Chapter Twenty
Hours later, in one of Glen Dare’s darkest corners, on a wooded islet in the middle of Loch Dubh . . .
“The stone, if you will, Raven?” Dungal Tarnach stood beside the Blue Well, his hands outstretched. “I will hold it the while.”
He indicated a cleared circle of deturfed ground not far from the well. “As you see, we have made preparations for your challenge.”
Ronan nodded, not about to show his relief.
He’d forgotten the wild tangle of dead heather and blood-red bracken crowding the well’s little clearing.
But he wasn’t about to relinquish the Raven Stone.
“The Tobar Ghorm can safekeep the stone.” He crossed the naked, hard-packed earth and stepped around the Holder to set a heavy
leather pouch on one of the tumbled stones guarding the well shaft.
Straightening, he looked round. “I trust it won’t be touched until we finish?”
Dungal Tarnach frowned. “How do we know yon sack holds our stone?”
Another spurt of hope shot through Ronan. “I would think you’d sense its power.”
“You doubt our strength?” The older man lifted an arm, pointing at the leather pouch.
At once its ties came undone and the pouch fell open, its sides slowly peeling back to reveal the Raven Stone before disappearing
completely.
More shaken than he cared to admit, Ronan placed a hand over the top of the stone, its sudden glowing blue heat almost blistering
his hand.
He kept it there anyway, certain the pain would vanish when he broke the contact.
Just as he was certain — or hoped, at least — that the Tobar Ghorm’s brilliant blue water, so deep below the earth’s surface,
and undeniably blessed, would keep the Raven Stone from the Holders’ hands if he failed.
“You are a brave soul, MacRuari.” Dungal Tarnach’s gaze lifted from the stone. “A shame Nathair will defeat you.”
Ronan almost choked.
How appropriate to take up a blade against a Holder named snake.
Oddly enough, the irony undid his ill ease on seeing his leather pouch vanish. He threw off his plaid with an eagerness and
speed that surprised him, then looked on as his challenger shrugged off his robes with equal relish.
Ronan’s own steel already gleamed in the man’s hand and a criss-crossing of scars on his broad, muscular chest revealed that
he’d held his own in more than one swordfight.
Knowing himself equally branded, Ronan tested Dungal Tarnach’s steel, swinging it round, then spinning and dipping, lunging
and feinting until the sword felt comfortable in his hand.
Almost sneering, Nathair simply waited.
“Come, have at me.” Ronan beckoned him, raising the blade in earnest now. “Show me your best so the devil will be proud of
you.”
“Save your breath, Raven.” The man lifted Ronan’s blade. “You will need it.”
Ronan beckoned again, eager.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Tarnach and the others move to the edges of the cleared turf ring. They formed a silent,
watching circle.
For one horrible moment, he was whisked back into Dare’s hall, facing Sorley again. But then Nathair sprang, Ronan’s own steel
slicing the air to clang loudly against the strange blade in his hand.
The other’s strength jarred him, the force of the swing almost knocking him aside. Nowhere near as tall as Ronan, the man
was nevertheless built like a steer and, apparently, possessed a stirk’s muscle.
Again and again, his steel clashed against Ronan’s in a fury of vicious stabs and slashes. They circled and swiped, blades
windmilling and drawing back, the shriek and clank of steel on steel loud in the cold morning, though the roar of Ronan’s
own blood muted the clatter.
Then Nathair spun, first feinting and then springing back around to make a vicious sidelong slash at Ronan’s middle. Seeing
the arcing flash, Ronan ducked and rolled to the side, the other’s blade just missing him.
But something flared in the man’s eyes and Ronan saw his intent. Nathair meant to seize the Raven Stone now, using its power
to win the fight. Already he’d maneuvered himself near the well’s edge, using furious windmilling slashes to keep Ronan at
bay.
“It won’t work, snake! You’ll ne’er get it!” Ronan lunged, his own blade arcing with even greater speed. “Not you, your brethren,
or anyone!”
“Bastard!” Nathair sneered. “The stone is ours.”
“Nae,” Ronan hissed, “it is no more!”
Leaping forward, he brought down his sword in one ferocious sweep, the force of the blow cleaving the stone in two perfect
halves.
“No-o-o!” Nathair roared as the shattered stone shot across the well lip, plunging at once into the Tobar Ghorm. Whipping
round, the Holder glared at Ronan, his steel raised high for a deadly strike.
“Yesss!” Ronan blocked the attack with ease, the other’s blade whistling harmlessly over his head while his own sword — or
rather, Tarnach’ s — sliced through Nathair’s left arm to drive deep into his side, splitting his ribs.
