Chapter Four #2
Even now, in the chill dark of the wood, he could see the creamy fullness of her breasts, the sweet press of her nipples against
the edge of her low-dipping gown.
He also remembered the silky huskiness of her laugh and the way she seemed fond of sliding a slow finger up and down the hilt
of her eating knife.
“You err, my friend.” He reached to flick a fallen leaf off the druid’s cloak. “Lady Gelis is earthy, not chosen.”
Earthy in ways that weren’t good for a man.
He was sure of it.
A sense of doom circling round him, he bit back a groan and shoved a hand through his hair, so distracted he wasn’t sure if
he’d blurted out his woes or kept them to himself.
Not that it mattered.
Torcaill of Ancient Fame, as all addressed the white-maned wizard, wasn’t a man to hide secrets from.
“She has the third eye.” He gripped Ronan’s arm, squeezing. “I saw its light shining like a lodestar. She —”
“The sight?” Ronan couldn’t help his surprise. “That canna be. My grandfather knows her as well as if she’d grown up beneath
his over-long nose. He would have told me if she was a taibhsear.”
Torcaill made a dismissive gesture. “I do have the third eye, and I’ve never known it to lie.”
Ronan released a breath, too aware of that truth to argue.
“You still mean to follow your plan.” Torcaill looked at him, his eyes seeing all.
“I have no choice.”
“There are always choices.”
“And you no longer approve of mine.”
“I did not expect her to be gifted.” The druid pulled on his long white beard, his gaze thoughtful. “She has great power,
that one. Even the cold flames of Dare’s torches responded to her. Did you not feel their bursts of warmth?”
“I felt Lady Gelis’s heat and naught else!”
Ronan scowled. The old wizard’s ability to loosen his tongue was almost as vexing as his own inability to ignore his bride’s
charms.
Her siren charms, the saints preserve him.
Gelis MacKenzie was the meaning of seduction.
It scarce mattered whether she had a third, fourth, or even a fifth eye.
She affected him.
He swallowed a curse. His head was beginning to hurt and a hot throbbing ache between his shoulders threatened to drive him
mad.
“She needs your protection.” Torcaill’s voice didn’t hold a jot of sympathy. “Her gift —”
“Hell’s bells!” Ronan glared at him. “Why do you think I began this mummery if not to keep her safe?”
“You mishear me, lad.” Looking annoyingly sage, the druid raised a hand, one gnarled finger aimed at a sliver of mist snaking
across the ground toward their feet. When the mist wraith rose and curled back into the trees, disappearing behind the moss-grown
trunks, the old man lowered his arm.
“Your bride,” he continued, “needs to be safeguarded from more than shadows and yon creeping menace.”
“Say you?” Ronan wrenched out his sword and thrust its business end into the dark, peaty ground. “I say such menaces ought
to beware.”
He’d no sooner spoken the words before the pounding between his shoulders worsened. The night now thoroughly ruined, he tightened
his grip on his blade’s hilt. Somewhere a high-pitched wailing broke the silence. Choosing to ignore it, he deliberately let
his sword slide deeper into the soft, leaf-covered earth.
His earth, as some souls might need to be reminded.
He also glowered.
Just for the sheer pleasure of it. And as fiercely as any riled Highlander can.
At once, the weird keening faded. Even the nearby mist shrouds quivered, then withdrew. Whether from his fury or his blade,
each billowing curtain slid away, finally settling over a tumbled gathering of ancient burial mounds and standing stones.
The resting place of Clan MacRuari’s hoariest forebears and the tainted ground whence such thick fog often came.
Giving the crumbled relics one final glare, he knew a moment of triumph when the mist disappeared into the ground, leaving
only the light haze of the moon. The wind dropped as well, though he’d swear the air went colder.
Either way, he’d made his point.
Or so he thought until he turned back to Torcaill and saw a look on the old man’s face that he hoped wasn’t pity.
“Your blade and your scowls will not aid the lass,” the druid warned, shaking his head. “Not when they realize the prize beneath
your roof.”
“They?” Ronan tossed another glance at the ancient burial ground. “Why do I think you don’t mean the mist wraiths? Or the
moldering bones of my ancestors.”
“Because I do not.” Torcaill followed his stare, his long white hair blowing in a wind Ronan didn’t feel. “You ken who I mean.
I’ve seen it in your eyes. Just as I know their return is why you wished to journey to Santiago de Compostela.”
Ronan yanked his sword out of the earth, cleaned its tip with an edge of his plaid, then jammed the thing back into its sheath.
He looked at the druid. “Is there aught you do not know?”
“I know all that I am meant to know.”
