The Fiery Cross

by Diana Gabaldon

  him. Seeing the puzzled looks on the faces of father and cousin, she took a deep breath and started over, trying-with occasional clarifications from Roger and me-to define things, and give a short, if confused, account of the sad state of the American Indian in the twentieth century.

  "So this Robert Springer is-or was-an Indian, of sorts, in your own time?" Jamie tapped his fingers in a brief tattoo on the table, frowning in concentration. "Well, that corresponds wi' his own account; he and his friends apparently took no little exception to the behavior of what they called 'whites.' I would suppose those to be Englishmen? Or Europeans, at least?"

  "Well, yes-except that by nineteen-sixty- eight, of course they weren't Europeans anymore, they were Americans, only the Indians were Americans first-and so that's when they started calling themselves native Americans, and-"

  Roger patted her knee, stopping her in mid-flow.

  "Perhaps we can do the history a bit later," he suggested. "What was it ye read about Robert Springer in the papers?"

  "Oh." Taken aback, she furrowed her brow in concentration. "He

  964 Diana Gabaldon

  disappeared. They disappeared-the Montauk Five, I mean. They were all wanted by the government, for blowing things up or threatening to or something, I forget-and they were arrested, but then they got out on bail, and the next thing you know, they'd all disappeared."

  "Evidently so," Young Ian murmured, glancing toward the journal,

  "It was a big deal in the papers for a week or so," Brianna went on. "The other activist types were all accusing the government of having done away with them, so that stuff coming out of the trial wouldn't embarrass the government, and of course the government was denying it. So there was a big search on, and I think I remember reading that they found the body of one of the missing men-out in the woods somewhere in New Hampshire or Vermont or someplace-but they couldn't tell how he died-and nobody turned up any trace of the others."

  " Where are they?" I quoted softly, the hair rippling on the back of my neck, "My God, where are they?"

  Jamie nodded soberly.

  "Aye, then; I think this Springer may well be your man." He touched the page before him, with something like respect.

  "He and his four companions all renounced any association with the white world, taking new names from their real heritage-or so he says."

  "That would be the proper thing to do," Ian said softly. He had a new, strange stillness to him, and I was forcibly reminded that he had been a Mohawk for the last two years-washed free of his white blood, renamed Wolf's Brother-one of the Kahnyen'kehaka, the Guardians of the Western Gate.

  I thought Jamie was aware of this stillness, too, but he kept his eyes on the journal, flipping pages slowly as he summarized their content.

  Robert Springer-or Ta'wineonaAira-"Otter-Tooth," as he chose henceforth to call himself had numerous associations in the shadow world of extremist politics and the deeper shadows of what he called Native American shamanism-I had no notion how much resemblance there was between what he was doing, and the original beliefs of the Iroquois, but Otter-Tooth believed that he was descended from the Mohawk, and embraced such remnants of tradition as he could find-or invent.

  It was at a naming ceremony that Ifirst met Raymond. I sat up abruptly, hearing that. He had mentioned Raymond in the beginning, but I had taken no particular note of the name, then.

  "Does he describe this Raymond?" I asked urgently. Jamie shook his head.

  "Not in terms of appearance, no. He says only that Raymond was a great shaman, who could transform himself into birds or animals-and who could walk through time," he added delicately. He glanced at me, one eyebrow raised.

  "I don't know," I said. "I thought so, once-but, now, I don't know." "What?" Brianna was looking back and forth between us, puzzled. I shook my head, smoothing back my hair.

  "Never mind. Someone I knew in Paris was named Raymond, and I thought-but what in the name of anything would he be doing in America in nineteen- sixty-eight? " I burst out.

  "Well, you were there, aye?" Jamie pointed out, "But putting that aside f or

  The Fiery Cross 965

  the moment-" he returned to the text, laying it all out in the oddly stilted English of the translation: Intrigued by Raymond, Otter-Tooth had met with the man repeatedly, and brought several of his closest friends to him as well. Gradually, the scheme-a great, audacious plan, stunning in conception"Modest, isn't he?" Roger muttered-had been conceived.

  "Tbere was a test. Manyfailed, but I did not. There werefive of us who passed the test, who beard the voice of time, five of us who swore in our blood and by our blood that we would undertake tbisSreat venture, to rescue our peoplefrom catastrophe. To rewrite their history and redress their wrongs, t0_."

  Roger gave a faint groan.

  "Oh, God," he said. "What did they mean to do-assassinate Christopher Columbus?"

  "Not quite," I said. "He meant to arrive before 1600, he said. What happened then, do you know?" d through "I dinna. ken what happened then," Jamie told me, rubbing a han

  his hair, "but I ken well enough what he thought he was doing. His plan was to go to the Iroquois League, and rouse them against the white settlers. He thought that there were few enough settlers then, that the Indians could easily wipe them out, if the Iroquois led the way."

