A Warrior's Taking

by Margo Maguire

  Scowling, Ridley took the papers and made a quick exit as he broke the seal and started to read them. As soon as he’d decided it was safe to use his power, Brogan had changed the entailment and the wardship of the lasses, causing the new documents to appear. In a few moments, Ridley would discover he had no business at Ravenfield.

  “Brendan,” she said urgently, keeping her voice low. “He will take out his anger on the girls. He will think of something worse than Loncrief—”

  “Bonny Sarah,” he said, drawing her away from the crowd at the table, “tell me who would be their best guardian.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you could name anyone in the world—anyone other than yourself—who would you ask to take care of the lasses?”

  “Brendan, I—”

  “Humor me, lass.”

  ’Twas clear she did not take the question seriously, but Brogan had no chance to pursue it when Squire Crowell approached them. He gave a short bow, his eyes dancing over Sarah’s figure.

  “Hello, Miss Granger.” He gestured toward Brogan. “I don’t believe I’ve met the gentleman…”

  As Sarah made the introductions, Brogan moved closer to her, clearly warning the other man off, in an essentially male assertion. Almost imperceptibly, Crowell moved back.

  “Mr. Locke, I wonder where you were last night after dark?”

  “In my cottage,” he replied, realizing that, as a stranger to the district, he ought to be one of the first to be suspected of the misdeed at Ravenfield. Yet because he was well-dressed and wealthy, it seemed that he was above suspicion. ’Twas foolish, but fortunate for Brogan.

  “You’ll have heard about the poor creature who fell from the ruins, of course,” said Crowell. “’Tis all around the neighborhood. Not that poor Andy’ll be missed by anyone in these parts…”

  “Aye. I heard.”

  “Well, here is Mr. Rutherford, whom Miss Granger met the other day,” the squire said, “and his wife, Mrs. Rutherford.” The couple stepped forward, and Brogan recognized each one from seeing them through the window at Corrington House. They gave cursory greetings, then moved on to Mrs. Pruitt.

  It was Brogan’s best opportunity to escape with Sarah.

  Seeing a doorway behind the musicians, he took her through it and emerged in a dim and quiet hall. He seized her hand and pulled her into his arms, desperate to feel her body against his, anxious to prove that she belonged to him. He had the stone; now was the time to ask her to come to Coruain.

  “Crowell has no claim on you, lass.” He dipped his head and kissed her, their mouths melding together as one.

  “Brendan, please…” Her voice trembled and she pulled back slightly to draw her fingers over his forehead and cheek where the sìthean had bruised him. “What happened to you? How were you hurt?”

  “’Tis naught. Come here.” He hugged her close and felt the pounding of her heart in her chest. He was unconcerned about the sìthean’s attack and the fact that the Odhar knew who he was. He had the blood stone, and there were no Odhar alive who could take it from him.

  “I must get back to the girls,” Sarah said. “I cannot just leave them.”

  “Aye, this once you can, Sarah. They are dancing with the other children.”

  She broke away and took a step back. Biting her lower lip, she looked away from him. “Brendan, I…I was mistaken in coming to you last night. I should never have—”

  He did not let her retreat, but followed her as she moved away. “Sarah, you know I’ve found what I came for.”

  Her pretty throat moved as she swallowed thickly. She was trembling. “You’re leaving.”

  “No’ without you.” He took her hand and meshed his fingers with hers. “I want you, Sarah Granger, for my wife.”

  Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over to course down her cheek. She closed her eyes and tried to turn away. But Brogan did not allow it.

  “I’d thought to make things right for you as well as the lasses, showing you how to attract a man like Crowell. But I willna give you up.”

  Her chin trembled as she looked up into his eyes. “I-I love you, Brendan.” She pressed one hand to her heart. “Dear Lord, I don’t know how it happened so fast…but I can’t leave the girls. I—”

  “I will take care of the lasses. You must trust me.”

  “You keep saying that, but what can you possibly do? The entailment is clear, Mr. Ridley’s guardianship—”

  “Will change as soon as you tell me who would be a better protector.”

  “Brendan, I don’t understand.”

  “I know you have no reason to believe me, moileen. But let me explain.”

  “Can you open your mind, Sarah, and try to understand—try to believe—what I’m going to tell you?”

  Sarah nodded, feeling the warmth of his body as he leaned one hand against the wall beside her head.

  “I am no’ quite what you assumed me to be.” He touched her cheek and continued. “My people are no’ Scots. We are called Druzai. We are of a different race, though we used to live among you. ’Twas eons ago that we removed ourselves from this place, to protect your kind from us.”

  She crinkled her brow and tried to understand him. “Th-then where…?”

  “My home is an isle on the other side of the sea. We remain hidden from your world.”

  His words frightened her, made her feel as though she were falling through a black void.

  “Sarah, I am a warrior of my people. My father was killed by our common enemy, and I was compelled to come here to find this brìgha-stone. ’Tis a thing that possesses its own power.”

  “I-I don’t understand you. Brìgha?” she whispered.

  “’Tis strange to you. Aye.” He took her hand in his. “You’re trembling, moileen. Are you afraid of me?”