Ronan folded his arms. “Might that include the whereabouts of that which my enemies seek?”
“The Raven Stone?” The druid looked at him as if he could scarce believe his ears. “Think you I would not have destroyed it
years ago if I did? Rendering the stone worthless is the only way to break the curse and stop the Holders of the Stone from
returning.”
“They have not been here since I was a lad.” Ronan frowned, remembering. “Valdar banished them. The battle near broke him,
as you’ll recall. And now —”
“And now” — Torcaill tapped him on the chest with his walking stick — “you must fight them. Soon, they will show themselves.
They will hide behind their mist and shadows only so long. Then they will seek your lady, believing her gift can be used to
lead them to the stone.”
“A curse on the wretched stone. If I had it, I would smite it in two, proving its worthlessness.”
The druid said nothing.
“ ’Twas Maldred’s own wickedness that cursed the MacRuaris,” Ronan argued. “Not his foul stone. The Holders are fools to desire
it.”
“Be that as it may, it is a treasure that is theirs by right, as well you know,” Torcaill said, looking unhappy all the same.
“To be sure, I know.” A chill passed through Ronan, even as the back of his neck flamed.
Every clansman of his name knew that Maldred the Dire was said to have stolen the Raven Stone from the Holders, thus acquiring
his great powers, along with the eternal enmity of the magical stone’s true holders.
The dark souls believed to have originally trapped a living raven within the stone’s hollowed center, forever granting the
stone’s holders all the power and wisdom of that ancient and sacred bird.
Ronan frowned.
His gut twisted and he drew his sword again, needing its weight in his hand.
Lady Gelis in the clutches of the Holders was unthinkable.
If the fabled band of wizards even existed.
Maldred the Dire’s bitterest foes, legend claimed they’d vowed to sweep into Glen Dare again and again, their warrior descendants
wreaking havoc and vengeance all down the centuries until the Raven Stone was returned to them.
Fireside ramblings Ronan had never truly believed.
Even when, in tender years, he’d hid from their rampages, taking shelter in Dare’s kitchens behind his grandfather’s pile
of wine casks as the red-eyed devils scoured the glen, searching for the Raven Stone.
A horror he’d later decided had only been a vengeance raid by a long-forgotten enemy clan.
An excuse he’d had to set aside some days ago, having thrown open his bedchamber window shutters only to see a shadowy figure
peering up at him from the edge of the woods beyond the curtain walls.
Dark-robed, cowled, and with eyes like two red- glowing coals, scorching hatred had burned in the Holder’s stare.
A fiery-eyed glare that melted the window’s iron hinges.
Ronan set his jaw, his gaze once again on the silent burial ground and the deep ring of pines sheltering the time-worn stones.
Autumn-dead bracken choked whatever paths had once wound between the ancient cairns and monoliths. Maldred’s desecrated grave
slab lay broken, its two halves covered with lichen and a drift of fallen leaves.
Nothing stirred.
But when the moon slid behind the clouds, plunging the wood into darkness, he couldn’t help but shudder.
He looked at the druid, a man he called friend and had trusted since birth, as had his father and grandfather before him.
Many more MacRuari chieftains as well, if one could believe the clan tongue-waggers.
“Tell me, Torcaill,” he began, not mincing words. “The Holders are men, are they not?”
There was only a slight hesitation. “They are men, aye.”
Ronan nodded, satisfied.
“Then they will ne’er leave this glen alive.” He tightened his grip on his sword hilt, the smooth leather banding warm beneath
his fingers. “Every last one of them can join Maldred in yon tainted ground. Let them battle each other as they should have
done centuries ago.”
“Think you it will be so simple?” Torcaill’s deep voice echoed in the stillness. “There is your bride to consider. She changes
all.”
“She changes naught.” Ronan firmly disagreed. “She returns to Eilean Creag on the morrow. Her father wishes to leave at first
light. Lady Gelis shall accompany him.”
Torcaill lifted a brow. “That is how you mean to safeguard her?”
“Sending her away is the only way to ensure her safety.”
“Letting her ride out with her father would invite the destruction of the entire party.” The druid looked at him, his expression
earnest. “Can you live with such a tragedy, should it come to pass?”
“The Black Stag is a mighty warrior. His scar-faced friend, the Sassunach, is equally capable. They can see her safe and swiftly
from this blighted glen.” Ronan paused, reasoning. “I will ride with them. Take along a score of Dare’s best men. Not that
Kintail would require us. He is feared in all the land. Beyond our borders as well, if you’d believe the songs sung of him.”
Torcaill remained unimpressed. “Such lays are not sung by those who melt steel.”