  "Perhaps he was right," Ian said softly. "I've heard the old people tell the stories. When the first of the O'scronni came, how they were welcomed, how they brought trade goods. A hundred years ago, the O'seronni were few-and the Kahnyen'kehaka were masters, leaders of the Nations. Aye, they could have done it-had they wished to."

  "Well, but he couldn't possibly have stopped the Europeans," Brianna objected. "There were just way too many. He didn't mean to get the Mohawk to invade Europe, did he?"

  A broad grin crossed Jamie's face at the thought.

  "I should have liked to see that," he said. "The Mohawk would have given the Sassenachs something to think about. But no, alas"-he gave me a sardonic look-"our friend Robert Springer wasna quite so ambitious."

  What Otter-Tooth and his companions had had in mind was sufficiently ambitious, though-and perhaps ... just perhaps ... possible. Their intention was not to prevent white settlement altogether-they were, just barely, sane enough to realize the impossibility of that. What they intended was to put the Indians on their guard against the whites, to establish trade on their terms, to deal from a position of power.

  "Instead of allowing them to settle in great numbers, they might keep the whites bottled up in small towns. instead of allowing them to build fortifications, demand weapons from the start. Establish trade on their own terms. Keep them outnumbered, and outgunned-and force the Europeans to teach them the ways of metal.

  "Prometheus redux," I said, and Jaime snorted. Roger shook his head, half-admiringly.

  admire their "It's a crack-brained scheme," he said, "but ye do have to

  966 Diana Gabaldon

  League nerve. It might just possibly have worked-if he could convince the Iroquois, and if they acted at the right time, before the balance of power shifted to the Europeans. It all went wrong, though, didn't it? First he comes to the wrong time-much too late-and then he realizes none of his friends have made it with him."

  I saw goosebumps rise suddenly on Brianna's arms, and caught the look she sent me-one of sudden understanding. She had abruptly imagined just how it might be, to arrive suddenly out of one's own time ... alone.

  I gave her a small smile, and put my hand on Jamie's arm. Absentmindedly, he put his own hand over mine, and squeezed it gently.

  "Aye. He nearly despaired, as he says, when he realized that it had all gone wrong. He thought of going back-but he didna have a gemstone anymore, and this Raymond had said yc must have one, for protection,"

  "He did find one eventually, though," I said. Getting up, I reached to the top shelf and brought down the big raw opal, its inner fire flickering through the carved spiral on its surface.
<
br />   "That is-I'm assuming there can't have been multiple Indians named Otter-Tooth, associated with Snaketown." Tewaktenyonh, an elderly Mohawk woman, and leader of the Council of Mothers, had given me the stone when we went to the village of Snaketown to rescue Roger from captivity. She had also told me the story of Otter-Tooth, and how he met his death-and I shivered, though it was warm in the room.

  The big smooth stone felt warm in my hand, too; I rubbed a thumb gingerly over the spiral. Tbe snake that eats its tail, he'd said.

  "Aye. He doesna mention that, though." Jamie sat back, running both hands through his loosened hair, then rubbing a hand over his face. "The story ends with him deciding that there's no help for it; whatever year it may beand he had no notion-and whether he was alone or not, he would carry out his plan."

  Everyone was silent for a moment, regarding the enormity-and the fiatility-of such a plan.

  "He can't have thought it would work," Roger said, the rasping husk of his voice giving the words a sense of finality.

  Jamie shook his head, looking down at the book, though his eyes were clearly looking through it, dark blue and remote.

  "Nor he did," he said softly. "What he said, here at the last"-his fingers touched the page, very gently"was that thousands of his people had died for their freedom, thousands more would die in years to come. He would walk the path they walked, for the honor of his blood, and to die fighting was no more than a warrior of the Mohawk should ask."

  I heard Ian draw breath behind me in a sigh, and Brianna bent her head, so the bright hair hid her face. Roger's own face was turned toward her, grave in profile-but it was none of them I saw. I saw a man with his face painted black for death, watking through a dripping forest at night, holding a torch that burned,with cold fire.

  A yank on my skirt pulled me away from this vision, and I glanced down to find Jemmy standing beside me, pulling on my hand.

  "Watsat?"

  The Fiery Cross 967

  "What-oh! It's a rock, sweetheart; a pretty rock, see?" I held out the opal, and he seized it with both hands, plumping down on his bottom to look at it. Brianna wiped a hand underneath her nose, and Roger cleared his throat with a noise like ripping cloth.

  "What I want to know," he said gruffly, gesturing toward the journal, "is why in hell did he write that in Latin?"

