Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Harper staggered into the great hall, where Ava, Olivia and Grace were setting up trestle tables and benches across the archways like barricades.
On the platform the laird and some of his senior men had gathered and were speaking intently.
She saw Rory come in from another passage and stumbled over to him, hugging him and then drawing back to see his blood on her hands.
“Why are you bleeding?” she demanded.
“The same reason as you, my lady,” he murmured. “My wounds, they’ve begun to heal.” He eyed the broken arrow and guided her over to a chair, and took a pouch from his belt.
As soon as they saw her the other women from her time hurried over, and she filled them in on what she had seen. The laird sent his men out of the hall before he came and said something in a low voice to his wife.
“Be still now, love,” the armorer whispered as he cut a slit in her shirt and examined the wound.
“You just called me love,” Harper had to point out.
His mouth hitched. “I love you, so you’re my love.”
“Okay. I love you, too.” Just so they were clear, she thought, and then laughed at herself. “I thought that would be a lot harder to say.”
“With others, aye,” Rory murmured. “For us, never.”
“We’re evacuating everyone from the stronghold,” Ava said, trying to sound calm but with a strange panic in her eyes. “We’ll arm everyone with whatever they can use to defend themselves, and then make our last stand outside.”
“Wait, please,” Olivia said, and then turned to Harper. “Can you help us do something before the MacBren and these zombies kill us, or the spell trap collapses?”
“’Tis naught she may do,” Tasgall said. “We must face the end with courage, Olivia.”
“I understand why you think that, Laird,” Harper said, grimacing as Rory pried the remains of the arrow out of her shoulder.
“Hang on a minute.” She took several deep breaths until the pain from the extraction subsided a little.
“Look, this place is like an insanely difficult escape room—a kind of puzzle in three dimensions. You keep trying to break out and you can’t.
I think it’s because you’ve never tried to solve the mystery first.”
“’Tisnae a solution to magic, my lady,” the laird said as he wiped some sweat from his brow. “The enchantment, ’tis eternal.”
A bloodied, battered Darro came in and joined them, eyeing Harper and then his brother, who shook his head at him.
“Hey, Chieftain,” Harper said before regarding the laird.
“This entire place was created to imprison you and your people while it repeats a series of events that happened back in the twelfth century. The MacBren dude rides in here and tries to force you to marry his kid. You refuse and fight him. He kills your people, you kill his, and then he and his wife are murdered. His clan blames you and sieges your castle. A lot more people die. Then everything resets and happens again, and you have to relive the same events all over again, and that’s been the deal for the last nine centuries. Am I right?”
“Aye, ’tis as you’ve said.” Darro sounded angry. “’Twill do naught to aid us, or prevent the enchantment from collapsing. Dinnae torment my brother over such.”
“I just want you to see that the MacBren and the cycle of events pertaining to him are what drives this place,” Harper reminded him. “He’s the mystery. So you have to solve him. Defeat the MacBren. Eliminate the reason for the events. Ouch.”
Rory set aside the last fragment of the arrow he’d pried out of her wound.
“Forgive me.” He pressed a cloth covered in salve against the open wound. “’Twill stop the bleeding.”
“’Tis facked to do naught but speak on such matters,” the chieftain said. “We shall face death together.”
“We might not have to, is what she’s saying.” Ava put a hand on her brother-in-law’s arm to prevent him from leaving. “Do you know how we can solve the puzzle, Harper?”
You’ve ever straddled both worlds, Torra had told her. Open the doorway and lead these people to their destiny.
At the time Harper had assumed she’d meant the modern world and the melia pocket universe that imprisoned the McKeran and their people, but now she thought she might have meant the real world in the twelfth century and the spell trap.
If she had been born a melia, she would have been able to construct a place like this which kept any mortal brought inside from leaving.
Only by opening the door had the melia who had kept her and her mother as her pets/prisoners created a way for them to escape.
She knew what would work. It scared the daylights out of her that she did—the last thing she wanted to be was like the melia—but it was also the most logical answer to the puzzle.
“There’s something you have to do, Laird.” She regarded Tasgall. “Go out there and talk to the MacBren. Don’t argue with him, don’t tell him no, and don’t try to persuade him that you can’t do it.”
