by Jane Stain
Mairee studied Nadia as if she were an alien from another planet. Her look was not unkind, just extremely puzzled. Before she spoke, she stole a glance at where the other six women were still drying dishes and putting them away, apparently deciding they were engrossed enough in their task not to have noticed Nadia’s odd question. "These are oor sleeping pads. Spread them oot sae we all are as close tae the fire as we can be. We wull get the blankets oot next."
Nadia couldn't help herself. Her mouth started working before her mind could stop it. At least she kept her voice to a whisper. "Ye mean we are sleeping in the kitchen?"
Mairee looked at her seriously and whispered back, "Yer expectations in life hae been verra high.” She waited, perhaps for Nadia to admit she was noble born, who knew. When Nadia didn’t say anything, Mairee nodded the slightest, taking silence as an admission. “Aye, we sleep here in the kitchen. And we get up as soon as the fire dies down, tae build it up again afore Cook comes doon tae start the bread."
Nadia took three of the blankets Mairee handed her and spread them out on top of sleeping mats. "And how soon after sunrise is that?"
Mairee shook her head, scoffing in disbelief. "Well afore sunrise, Nadia."
In shock, Nadia took off her dress and hung it over a chair so it wouldn't get too sweaty and rumpled while she slept, as did all the other women. And then they all knelt on their pads and said prayers together before climbing under their blankets on their pads, closing their eyes, and falling into an exhausted sleep.
She dreamed she was in an underground castle with amazing Celtic ogham carved in the walls. Wow. The only thing that could make this better was if Ciaran were here. There he was! Good. She deserved a nice dream after the backbreaking day of work she'd done.
Vaguely aware that other people were present, wanting to talk to her —why were dreams so weird like that?— Nadia only had eyes for Ciaran. Eyes, arms, lips, and tongue. The way it can only be in dreams, she was instantly beside him, throwing caution to the wind. She grabbed him and started kissing him with all the passion she felt when she looked into that smug little grin of his.
He kissed her in return, of course, it being her dream and all. But he had a style she'd never experienced before, and that was surprising, in a dream. Rather than wrestle with her tongue, his tongue caressed her cheeks rhythmically, causing her whole body to respond with the same rhythm—
All of a sudden, Nadia was sitting in one throne and Ciaran was sitting in the other, no longer touching her the slightest. Both of them were again fully clothed, though Nadia was wearing the clothes she'd been wearing today, not the tank top and jeans she normally wore inside the warm buildings at Celtic University. What the heck was going on?
Oh well, she would just wish him into her arms again, and there he would be … And there he would be. He should be there, right?
"Just tell her, Kelsey. It's cruel to put her through this frustration, not to mention a wee bit embarrassing."
Oh no. That was Eoin’s voice. And Kelsey was here? Wait a second. Hadn’t Sarah said Kelsey could…
Nadia looked up and focused on the other people, who had been trying to talk to her: Kelsey, Eoin, and Baltair. She looked at Ciaran for his reaction to all this, a little bit afraid to see what it would be. But she relaxed when she saw him grinning at her with his mischievous smile and then raising his eyebrows in a "how about we do that again?" invitation. She smiled back at him before turning to the others.
Kelsey cleared her throat. "Aye, I have brought all these people to your dreams at their request, so that we can form a plan to rescue you."
Ciaran spoke from right next to her. "I need to get into the fortress as a spy so that we can find out the Cameron plan of attack, and tell the Murrays. You can let me in, and then I can help you escape—”
"No," Nadia exclaimed at Ciaran. "It's too dangerous. You can't stay here! You won't be able to bring the halberd, you know."
Kelsey spoke up now. "Oh, but he will be able to bring the halberd, if he gets it to disguise itself as a shepherd's crook or a walking stick or a plain old cane used by the infirm."
Nadia brightened. "It can do that?"
Kelsey smiled the slightest, clearly enjoying this. "Aye, it can do that."
Ciaran got up from the throne, and instantly the halberd was in his hand, used as if it were a cane. As soon as he did this, the halberd actually changed into the likeness of a cane, just the right height for Ciaran to lean on as he walked.
