by Vivian Wood
When she returned to her bedroom, a dark shape slipped in the door before she wedged it shut. This one was a comfort, though; her familiar, silky midnight-black cat named Cairn. He jumped up onto her writing desk and sniffed the piece of stationery that Mere Marie had inscribed, cocking his head and shooting Mere Marie a curious look.
“Visitors at this hour?” Cairn said, his voice a soft, throaty rasp.
“Le Medcin, to be precise. He’s giving me the protectorate I requested,” Mere Marie announced. “But he isn’t making it easy for me, of course.”
Lifting his nose, Cairn gave a delicate sniff.
“It smells like scrying in here,” he said. “I didn’t know you had the talent.”
Mere Marie narrowed her gaze at the minor slight, but Cairn merely licked his paw and groomed himself, pretending to be unaware of his snark.
“I’ve been given a mirror for the purpose. To find the Guardians, I would think,” she said, picking up the list and pinning Cairn with a sharp glance. “And I’ll thank you to stay away from it.”
Cairn gave a gentle huff, but didn’t argue.
“What sort of Guardians has Le Medcin chosen for you?” Cairn asked, tail swaying.
“A nice variety. The first three I’ve selected are all shifters,” Mere Marie said, pursing her lips.
“Wolves?” Cairn asked. He was always full of questions, but Mere Marie rarely minded. Talking to Cairn often helped her work things through in her mind.
“Bears, actually,” she replied, feeling satisfied with her answer.
“Ah. Sensible. Bears are fierce protectors, after all. Though how you’ll make them get along, I don’t know,” Cairn said, a teasing smile on his face.
“I think Le Medcin left this book for just that purpose. A rule book, so to speak. I fill in the specifics, and bind them with a signature and an offering of blood.”
“How do you know that?” Cairn asked.
“There’s a ceremonial dagger. One assumes that the city’s new Gurdians won’t be sacrificing a virgin with it,” Mere Marie said. “At least I hope not.”
“They’re hard to find these days, anyway,” Cairn said, rising and stretching in the way that only cats can.
Mere Marie picked up the book once more and flipped to the second page, her lips lifting a hair when she saw that more words were forming on the page. The book began to lay out the terms of the Guardians’ commitment as it took shape in her mind. In short, the bargain offered the men relief from their circumstances in exchange for faithful and loyal service.
“Hmm. Interesting,” Mere Marie said. “The book is adding some terms of its own. It says that the Guardians are bound to me until such time as I release them, unless they find their fated mates.”
“Tricky, tricky,” Cairn tsked, his expression speculative. “You never know with shifters. Could be a hundred years. Could be tomorrow. One minute they’re eating a beignet, the next they’ve spotted their mate and they’re running off to seal the deal with a heck of a lot more than a kiss. Bears especially, there’s no controlling them once they’ve got something of their own to protect.”
“I didn’t know that you were such an expert on bear shifters,” Mere Marie said, lifting a brow. Her familiar roamed the Vieux Carre at will, mixing and mingling with all sorts. Mere Marie rarely left her house these days, preferring to leave the dangerous work to her many descendants and students. Certainly she didn’t regularly interact with gruff, aggressive bear shifters. Until now, that was.
“I get around,” Cairn said, leaping off the table and making his way to the door.
“Don’t go far,” Mere Marie warned. “We’ve work to do tomorrow.”
She leaned back in her seat, turning over in her mind an entire world of possibilities.
2
Chapter Two
Rhys
Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands — 1764
Rhys Macaulay used the toe of his boot to nudge a pile of loose dirt onto the still-smoldering campfire. It was early yet, the violet fingers of dawn still half an hour or more from breaking over the top of the hill that rose sharply next to their camp site. The Macaulay clan might be down and out, running for their lives, but they were still smart enough to hide their tracks well. They’d rode hard the day before, fleeing north, deeper into the Highlands. The second Rhys had spotted this little valley, he’d called a halt to the procession. Being bear shifters, the Macaulays were comfortable with nature and most even enjoyed sleeping rough. In better conditions, this night would have passed quite pleasantly. The two sides of the valley were steep, barely accommodating the horses, but the vale at the bottom was nice and flat and verdant, giving them an ideal place to hunker down.
