Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03]

by Wedding for a Knight

  His father suffered no such affliction. “Heh, heh!” He crowed with righteous glee. “See what a fine bride I found you,” he declared, jabbing the air with a knotty finger. “She is not only pleasing to look at but wise . . . as you’d be if you’d heed her wish and take the air with her.”

  A sage nod from Dagda and the narrow-eyed urging on Colin Grant’s face unhinged Magnus’s tongue. “The only taking I’ll be doing is to my own good bedchamber,” he said, turning on his heel. “I’ve sore need of rest. Whate’er needs to be yet discussed can be done on the morrow.”

  “Your bedchamber?” Donald MacKinnon’s brief burst of high humor vanished as if it’d never been. “You canna sleep there—we’ve readied the old quarters of Reginald of the Victories for you . . . for you and your bride. She is already settled there.”

  “My room will serve me well enough.”

  “But—”

  “On the morrow, Da.” His mind set, Magnus strode from the solar.

  “Saint Columba—save us! Ooooh, blessed martyrs . . . !” the old man cried after him.

  Ignoring his father’s haverings, Magnus stalked down the gloom-chased passage, making straight for the turnpike stair.

  But try as he might to seal his ears, his da’s gabblings echoed through the shadows, craftily using the wan light of the smoking wall torches to find every wee crack in Magnus’s armor.

  And to his worst horror, the most disturbing objection of all found his ear just as he reached the upward-winding stairwell.

  “Your old room is no more, laddie. The power o’ darkness snatched it away—”

  Half-convinced his exhaustion and ire had conjured the absurd words, and not his babbling sire, Magnus took the stairs two at a time all the same.

  At the second landing, he sprinted down an even mustier-smelling corridor, but knew a great sigh of relief when he spotted the familiar oaken door to his boyhood bedchamber at its end.

  Feeling much the fool for letting the old man’s ravings get to him, he yanked open the chamber door . . . and near stepped into a black-yawning abyss.

  “A mercy . . . !” Clinging to the sooty doorjamb, he stared in disbelief at the gaping darkness that had once been his room. His da had been right. . . . The chamber no longer existed.

  It had indeed been snatched away as if by some evil enchantment.

  Or an ancient curse.

  Not much later, a stealthy darkness crept over the neighboring isle of Doon, cloaking not just the coastline but sweeping land-inward until even the loneliest moorlands and peat hags lay silent and deserted in the black, bewitching night.

  Doon’s Islesfolk slept as well, lulled into deep slumber by the comfort of their turf fires and the quiet of the chill Highland night.

  Aye, they slept . . . all save one.

  Devorgilla, Doon’s resident cailleach since longer than stones were old, tossed and turned within the thick, white-washed walls of her thatched cottage. And as ne’er before, her pallet of dried heather and bracken proved too lumpy to spend her aged bones a good night’s rest.

  Blowing out a frustrated breath, the crone rolled onto her side and flung a knotty-elbowed arm over her grizzled head. Truth be told, there was naught wrong with her bed. Were she honest, she doubted the finest high folk in the land slept more comfortably than she did on her bed o’ heather.

  Nay, it was the eerie, dark green shadow she’d spied lurking over MacKinnons’ Isle earlier in the day that stole her sleep and prickled her nape.

  Out gathering herbs and other vital ingredients for her potions and charms, she’d glanced across the sea and seen the strange darkness swirling round and o’er the other island like some vile and pulsing dome of sheer, living evil.

  Ne’er in all her years had she looked on such malevolence.

  And though she mostly used her skill for the beneficence of the good folk of Doon, she knew enough of her art to recognize dark powers.

  Her teeth chattering, the cailleach pulled her well-worn plaid up to her ears, and only her fearsome stubbornness kept her from yanking the threadbare blanket over her head.

  Nor was she about to admit that a cold much deeper than the chill autumn night had seized hold of her weary bones.

  By sheer force of will, she sent a glance beyond the haven of her bed to the two deep-set windows. Soundly shuttered, they kept out the worst of the night wind just as her door, carefully shut and barred, would thwart the attempt of anyone foolhardy enough to seek uninvited entry.

