Chapter Nineteen
Ronan shoved and heaved and, finally, set another wine barrel to rolling. He frowned as the thing began to trundle away, certain
that each new barrel he’d tackled since the small hours was mysteriously larger, more full, and without doubt much heavier
than the one before.
Now, with the new morn already growing old, he was also nigh on to believing the wretched barrels were multiplying behind
his back.
A sidelong glance at Hugh MacHugh, the Dragon, and others assured him that they shared his sentiments.
To a man, they strained and labored beside him while his lady, Anice, and even young Hector crowded close. Bent and shuffling
like a clutch of plague-backed crones, they moved slowly about the wine cellar, their eyes fastened on the dusty floor.
Only Valdar and Torcaill stood apart, their age and rank excusing them from participation. They stood near the stair-foot,
Valdar offering ceaseless snorts and grumbles, the druid simply looking on, his softly glowing slachdan druidheachd the best encouragement.
“ Heigh-ho!” Valdar slapped his thigh then and pointed to a large semicircular scratch on one of the floor’s large stone flags.
“There be your grave marker! A barrel scrape, as I said, just!”
Ronan straightened and looked around. A score or more of hanging lamps cast a helpful gleam on the floor, but the thin haze
from the smoking oil made a soul’s eyes water and burn. And with each passing hour it was getting more difficult to distinguish
the natural cracks and wear-scratches on the aged stones.
Even so, his grandfather’s barrel scrape was just that.
Ronan frowned. “That is a scrape.”
“So I’ve said all along.” Valdar folded his arms, looking triumphant.
“We still have at least ten barrels to move.” Ronan ignored his grandfather’s peacocking and leaned forward to brace his hands
on his knees. Weary to the bone, he gulped in a few deep and restorative breaths.
It scarce mattered that the air was stale and smoky.
The two back-to-back crescent moons carving of his boyhood memory was here somewhere.
And he’d find it or turn gray looking.
So he straightened and flexed his fingers before tackling the next wine barrel. But even before he set his hands on this one,
a shift in the air lifted the hairs on his nape. When the barrel started to move, rolling away with ease, his heart began
to pound.
A flash of silver-blue burst from the top of Torcaill’s staff then, the brilliant light illuminating the ancient Pictish symbol
etched deeply into the floor.
Two back-to-back crescent moons, just as he remembered.
Only now they glowed with the same bluish light as the druid’s wand.
Behind him, Gelis gasped. “The tomb,” she cried, hastening to his side. “I knew you’d find it!”
Valdar humphed. “Finding it doesn’t mean old Maldred is in there,” he scoffed, stepping forward to eye the carving. “I doubt
we can even pry up the stone to look beneath it.”
“The stone will give way.” Torcaill strode over to them, his staff pulsing bright silver-blue. “The time is come. It would
open now even if we hadn’t uncovered it. Somehow we would have known.”
Ronan shot him a look. “Now you say so,” he groused, the words escaping before he could catch them.
But the druid only lifted a brow. “Likewise, it was your task to search, my friend. The journey has been good for you.”
“Then let us make it better by putting it to an end.” Dropping to one knee, Ronan glanced at Hugh MacHugh and the Dragon.
“Come, lads, let us see if we can budge this stone. And Hector” — he called to the boy — “run and fetch a coal spade from
the kitchens.”
Eyes round, the lad spun about and streaked up the stairs, returning as quickly with the requested spade. Ronan shook his
head when the boy offered it to him.
“Nae, lad, you keep it,” he said, already using his dirk to pick at the seams where the stone slab was set into the floor.
“When we hoist up the stone, I want you to thrust the spade into the crack, see you?”
Hector nodded.
But the moment Hugh MacHugh and the Dragon knelt to assist Ronan and all three men dug their fingers into the groove of loose
grit Ronan had freed along the stone’s edges, the massive lid shifted, sliding upward and then sideways with the unpleasant
screech of grinding stone.
Fully without the need of a spade’s leverage.
It did remain heavy.
“Now, lads!” Ronan’s muscles strained against the stone’s weight. “Heave to!”
And at last it came free, revealing an icy black void beneath.
“Hech, hech!” Valdar was the first to peer into the hole. “There is naught down there but — hell’s afire!” He jumped back
when the Dragon held a torch above the opening. “There is something down there!”
“The Raven Stone.” Torcaill lowered his staff into the opening, its shimmering light almost dim against the blaze of blue
pulsing in the dark below. “Such light can be from naught else.”
“And Maldred?” Gelis pushed her way through the little knot of men. “He’s there, too, is he not?”