  "Oh. He says that. He'd learnt Latin in school-perhaps that was what turned him against Europeans"-Jamie grinned at Young Ian, who grimaced"and he thought if he wrote in Latin, anyone who happened to see it would think it only a priest's book of prayers, and pay it no heed."

  "They did think that-the Kahnyen'kehaka," Ian put in. "Old Tewaktenyonh kept the book, though. And when I-left, she gave me the wee book, and said as I must bring it back wi' me, and give it to you, Auntic Claire."

  "To me?" I felt a sense of hesitation at touching the book, but nonetheless reached out a hand and touched the open pages. The ink, I saw, had begun to run dry toward the end-the letters skipped and stuttered, and some words were no more than indentations on the paper. Had he thrown the empty pen away, I wondered, or kept it, a useless reminder of his vanished future?

  "Do you think she knew what was in the book?" I asked. Ian's face was impassive, but his soft hazel eyes held a hint of trouble. When he had been a Scot, he hadn't been one to hide his feelings.

  "I dinna ken," he said. "She kent something, but I couldna say what. She didna tell me-only that I must bring ye the book." He hesitated, glancing from me to Brianna and Roger, then back. "Is it true?" he asked. "What ye said, cousin-about what,,Aill happen to the Indians?"

  She looked up, meeting his eyes squarely, and nodded. "I'm afraid so," she said softly. "I'm sorry, Ian."

  He only nodded, rubbing a knuckle down the bridge of his nose, but I wondered.

  He hadn't forsaken his own people, I knew, but the Kahnyen'kehaka were his as well. No matter what had happened to cause him to leave.

  I was opening my mouth to ask Ian about his wife, when I heard Jemmy. He had retired back under the table with his prize, and had been talking to it in a genially conversational-if unintelligible-manner for several minutes. His voice had suddenly changed, though, to a tone of alarm.

  "Hot," he said, "Mummy, HOT!"

  Brianna was already rising from her stool, a look of concern on her face, when I heard the noise. It was a high-pitched ringing sound, like the weird singing of a crystal goblet when you run a wet finger round and round the rim. Roger sat up straight, looking startled.

  Brianna bent and snatched Jemmy out from under the table, and as she straightened with him, there was a sudden pow! like a gunshot, and the ringing noise abruptly stopped.

  "Holy God," said Jamie, rather mildly under the circumstances.

  Splinters of glimmering fire protruded from the bookshelf, the books, the walls, and the thick folds of Brianna's skirts' One had whizzed past Roger's head, barely nicking his ear; a thin trickle of blood was running down his neck, though he didn't seem to have noticed yet.

  968 Diana Gabaldon

  A stipple of brilliant pinpoints glinted on the table-a shower of the sharp needles had been thrust upward through the inch-thick wood. I heard Ian exclaim sharply, and bend to pull a tiny shaft from the flesh of his calf. Jernmy began to cry. Outside, Rollo the dog was barking furiously.

  The opal had exploded.

  IT WAS STILL broad daylight; the candleflame was nearly invisible, no more than a waver of heat in the late afternoon light from the window. Jamie blew out the taper he had used to light it, and sat down behind his desk.

  "Ye didna sense anything odd about yon stone when ye gave it to the lad, Sassenach?"

  "No." I still felt shaken by the explosion, the echoes of that eerie noise still chiming in my inner ear. "It felt warm-but everything in the room is warm. And it certainly wasn't making that noise."

  "Noise?" He looked at me queerly. "When it went bang, d'ye mean?" Now it was my turn to look askance.

  "No-before that. Didn't you hear it?" He shook his head, a small frown between his brows, and I glanced round at the others. Bree and Roger nod ded-both of them looked pale and ill-but Ian shook his head, looking interested, but puzzled.

  "I didna hear a thing," he said. "What did it sound like?"

  Brianna opened her mouth to answer, but Jamie raised a hand to stop her. "A moment, a nigbean. Jem, a ruradb-did ye hear a noise before the bang?l

  rom his fright, but was still crouching in his Jemmy had settled down f

  mother's lap, thumb in his mouth. He looked at his grandfather out of Aide blue eyes that had already begun to show a definite slant, and slowly nodded, not removing the thumb.

  "And the stone Grannie gave ye-it was hot?"

  Jemmy cast a glare of intense accusation in my direction and nodded again. I -followed by a much larger one, when I thought of felt a small surge of guilt

  what might have happened, had Bree not snatched him up at once.

  We had picked most of the splinters out of the woodwork; they lay on the desk in a small heap of brittle fire. One had sliced a tiny flap of skin from my knuckle; I put it in my mouth, tasting silver blood.

  "My God, those things are sharp as broken glass."

  "They are broken glass." Brianna clutched Jem a little closer.