  Not quite satisfied, she peered through the half-dark, turning a critical eye on the cottage’s central hearth fire. All knew, if e’er such a fire extinguished, the very soul would go out of the people of a house. But the clump of peat she’d tossed onto the hearthstone before retiring smoldered with pulsing warmth, and hazy-blue wisps of sweet-smelling peat smoke curled upward toward a soot-blackened hole in the roof.

  All was as it should be.

  Even her little brazier of hot-burning sea coal, a much-appreciated gift from Donall MacLean, still glowed with soft red light and threw off welcome, soothing heat.

  Yet she froze as if gripped in the teeth of the blackest winter gale, her very marrow iced by a chill coming not from without, but from the cloying vestiges of the unholy darkness she couldn’t put from her mind.

  A rank foulness she’d almost swear had slid across the night-bound waters to howl around her cottage walls.

  Ashamed of her ill ease, for she refused to name it fear, Devorgilla flounced onto her back. For good mea-sure and in utter defiance of the shivers snaking up and down her spine, she folded her arms and stared up at the low, black-raftered ceiling.

  Bunches of dried herbs hung there, each precious bundle affixed with tireless, loving hands. They comforted and reminded her she still had a wee measure of the sleeping draught she’d whipped up earlier.

  Potent goosegrass tisane.

  Mayhap a dollop or two would make short shrift of this troublous night. In especial, if she washed down those dollops with a full-brimming cup of fine and frothy heather ale.

  Devorgilla’s own special brew, and the best to be had in all the Isles.

  Her heart lifting already, she threw back the covers and heaved herself to her feet. Blessedly, with a minimal amount of bone creaking. A throaty meow greeted her from near the softly hissing brazier, and her spirits soared all the more.

  “Heh, but you shall have a wee helping of ale, too,” she promised Mab, her stalwart companion since longer than mortal bones need to turn to dust.

  Or so Devorgilla imagined as she pressed a hand to her lower back. She waited for Mab’s stiff-legged gait to carry her across the short distance between them, then leaned down to stroke the tricolored cat’s silky-warm fur.

  “You have no taste for those who stalk about in gloom and shadow, either, do you, my sweet?” she crooned in a singsong voice reserved for Mab alone.

  “We want naught to do with the like o’ such debased cravens,” she vowed, straightening. “Come, let us chant a word or two to hie those dark shadows back to the ill bounds whence . . . aiiieeee!”

  Clutching her heart, Devorgilla reeled backward, her eyes full-wide as she stared at the broad, masculine back of the mailed warrior standing before her. Nay, not quite standing, for the braw knight she recognized as Magnus MacKinnon clung fiercely to a doorjamb.

  And, Mother of the Moon preserve her, but she could see right through him!

  A black abyss yawned at his feet, deep as the night and vast enough to swallow the familiar surroundings of her cottage’s homey interior.

  Devorgilla stared, her heart thumping hard against her ribs. An all-encompassing void shot through with eerily glowing threads of vilest green whirled all around her, its evil almost crushing her.

  And then the knight vanished, the whole of his vision-self gone as quickly as he’d appeared, but the darkness remained. It crept ever forward, eating up her tidily swept floor until the crone and Mab, too, teetered on the very precipice of Doon’s mo
st treacherous cliff top.

  Whitecapped combers broke on jagged rocks far below her and a bitter cold wind tore in from the sea, its deafening roar more earsplitting than the crash of the waves. In the distance, MacKinnons’ Isle rode low on the horizon, its dark mass almost obscured by roiling clouds of sickliest green.

  “Goddess have mercy,” Devorgilla breathed, snatching up Mab before the racing wind could whisk the poor creature over the cliff to certain doom.

  Then the ground shifted beneath her feet and before she could blink, she found herself on lower, gentler ground . . . the MacLeans’ own boat strand. A haven of calm, and as far from the storm-chased cliff she’d just stood upon as her wee cottage was from the moon.

  But the eerie glow accompanied her. Great sheets of it swirled about the shingled beach, even blotting out the massive curtain walls of Baldoon, the formidable MacLean stronghold rising above the far end of the crescent-shaped strand. Only the castle’s topmost turrets pierced the shifting mass of luminous green.