“What then must I say?” the laird asked.
“Tell him you agree to marry his daughter,” Harper said. “Then get on a horse and ride out of here with him.”
Darro made an impatient sound. “Ride out of the spell trap. Aye, right. ’Tis naught beyond the walls, Mistress. The enchantment, ’twill throw my brother and the nag back through the gates.”
“Nope,” Harper countered. “You’re going to survive this. All of you. Even Torra.”
“Lady Torra’s dead,” Farlan reminded her. “The laird cannae marry a ghost. We shall all die here.”
“If Tasgall does this, I promise you that none of you will die,” she countered.
Rory finished cleaning the wound and looked down at her, his eyes filled with admiration, as if she’d done something special. “Tell them.”
“I’m the reason I know you live and escape the spell trap,” Harper said. “Torra MacBren is my hundred times great-grandmother. She survives this, and gets married, and has kids. Nine hundred years later, I’m her last descendent.”
“How can you be so certain ’twas her bloodline you share?” Tasgall asked.
“We saw it on the enchanted viewing scroll,” Ava said before Harper could reply.
“The blonde woman with her back toward us, she was Torra. That’s why I thought I recognized her.
” She eyed her. “Fine, let’s say you are proof that Torra somehow survives, maybe by jumping into another body when this place explodes. How does that prove we live?”
Trust the ex-FBI agent to come up with reasonable doubt, Harper thought. She saw Rory leaving through one of the arches, and wished she could go after him. But she needed to convince these people of the answer to their mystery.
“This place won’t explode if you break the enchantment before it collapses.
” She pointed toward the window slit. “Remember, everything Laird MacBren does is because he wants you to save his daughter back in the twelfth century. It isn’t real to you, and hasn’t been for a long time, but it’s always real to him because of the magic.
It brings him back to life as the man he was when he lived in the twelfth century, in the exact time he was trying to marry Torra to Tasgall to protect her from Bodach. ”
“A father, frantically trying to protect his daughter from a soul-stealing goblin,” Grace murmured, nodding.
Esme hurried in, and grabbed Darro, who kissed her and held her tightly.
“Keeping Torra alive is all he cares about when he comes here, but bullying you into marrying her is his single goal,” she told the laird.
“All this time you’ve been treating him like he’s been in here with you, and knows what has happened, but he doesn’t.
He can’t learn, or understand, or have even the slightest clue about this place.
He’s an artificial construct—a copy of the MacBren—brought to life to reenact the events before the curse.
That’s all he can ever do. After he’s murdered, he’ll do it all over again, and you’ll turn him down, and everyone will keep dying.
So, this time, agree to marry the girl. Go with the man. See what happens after that.”
“It couldnae be so simple,” the laird said, his mouth so tight the words sounded bitten.
“I know how crazy it sounds, but think about it,” she said.
“Everything that happens hinges on two facts: the MacBren demanding you marry Torra, and you always refusing. That’s the conundrum, and the catalyst for everything that happens after the guy comes the first time.
Because he’s a construct, he can’t stop what he’s doing.
You have to be the one to stop refusing him. ”
Tasgall looked for a moment as if he wanted to shout at her. “The chieftain speaks the truth, for ’tis naught beyond the outer curtain wall. How then may I ride away with him?”
Ava bit her bottom lip before she said, “Maybe if you agree and try, that will break the enchantment keeping us here.”
“Or the MacBren shall slay him,” Darro said flatly.
“I know you’re worried, mi vida, and it will be dangerous for your brother.” Esme held his hands in hers. “But if we don’t get out of here soon, we’re all dead.”
“All of you, you’re to remain inside the stronghold. Alec, assure my wife doesnae attempt to follow me.” Tasgall cradled Ava’s face between his hands, looking all over it before he gave her a passionate kiss. The temperature in the great hall seemed to climb before it ended and he released her.
“I love you,” Ava whispered.
The laird took her hand and pressed it over the left side of his chest. “Hold fast my heart, Wife.” He let go and strode out of the hall.
“Oh, how can we do this,” Ava whispered, her face drained of color as she stared after him.
“It will work.” Harper put an arm around her shoulders. “The watch tower is inside the stronghold, Lady A. Come on.”