Chapter 5
Chapter Five
D arro came into the armory to find Rory sharpening daggers at his whetstone bench, to which a rope pulley had been fitted that sawed back and forth with the movement of his boot on the attached tread plate. The contraption, which had been designed and built by the clan’s healer, worked well and swiftly. Still, the chieftain didn’t care for Ben’s time-saver devices. Here men given time for idleness often indulged in melancholy or worse.
As ever Rory proved the exception.
The clan’s armorer devoted nearly all his time to his work, which he managed alone. The laird, Darro and others had offered to aid him countless times, but Rory would simply shake his head and walk away. Thanks to the solitary life he’d led in the deep forest, the armorer had never learned to be comfortable around others. He also struggled with his mortal weakness, and ever guarded against unleashing it, for it could destroy like no other weapon or magic.
As if that weren’t enough, there were his size and looks, which like Alec also set him apart from the other sons of Keran.
While nearly all of the McKeran had grown immense, in their time Rory had been one of if not the largest man in all of Scotland. He might have been a dark copy of their sire as well, and possessed many of his unearthly Fae characteristics. As he constantly labored around flames the armorer kept his hair close-cropped, but it still resembled glossy strands of spun obsidian. At first glance his eyes seemed the same shade of brilliant blue as the laird’s, until one noticed the vivid motes of violet and green, which caught and reflected sunlight with a disquieting glitter. His flawless hide, which seemed more like light golden marble than ordinary flesh, had a tendency to glow faintly, as if lit from within. He had the build of a berserker, but his noble Fae features made him look more like a king among mortals.
Few recognized just how resplendent Rory appeared, for he kept to the shadows and went about covered in sweat and grime, often wearing a hooded cloak that concealed his face. If he’d ever stop hiding his appearance, Darro thought, not even Alec’s ungodly beauty would outshine Rory’s.
The armorer’s self-imposed distance from the clan worried all of them, but they had accepted his wishes. Darro suspected Rory sorely needed the kinship and camaraderie of his brothers, and indeed the warmth of a kindly female in his bed. Never once had he sought either, even before the clan had been cursed. That had nothing to do with his mortal weakness, either. Darro suspected Rory would always go on alone, and wished again he could understand why. The big man had never told anyone about his past, or why he’d been left to live alone in the wilderness by his mortal blood-kin.
“Fair morning, Brother.” Darro presented himself in front of the whetstone bench. “You’ve been cloistered away hammering for at least twoday now, and the garrison shall be finishing their morning drills. Come and practice.”
Rory stopped the stone and tested the edge of the dagger he had been sharpening. He tossed it on a pile, reached for another, and shook his head.
“You may persuade me make a wager on who prevails.” Darro patted his belt, which he had spent close to a moon fashioning from silver and gray-dyed leather. He’d also embossed it with intricate miniature horses that appeared to be galloping from one end of the belt to the other. “You’ve long coveted my clever handwork, aye?”
The armorer closed his eyes for a moment before he set aside the dagger and rose from the bench. He stood taller than any other McKeran, and from Darro’s dim memories he knew that not even their sire had possessed as much stature. Tasgall imagined Rory’s unknown maternal bloodline to blame. The lad would never speak of her, and neither had their sire, so no one knew of her kin or if they had made her son a giant.
Rory had said something to Tasgall once, a handful of words he’d whispered for the laird’s ears alone. After that their eldest brother had forbid the entire clan from plaguing the armorer with any questions about his past.
’Tis naught you need ken, Tasgall had said later when Darro had asked him about it. Leave alone the lad, Brother.
The big man gestured for him to leave the armory, and for a moment Darro wondered if he meant to force him out if he didn’t. Then Rory followed him, pausing only to secure the door and then kneel and mutter as he placed an etched stone on the threshold, which glowed as soon as he took away his hand.
The chieftain remembered the first time he’d seen the armorer use a spellstone. Darro had gone with Tasgall in search of the strange lad in the woods that everyone in the north of Scotland had warned them to avoid. Rory had emerged from a wooden cabin so strangely constructed it appeared more grown than built, with no doors or windows. The lad bent to place a pebble with a strange symbol on it in the dirt just in front of the entry. When they returned, a squirrel, a vole and two wrens lay senseless on the dirt directly in front of the stone. They all woke and fled a moment after he picked up the spellstone.
