking them off course. There have been more storms than usual, and there was that incident over at North Cove.”
“Incident? What incident?”
“All the fish there died. The local villagers went down to the beach one morning and found it full of fish floating belly side up. It was quite eerie by all accounts.”
“When did this happen?”
Maggie shrugged. “A couple of days ago. Why? What has this got to do with Drew?”
Rose didn’t reply. The burn on her palm was beginning to smart. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I need to talk to Cailean.”
She climbed to her feet and hurried out of the infirmary, glancing down at her palm. The skin there was red and puckered. Oh, yes, there was definitely something wrong here. There was more going on here than just a sickness.
And she was determined to find out what.