Ideal, because approaching soldiers would have to make a good bit of noise if they wanted to clamber down into the valley and attack the Macaulays as they slept. Ideal, because two guards posted at the top of the hills to the east and the west were high up enough to survey the surrounding wilderness with ease. Ideal, too, because Rhys had driven the remaining hundred or so men, women, and children past all endurance in the last week, ripping them from the fabric of their lives as they fled Tighnabruaich, the only home most of them had ever known.
If Rhys had demanded it, his clan would have kept going until they dropped dead, but of course that would defeat the purpose of the entire mad flight. The Macaulays were tough, but even bears could only be pushed so hard before they crumbled. So this little valley had been the best choice for the Macaulays, but in a way the only choice. Rhys could only pray that the clan had outrun their pursuers by enough distance that they could risk staying put another night, because every member of their party was half-dead with exhaustion, down to the last man and horse.
Of course, they could not rest longer than another night, for Fuadach nan Gàidheal was upon them. The expulsion of the Gael. Greedy Scottish lairds, grown fat with their successes, had begun to look around themselves and seek out small communities that could be annexed to their lands with little trouble. Tighnabruaich was such a community, to Rhys’s unending shame. He’d been off fighting for the King, looking for adventure and glory; in the meanwhile, his father and younger brother had both passed away suddenly, leaving Tighnabruaich defenseless and disorganized. By the time Rhys had received a dispatch to return, the MacGregors next door had already attacked, taking a great deal of livestock and weapons and no few lives as well.
The biggest problem was that the MacGregors had been very clever in his destruction of the Macaulays. The MacGregors were wolf shifters, generally considered much more peaceful and friendly than bear shifters. Wolves were much more prevalent than bears in the shifter world, and bears tended to get a bad reputation. There were several popular stories that floated around the shifter world about vicious, aggressive bears that had attacked humans and other shifters without provocation. Because bears were so much rarer and kept to their own kind, the rumors were hard to combat.
The MacGregors had used the rumors to their benefit, spinning a clever narrative about the Macaulays beginning a rivalry by stealing cattle and traversing MacGregor territory, things that Highlanders normally did. But the MacGregor laird had also spread lies about the Macaulays, leveraging the fears of the community by saying that some of the bears had attacked MacGregor children and abducted MacGregor women, that the Macaulays had committed these crimes and then lay in wait for MacGregor soldiers, slaughtering any small groups of wolves they found.
Sure, the Macaulays were territorial and stiff-spined, as were most shifters of any kind. And being bears, they were hot-headed and unafraid of confrontation. But rapists and child murderers they were certainly not. Nevertheless, the MacGregors had traveled for months before he began to attack, telling everyone who would listen about the Macaulays’ many crimes. The news of the Macaulays’ supposed misdeeds had reached Rhys’ ears even before word of his father and brother’s mysterious and suspicious deaths, and by the time Rhys obtained leave to return to the Highlands th
e whispers and lies had compounded to a maelstrom of conspiracies and outright demands for action to quell the Macaulays. Threats that the MacGregors were only too happy to fulfill.
When Rhys finally set foot on home soil, it was far too late. Upon arriving, he had less than three days to reacquaint himself with his people, make sense of the whole situation, and come to a decision about the fate of the whole clan. A Macaulay sympathizer in the MacGregor castle had sent word of an impending attack, intending to annihilate the entire the clan, leaving the lands open for the MacGregors’ taking.
The bitterness of the decision was still heavy on his tongue a week later as he walked amongst the small clusters of sleeping clan members, moving from one end of the narrow valley toward the other. He paused as he came to a pallet whose occupant was entirely covered, except a riot of golden curls that couldn’t be repressed. He knew those curls well, had admired them and longed for their owner since boyhood.
