Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel)

by Autrey, Clover

  She stopped at the entrance, dirty fingers resting on the wall as she took in the scene before her.

  This was Edeen’s cave, the place the High Sorcerer brought his sister after the Battle with Aldreth upon Crunfathy Hill. He put the Empath into a slumber so deep it had lasted close to a century.

  But she would be awakened in the time of Hitler and do her country a great service.

  With his back to the cave entrance, Shaw rested a palm upon his sister’s brow where tendrils of soft luminous silver curled from between his long fingers and enveloped the girl’s length in its muted glow. She really was lovely, auburn hair surrounding pale skin, like a true fairy tale princess.

  “I thought the sorcerer’s magic preserved your sister?” Bekah broke the stillness of the cave.

  If Shaw was surprised at her sudden presence he didn’t show it, nor turned to address her. “He expends all he can on her, but Toren’s magic isn’t enough.”

  “But yours is?”

  He looked tired. Shoulders slumped, barely able to stand, yet all the regeneration he’d gained from the moonlight above he now extended to his sister. “It has to be.”

  Hidden within those words filtered abject misery and shame and everything clicked. Bekah understood exactly what drove Shaw Limont to remain with the witch. It had nothing to do with being evil or seeking power for power’s sake. “You hope to find a way to save her.”

  This time, he did look at her, shifting only enough to peer over his shoulder.

  Bekah went on. “What better place to search for a cure from a witch’s accident than right under the witch’s nose? You could have escaped Aldreth, yet you’ve remained.”

  His lip twitched. “’Tis not as simple as that.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.” His head lowered. She didn’t think he was going to say anything else, but he did. His voice strangely quiet.

  “When we were children, Col fell into a hunter’s trap in the forest and trying to get him out, Edeen tumbled in after him. We searched for them for two days. I was but a child myself and ‘twas my first taste of real fear—losing them. And I vowed to myself that I would not lose them again.

  “Yet I have.”

  His words held her with the fragile strength of a spider’s web.

  “Please tell me what you know of Col.” The glow of magic flowing from his palm moved as his hand slipped from Edeen’s forehead to enclose her still hand within his. “I am not the monster you think me. Please trust me to do the right thing.”

  “Okay.”

  His head tilted, drifting the ends of his dark hair across his bicep. His brows knit together.

  “All right.” So she told him everything. She eased down the wall to sit on the stone floor, hand upon her side.

  The lines bracketing his mouth deepened with each new piece of information she doled out, though he made no interruptions. She told him of the future, of the Sifts, of how they suspected he was their creator. And she told him of Alexander, just not exactly who he was to him. It was a bit unnerving how intently Shaw listened.

  “Seven centuries.” His voice echoed across the cave walls with the heaviness and despair of dirt shoveled onto a pine box six feet down. “Seven centuries my sister is imprisoned in this dark slumber.” He paced away from the stone alter the young woman slept upon and curled his fists to the sides of his head.

  “But Roquemore Giordano will be able to awaken her,” Bekah offered hopefully.

  Shaw whirled, dropping his hands. “I’ll go to Toren and force my sorcerer brother to open a rift and bring this dragon vampire here to awaken her now. And scoop up Col from this…this Sea-at-tall.” He was angry. At her? Or fate in general?

  “Can he do that?” Without the magic of their clan supporting him, did the sorcerer still have the juice to open a rift, let alone two, that far in the future? Could he open one at all?

  Shaw’s frown deepened. “’Tis uncertain,” he admitted.

  “Can…you?” She squinted up at him. It was some sort of rift that had pulled Col away from them, an unstable hole had been ripped in the fabric of time and space, while Shaw had used his magic against the witch’s on Crunfathy Hill. The force and combination of their magic had torn open several rifts and Col had been sucked into one. Fortunately it had been to a time in the twenty-first century and not simply a hole that led to nowhere.

  “No.” Shaw’s voice was the quiet shush of a vault door closing.