Kelsey clapped once and then hugged her hands together below her chin. "See, that's how it's done. The same way in real life as you just did in your dream. Believe that it will disguise itself, and it will."
Ciaran marveled at his new cane. "What about the other wonders it can do? Eoin spoke to it before it paralyzed everyone that time. Is that its only trick, or can it do more?"
Oddly for her, being a druid and him just being a druid’s servant, Kelsey turned to Eoin and gave him a look as if to ask, "How much do you want me to tell him?"
Eoin gave Kelsey a look as if to say, "Tell him enough that he can save himself, but not enough so he doesn’t need me."
Kelsey turned to Ciaran. "It works according to your need. If you're in a pickle—"
Ciaran gave her the oddest look.
Kelsey laughed and looked thoughtful. "If you're in dire straits, or up a creek without a paddle, or at the end of your rope, or in any sort of fine mess—"
Baltair interjected, "Or three sheets tae the wind?" and joined Eoin in a hearty laugh.
Ciaran mock scowled, put his left hand on his hip, and turned on them with the halberd raised.
Instantly, Kelsey held up her hand.
Ciaran froze.
Kelsey’s face was ash white and full of absolute fear. "Never, ever even joke about using the halberd on your friends."
Ciaran stood there waiting for her to go on.
Kelsey just stared at him with her ashen face. She was almost trembling.
Ciaran nodded the slightest. "Verra well. I will not ever use the halberd on friends, na even in jest."
Kelsey waited still a few more moments, staring at him as if to measure how much sincerity had been in his statement. Appearing to decide there was enough, she went on. "Whenever you find yourself in danger, call on the halberd to do the most obvious thing that occurs to you —unless that would harm any friends. Do you understand?"
He nodded once. "Aye, I understand."
Baltair tapped Eoin’s upper arm with the back of his hand. "What about the c—"
Eoin threw his arm around Baltair and squeezed so hard, the smaller man couldn't continue speaking. He then addressed Kelsey. "Thanks for explaining it to Ciaran so he can use it in order to spy on the Camerons. I take it this is satisfactory to you, Nadia. That now you will help him get inside the stable? We can have him there at dawn."
Nadia met Ciaran's eyes. They promised her a good time later if she would help. They looked amused at their circumstances —and more than a little pleased with the new knowledge of how much power the halberd had. She almost agreed immediately, but then she remembered.
"I will," she said. But when they all looked to be going on to another subject, she held up her hand. "I will, but on one condition."
Ciaran looked at her with mischievous curiosity, telling her with his eyes that he was more than willing to meet any condition she might set.
Eoin wrinkled his brow and looked down on Nadia. "You dinna get any conditions. You stowed away on our wagon, and stowaways dinna negotiate terms."
Behind Eoin’s back, Ciaran rolled his eyes.
Biting her lip to keep from grinning and cluing Eoin in on Ciaran’s disrespect, Nadia addressed Kelsey. "My condition is that I be allowed to stay and spy with him. I've already established myself here as a washerwoman. I've made friends with the other washerwomen, even giving them some of my Snickers bar to seal the deal. There's a lot they will do for me that they wouldn't do for Ciaran. I can help."
The m
en all voiced varying degrees of objection. Baltair worried she wasn’t up to it. Eoin thought she'd get in the way.
Ciaran was just worried for her safety.
Kelsey looked at Ciaran. "She has a point."
He opened his mouth up to say something.
Kelsey waved her hand in the air and got him to stop. "The halberd will protect her, too, at your wish."
He stopped and considered for a moment, then turned a thoughtful face to Nadia. "Aye, you can stay and help. But only if you do as I say. That is my condition."
"Works for me," Nadia said to Kelsey while locking eyes with Ciaran, calling his bluff with her stare.
Eoin and Baltair didn't look any too happy, but all Eoin said was, "Verra well. We will have him at Cameron stable at dawn."