  A jolt of energy surged through her at his touch, and she felt drawn to him, like a sewing needle to the most powerful magnet she could imagine.

  “No. Not of you.” She trembled with the power of her attraction, and knew she would go with him, if only there were some way to take the girls with them.

  He took a deep breath and gazed directly into her eyes. “Listen to me, lass. My home is far from here, and verra different from this place. I am a son of the high chieftain. My father was killed by a…a criminal…called Eilinora. The stone from your Fairy Luck—and its twin in another time and place—are the only weapons we have against her.”

  Sarah rubbed her forehead.

  “I know this doesna make much sense to you, Sarah. You must believe me.”

  “I do,” she whispered, though she did not know why. She loved him, but his story…it was incomprehensible.

  He leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers. “Would you say Maud would be the best guardian for the lasses?”

  “Yes. She loves them like her own grandchildren, but she is feeling her age, Brendan. She cannot keep up with them.”

  “But if she were to feel younger? If her bones didna ache and her sight was better?”

  Sarah nodded. “Yes.”

  He reached into his coat and pulled out the violet satchel that had washed up with him. It was crushed flat, but when he opened it and reached inside, he pulled out a handful of gold coins. Then another.

  Sarah nearly gasped at the sight of such a fortune.

  He tossed the first handful of coins into the air and they disappeared, making quiet popping sounds as they vanished. The same thing happened with the second, and then the third handful, and Sarah could only gape at him. “You…you’re a magician?”

  “Not exactly. The coins are now in Maud’s possession.”

  “But how—?”

  “The Druzai have powers that canna be explained. Just know that Maud’s joints no longer cause her any pain. Her eyes are good once again, and she is now a woman of means. She can hire a nurse of her choice to care for Meglet and Jane. She can go away to her sister’s house, or remain at Ravenfield. The property will always belong to
the lasses. Naught can change that.”

  Sarah took the satchel from him and shook it. “’Tis empty.”

  “Only if I want it to be,” he said, his voice dark and seductive. “Reach inside it.”

  Sarah put her hand down to the bottom of the satchel and felt a hard leather surface. She pulled out the two objects inside—replacements for the shoes she’d ruined the day she’d run into the sea to rescue him. “’Tis impossible. These could not have been inside.”

  “I was not to use any magic once I arrived here, so I had to put everything I would need into the satchel before I left my home,” he said. “’Tis where I kept my clothes…and the money I gave you.”

  She could not believe it, yet she’d seen it with her own eyes. She’d forgotten to ask him about his suit, and how it had survived the sea with nary a wrinkle. He must truly be a powerful sorcerer…yet why would he want her?

  The question went unasked when the music in the next room stopped and everything went silent.

  “What is it?”

  “Mayhap ’tis Eilinora, come to confront me. Stay here.”

  He went back toward the ballroom, but Sarah followed him. Margaret and Jane suddenly squealed and ran from the crush of people near the doorway, toward a man in a blue coat and light breeches. He walked with crutches, and Sarah saw that one of his trouser legs was empty. She staggered on her own feet at the sight of Captain Barstow, alive, but looking thin and haggard, in the center of Mrs. Pruitt’s ballroom.

  It was one shock too many.

  Brendan took hold of her elbow to steady her. “Are you all right, Sarah?”

  She pressed a hand to her heart and nodded. “’Tis the girls’ father!” she whispered. “Captain Barstow is alive!”

  Chapter 16

  Even Brogan was shocked, though he did not know the man. A number of the women in the room began to weep as someone pulled up a chair for Barstow and he gathered his daughters into his arms. It was quite some time before the man was able to tell that he’d lost his leg in battle and had languished for months in a military hospital in Spain. He had not even been aware that his family thought him dead until he’d arrived at Ravenfield an hour before.

  “So you’ve seen Maud?” Sarah asked, wiping her eyes.

  “Yes,” Barstow replied. “She sent me here.”

  One of the men announced a grand celebration in honor of Captain Barstow’s return, and the music resumed, along with dancing and toasting. Sarah introduced Brogan to the girls’ father, and the captain’s friends soon drew him and his daughters to a small room away from the main party, where the festivities seemed even more jovial than before. Everyone celebrated the return of Ravenfield’s true master, but Brogan knew his time was running out. He had to leave.

  And he wanted Sarah with him.

  He took her hand and led her out of the ballroom to a terrace, where they descended the steps and went out into the garden.

  They stopped behind a tall hedge, in a circle decorated with numerous stone statues. Sarah sat on a bench near the center as Brendan went down on one knee before her and removed her Fairy Luck from his coat. He set it on the bench beside her and opened it, removing the dark red stone from it.

  Sarah gasped when it turned a bright red color in his hand and started to glow, its color undulating so that it seemed to writhe in his hand.

  “Sarah, moileen. My people are in grave danger,” he said. “’Tis only this—the brìgha-stone—that will give us the power to vanquish Eilinora and those who follow her.”

  A strange, rough voice came to them from somewhere nearby. Sarah looked ’round, but all she could see was a statue.

  “M’lord Brogan, someone approaches,” it said.

