Chapter 2
Chapter Two
You must choose your path, lad.
As Rory McKeran lay on his pallet in the forge, he listened to the sound of his own breathing, imagining it to be waves coming ashore at the loch near his boyhood home.
The lake near that old cottage had been cold and deep.
When troubled as a young lad he’d often made his way from one side to the other and back again.
That he might transform into a grayling and swim away from a life wrought by dark forces beyond his imagining had been a frequent yearning.
Because as a young lad he’d been big, clumsy and growing so fast his bones ached, he’d even composed a poem about his wistful desire:
’Tis a fine wish
to live as fish
concealed from brutes
no need for boots
When he’d proudly recited it for Chomha, his lady màthair, she hadn’t laughed as he’d hoped.
Instead she’d turned her back on him to leave their cottage and walk out into the forest. Rory had considered tracking her, but knew she sensed his nearness, and that would only make her angrier.
When she’d returned the next day, her gown damp and her boots muddied, she’d carried a string of gutted, headless grayling, which she’d held up in front of his nose.
’Tis what truly happens to such creatures, my lad. They’re but fodder for bigger, stronger and hungrier beasts. She dropped the string at his feet. Now tell me again you envy the facking fish.
When Chomha became that angry Rory sought at once to calm and appease her.
He’d picked up the fish and cooked them in a stew she favored.
After the meal he’d held his tongue and stayed out of her way, attending to tasks like cleaning out the hearth and chopping more wood, which she disliked doing herself.
Until she looked upon him without darkened eyes, which that time had taken nearly a moon, Rory had done everything he could think to placate her.
Although he continued to write many verses in his head, never again had he spoken to her of them or his wishes.
I must work harder to be like others.
He knew he could never be entirely like his half-brothers.
Since joining the clan he had imitated much of what they did, but even among them he was too large and strong.
His mortal weakness would ever and always be too dangerous.
Then there were all the things he’d kept from the clan since Tasgall and Darro had first come in search of him.
They believed him shy and retreating because he’d dwelled so long alone with his mother in the forest.
Never once had any of the clan ever asked why Chomha had kept him away from others.
When it was time to sleep Rory would lay awake for hours with his eyes closed while his head clashed with his heart.
His heart had always prevailed in the end, but of late the battles had grown longer, more frequent and deeply troubling.
Being sired by a Fae hunter-warrior and born to a mortal turncoat dark druidess might have been the cause, for his parents should have been eternal enemies.
Rory had grown weary of fighting himself and his nature, but he could never stop resisting the lure of his dark blood.
The forces inside him might tear apart his kin, his home, and the spell trap into which they’d been cast after being cursed in the twelfth century.
Only now his enchanted world had begun tearing itself apart, thanks to damage done to the magic that had created and maintained it.
Rory could never escape the enchantment, either.
On this night the disturbances in the spell trap flowed over and around him, sometimes churning as rivers did when spring melted the snows in the mountain ranges.
Although the spell that imprisoned them had been crafted to restore all to its original state each morning, bizarre changes over the last three seasons had altered the magic into a seething unseen cauldron of ruinous alchemy, now apparently bent on devouring itself.
Presently days and nights in the spell trap lasted only a few minutes to an hour; clansmen and vassals fated to die and vanish now suddenly appeared without warning ahead of the time cycle reset.
What magic I possess, ’tis useless here.
Rory’s parents had both been gifted with formidable abilities.
Keran, a Fae warrior sent to track and slay rogue immortals in the mortal realm on behalf of his king, had been a relentless hunter and powerful fighter.
Chomha, who belonged to a terrifying tribe of outcast druids turned assassins, had wielded the deadliest of dark mortal magics through her spells and potions.
Both should have hated each other at first sight, but instead they’d become lovers before Keran went off to fight his final battle, during which he was slain.
As soon as she realized she had conceived, Rory’s màthair had fled and hidden away deep in the forest to prevent her tribe, who despised the Fae, from sacrificing her unborn child.
That was all Rory knew of his origins. Keran had died before he had been born, evidently unaware he had sired a son with Chomha. She rarely if ever spoke of the past.
His màthair also refused to train him to wield her magics, and had no knowledge of his sire’s abilities.
When Rory attempted to speak to her about mysteries such as the strange dark violet color that radiated from his flesh, the terror with which most of the forest animals seemed to regard him, or how he could tell by touching a plant if it was poisonous, she would only shake her head or command him not to brood on such matters.
It had rendered him useless and unable to use even the most basic spells in his boyhood.
Only when he approached manhood had Chomha begun teaching him a little.
Never use your power to destroy a living thing. Taking life, ’tis opening a door to dark magic, and ’twill tempt you again and again to wield such, until you’re consumed.
Her refusal to properly enlighten him had resulted in a frustrating lack of ability.
What little magic he could wield had never amounted to much.
Indeed, only a few weeks past he had been unable to save the life of the clan’s chatelaine, Inga Holm, the mortal female he had loved since she had become trapped in Dun Talamh seventy years past.
Inga had been fatally burned during a horrendous attack by monstrous enchanted bats, her life ending before the spell trap’s enchantment could heal her.
Only the second mortal to die since the clan had been cursed, she had barely had enough time to bid her granddaughter, Grace Johansen, farewell.
Rory, badly injured himself during the attack, arrived at her side only to find a shroud drawn over her corpse.
He’d never had the chance to declare his love to her once, and that more than the damaged enchantment plagued him.
He had been a coward, just as he had been before the clan had been cast into this magical prison.
It doesn’t seem like it now, but you will get through the pain and the sadness, Ava Travars, the law woman from the modern world who had become the laird’s wife, had told him. On the other side of this place, there’s someone good waiting for you.
Rory knew Ava had been attempting to give him the hope he needed to continue on; because she shared his mortal bloodline she understood him better than Tasgall or any of his half-brothers.
He also suspected he would never again love as he had from afar with Inga.
It hurt too much to open his heart to another, even in secret.
Since he could not rest, he got up and went to pound on something as he pondered how he might save his kin and their vassals without using his power.
He needed to hurry and find a solution, too, for the changes had for the last weeks grown increasingly worrisome.
First the dawn restoration had become unpredictable, sometimes dumping huge mounds of foods far in excess of what they had used the day before, or making foods they had yet to consume vanish.
Doon, the clan’s cook, had informed them they would have to eat whatever appeared, which resulted in meals with mostly breads and cheeses, or all veg, or thin pottage made from stew bones and herbs.
They had no sun or moon, but the sky, which lightened to green during the day and black at night, had begun making those changes faster and faster.
Then clansmen and vassals that had died earlier in the cycle of events began reappearing, with no memory of what had happened to them.
“We shall endure, as we’ve done nigh on a thousand years,” Tasgall, the clan’s laird had said after gathering together their frightened vassals to address the troubling alterations. “Be kind to each other, and help the clan however you may.”
On that occasion he had looked at Rory as he spoke, as if trying to urge him to do something.
While he could cast some minor, benign spells wielded by common druid kind, Rory had never once attempted to use Fae magic.
His mother had forbidden him as a lad from attempting to make use of the objects of power he sometimes found in hollows and glen pools, warning that to wield them might end his life.
Obedient, Rory had handed them over to her.
Chomha never said what she did with the objects, but he never again saw them, and assumed she had destroyed them.
Only after her death had he discovered the stone cache she’d built deep in the forest, where she had stored them all.
He’d left them there, afraid of what he might do with them if he dared attempt to use their magic.
Too often since being cursed he wished he had brought the objects with him; their Fae power combined with the magic Chomha’s bloodline had bestowed on him might have released the McKeran from their eternal prison.