Boyden nodded. In the center of a clearing, a square stone well rose before a thicket of silver thorns from a hilly backdrop of granite boulders. Four familiar stone columns grew out of the enchanted well at each end, rising toward the blue cloudless sky, tips blunted.
Around the base of the well, a small red squirrel sat among the twisting brown vines and white roses, black eyes watchful while munching on a nut.
“It is beautiful,” she murmured, and the squirrel darted away.
“Beauty must be with all things faery, Scota. This is one of our primal places.”
“The clearing feels alive to me, almost like it is breathing.”
He heard the awe in her voice and was pleased by it. “It is a place of forces and magic. No matter the weather beyond the woodlands, warmth always seeps from the soil here, a fey gift from our brethren.”
He moved closer to her, and she unconsciously moistened her lips, refusing to meet his gaze. He could feel himself nearing the end of his endurance.
“Scota.”
Scota met his gaze, feeling miserable and hot. Here in the ending twilight of the most unusual time of her life, she felt the unfolding of a terrible awakening. It was a sensitivity she had always been able to beat down before, but not now.
His eyes shone with dark fever, a pulsing fervor stealing her resolve and she willingly let him. He said her womb would bloom with his seed; she had not known her heart would bloom with his trust.
“I am sorry there could not be more between us,” he whispered and smiled. “I would have enjoyed being ridden by you.”
“Would you?” she rasped.
“Aye, Scota.” His hand reached for her cheek, a gentle caress heralding a final parting.
She hated him for making her care and hurt.
Whoosh…
A child screamed, “Boyden!”
They turned in unison to the clearing.
An arrow embedded itself in the ground at Cavan’s feet, a near miss.
“Cavan, get down,” Boyden roared, charging forward to protect the children. Nora screamed in terror as another arrow zoomed past her and then another. The child, paralyzed with fear, did not move.
“Nora, you silly nit, get down!” Cavan yelled, trying to pull her with him.
“Stop!” Scota cried into the unseen dark woods and charged after Boyden. “I am unharmed. Do not hurt the children.”
“Derina, with me.” Boyden scooped up the crying girl in one hand and grabbed the boy’s arm with the other. Another arrow whizzed past their faces, and he checked his stride, narrowly avoiding an arrow that would have sliced his cheek.
“Derina!” he commanded.
“I come,” Derina grunted, lifting her brown robes, half-limping, half-running.
“Now!” he bellowed.
Gulping in air, Scota locked her hands around the crone’s thin arm and dragged her after Boyden and the children. They needed to get behind the stone well for protection; only then could she reason with the captain. Reason or kill him, she thought, preferring the later.
Another arrow flew by, and Scota yanked the druidess down, protecting the frail body with her own.
“I doona care for this,” Derina mumbled, her nose smashed into the soil.
“Then move, Derina.” Jumping to her feet, Scota pulled the crone with her and raced after Boyden.
What she saw next put dread in her heart. “Boyden, stop!”
He was holding Nora above the opening of the well, about to drop the child to her death. “Stop, Boyden!” she cried out with disbelief. He was going to kill the children rather than allow them to be captured!
“Boyden!” she screamed in horror. Releasing the druidess, she slammed into him, but his balance held and it was she who hit the ground instead of him.
He looked at her briefly, turning back to the boy.
Climbing to her feet, Scota grabbed his right arm. “Stop this, Boyden. Put her down.”
“Cavan,” Boyden called, glancing at her sharply.
“Here.” The boy climbed up the gray stones and crouched near the well’s opening.
Changing tactics, Scota yanked her sword from the scabbard at his back. If reason did not work, force would. In the next instant, she held the tip of the blade pressed to the strong pulse at his neck.
“Put Nora down, Boyden.”
He ignored her. “Cavan, take your sister and go into the well.”
“Is it safe, Wind Herald?” the boy asked, trusting.
“It is safe, Cavan. Our brethren willna allow anything to happen to one of their own. You and Nora are idir, of the between. Hold your sister close to you and jump.”