Rory’s ability to use such charms also remained a mystery, for Keran had possessed no such power to pass along to his sons.
Now Darro walked with the armorer to the lists, where a few other men had stayed behind after their drills to tidy the grounds. The rare sight of Rory coming onto the practice field had the other clansmen hurry to finish before they went to the observer’s benches to watch. Darro considered ordering them to leave, as the laird’s senior chieftain possessed such authority, but he saw Rory ignore them and did the same.
“Three bouts,” he offered as they stepped into the largest of the circles. “Two to prevail.”
Farlan appeared outside the circle, his smiling face taut with concern. “Chieftain, need you a sparring partner? I’ll gladly serve.”
“Cease your fretting, old woman,” Darro chided. “’Tis but a friendly match.”
“A friendly match. With Rory.” The seneschal eyed him as if he’d gone mad. “I’ll fetch Ben.”
“Whatever bones he breaks shall mend on their own, eejit,” Darro called after him, and then chuckled as he went to the weapons rack. “Shall we use blunted blades, Armorer, or desire you fight fists alone?”
Rory tossed him a jeddart with a padded wad of straw wrapped around the axe head to prevent injuries. Prolonged sparring with the weapons caused the padding to loosen and fall away, which seemed like a veiled warning.
“Dinnae drag out the match, eh?” Darro chuckled as he tested the balance of the jeddart on the way to the sparring circle. As he stepped over the line of pebbles that marked the boundary he glanced over his shoulder. “I reckon ’twill take me–”
The padded end of Rory’s weapon struck him in the face with a hard blow that sent him sprawling.
Darro wiped the blood from his nose and peered up at the armorer. “Fack, ever I forget how fast you move. Remind me the next time I’ve such a stupit idea, aye?”
Rory reached down with a huge fist, taking hold of him and pulling him to his feet before backing away. A rare glimmer of satisfaction flashed through his violet-blue eyes as he matched Darro’s movements. Then his gaze shifted and his lips flattened.
“I’m no’ falling for that, Wee Brother,” Darro told him. “Come at me now, lest I fall asleep where I stand.”
The armorer paled, as if he’d made some manner of dire threat. He then placed his jeddart on the ground and bowed to him, yielding the match, and then turned and retreated into the stronghold.
“Now why should he do thus?” Darro turned around to see Tasgall and the tall, raven-haired newcomer standing just beyond the sparring circle.
A guard came and spoke in a low tone to the laird, who murmured briefly to the newcomer before giving Darro a particular look. He then left with the guard through the archway to the outer bailey.
The woman approached him and tucked her hand into her pocket. She produced a wad of something white and thin which she offered to him.
“For your nose,” she said when he didn’t take it. “It’s still bleeding.”
“Ah, my thanks.” He accepted the strange kerchief, which was softer and more fragile than their own rags, and used it to mop up the mess. “I expect you ken I’m Darro McKeran, senior chieftain and Tasgall’s blood-kin brother.”
“Yes, he told me a little about you. I’m Ava Travars.” She glanced past him at the stronghold. “That gentleman you were fighting, is he your armorer?”
“Aye, Rory, the youngest of our brothers.” He picked up the jeddart on the ground and carried it with him to the weapons rack.
Ava followed and studied the different sparring implements. “Is there any chance I could work out here regularly in the mornings?”
Her question surprised him, and he had to think for a moment before he recalled the outsiders’ meaning for “work out.”
“The garrison drills after the morning meal until midday,” Darro told her. “They’re many and need the full yard and every sparring circle for practice bouts. Mayhap you might rise early for your work outing?”
“Sure, be happy to.” She took down a stave, testing the weight and balance with obvious experience before replacing it and selecting another. “Very nice. White oak?”
“Aye.” That she had guessed the type of wood startled him. “Do you use staves in your world?”
R ory stood in the shadows of the gallery above the lists and watched the chieftain speak with the dark woman. Seeing her in their outlandish green and yellow daylight did not dispel his first impression of her, but rather enforced it. Her scent made it clear that unlike him and his brothers she’d been born to a mortal couple. She had conducted herself with restraint and composure. Yet something about her took him back to the forest where he had been born, where the shadows ruled over a small kingdom of silence and secrets. They did not share a bloodline; of that he remained absolutely certain. His màthair had died long before he’d even met his brothers, and so had her tribe.