Ronan nodded and reached for her hand, drawing her to the opening. “See, he’s there and . . . blazing heather, look!”
Not believing his eyes, he looked on as the glow from Torcaill’s wand stretched toward the shimmering blue stone, the combined
brightness revealing what he’d been suspecting for days.
Maldred the Dire’s mortal remains not only sat crouched against an enormous carved slab, his precious stone cradled to his
breast, he’d died peering up at the opening.
A chill ripped down Ronan’s spine and he shook himself, the unexpected clutch at his heart changing everything he’d ever known
about his clan’s ill-famed forebear.
His lady squeezed his fingers, her touch grounding him in a world set to reeling. I told you he wasn’t the fiend he’s painted to be, he thought he heard her whisper.
But he couldn’t be sure. Too loud was the roar of his own blood in his ears.
“I knew it,” he said, not missing Torcaill’s grim nod. “He had himself buried with the stone. Taking it alive into hiding
to —”
“It was an act of deepest penance,” the druid finished for him. “I’ve suspected it for long. He couldn’t bring himself to
destroy the stone, but he knew its power would be the end of his clan. So he did the only thing he could, sacrificing himself
in the old way, for the good of all.”
“I’ll not have the thing in these walls!” Valdar jammed his hands on his hips. “The stone, I mean,” he added, quickly crossing
himself. “Maldred can stay where he is. Requiescat in pace and all that! But the stone comes out o’ the tomb —”
“Begging pardon, sir, but I don’t think it is a tomb. Not a real one, anyway,” Hector chimed in, his face bright with his
daring.
“Eh?” Valdar’s brows shot upward. “What’s this, laddie? Since when is a stone hole with bones in it not a tomb?”
Hector shuffled his feet, the coal spade clutched in his hands. “I have good eyes, sir,” he offered. “Everyone says so and
. . .”
“Go on.” Ronan put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “Why do you think it’s not a tomb?”
“Because . . .” The boy swallowed, then rushed on, “it’s a circular space, and the stones lining the walls look like Maldred’s old crest stone above the keep door. The heights are about the
same, though the stones at the back look a bit taller than the others.”
He bit his lip and glanced round as if he expected someone to naesay him.
“I’ve heard the seannachies,” he continued when no one did. “The ones that claim Maldred’s crest stone was taken from an ancient
stone circle and . . . and if you look close” — he glanced at the opening in the floor — “you’ll see there’s a stone missing
down there. And —”
“— tradition says, this keep was built atop that circle,” Ronan concluded for him.
The boy nodded.
“He speaks true,” Torcaill confirmed, glancing up from where he knelt at the opening’s edge. “The old crest stone would fit
perfectly into the gap in the circle. And” — he used his staff to pull himself to his feet — “Maldred is sitting against the
circle’s recumbent stone. Even its two flankers are there, still guarding the recumbent.”
He smoothed a hand down the front of his robes. “So, aye, the lad supposed rightly. Maldred did choose the circle as his tomb.”
“And he can fine well stay there — as I said!” Valdar assumed his most stubborn look. “You” — he wagged a finger in Ronan’s
direction — “can do what you will with his stone. Just see that it vanishes.”
“Dinna you worry.” Ronan slid an arm around his lady, pulling her close. “I already know what needs —”
“Sirs!” One of the kitchen laddies trampled down the stairs, coming to a panting halt at the bottom. “The guards at the gatehouse
sent me. A great knightly host approaches, riding in fast from the west.”
Ronan raised a brow. “Any word who they might be?”
But he already knew.
“MacKenzies.” The boy’s answer confirmed the worst.
Gelis gasped and Ronan flashed a look at her, not surprised to see that her face had drained of color. Apparently she, too,
knew the riders were anything but her kinsmen.
“Sir.” The kitchen boy tugged on Ronan’s sleeve. “What shall I tell the gate guards?”
Ronan kept his tone neutral, not wanting to frighten the lad. “Tell them I shall ride out to meet with the riders,” he said,
a chill sweeping him.
When the lad turned and raced back up the stairs, he frowned.
Dungal Tarnach had kept his word.
He’d come for his stone.
And he hadn’t wasted any time.
“You can’t think to ride out to meet them alone.”
Ronan resisted the urge to squirm beneath the fire in his lady’s eye. Saints, but she could look at a man. And this look wasn’t
one of his favorites.
Frowning, he wrapped a hand around her arm and drew her away from Dare’s open gate and out of his long-nosed men’s hearing
range.
“I must go alone.” He clamped his hands on her shoulders, willing her to understand. But when he sought the right words and
none came, he simply spoke the truth. “I have to risk a chance on honor.”