  A soft, iridescent mist that now grew steadily lighter, and much less ominous.

  Devorgilla continued to mumble her prayers of protection nevertheless.

  Through a rift in the mist, she caught a glimpse of the Lady Rock, a black-glistening tidal islet of great menace and dread. A constant bringer of strife to the Isle of Doon.

  Or so tradition claimed.

  The crone snorted.

  She held such notions for lack-witted prattle. Nonsense and babble put about by the unenlightened.

  Naught ailed the land hereabouts or elsewhere . . . and even perilous rocks thrusting up from the sea had their place and reason for being.

  Nay, man alone spread ill will, and wrapping that truth about her aged bones, Devorgilla lifted her somewhat bristled chin and peered through the mist to see what the old ones wished her to know.

  But Mab saw her first, the cat’s deep purring signaling the presence of a friend. Squinting, Devorgilla strained her eyes until she, too, caught sight of the gruagach, a mostly benevolent female spirit, perched high atop the Lady Rock.

  Sad-looking, the gruagach simply sat there, seemingly oblivious to the strange night and the heavy seas all around her. With her head slightly turned to the side, she toyed idly with the strands of seaweed tangled in her wet, unbound hair.

  Leaning forward, Devorgilla peered harder, almost mistaking the winsome creature for one of the merfolk or selkies said to ply Hebridean waters. But the pale glimmer of green surrounding the gruagach revealed her for what she was . . . though some might dub her an angel.

  Devorgilla knew better.

  Thought to be the spirits of mortal women who had died in childbirth or fallen under some fey enchantment, gruagachs clung to places they’d once loved and saw their duty as guarding the well-being of those who remained.

  Some even influenced crops or a cow’s ability to give pure, sweet milk. Indeed, so often as her aches and her duties allowed, Devorgilla made the long trek to Doon’s Clach na Gruagach, or Stone of the Fairy Woman, to pour an offering of finest cream onto the stone.

  And to pay her respects . . . for Devorgilla suspected the gruagach’s earthly identity.

  But even now, the creature’s image was fading, washed away by the spume breaking ever higher upon the Lady Rock, the buffeting of the waves. Then she was gone, and the crone knew a pang of deep regret, for this time she’d almost caught a full-on glimpse of the gruagach’s most-times averted face.

  Her gaze still on the black-gleaming rock, Devorgilla heaved a weary sigh, filling her lungs not with chill, moist air ripe with the tang of the sea, but with close, almost stuffy air heavy with the smoky-sweet smell of peat.

  Blinking, she looked at her feet, not surprised to see them no longer standing on rain-damp shingle or even her own stone-flagged floor, but tucked soundly beneath the familiar warmth of her plaid bedcovers!

  And dear Mab still slept curled in the ruddy glow of the brazier.

  Too old to be cozened by the vagaries of magic, and too wise not to respect its powers, Devorgilla settled back on her pallet, content to watch tendrils of thin blue smoke from her peat fire snake along the ceiling rafters.

  She also breathed a word of thanks to the ancient ones for giving her the foresight to work a wee bit of her own spelling before Amicia MacLean e’er set sail for Mac-Kinnons’ Isle.

  Dark forces lurked there, that she knew.

  Aye, ’twas good she’d taken precautions.

  She only hoped they’d be enough.

  Chapter Three

  “SO YOU ARE BACK!”

  Magnus jerked, his fingers tightening on the soot-smeared doorjamb of his now-vanished bedchamber before he wheeled about to face the second fetching young lass he’d have to disappoint that night.

  “Praises be!” His cousin Janet MacKinnon stood before him, all gleaming silver-blond hair and rosy-flushed cheeks. “I prayed God every night that He keep you safe,” she breathed, one hand pressed to her breast. A teensy package, she beamed up at him, her great blue eyes alight with adoration. “Faith, I can scarce believe it is you.”

  “Och, ’tis me, sure enough,” Magnus said, waves of shock still coursing through him. “And come home to more surprises than I have known for long.”

  Janet’s face clouded. “Would that it were not so,” she said, glancing aside before he could catch and hold her gaze.