The next thing Nadia knew, she was waking up in the dark on her pad on the floor of the Cameron mansion, next to a barely burning, cold kitchen fire.
8
Finally feeling strong again after a braw night’s sleep in a wonderful bed —not to mention a bonny dream of Nadia— Ciaran kept a careful eye on Kelsey while she unlocked one of the three dozen castles in ‘Druidville’ and took him downstairs into a huge dungeon full of clothing. Among rich gowns, clerical robes, bardic costumes, truly the clothing of every walk of life, the underground room held kilts of many different tartans, some of which he didn’t recognize. She gestured for him to choose one while she held out her hand for the one he was wearing. She seemed so businesslike about all this. As if it was part of some grand scheme. He didn't doubt it was, but did Eoin know that? Did it matter?
He pointed to a brown and yellow tartan kilt. “Which region o’ Scotland yields these dyes?”
She smiled at him conspiratorially. “None. It’s pure modern theater.” She still held out her hand as if she expected him to disrobe right in front of her.
He raised his eyebrows at her, then looked at the stairs up to where Baltair and Eoin waited.
Rolling her eyes, she took the hint and left, flipping a switch that cast bright lights on all the clothing behind her.
Recovering from the sudden profusion of light and scarcely believing the wealth of wool and velvet down here, Ciaran chose a new outfit for himself out of the tartan Kelsey had assured him was only found in modern times. He appreciated the chance to do this. A highlander’s kilt distinguished him, and while the clans didn’t have official tartans, the regions where they normally harvested dyes did tell much about where a man hailed from. The less they knew about him by looking at him, the better.
He chose an older outfit, weather worn and unremarkable. He kept his sporran though, unable to part with it because his father had made it for him. And of course he had the halberd, but he was practicing disguising it as a walking stick, and because of that he also practiced walking with a limp. It didn't help his unmemorable and unremarkable image, but at least it would explain why he had a walking stick.
There was a mirror in the room, a luxury item mounted on the wall over a dressing table. Having only heard of mirrors and never actually having seen one, he couldn't resist looking at himself in it, practicing all his usual smiles to see what they looked like in clear view and not just in his reflection in water.
He had to admit, his face was darn charming. And far too memorable. It was his long hair, he decided, water slicked against his face and tied as it was with a leather cord into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He took it out of the ponytail and combed it with his fingers till it hung down against the sides of his face. There. He looked much more like all the other warriors he’d ever met. But when he turned to go, his hair swiveled around his face, causing it to tickle his nose, and he remembered why he always wore it in a ponytail. There was nothing for it.
Not trusting Kelsey with this task, he sought out his cousin. "Eoin, you have to cut my hair."
Looking giddy, Eoin took to the task with relish, especially when Kelsey showed him there was a pair of scissors in one of the dressing table’s drawers, so he wouldn't have to use his dirk. When it was all done, Ciaran's hair was short enough that it wasn't tickling his nose.
He stared at the mirror again, looking at his new haircut from all angles, pleased with it. He was still strikingly handsome, but with this new hair and these new clothes, from a distance he would look like an entirely different person. Good.
Without ceremony, Ciaran and his cousins returned to their horses and then to 1706, arriving with plenty of time to get to the Cameron fortress by dawn. On the craggy highland mountain that looked out over it, still within the shelter of the trees, Eoin reined his horse in. "This is where ye dismount and gae on yer own, Ciaran. We wull bide here for two days only, sae ye hae two days tae spy. Then get back here, else ye are on yer own tae return tae Murray camp."
"Aye, we wull be here within two days’ time," Ciaran told Eoin as he surveyed the way down to the fortress in the darkness. "Nay a moment tae linger if I am tae hae a chance o’ meeting Nadia at dawn withoot being seen."
Eoin chuckled. "Use the halberd."
Wondering just what he meant by that, Ciaran dashed through the open ground to the first bit of cover, a clump of boulders a little way down the hill. There, he looked for the next bit of cover, and so on. He was halfway to the fortress in this manner when he realized there wasn't any cover for the last fifty yards. The fortress was very strategically placed with this in mind, its perch on the small piece of land between two lochs making it impossible to approach without being seen. Why hadn't he thought of this earlier?