The boy wrapped his arms around his sniffling sister.
“No, Cavan,” Scota countered loudly. “Do not listen to him! He is ill.”
The boy held on to his sister, taking no notice of her protest and worry, and jumped.
“STOP!” Scota made a grab at them, but it was too late. She leaned over the edge and looked down into the well … hoping frantically … but both children had disappeared into the long darkness.
“How could you?” she rounded on Boyden. “You killed them needlessly!”
In response, he calmly held a hand out to the druidess. “Derina.”
The ancient came into his arms willingly, and he scooped her up as if she weighed no more than an oak leaf.
“Her, too, Wind Herald,” the druidess said pointedly.
He froze. “Derina. The princess is not of the between and would die.”
“Her, too. She willna fall. Trust me.”
Whoosh…
A barrage of arrows whizzed by them, imbedding in stone and soil. He dropped Derina into the safety of the sacred well and reached for her.
Scota shoved his hands away. “Have you lost your mind? What have you done?”
Without answering, he knocked the sword out of her hand. “Trust me, Scota. Derina says you willna fall, then you willna fall.”
She did not fight him.
He scooped her up, strong arms swift and sure.
A kind of shock set in, turning her body cold. The ending had come. It was too soon.
“Boyden.” She clung to his neck.
He held her close, arms tightening for the last time.
Pivoting he dropped her, feet first, into the dark abyss.
CHAPTER 9
SCOTA DID NOT FALL INTO water-filled darkness or a cold drowning death. She landed lightly on her feet, drifting downward through air and gleam onto solid ground.
She could not believe it. Her body frozen with astonishment and wonder, she stood motionless in a cave of crystal reflections, the echoing resonance of dripping water thunderous in her ears.
“Derina?” she said hoarsely. “Nora? Cavan? Are you here?”
No answer but the sounds of the dripping water.
She fell into the mysterious below of the land with no passageway of escape other than the dark ominous opening of the well above her head. A shiver raked through her. She disliked closed-in places like ship holds and land caves. She looked up, eyes widening in realization, and quickly stepped out from under the opening to make way for Boyden.
Given his heavier weight, he would probably fall faster than her.
She waited, a frown creasing her brow at his continued absence.
“Boyden?” she called, searching the upper darkness.
Again, no answer.
She felt indescribably alone.
“You could have told me I would not drown,” she muttered, looking around, then up into the opening once more.
Maybe an arrow brought him down? No, she thought with quick disagreement. It would not be so simple a thing as that. He did not come by choice, she reasoned and felt discarded, tossed down a well to wither and die in air instead of water. Her fists clenched in anger and she took a moment to regain her perspective. When she saw him again, she would tie him to a tree and … what? He is dying. The thought came unbidden. Never will I see him again. G
rief welled up in her breast, choking her with misery at the mere thought of him forever gone. She would not think of it. Looking around, seeking freedom, she vented vows of retribution.
A mysterious light floated over stone walls embedded with clear azure jewels and rock gems. A tiny stream of water trickled from a crack near her left shoulder. Stepping closer, she placed her lips against the crack and drank, the cold water hurting her teeth. Pulling back, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.
Warm moist air flowed over her skin and over the cold rock walls, creating moving columns of vapor. About a horse length to her left, water seeped from tiny cracks in the ceiling and wall, forming a strange prism in the shape of a shield. It was the color of flickering flames. Below the man-sized shield and around the perimeter of the cottage-sized cave, bluish crystal and pink fibrous flower petals radiated upward. Portions of the wall’s silvery slab pulled away as the sparkler petals reached for a never-seen sun. She took a step closer to the shield, curious of its intent, and experienced a sudden lowering of temperature, a warning of the magical.
Straightening, Scota felt caught in a void of air-filled enchantment, surrounded by exquisite crystal scenery and fragile wildness. In the dim reaches of her mind, she wondered if she were dead, a body floating in a well. Perhaps all this belonged to a place of endings. Was she being punished or rewarded? she wondered. Lifting her gaze, she again searched for Boyden in the dark, round opening of the ceiling. “Where is he?” she murmured to no one but herself.