  Bekah tilted her head, looking him over. He had tried. She could see it in the way his hands fisted and the thinning of his lips as he pressed them together. He had tried to open a time rift to find his brother. The ties of their blood would have taken him right to him anywhere in time that Col would have landed. If he’d been able to create a rift. Which he’d tried, but hadn’t succeeded in.

  Probably several times.

  Why had he failed? Alexander was certain that opening rifts was inherent in Moon Sifters. It was part of why the Sifts also had that ability, though on a shorter leash. The monsters were only able to travel within a span of one hundred years of their lifetime, forwards or back. Period. They couldn’t then jump back another century from that time frame, frog leaping into several more centuries without imploding. Only sorcerers and their time rifts could make the far leaps in time. And Moon Sifters, or so Alexander had thought.

  Could he have been wrong?

  Or was it something else?

  Was something blocking Shaw from that ability? Maybe he simply didn’t know how?

  Suddenly his countenance altered. His posture straightened, shoulders thrown back, chin lifted. A determined scowl set firmly across his dark brows as though a decision made settled into his features.

  “Come.” He strode out into the smaller cavern chamber and with a subtle lift of his hand, magic pulsed in the air, lifting Bekah’s long bangs and streaking electricity across her skin. She scrambled back from the opening between caverns just as an earthen wall solidified in its place, closing the sleeping Empath out of sight.

  Illusion or real? She reached out to touch it, expecting to feel a trickle of magical current, but all she felt was cool damp stone. If it was only illusion, it felt as real as it looked.

  No wonder no one had found her for centuries. It took a creature born of dragons and vampires to see through the illusion.

  Bekah smoothed her hair back down along her cheek and looked to Shaw. He waited for her at the mouth of the cave, a new undecipherable frown pouring from the gray of his eyes which were pointedly fixed on her bleeding feet. It would take a lifetime to learn all the different emotions that frequented his expressive face.

  She lifted both brows in question. “What?”

  Those incredible eyes lifted to hers. “Forgive me.” He took a step toward her. “You shouldna have lived a life overrun with monsters.” Another step and the space around her seemed to shrink with his nearness. “I grieve for the loss of your family, loss of your friends.” He stood right in front of her. She had to crane her head back to look up at him.

  His hand lifted. He skimmed the length of her wayward bangs between two of his long fingers. His knuckles slid along her cheek. “Ye shouldna have had to grow up like that, fear-dìon.”

  Her heart cinched up tight in her chest, making it difficult to breathe around it.

  “What does that mean, fear-dìon?”

  He merely smiled. “Why have ye have no boots?”

  “What?” She blinked at the abrupt change in subjects. She blinked a few more times to regain her bearings. “There weren’t any shoe stores along the way.”

  Confusion lightened the hue of the gray in his eyes to a hazy mist. “Shoe stores?”

  She smiled. “I haven’t come across any footwear in the forest.”

  He nodded, shifting even closer though there wasn’t any space left between them as it was. Her heart whooshed like drafts of air from a swinging pendulum.

  It was too much. He was too much. Too immovable. Too pred
atory. Too…male.

  His proximity, his largeness, did all sorts of funny things to her fluttering belly. She felt utterly and transparently female.

  “Please,” he said again, his voice low and husky and Bekah’s skin erupted in goose bumps.

  And before she could form a coherent thought, Shaw grabbed her around the waist and lifted her against him. “Wrap your legs around me.”

  “Wh-what?” She leaned back to look into his face. Wicked. His expression could also turn very very wicked.

  He grinned. He knew exactly what effect he had on her, could probably feel it through the thin material of her shirt. Stepping out onto the ledge, he reached to the side and began climbing.

  Bekah had no choice but to hang on tight to his neck and she did lock her legs around his waist. “I climbed down just fine, you know.” She’d rather climb up too. Putting her life into someone else’s hands was not fun.

  “And yer feet are a bleeding mess for it. Ye’ll slip.”