  "Glass? You mean it wasn't a real opal?" Roger raised his brows, leaning forward to pick up one of the needlelike shards.

  "Sure it is-but opals are glass. Really hard volcanic glass. Gemstones are gemstones because they have a crystalline structure that makes them pretty; opals just have a really brittle structure, compared to most." The color was beginning to come back into Brianna's face, though she kept her arms wrapped tightly round her son.

  "I knew you could break one if you hit with a hammer or something, but I

  The Fiery Cross 969

  never heard of one doing that." She nodded at the pile of glimmering fragments.

  Jamie picked a large shard out of the pile with finger and thumb and held it<
br />
  out to me.

  "Put it in your hand, Sassenach. Does it feel warm to you?"

  I accepted the jagged piece of stone gingerly. It was thin, nearly weightless, and translucent, sparkling with vivid blues and oranges.

  "Yes," I said, tilting my palm cautiously to and fro. "Not remarkably hotjust about skin temperature."

  "it felt cool to me," Jamie said. "Give it to Ian."

  I transferred the bit of opal to Ian, who put it in the palm of his hand and stroked it cautiously with a fingertip, as though it were some small animal that might bite him if annoyed.

  "It feels cool," he reported. "Like a bit of glass, like cousin Brianna says."

  A bit more experimentation established that the stone felt warm-though not strikingly so-to Brianna, Roger, and me-but not to Jamie or Ian. By this time, the wax had melted in the top of the big clock candle, allowing Jamie to extract the gemstones hidden there. He fished them out, rubbed the last of the hot wax off on his handkerchief, and laid them out in a row along the edge of the desk to cool.

  Jernmy watched this with great interest, his misadventure apparently forgotten.

  "D'ye like these, angbille ruaidb?" Jamie asked him, and he nodded eagerly, leaning out of his mother's lap, reaching toward the stones.

  "Hot," he said, then, remembering, shrank back a little, a look of doubt crossing his small, blunt features. "Hot?

  "Well, I do hope not," his grandfather said. He took a deep breath and picked up the emerald, a crudely faceted stone the size of his thumbnail. "Put out your hand, a bailach."

  Brianna looked as though she wanted to protest, but bit her lower lip, and encouraged Jemmy to do as his grandfather asked. He took the stone, still lookin but then the look of wariness faded into a smile as he

  9 suspicious)

  looked down at the stone. "Pretty rock!"

  "Is it hot?" Brianna asked, poised to snatch it out of his hand.

  "Yes, hot," he said, with satisfaction, holding it against his stomach.

  "Let Mama see." With a little difficulty, Brianna succeeded in getting her fingers onto the rock, though Jernmy wouldn't surrender it. "It's warm," she said, looking up. "Like the piece of opal-but not way hot. If it gets way hot, you drop it fast, OK " she said to Jernmy-

  Roger had been watching this with fascination.

  "He's got it, hasn't he?" he said softly. "Fifty/fifty, you said, or three chances in four, depending-but he's got it, doesn't he?"

  "What?" Jamie glanced at Roger, then me, one red brow raised in question. "I think he can ... travel," I said, feeling a tightening of my chest at the thought. "You know what Otter-Tooth said-" I nodded at the journal, which lay discarded on the desk. "He said they had to take a test-to see if they could

  970 Diana Gabaldon

  hear 'the voice of time.' We know that not everyone can ... do this." I fclt unaccountably shy, talking of it before Ian. "But some can. From what OtterTooth said, there was a way of finding out who could and couldn't, ahead of time, without having actually to try."

  Jemmy was paying no attention to the grown-up conversation, instead rocking back and forth, humming to the stone clutched in his pudgy hand.

  "Do you suppose the 'voice of time' is-Jem, can you bear the rock?" Roger leaned forward, taking hold of Jernmy's arm to compel his attention away from the emerald. "Jem, is the rock singing to you?"

  Jemmy looked up, surprised.

  "No," he said uncertainly. Then, "Yes." He held the rock up to his ear, frowning, then thrust it at Roger. "You sing, Daddy!"

  Roger accepted the emerald gingerly, smiling at Jemmy.

  "I don't know any rock songs," he said, in his husky rasp of a voice. "Unless ye count the Beatles." He lifted the rock to his own ear, looking self-conscious. He listened intently, frowning, then lowered his hand, shaking his head.

  "It's not-I can't-I couldna really say I bear anything. And yet-here, you try." He passed the stone to Brianna, and she in turn to me. Neither of us heard anything in particular, and yet I thought I could perceive something, if I listened very hard. Not exactly a sound, more a sense of very, very faint vibration.

  "What is it?" Ian asked. He had been following the proceedings with rapt interest. "Ye're no sidheanacb, the three of ye-but why is it you can do ... what