Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
The guards would have preferred to deny her, Lianae realized.
Wielding her chatelaine’s keys before her, she forced her way past two guards, and then lifting one of the pitch torches from its brace upon the wall, she descended into the ancient tunnels below Dunràth.
Alone. If by chance they didn’t already know what awaited her there, she wanted no one present to witness what she would find.
Dark and cold, despite the glow from her torch, the scent of salt permeated the dank air.
The walls themselves wept, leaving the rock stained and crusted with an age-old scab of white.
Icy drafts swept past her legs, but she pinched her cloak together and continued boldly in her descent.
Somewhere, beyond the confines of the walls, she could hear the surf pounding furiously against the cliffside.
She met another guard along the way, but the instant Lianae met his gaze, the man fled before she could speak a word—because he knew.
She was her father’s daughter, she told herself, a daughter of Moray. She would not cow before usurpers. Whatever it was that awaited her below, she was not afraid.
Brandishing her torch before her once again, Lianae inhaled a breath and continued the drafty descent.
A rat scurried past her feet, startling her and she gave a little yelp, but not even a fear of vermin could stop her now.
Were she told she might meet Viking marauders at the end of her journey, Lianae would refuse to turn back now.
She heard a crunch beneath her feet and felt the crack of bones. The remnants of another small rodent lay in pieces in her path.
If it were true what Uhtreda had said, all things were subject to change… especially with Lianae’s knowledge of the Destiny Stone.
Despite the woman’s uncanny sense of knowing, not even Uhtreda knew about that lost Stone from Scone.
And yet… if Lianae betrayed confidences, if she spoke the words out loud, her life with Keane would be lost with the very next breath.
Alas, she must consider the good of Scotland, not simply her own welfare, or that of her babe’s.
Along the midway point, Lianae reached a forked passage, each tunnel descending further into darkness….
Which path to take?
Forward, ever forward, she decided and chose the darker of the two—the one that promised the deepest secrets. Holding her breath against the stale, cold air, she moved past cobwebbed corners and putrid smells.
What would óengus do?
At last, Lianae came to a recess in the tunnel, wherein they had carved four cells into the stone walls, each barred by heavy iron doors.
Here, even the sound of the ocean was quieted by the thickness of the earth. Inhaling sharply, Lianae thought about Keane and tears stung her eyes. Producing the chatelaine’s keys from her belt, she located the key meant to open the cell doors.
Three of the doors were already unlocked and slightly ajar, the fourth was shut tight against what lay on the other side…
The bars were too high to peek inside, but Lianae understood this would be the one.
She held her breath as she lifted the key to the rusted old lock, turning it quickly, before she could lose her nerve.
For a long moment, she stood by the closed door, half expecting that whoever was on the other side would come barreling through at the turn of her key, but they did not.
Somehow, Lianae sensed they were holding their breath as did she...
Placing a hand to the cold iron, she pushed the door open. And there he stood.
Graeme.
Beaten and half starved, with a gaunt face that was dirtier than a chimney, her eldest brother stood staring at her through bloodshot eyes.
Even the trees wept.
It was a strange winter they were passing, far warmer than any Sorcha could ever recall. It was as though the Mother of Winter herself had somehow abandoned them forevermore.
Betimes she missed Una more than she could bear, but the sojourn away from Dubhtolargg had managed to distract her from her grief.
Sorcha liked Lianae. And the simple fact that she liked her only served to prove that her brother was wrong to keep them all so secluded in the vale.
People were mostly the same, no matter from whence they hailed.
In the end, their bodies would all feed the earth altogether, and a new generation would arise again and pass.
“We are all merely passersby in this life,” Una once said.
Fleeting breaths, through impermanent lungs. There is an unseen life who dreams us… one who knows our fate…
As they sat watering their horses near a wide spot in the burn, Sorcha ferreted out the crystal Una had given her from her saddlebag, inspecting the bauble in the palm of her hand.
Una had been such a curious woman, and betimes Sorcha witnessed things in her grotto that could not be explained—like the color of her eyes now.
One was violet, one was green, and she only realized it because Ria had asked.
In fact, Sorcha felt changed after that morning in Una’s grotto—but the change was not so telling as the color of her eyes.