Anne Grant was just one more thing he’d given up when he’d left on his fool’s errand to fight for the King. If only Rhys had listened to his father and stayed in Tighnabruaich, let his younger brother Craig serve the King’s cause. The pallet shifted, and Anne rolled onto her back, giving him a good look at her sleeping face. Next to her, Rhys could now see her young son Toran. The boy was a perfect copy of his father, one of the first men slain by the MacGregors.
The knowledge that not only had he lost any chance at Anne’s love, but also her respect for Rhys as clan leader, was every bit as harsh as the guilt he felt for her loss. She was lost to him, in every sense. Even if he’d wanted to court Anne some day, even if he didn’t know that she looked at his adventures in the King’s service with no little loathing, Anne had eyes for no one but her beloved Logen, and the son Logen had given her.
Stomach tightening, Rhys moved on. There was no use longing for a woman who now hated him. He needed to focus on the present, on keeping the clan together and alive. If they could but make it to the sea, follow the coast upward a few days’ ride, they might make it to the MacLeans, his mother’s people. He wasn’t entirely certain of the welcome the Macaulays would receive, but it was their only chance.
Rhys turned and trudged up to the top of the easternmost hill, steadying himself several times against the loose rocks and soil underfoot. At the top, he saw the very beginnings of dawn, as he’d predicted. Shoving a hand through his dark hair, which he’d released from its tie to brush the top of his broad shoulders, Rhys spent a moment adjusting his plaid, which had loosened somewhat on his ascent up the hill. He then opened his sporran, the leather pouch that hung from a chain around his waist, and withdrew a folded map and a tarnished bronze compass.
Squatting, he gently spread the the map out on the ground. The paper was already worn thin, tearing at the fold lines, the smaller print smudged and faded. After a few minutes’ calculation, Rhys determined the direction of the sea and the closest route to the coast. Going to the sea would solve the problem of their fast-diminishing rations, as well as leading them inexorably north toward the MacLeans.
He put the map and compass back in his sporran and turned to head back down the valley, then froze in place. He squinted into the distance, cursing the feeble early morning light. Was that… damn, it was smoke. From the look of it, quite a large campfire, and only a few hours’ ride from where Rhys now stood.
“Damnation,” he muttered. Peering down into the valley, he pressed two fingers to his lips and gave a long, low whistle. Three sleeping forms shot to their feet in moments, all three guard captains in perfect sync as they turned to find Rhys, trudging toward him as they rubbed sleep from their eyes. Rory, Donal, and Tristan were his three most trusted men, and true to form they were at Rhys’s side in under two minutes.
“Laird,” Donal said, inclining his head respectfully. Rhys appreciated Donal’s tried and true loyalty, but he had no time for formalities just now.
“Smoke,” Rhys said, pointing to draw their attention to the horizon. The sky was growing lighter by the minute, which meant that the MacGregors could be on the Macaulay camp in a matter of hours. Sooner, even, if they’d sent scouts ahead.
Tristan looked at the smoke, then looked down into the valley where the clan slept.
“Shite,” he said, his brogue thick as tar. “We canna move the bairns. No’ yet, no’ when they’ve hardly slept a wink.”
“Aye,” Rhys agreed, conscious of his own accent, how his words had been worn down and rounded by his time serving the King. Just one more thing that separated him from his clan.
“Nor can we fight, unless they’re a very wee number,” Rory pointed out, rubbing the back of his neck. “No’ with the women and the babies atop us as such.”
Rhys nodded, already knowing that his next words would be every bit as bitter as the announcement that the Macaulays would flee Tighnabruaich.
“Donal, you must take five men and lead the women away,” Rhys said, his voice nearly faltering on the last syllable.
“Laird—” Donal stuttered, but Rhys stopped him with a gesture.
“Go now, start waking them up. Tristan, get some lads to ready the horses. And Rory, we need to ready the men to ride.”