Eoin’s voice came to Ciaran in memory. "Use the halberd."
What did that mean?
As the first ray of dawn beamed down into the heather and reflected off the loch, Ciaran saw Nadia in the stableyard, looking for him. The mischievous part of him wished he could just appear there in the stableyard without any warning and startle her, and he chuckled, imagining her face when he did so.
Ciaran nearly fell down. Energy was draining from him, just like it had when Eoin uttered that word and the halberd made all the Camerons around the apple wagon fall down paralyzed. A lot of energy, so much that it scared him. Now he was in no condition to run to the next bit of cover, let alone fight if he got attacked.
Suddenly, Nadia was right in front of him.
And he was in the stableyard.
Ciaran did what he’d wished he could do, reached forward with his left hand and tickled Nadia's waist, startling her into jumping straight up in the air and twisting around with the funniest look on her face when she saw him.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she put a hand over it, grabbed his arm with her other hand, and dragged him into the stable, thinking, "Is he daft? He canna be seen by anyone, let alone heard.”
A memory of the druid child Tahra killing a man flashed through Nadia’s mind, bathing it in terror at what might happen if Ciaran were discovered here and remembered to be a Murray.
She stuffed this memory and the fear it caused down out of her conscious thoughts, which raced on. “And how did he get in? If he's gaun'ae dae underhanded things like this tae me, then I dinna want him here. The nerve o’ the man... Who am I kidding? O’ course I want him here. He looks gorgeous with his new haircut!”
Wanting to hear more but unable to resist telling her he would not be leaving, Ciaran deliberately thought to Nadia, "There's not a chance I wull leave ye here by yerself while I can hear yer thoughts like this. We wull dae this together."
The two of them stood in an empty stall in the near dark of the stable, but he could see Nadia's eyes open big.
She didn’t look afraid, more embarrassed. And intrigued. "How are ye doing this?" she asked him in her mind while at the same time testing his thoughts out, seeing how much she could discover!
He mock scolded her for her boldness with the color of the words he thought toward her. "Eoin suggested I use the halberd for things I dinna understand how tae dae, and 'tis working. It got me inside the stableyard from a hundred yards away, and now
'tis allowing me tae speak with ye withoot alerting the others."
Thoughts of the early death he was cursed to because of the halberd tried to surface in his mind, but he shoved them away, lest she hear them and despair. There was no help for him. He had already used the halberd. The curse was already on his shoulders. He was going to fully enjoy the short time he had left in the world, and that meant being in the company of a Nadia who wasn’t terrified about his fate.
Nadia was still holding him by the arm, and the contact was at the same time both not enough and far too much. If he could be sure they wouldn't be interrupted it would be a different story, but…
As if Ciaran's thinking about it had caused it to happen, the door at the opposite end of the stable rattled and opened, letting in the light of the sun that had at last risen. The man who had opened the door spoke to the horses like a father. "Ye need a bit o’ work there on yer left rear shoe, aye?” Down to the next stall. “Wull the flies are getting tae yer hindquarters, eh? We'll see if we canna get ye some ointment for that.” Down another few stalls. “Och, such a pile ye hae made owernight! Were things sae easy ye had sae much time tae eat grass yesterday?"
Ciaran cast about for something to do to look productive in here so that he wouldn't be kicked out immediately.
Nadia thought at him, "Grab that rake and start mucking out stalls!" Her choice of words was odd, but the clear —and amused— vision she showed of him clearing the horse dung away from the straw left nothing to his imagination.
He cast about in his mind for some other way, any other way, to look useful, but came up with only impractical ideas. Grooming horses that had just slept the night. Going out to bring in feed when he had no idea where it was.
"Good idea," he told her even as he shook free of her and went out to grab the rake that leaned against the wall by their empty stall. He got to work immediately, not taking any time to say hello to the stable master or even acknowledge his presence. "If he first sees me working, I wull hae the best chance o’ being allowed tae bide.”