  Spray from the crashing ocean below splashed them. Oh man. She buried her forehead in the crook between his neck and shoulder. His skin smelled of just turned earth and the cool electrical air during an ice storm. If magic and moonlight had a scent, this would be it.

  “And do not believe I did not notice how ye favor yer side.”

  She frowned. The man noticed everything.

  As happy as she was to reach the top without falling to their deaths, she missed the warmth when Shaw set her down. Yeah, that was it, his warmth. It was cold on top of the wind-swept cliff.

  She held her bangs out of her eyes and her other hand on his forearm just to steady herself. “Where to now?”

  The muscle beneath her hand went rigid. “Toren will know what to do.” His expression turned inward. “’Tis time I face my brother.”

  Chapter Ten

  “You know, you don’t look so good.”

  Shaw glanced down at the lass walking at his side. Bekah. Her name was Bekah. ‘Twas a strong name that fit the strength of her character, fit the life she had endured, and the journey she had taken to right it. Hers had not been an easy path. Déithe, the tale she spun of the future. It had been hard to hear, especially his part in it about nearly being the undoing of the entire human race.

  Yet she was willing to spare him, to give him the chance to make it right. His fellow Scotsmen, the clan chieftains, had not been so ready to hear him out and forgive. Nor had he been eager to forgive himself, he realized. But Bekah, this strange lass from the future who had endured so much, did not see a monster when she looked at him.

  ‘Twas a rare gift he did not intend to let slip away. He would not let her down as he had let down his family and clan.

  She was looking anxiously up at him as they walked side-by-side through the forest, both keenly aware of the monsters that at this very moment could be shadowing them. Monsters of his creation. Fae’s blood, how did he create monsters? He would not know how to go about such a thing.

  He’d given her his own boots, though they were much too large. And noisy. The lass could barely walk without stepping out of them.

  He grinned. By the rood, she was a stubborn one. And fierce. She had left everyone and everything behind to travel through time and fix the wrong that he himself had bestowed upon future generations. He’d called her right. Fear-dìon, his wee defender.

  Billions dead. The grin tipped into a scowl. He would fall onto his sword this instant if he thought ‘twould stop it.

  He glanced sidelong at the lass.

  She shook the errant white strands out of her face only to have the locks slope across one eye. ‘Twas thought uncomely for a maid to shorn her hair, usually only done as a form of punishment for adultery or witchcraft, yet the short locks suited his wee defender. He found his gaze constantly roving over the exposed curve of her neck, imaging his lips skimming behind her ear, down the slope of her neck to the dip at her shoulder. There, there, and there.

  And the way her hair shone silver while in the moonlight, hiding her gaze until a breeze or movement of her head exposed thick-lashed eyes of golden brown. She was an ethereal creature spun of velvet night and starlight, a goddess who should be bathed only in moon glow and thoroughly worshipped upon an altar of earth and lavender.

  Shaw’s loins tightened at the fanciful image.

  “What are you thinking about?” She stopped walking and stared up at him, her pert little nose scrunched. “I can’t figure out that expression.”

  Oh, but he’d like to help her figure it out…and often.

  Once more his mood dampened. ‘Twas likely any future years he had could be counted on one hand, possibly less. The forest opened before them. The gray stone walls of MacTavis Keep perched on the edge of a small burn overlooking the sweep of the dark ocean. Torchlight danced within the long arched windows of the small keep and around the walls of the yard.

  “You’re sure your brother’s here? It doesn’t look that defensible. Especially against a witch.”

  It wasn’t. Although the MacTavis warriors would make a good attempt if it came to it. Even now he sensed several men watching them from the forest. They’d been shadowed for the last few moments, for which he was grateful as it would keep the monsters from getting too close. Shaw shot Bekah an appraising look. “Toren remains on the move. He’s been uniting the clan chieftains to go against Aldreth. Against me. He’s only recently returned from the lowlands.”

  “Then how do you know he’s here?”

  How indeed? “Aldreth sees every movement and ripple upon the land, especially as it concerns my brother.” Toren and his magic had slipped through the witch’s grasp three years ago—and Shaw had paid the price for that within her dungeon.