You’re the last of our kind, lad, and you cannae sire bairns, she had told him as she lay dying in his arms after the final battle. The Briseadh ends with you.
Had it indeed ended with him? Something in Agent Travars’s eyes suggested otherwise. Or was it the husky, melodic resonance of her voice? Whatever she possessed, it reminded him strongly of Chomha and her tribe.
Rory had tried to forget the woman who had birthed him. His memories of her tore all the old wounds open again and tempted him to seek an end to his own overlong and wretched life. Chomha had run away from the Briseadh after Keran had used and then abandoned her, as they would have sacrificed her and her unborn for allowing a pureblood Fae to get her with child. Deep in the forests of the north, Chomha had found sanctuary with a widowed herbalist who took pity on her and offered shelter and food.
Rory had been born there nine months later, in the midst of a blizzard that had felled a tree that smashed through the roof of their cottage and crushed the old crone. He had a dim and fuzzy vision of his mother bundling him in furs and placing him in a trunk. Later he learned she had left him in order to burn the herbalist’s body far from the cottage, although he could not account for having the memory at all. What newborn recalled the events scarcely a day after his birth?
Chomha had never explained. Twelve years later, when the Briseadh finally found them, she’d made her choice between him and her tribe, and in the end had died for it.
As Agent Travars and the chieftain replaced the weapons and retreated into the stronghold, Rory left the gallery and walked over to the base of the watch tower. The guards inclined their heads as they always did—every other McKeran showed him such respect, although he’d never understood why—and allowed him to pass. The men, his half-brothers, likely started whispering about him as soon as he left their sight. He didn’t mind, for he wondered as much about himself as they did. Why had he grown larger than the other sons of Keran? What had made him look so otherworldly? Had his Fae blood caused such, or something peculiar from Chomha’s bloodline?
Everyone who could tell him was long dead, and the curse had forever separated him from the mortal realm. Rory knew only that he would never know.
Climbing to the top of the tower, he stepped out to find Alec at the battlements. From his position overlooking the lists he had likely been observing him and Darro as well as the newcomer. The war master said nothing as Rory joined him, keeping his gaze shifting from one side of the forest illusion to the other. In his fist he held a knotted loop of cord like others he’d fashioned to track the passage of time. That told him the true reason Alec had come to the spot; he knew the wretched events of the year they’d been cursed to relive would soon again begin.
“How long until they come?” he murmured to the war master.
“Sevenday.” Alec’s jaw tightened. “Mayhap eight. Our time here, ’twas an intercalary year, or so Ben claims.”
Rory closed his eyes for a moment. The clan’s healer had explained to them the adjustments of time made in the future so that the counted calendar matched that of the solar, but in the trap there was no sun and no time as they’d experienced in the mortal realm. The cruelty of the curse made the MacBren and his clan repeat the same demands and attacks, until the murder of the laird and his lady wife. That lead up to the siege of Dun Talamh by his outraged clan, during which many on both sides would die. And then, on the day the clan had been cursed nine centuries past, any dead McKeran and their vassals would appear out of nowhere, alive and horrified, and time would reset to the beginning of the year.
The curse’s time cycle never failed to restart with the MacBren, his lady wife, and his senior men riding to Dun Talamh to demand Tasgall marry Torra, the mormaer’s only daughter. As he ever did the McKeran laird would refuse. He could not tell the MacBren that his half-Fae blood prevented him from aging or siring bairns, so he gave no reason other than he did not wish to wed the lass. This always deeply offended her sire, who would then swear he’d see the laird married to Torra or end him, the clan, and all their vassals before destroying Dun Talamh and wiping out any trace that they had ever existed.
“Could we barricade the gates against them?” Rory whispered.
“You forget, lad, we tried that in the second century after the curse,” Alec reminded him. “The barricades turn to dust the moment the McBren approach. All where they go becomes as ’twas that day, and any alteration we attempt vanishes as if never done. Och, fack me.”
He removed his bow from his shoulder and drew an arrow from the quiver at his hip, notching the arrow to the bowstring.