“He willna come.”
Scota spun around in surprise and faced the blind druidess. The old woman looked different. She was clean. A spotless white robe draped her bent frame where there should have been a soiled brown one. Clean white plaits fell about her shoulders, woven with twigs of fresh rosemary. She looked behind the ancient for the children, but they were nowhere among the protrusions of rock and water vapor.
“W-what?” she stammered. “How?”
“Boyden willna come,” the druidess repeated. “He knows your captain wants him and he willna jeopardize us or one of our sacred places. He leads the enemy away from us, following the path of a blooded protector.”
“Captain Rigoberto is not my anything,” Scota snapped, glaring at the druidess’s empty eye sockets.
“Be the Wind Herald your anything then?”
“I do not understand you. Where are the children? Where is this place? Why are you dressed like that? I gave my word as a warrior to Boyden to bring you safely to your brethren.”
“I know. The children be safe with our kin. Doona worry.” The ancient gestured toward the shield as if it were a secret opening to a passageway. “This place be of the well. Only those belonging to the fey may enter.”
“I am not of your tribe or of your land,” she protested sharply.
“True, but your womb carries one of the between, a wind child, methinks.”
Scota pressed her hands to her stomach, shocked. “How do you know? I only just mated with him. How do you know I am with child?”
“I sense the magical. Through the babe in your womb, you be sensing the magical verra soon, as well.”
“You speak nonsense.” She protested, yet felt strangely pleased.
“Do I?” The ancient woman smiled. “Boyden be like none other you have ever met. His bloodline be belonging to the wind guardians but also to the threads of a most ancient line, though he refuses to accept it. He be of the ŕigdamnai.”
“I do not understand you.”
The ancient nodded. “Listen well then, warrior princess of the invader. Boyden be rigdamnai, of kingly material. He be a wind descendent from a royal line of the long-ago times, a time of gods and goddesses and fury and storm.”
“He is a lost king?”
“Not lost. Destined so.”
“What does that mean?” Scota was confused.
“Wait and see.”
“You make no sense.”
“I have been told this before. Ending comes soon, princess. Do you have the courage to face it? I wonder.”
A quiver of forewarning raced down her spine. “Whose ending? Do you speak of Boyden? How can he be a destined king and die?”
The druidess did not answer, and Scota looked once more at the prism shield, a magical doorway into the unfathomable.
“I can not help Boyden here,” she stated carefully, concern for his safety gnawing away at her.
“Aye,” the old woman agreed.
“How do I get out of here, Derina? Through the shield?” She moved closer to the prism shield. “Does it slide open?”
“Nay, the fey willna allow you entrance into their realm. You may carry a magical babe in your womb, but they consider you still the enemy.”
“So be it.” She would find another way. She thought of Boyden and how the captain would take advantage of his illness. “Can I climb back up?” she asked as she positioned herself under the opening in the stone ceiling.
“Aye, but first you must take this.”
Scota looked over her shoulder. The druidess held up two brown sacks, one larger than the other.
“The larger one be food for you and Boyden,” the druidess indicated the one in her right hand. “This other be for his healing.”
The bitter scent of herbs wafted into the air.
“What is in it?” she asked, drawn in by curiosity.
“It be an olden remedy with traces of garlic and comfrey root for wound healing and other plants like purple bit for pestilent fevers and poisons. The rest of it, you would not know.”
Scota knew a little bit about healing. Purple bit was a plant used by her people, too, one with dark leaves with rounded heads of purple flowers.
“Smear the green healing paste on the Darkshade wound at his temple. He will be feverish and may fight you. Doona let him. Keep the wound always covered with the paste. You must do this soon, Scota. Though his mortal blood remains strong, the magical part of him dwindles and he canna live without it.”