  He wondered sometimes if Aldreth still harbored hope that Toren would come back to her.

  “Oh. So do you think he’ll listen to us? Or is he the shoot first, ask questions later type?”

  Shaw grinned at her strange way of phrasing things. ”He’ll want answers after he—“

  An arrow slammed into the ground fractions to the right of his smallest bare toe.

  “—shoots first,” Bekah finished the sentence and instantly shifted behind him, facing outward toward the trees to take up a defensive position at his back.

  Warmth welled in his chest that she put herself between him and a perceived threat. He vaguely remembered a time when others had always been there to stand with him. Several warriors drifted out of the shadows, moving to encircle them.

  “What do ye here, striapach?” Haddon spat.

  Shaw crossed his arms over his chest in indifference to the MacTavis Chieftain’s second in command.

  “I have come to confer with my brother.”

  “Confer?” Thick red brows knitted over a pock-pitted nose and the warrior pointed the top of his dirk toward Shaw. “You dinnae get to confer with anyone here, least of all the High Sorcerer.”

  “Um…” Bekah peeked around his bicep to look up at him. “Are we going to fight? Because you’ll probably want your boots back first.”

  Twelve sets of incredulous eyes latched onto the lass.

  “Nay,” Shaw gritted. “I do not need my boots.”

  “’Cause, you know, they’re so big, they’ll probably make me trip, but you’d be better off with them in case there’s a fight.”

  “We are not going to fight.” It would take little effort for him to knock them all on their arses on his worse day—and that’s without unleashing a bolt of magic on them. Or he could simply open a space rift, disappear and reappear behind any one of them. But being that this apparently was his worse day, he remained still. On a better day, he’d be able to disappear and come out within the keep right next to Toren for that matter. Unfortunately attempting it now while at merely a quarter of his usual strength, would put Bekah at risk too since he would be taking her along with him. He would not leave her here.

  Aside from his weakness of the moment, ‘twas not the manner in which he wanted to greet Tor
en after so long. He needed to offer himself up in peace.

  He dropped his hands to his sides. “I mean no harm here, but I will see my brother.”

  “Betrayers have no brothers.” A gruff warrior with stone beading braided into his gray beard planted the end of his longbow upon the ground. The surrounding warriors growled their agreement.

  Haddon lifted his hand, silencing the grumbling. “Ye say ye wish to confer?”

  Shaw jerked his chin in a tight nod.

  “I doubt the High Sorcerer has any use for the lies trickling off yer forked tongue, diabhal.”

  “But you’ll ask the High Sorcerer himself, right?” Bekah interjected. “I mean, what if he does want to see his brother and you’re the yahoo who doesn’t let that happen? Huh? So guessing not a lot of gray matter in that huge Scottish head then.”

  Haddon‘s eyes bulged out and his mouth dropped unhinged. By his dumbfounded expression he knew he’d been insulted, he just didn’t know how. Haddon glanced about at his fellows for assistance, but their perplexed looks offered no help.

  Shaw stifled the grin from settling into his features. The wee lass had them by rights.

  Haddon shifted from one foot to the other. “Maoil, go inquire of the Sorcerer what he would have us do with the betrayer.”

  A young warrior with the light features of the MacTavis bobbed his head and ran off toward the keep.

  Haddon rolled his shoulders in an attempt to regain the higher ground he was sinking on. “If ye’re truly here peaceably, ye’ll offer no resistance to binding yer hands.” The warrior stretched an arm out to the side and Eber Horsetooth placed a coil of rope in his waiting palm.

  In answer, Shaw placed his wrists together and stretched out his arms.

  Haddon made quick work of tying Shaw’s wrists and as a final touch, he removed a thin chain from around his neck and twined it around the rope.

  Iron. The superstitious dolt believed a wee bit of iron could undo his magic. If his magic stemmed from the ether or the absent Fae, mayhap that might weaken it, but his magic was born of moonlight and darkness where iron had no power.