Tell me what you see…
Sorcha heard the auld woman’s voice even now, like a gentle whisper rifling through the ancient trees, and she studied the crystal in her hand, the milky white stone that once graced the hilt of Una’s staff—that punishing staff that so often found the pates of their heads.
And yet Sorcha remembered it fondly, tears forming in her eyes.
The bruadar is yours alone to decipher…
They must be near Lilidbrugh by now; Sorcha could feel it in her bones—the same way Una’s crystal had called to her from her bag.
Lael had promised to stop and explore the old ruins along the journey home.
They belonged to Keane now, but Una had often spoken of the birthplace of their clan—the pale stone towers that had once risen high into the pinewood trees, the cobbled courtyard made of the white quartz culled and hauled from the lands near River Ness.
It was the same kind of stone some referred to as coldstones, used by the blessed to cure sickness and bring peace to the dead.
Charmed by faeries, they were said to float like lilies on the water.
The fountain in the courtyard at Lilidbrugh had once been filled with coldstones, enough to provide blessings for every man and woman in Scotia.
But, alas, it was as though the white city had decided it did not wish to be found, for they’d been searching for half the day and Lael was growing impatient.
She had daughters waiting for her at home.
Thinking about Lael’s daughters, Sorcha studied the small crystal in her hand.
Made of the same lucent stone as Una’s keek stane, the glass was smaller in size.
It fit neatly in the palm of her hand and looked a bit like the one Una had kept upon her table—the one Sorcha had peered into the day before the old woman died.
The keek stane was lost now—like the Stone of Destiny—but on the very day Una died, Sorcha had discovered this smaller stone lying upon her bed.
It was as though Una had left it for her there… a gift.
Like the book.
The collapse of the mountain had not been the work of mortal men. The gods themselves had seen fit to take Una and her grotto, along with the Stone from Scone, with the sweep of a godly hand. Only this now remained…
Far more solicitous these days, with four girls to look after, her eldest sister came to check the bridle of Sorcha’s mare. “What is that?” she asked.
“Una’s crystal.”
Touched by a ray of watery sunshine, the glass seemed to wink in Sorcha’s hand.
Curious as to what they might be looking at, Cailin wandered over as well. “The one from her staff?”
“Aye.”
“Una gave that to you?” both sisters asked at once. That damnable ash wood staff had never left Una’s hand, and the thought of her prying out the stone from its hilt was inconceivable… and yet she must have, for here it sat.
“When di’ she gi’ that to you?” Lachlann asked. “I saw her with her staff the night before she died. I took the last watch on the hill.”
Sorcha shrugged. “I discovered it lying upon my bed…”
For a moment, whilst the horses drank, they all stood peering into the crystal as Sorcha cradled it within her hand, rolling it gently back and forth.
And then she stopped and froze, peering inside.
But neither of her sisters saw what Sorcha saw, for Lael and Cailin soon grew bored and walked away. Cailin stood chatting away with Luc.
“I say we leave off searching,” Lael said.
“Oh, nay! Ye may go,” Cailin argued. “We dinna need for ye to stay.”
Barely listening, Sorcha blinked, studying the crystal.
“I would not leave you,” Lael replied, her tone more snappish yet. “If I go, so do you—both o’ ye. I’llna give Aidan yet another reason to forsake me, do ye ken?”
“It isna your place to see to my welfare,” Cailin argued. “I am a woman grown! We are scarce twenty miles from the vale. Lachlann and I will see our Sorcha home!”
“Over my dead body,” Lael argued. “When I go, the rest of you will leave as well. There is naught for us here.”
Much like the keek stane in Una’s grotto, the crystal in Sorcha’s hand suddenly appeared to glow.
The forest fell to silence, and the mist about them seemed to flow deep into the crystal.
Inside the crystal, shapes began to coalesce, and Sorcha’s heartbeat a little faster.
Mesmerized, she studied the changing shapes.
“Well?” Cailin prompted.
“What is wrong wi’ ye, Sorcha?” Lael asked. “Ye look like ye’ve seen a ghost. And by the by, what the devil’s happened to your eyes?” she asked, as though she’d only now noticed the different colors in the glow radiating out from the crystal.
But Sorcha couldn’t pry her gaze away. She spied the same tower rise up—the one she saw in Una’s keek stane. Only now she recognized it all the better.
Because she had been there.
Dunràth.