The snake’s eyes bulged and he toppled forward, Ronan’s sword falling from his hands.
It was over.
Another debt of honor paid, if a centuries-old one.
Ronan dragged the back of his hand across his brow, only vaguely aware of the movement around him. The stumbling rush of a
score of thin and stoop-shouldered old men toward the edge of the ancient sacred well.
“ ’Tis over.” A relieved-sounding voice, aged and weary, cut through the red haze. “The stone has truly split in twain.”
Dungal Tarnach’s voice.
But sounding more like the benign-grumbling graybeards who gathered round Dare’s hearthside on dark winter nights than any
Holder he’d ever known.
“MacRuari! You not only destroyed the stone, you’ve freed the raven.” Tarnach glanced up at Ronan’s approach. “Come, lad,
see for yourself.”
His brow lifting at the friendly tone, Ronan joined them, these bent and frail men who knelt to peer down into the Blue Well.
He saw at once the shattered Raven Stone. He’d destroyed it indeed. Its two halves rested on a jagged ledge deep in the heart
of the well shaft.
He also recognized the reason for the old men’s wonder.
The awe in their voices and their surprising turn of heart.
Peering into the well, Ronan saw that the split stone revealed the skeletal remains of some kind of ancient, long-moldered
bird. But what truly stilled his heart was the raven. Black-winged and full of life, the bird was slowly spiraling upward
through the shadowy well shaft.
“ ’Tis as I knew it would be.” Dungal Tarnach pushed to his feet and stepped back, one hand pressed to his berobed chest as
the raven crested the stones lining the well’s edge to whir away on glossy, blue-black wings.
The raven circled back once, half-closing his wings to dive at them and sail past in a fast glide before soaring upward again,
speeding away across the hills and moors before Ronan and the Holders — a pathetic clutch of stooped, withered old men — could
even acknowledge what they’d seen.
“Sakes!” Ronan breathed, running a hand through his hair. He could scarce believe it himself.
More shaken than he cared to admit, he turned to retrieve his sword, but it appeared in his hand before he could. He blinked,
not surprised to find Dungal Tarnach at his elbow.
“We will see to Nathair,” said the Holder, his gaze flicking over to where a few of his brethren already knelt beside the
body. “Though I’d ask your permission to bury him here.” He spread his hands and Ronan noted they were gnarled and age-spotted.
“Unlike Nathair, the rest of us do not have the strength to carry him far.”
Nor, Ronan was sure, did they have the stamina to journey very far themselves.
Their druid wands might work a bit of flummery for them, but their bones were old.
And though he couldn’t be sure, he suspected much of their magic had lain with their now-broken stone, whether it’d been in
their possession or no.
“ ’Tis true,” Tarnach said then, proving he could still read thoughts, regardless. “The stone fed our power. ’Twas the life
force of the sacred raven trapped within. Each beat of its heart craved its stolen freedom and its sorrow bled into the stone,
drenching it with the bird’s power. Now . . .”
He looked aside, then back at Ronan. “Two wrongs have been righted. Maldred no longer holds the stone he took from us, and
the raven has regained the freedom we took from it. There are many among us who will be gladdened that our craft is now reduced
to” — he held out his hand and Ronan’s empty leather pouch appeared in it — “a few simple wizard’s tricks.”
Ronan took the pouch, an uncomfortable tightness beginning to spread through his chest. “You —”
“We are not all as Nathair. We will keep our word.” Dungal Tarnach hitched up his robes to turn away, revealing that his shoes
were cracked and worn. “We might need a few nights to reach the end of your glen, but then you will see us no more.”
“Hellfire and damnation!” Ronan swore against the tightness in his chest. The fool sensation had somehow spread to his throat,
sitting there hot and persistent.
And he feared he knew only one way to rid himself of it.
“Have you e’er heard of a Highlander turning away guests?” he blurted, certain the husky, rough-edged words had come from
someone else’s lips.
“Eh?” Dungal Tarnach stopped in midturn. He looked back at Ronan, his eyes wet and red-rimmed.
Old-man red-rimmed and quite ordinary.
If an old man’s tears can ever be called the like.
Seeing them sealed Ronan’s fate.
He swore again. But the hot tightness in his chest and throat broke free, something inside him splitting as wide as the cracked
Raven Stone, releasing him as surely as the stone had given up its bird.
Fighting back a ridiculous urge to throw back his head and shout his triumph, he reached out to grasp Dungal Tarnach’s hand
between his own.
“Have you e’er heard of a MacRuari turning away friends?” he amended his first question.
The wetness in the druid’s eyes glistened. “Ne’er in my day,” he replied, his voice as thick as Ronan’s. “Though that was
more than long ago . . .”