“Dinnae shoot that newcomer woman,” Rory muttered, looking down to see if Ava had wandered into the war master’s view.
“I dinnae harm females. Laggards get what they deserve.” Eyeing his target below, he drew the bow and released.
The white-fletched arrow flew down toward one of the gate guards who had wandered a few steps away from his post. The arrow pierced the pear the guard was munching on, knocking it from his grip. The astonished man looked up to see Alec and Rory, paled, and quickly bowed before returning to his position.
Rory left Alec to his watch and made his way to the armory, outside which stood Ava and Darro. He considered returning to the watch tower, but at that moment the woman turned her head to regard him. She didn’t smile, but she had a warmth in her eyes that reminded him of Chomha when she had gazed upon him. She had considered him her finest accomplishment in her young life, instead of a bastart and the burden that had driven her into hiding. Seeing his mother’s regard on the outsider woman’s face made him want to turn on his heel and flee, only there was nowhere he could go that she would not find him eventually.
You’re my son, and the son of the mightiest Fae warrior to ever walk the mortal realm, the ghost of his mother chided. You neednae run from anything.
When he joined them, Rory turned his gaze on Darro, and flipped his hand forward and then back, a signal he used when he wished another to tell him what they wanted from him.
“Agent Travars wishes to examine the weapons the clan possesses,” the chieftain told him. “I’ve other matters I need deal with now, so I must leave her here. I’ve explained you cannae speak louder than a whisper.”
“I won’t take too much time,” she added. “It’s only that my weapon disappeared, so I’d like to carry one of yours.”
None of their female vassals carried weapons, but Ben had told them that outside the spell trap females often held positions and did the same work as males. He nodded to her, and then as Darro bowed to her and left he bent down to remove the spellstone from the threshold. Inside he lit some lamps before building a fire in the central hearth.
Ava did not chatter out of nervousness or attempt to flirt with him, which he appreciated. She moved around the armory examining the weapons that were waiting for repairs and honing, as well as those he had finished and added to the immense wall racks in size order. She took down a fighting dagger, hefting it in the same way a man would before replacing it. She studied closely the long swords but didn’t attempt to try any, as if she realized they’d be too heavy for her.
The respect she showed his work gratified him.
Rory watched her for a time before he put on his leather apron and set out the blades he intended to repair that day, including one the laird had asked him to fit with a narrower hilt. He might have simply left the blades for the enchantment to restore, but he needed his smithing work to fill his otherwise empty hours. Tasgall must have wanted the hilt changed for the newcomer, who had slender, long-fingered hands, the knuckles of which had been scarred long ago. He went over to one of the storage cabinets and removed a tray of daggers he’d designed and forged for another female. He’d never found the temerity to offer them to that lady, nor would he. It seemed a waste to let them sit forever unappreciated.
Ava came over as he set the tray on the table and inspected the smaller blades. “These are beautiful. Are they finished?”
When he nodded she picked up a dagger with a thin, sharp blade, and held it in both hands before returning it to the tray.
“I think that one is too long,” she told him. “I’ve not done much fighting with these, so while I’m practicing I might snap the blade. I don’t want to destroy your work.”
No one had ever bothered to consider such with the weapons he’d made and repaired; to the clan they were but tools to be used until they wore out. Rory liked her for realizing how much effort went into the creation of what he made.
“Here.” He chose a shorter knife with a stronger, wider blade.
Ava tested her grip on the hilt before placing it across her palm to weigh it.
“It’s a bit heavy, but once I practice it’ll work. May I take this, then?” When he nodded she tucked it back in the sheath and tied it to her belt before nodding and making a gesture with her thumb sticking up in the air. “Thank you, Mr. Armorer.”
“Rory,” he murmured.
“I’m Ava.” She smiled for the first time. “Appreciate it, Rory.”
Once she left the armory he closed the door, and considered bolting it so he could assure his solitude. For reasons he could not fathom he had taken pleasure in the company of a female, one who had unnerved him from the moment she’d arrived. Yet as much as she made him think of his long dead màthair , her quiet manner and honesty also reminded him of Tasgall, whom he considered to be the best of his brothers. He would never become completely at ease around Ava or anyone else, but he thought he could learn to tolerate her presence around him.
As long as you dinnae permit her come too close, Chomha whispered inside his head.