“Where, Laird?” Rory asked, his brow hunching.
Rhys looked at Rory, his stomach as leaden as his heart.
“Straight to the MacGregors, lad.”
Rory visibly swallowed, but in a heartbeat all three men were sliding down the valley, following Rhys’s orders. Rhys looked at the smoke rising in the sky once more, then looked down at his bedraggled, exhausted clan. In his heart of hearts, Rhys had not an ounce of hope that this day, this fight, could end in the Macaulays’ favor.
Just as he moved to slide down the valley, following his men to make the announcement to the clan he’d failed, the air around him seemed to tense, thicken. The valley, his clan, the early morning sky… it all slid away from his consciousness, and all he could see was white. Pure, formless, endless white. He looked down, and he could see himself perfectly well, but all else was insubstantial and blank.
For a moment, Rhys couldn’t help but think that an arrow had taken him by surprise, hit him in the neck and killed him in an eye’s blink. This endless white, then, was purgatory. He’d wait here until he was sent to hell, the sentence he deserved for ruining his clan, turning his back on his people in his quest for glory and excitement.
“Rhys.” A woman’s voice, her accent unlike any Rhys had ever heard. Not Scots, Irish, or English. Not even French, which Rhys had heard a few times. Mayhap Italian or German; he’d heard such people had strange ways of speaking. But why would a German be speaking to him in purgatory? Perhaps an Italian, like Dante?
Turning slowly, Rhys was astonished to find a very wee woman standing a stone’s throw from him. She was so foreign as to puzzle him, her skin so dark from the sun that she was brown as a river rock from head to toe. She wore a strange, formfitting blue gown, her glossy midnight hair braided close to her head. Her feet were bare, and she wore no jewelry or plaid, nor any other mark of her clan. She was not young, despite her dark hair, yet she was not quite old and wizened either. Ageless, in a way that made Rhys aware of her inhumanity.
“Rhys,” she said again, over-pronouncing his name, so it sounded less guttural, like Reece. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
“Aye,” he said, watching her with baited breath.
“I am Mere Marie,” she said slowly.
“Am I dead, then?” he asked, looking around at the vast whiteness around him once more.
“Oh,” Mere Marie said, looking surprised. “No, but I’ve a feeling that you’re not far from it, present circumstances considered.”
Rhys took a few moments to parse her oddly-accented words, then nodded.
“Aye, I suppose,” he agreed. “My people are in grave danger. I need to get back to them.”
Mere Marie waved a hand.
“Worry not, their world out there is… let us say, paused, for the moment. Not
hing will happen without you.”
Rhys merely cocked his head, trying to understand why… how… where he was.
“I see I’m not making things better,” Mere Marie said, her copper eyes flashing with something akin to amusement. “I am here to save your people, your…”
“Clan,” Rhys filled in when she hesitated.
“Yes. I want to make a bargain,” she said.
Rhys stilled.
“So you’re the devil, then,” he concluded, shocked by his own lack of surprise. She was fetching, in a manner, and exotic.
“No!” Mere Marie said, clearly startled. “No, no devil. I work on what you might consider to be the other side of the equation.”
Rhys puzzled that out.
“You’re an angel? You work for God?”
The peculiar woman flinched, then shook her head again.
“No. But I’m closer to an angel than a devil. Today, at least.”
Rhys decided to take that statement at face value, turning back to her earlier words.
“You spoke of a bargain,” he said.
“Yes. I can save your clan, if you wish. I can destroy Angus MacGregor, make him sorry he ever threatened your people."
Rhys narrowed his gaze.
"I'm not sure how you'd do that. The MacGregors are stubborn bastards. Even if you did, my people have nothing to go back to now. The village is burned."
Mere Marie canted her head, considering. After a moment, she waved her hand to indicate the vast whiteness surrounding them.
"You have seen that I have power. I can change things, go back before the MacGregors first attacked your clan. If that is your wish."
Something in her tone made Rhys question her motive.