  Even so, Magnus eyed her sharply, discomfort coiling in his belly, for the sudden petulance of her tone and the fading of her smile revealed more than her words.

  But the taint of cold smoke permeating the dank passage vexed him in a far worse way.

  Aggrieved as seldom before, he tossed another quick glance at the charred devastation of his former bedchamber. “Blood of Christ—the entire east tower is naught but a burned shell . . . all floors, gone.”

  Though clearly months had passed since the fire, he could almost feel blistering heat pouring off the blackened stones, even taste the coppery stench of fresh-spilled blood on chill, acrid air. His stomach churned with the well-remembered reek of burning flesh. Horrors he’d hoped he’d left behind him on the red-stained banks of the River Earn.

  Shuddering, he pushed all thought of Dupplin Moor and its appalling ruin from his mind. “The fire, were there any . . . did anyone . . . ?”

  Janet shook her fair head. “There were no injuries,” she said, understanding. “Nothing was astir in this part of the keep that night.”

  Magnus released the breath he’d been holding.

  But a good deal of his tension remained.

  He had yet to see his brothers.

  “Hugh and Dugan kept quarters in the east tower. Just below mine,” he minded his cousin, the travails of recent weeks letting his every nagging doubt roll off his tongue far too easily. “Their chambers are as gone as mine.”

  Janet drew a cautious-sounding breath, her attention on a deep-splayed arrow slit cut into the passage’s thick walling. “It saddens me that I must be the one to tell you of these ill happenings,” she said, finally looking back at him.

  Something in her tone prickled the fine hairs on the back of his neck and he studied her face in the flickering torchlight, looked for signs that she sought to cushion a blow.

  “Your brothers are hale and unscathed.” She took his dread, deftly displaying her unsettling ability to ken his mind. A talent he’d found plaguey annoying in their youth but welcomed all the more now, this moment.

  “And where are they?” That came gruff. “Do you know?”

  Janet nodded. “They are with the other men, working with the shipwright, down on the boat strand. The lot of them toil by pitch-pine torches until the small hours,” she told him. “And you needn’t thank me for telling you,” she added with a glimmer of the cheekiness he’d so cherished in her as a young lassie.

  A sassiness that, in recent years, had sadly given way to moon eyes, pouting lips, and fluttering lashes.

  Soppy silliness he’d ne’er had time for
in any female, least of all one he loved as a sister.

  And as if she’d probed his mind yet again, her expression sobered. “You need not grieve for them or anyone else within these walls. No one suffered aught in the fire. Naught save the scrapes and bruises we harvested afterward, clearing away the rubble.”

  She looked away again, this time peering past him into the shadows of the ruined tower. “It happened during the Yuletide celebrations, see you?”

  “So?” He didn’t see at all.

  A fire was a fire was a fire . . . and a life was a precious and fragile thing, its breath and pulse snuffed out in less than the blink of an eye.

  That much he’d learned.

  At the latest, after seeing Scotland’s finest spill their life’s blood beneath a hailstorm of English arrows.

  “I dinna see what Christmastide revelry has to do with sparing men the warmth of a raging inferno.”

  “And I say you should.” She flipped her braids over her shoulders, gave him a challenging look. “Or have you not done any carousing on the tourney circuit, Magnus MacKinnon? Have you forgotten that nights of chaos and conviviality often leave the best of men not just reeking of stale wine and light-skirted kitchen lasses, but also sleeping openmouthed on the floor rushes?”

  “Christ in hell.” Magnus swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “Are you telling me the men of this household lay about beneath the trestles—drunken—whilst the whole of the east tower went up in flame?”

  Janet peered hard at him. “Would you rather they’d been asleep in their beds? In that selfsame tower?”

  She had him there.

  Magnus clamped his jaw, gave her a stiff nod. “You are right, to be sure,” he conceded. “But it is still shameful. A sorry business.”

  “A sad affair, aye—but caused by a lightning strike. The most alert guardsmen could not have prevented it. Though some say the old curse guided the bolt’s path.”

  Magnus snorted. “Pray, spare me such foolhardiness. I have no wish to hear it.”