Chapter 24
Saddell Abbey, Kintyre
Saddell Abbey sat in a green hollow above the shore of Kintyre, with the hills of Arran gray across the water. Two days after the glen, Torstein and Samira rode through its gate side by side.
Abbess Murdina met them in the cloister.
"You are later than I hoped," she said. "And earlier than I feared. Come inside."
In her solar, with the door shut and Sister Eithne standing guard beyond it, they told her all of it. Fez. The storm. Thurso and Orkney. Thorfinn's chamber, and the stone that woke on his shelf. Loch Awe, and the blood. The glen.
Murdina listened without interrupting. When they had finished, she looked at Samira for a long time.
"Your mother never wielded it alone," she said. "None of the keepers did. Did no one tell you?"
Samira shook her head.
"The stone draws on whoever holds it. Alone, it drinks from the keeper, and it will drink until there is nothing left.
" Murdina folded her hands. "But with another hand over hers, one she trusts entirely, it takes nothing at all.
That is why the keepers, the guardians, were never meant to walk alone.
It was never a cage, child. It was a safeguard. "
Torstein had gone very still. "Show me," he said.
Samira drew the pendant from the boist and held it in her palm. Torstein laid his hand over hers.
The stone woke. The light filled the small room, soft and blue-green. Samira closed her eyes and saw the gray stone on Thorfinn's shelf, and the mound at Orkahaugr, and the long road north and all manner of hidden things and visions. She opened them again.
There was no blood. She was not cold. She felt only the warmth of her husband's hand.
Torstein let out a breath that sounded as if he had been holding it since Loch Awe.
"The prophecy said the keeper would be given wholly to whoever stands guard over her," Murdina said. "It meant you, Torstein Hagansson."
***
IT WAS DECIDED THE pendant would stay at Saddell Abbey. Murdina would hide it where only she and Sister Eithne knew, and the keeper would go home with her husband.
"It is the same arrangement the king has made for another relic," Murdina said. "The stone in one place, the one who can wake it in another. The Brotherhood can never take both at once." She looked at Samira. "When the time comes, I will send for you. For both of you."
"And we will come," Samira replied. "Together."
As they rose to leave, Samira paused at the door.
"On the road I met a woman," she said. "Naomi. She carried a quarterstaff and traveled alone. When I sat by her fire, the pendant grew warm. I told her someone was searching for her."
Murdina went very still. For a moment Samira saw something pass behind her eyes that she could not read.
"You told her true," Murdina said at last. "More than one is searching for that lass. She will need friends before this is done." Then she smiled, a small, private smile. "It seems you have already become one."
***
THORFINN'S MEN MET them at Thurso with the jarl's own ship.
They crossed the Pentland Firth on a clear cold morning with the wind behind them.
Samira stood at the bow with Torstein's arm around her and watched the cliffs of Hoy rise out of the sea, and then the wide gray water of Scapa Flow, and then, high on the cliff above it, the smoke rising from the roof of Hrafnaklett.
"Home," Torstein said.
Samira leaned back against his chest.
"Home," she agreed.
***
1049 - Raven's Roost - Gaitnip, Orkney Isles
TORSTEIN HAGANSSON was content.
It was a feeling he was still getting used to, this quiet settledness that had taken up residence where the restlessness once lived.
He sat at the head of the long table in Raven's Roost mead hall, his back to the wall and his eye on the door out of old habit, though the vigilance had softened.
The long fire pit burned against the frosty night, and the benches ran full down both walls.
Njal, Mathias and Leif were around him, and the raid they celebrated had been a good one.
But the thing that made the night different from a hundred nights before it sat beside him, tucked close against his side.
Samira.
His wife. His arm was around her, and it had not left her since they entered.
Her dark hair was loose the way he liked it, and she wore the fur he had draped over her shoulders when the wind off Scapa Flow had cut through the door.
She turned a cup of warm spiced milk between her hands and watched the hall.
"Ye keep her pinned to yer side like a stolen treasure," Leif observed, dropping onto the bench hard enough to rattle the trenchers. "The lass can barely breathe, Tor. This is a mead hall, not a longship in a storm."
"She sits where she pleases," Torstein said.
"And it pleases me here," Samira replied, and there was a dry edge to it that made Njal rumble with laughter.
"Aye, she's got yer measure already," Njal said, pleased. He lifted his cup toward her. "Drink, lady. Ye're among friends."
Mathias, well into his cups, leaned forward. "Do ye know, Samira, that Njal here drinks like a bear waking from winter? And Leif tells a tale so stretched ye'd think the fish was the size of a whale. But they're good men. The best." He hiccupped. "Sat down too fast."
"You are still seated," Samira replied.
"Aye. For now." He lifted his cup in a toast to no one, sloshing ale over his knuckles, and the whole end of the table cheered him because that was the mood of the night, and any excuse to shout was a good one.
Torstein watched his wife's mouth curve, and watched her guard ease a fraction as the warmth of the hall and the foolishness of his men wound around her.
It did something to his chest, seeing it.
She had come so far and given up so much, and here in this rough hall full of loud men and women she was beginning to look as though she might belong.
That was worth more to him than any raid.
She still longed for her homeland, and Torstein was always on the lookout for any of her home delicacies.
Their homestead was full of trinkets, a special garden, and fabrics and designs that reminded her of home.
She missed her father and Zohra and her life in Fez, and he knew he could never replace any of those things.
But he tried to make her transition easier.
Torstein had noticed another benefit of having a wife everyone recognized. The procession of women who used to flock towards him had dwindled remarkably, most likely because he only had eyes for his wife.
Once, Torstein had endured their attention with a performer's grin, courteous and distant, feeling nothing. Now he simply kissed his wife and kept her on his lap, making it clear that he was a kept man and a very happily married one at that.
And whenever a woman dared make a move, his feisty, possessive wife would reach for her blade and threaten death.
At that moment someone said something funny, the end of the table erupted, and even Samira laughed.
The sound was startled out of her, bright against the smoke and the firelight.
Torstein pulled her in and pressed his lips to her hair and did not let her go, and for the first time in the whole of his thirty-two summers there was no restlessness in his chest at all.
There was only her.
***