As if able to see, the blind druidess placed the healing sack in her hands. It pulsed with warmth and life, a fey destroyer of dark enchantment. “Where did this come from, Derina?”
“Time moves differently in the fey realm. I gathered and prepared what I needed before your arrival.”
Scota’s brows arched with skepticism. “Boyden dropped me in the well right after you. There was no delay between us.”
“Aye,” the old woman replied knowingly and Scota shook her head, deciding not to question it further. She determined early on that extraordinary happenings in this land escaped reason and explanation, let alone understanding. Looping the healing sack’s brown cord of horsehair over her head, she tucked it safely under her dirty woolen shirt next to her heart. It rested securely between her breasts, a promise of fey born healing. The heavier food sack she swung over her left shoulder. Catching the scent of bread, her stomach grumbled.
“You should eat to keep your strength up,” the druidess urged.
“I will, Derina, but not now.”
Moving back under the opening of the well, she could not detect any light above.
“Do you have any weapons, Derina?”
“The fey doona give weapons to the enemy.”
“Do you still consider me the enemy?” she asked.
“Do you still consider us the enemy?”
Scota kept her attention on the ominous opening in the ceiling once more. “No longer.”
“Good. You be finding what you need up there.”
“All right.” If time moved differently down here in the fey ways, what time was it up there? Morn? Eve? Another twilight?
“Do you sense Boyden, Derina?” she asked, her heart heavy with concern.
“He remains strong yet.”
“Are you sure?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Scota saw the druidess’s perceptive smile and decided not to question this knowing either. Derina was one of them, one of those magical fey born creatures that th
e captain so wanted and so insisted were perfection formed. She considered Boyden physically perfect. The sightless, fey born druidess, however …
“Perfection be seen through preference.”
Scota pulled back. “How did you know what I was thinking?”
“Your expression.”
“My expression?” She shook her head. The well looked to be a long climb up, and she experienced a sudden doubt of her ability to make it. She turned back to the druidess, standing there in solid mystery and certainty.
“How am I to get up there? There are no footholds, nothing but an open shaft of smooth rock.”
“Use the rope.”
“What rope?” Scota blinked at the sudden appearance of a shiny black rope. It dangled in front of her face, reaching upward into the darkness of the well. Orange light glowed in the threads of the weave, and shaky laughter burst out of her. “This rope was not here before.”
“So you say. Mayhap you failed to notice it.”
Scota slowly reached for it.
“Princess Scota.”
Her hand stayed a finger’s length from grasping the enchanted rope.
“Doona fear the wind.”
“Why would I fear the wind?” Grabbing the rope with her right hand, a chill climbed into her limbs, a feeling of displacement. In the next breath, she lay on her side in the open air beside the well of stone. Prickly vines curled near her hip and a white flower brushed fragrance onto her cheek.
She had returned to the outside world of mortal men. The sun appeared high in the cloudy blue sky, indicating middle afternoon. But which day?
Holding the food bag against her hip, she climbed quickly to her feet.
At the top of a grassy, elongated ridge, near the loop of the river, Boyden stumbled to his knees against the horizontal entrance stone to the tomb. He had made it to Brú na Boinne, the Womb of the Moon, the sacred passage tomb of the before-time. Wiping sweat from his brow, he took a moment to regain his breath.
Known by the local villagers as the Grange, the great barrow was built only of local stone and not wood. Under a cloudy blue sky, thirty-five stone pillars formed a great circle around the sacred mound, sentinels from the forgotten past.
About thirty-five horse lengths in diameter and six horse lengths in height, surrounded by decorative and weathered stones, the Grange always felt female to him, defiant of all things male. It gave him an uncomfortable feeling, and so he had not visited this place in many a long year. It was here his ending would come. A fitting place, he thought. Lifting his head to embrace the light winds, he squinted at the bright afternoon light, his body awash in the illness of Darkshade. In his fever, hallucinations of angry slashing winds and wailing gray-cloaked banshees slid in and out of shade. He fought it, hanging on by a mere thread.
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