  Brendan turned to look at the gray stone figure of a maiden with a circlet of flowers in her hair and a basket of flowers draped over her arm. “Dragheen,” he said to it, “Colm spoke of you.”

  Sarah gasped as the stone statue made a slow bow to him and spoke.

  “I be Geilis, m’lord. They come. Odhar!”

  Brendan’s expression turned fierce. He suddenly grabbed Sarah’s arm and started to push her away. “Run, Sarah! Get as far away as you—”

  A loud crack rent the air, and suddenly he was lifted from the ground and thrown into the air. Sarah screamed.

  “No one will hear you, Tuath,” said a woman whose shrill voice rang in Sarah’s ears.

  Sarah looked toward the speaker, and saw that it was Mrs. Rutherford. The woman held her hand up, palm out with her fingers spread, as a visible streak of light seemed to hold Brendan in the air.

  Terrified, Sarah picked up Brendan’s red stone and thrust it behind her back. “Let him down!” she cried as the stone heated her hand.

  Mrs. Rutherford laughed. “This Druzai prince is not worth your time, little Tuath.”

  “Run, Miss Sarah!” the statue ordered. “Lord Brogan canna help you now.”

  “Eilinora!” Brogan used his few moments in the air to draw on all the power he could muster. He took in a deep breath and blew out a scorching wind in Eilinora’s direction, catching her, as well as her “husband” in the flames.

  Eilinora released him and he started to fall, but caught himself before he hit the ground. He put up a wall of stone between Sarah and Eilinora, but it crumbled almost as quickly as he’d raised it. “Sarah, run! Get away from here!”

  Brogan could not watch Sarah go, not while Eilinora and Rutherford recovered from the flames and launched their next attack. Brogan vaulted high into the branches of a nearby tree to avoid the daggers they threw at him.

  He conjured numinous bonds, just like the ones the ancient elders had used to bind the Odhar minions, and started to circle the two of them. With a loud, rasping sound, Eilinora transformed herself into a wisp of smoke, while Rutherford became a snake and slithered away in the opposite direction.

  A bolt of pain hit Brogan in the center of his back, and he fell to his knees, blinded by the agony of Eilinora’s blow. Certain he could feel the blood draining from his body, he knew she would come in for the kill unless he acted. The snake took shape in front of him and held out his father’s scepter, just out of reach.

  More quickly than any eye could see, Brogan drew a broadsword from the air and speared Rutherford through the heart. Still reeling with the pain in his back, he tried to reach for his father’s scepter, but Eilinora did not allow him to move. She drew a heavy rope ’round his neck and pulled it taut.

  Sarah could not move, even though that strange, rasping voice of the statue kept ordering her to go.

  Paralyzed in place, she watched as Mrs. Rutherford—Eilinora—yanked Brendan up by the hair and choked him with a thick rope. He’d killed Mr. Rutherford with a spear that had…She shook her head as though that could clear it…The spear had flown into his chest.

  A heavy gold rod floated in the air above Mr. Rutherford’s body, and Eilinora taunted Brendan with it as she choked him, pulling the rope tighter and tighter. “Your father let it go willingly, my dear Lord Brogan!” she screamed. “He released the spells that bound his scepter to him to spare your lives—yours and your brother’s!”

  She was killing him. Sarah could see that the woman held some extraordinary power over him, and it seemed to emanate from the rod—the scepter. It shimmered in the twilight, hovering over Brendan, somehow encasing him in its cold, vicious grip.

  Frantic to help him, Sarah looked for a weapon to use, even though she knew nothing she could wield would be effective against such a bizarre and extraordinary adversary. If she’d had trouble believing Brendan’s story, she knew now that he had not exaggerated.

  He’d told her to run away, but she couldn’t leave him here, not at the mercy of this vicious woman and that horrible scepter. Without thinking, she took hold of her skirts and ran toward them.

  “Get away from him!”

  Eilinora just laughed. But at least Sarah had provided a diversion, a temporary break in the witch’s concentration. The scepter wa
vered in the air, then turned in Sarah’s direction.

  Without thinking, she held up her hand to ward off the sparks that shot toward her, and was surprised when they collided with the sharp red glow of the rock in her hand. It was the stone Brendan had searched for, and it was blazing painfully in her hand, making her feel dizzy and disoriented.

  Eilinora screeched, and Brendan shoved away from her, turning to knock the witch to the ground. But a thousand needles pierced Sarah’s skin, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, and she wavered.

  “Hold it there, Sarah!” Brendan shouted.

  He grabbed Eilinora by the throat.

  “You will never defeat Pakal, for the Druzai are weak,” cried the witch.

  “What is Pakal?” Brogan demanded. He reached for the scepter while the stone burned Sarah’s hand. She could barely hold it steady. She felt faint and light-headed, and it wobbled in her hand. “Brendan?”

  “’Tis almost over, moileen,” he said. But his voice sounded distant, as though he were calling to her over a roar of some horrible noise. “Hold on!”

  It was almost as if the scepter itself was roaring like some creature she’d never heard of. It filled her ears and engulfed her mind so that she could barely think.

  She could not hold it any longer. The red stone seemed to pull her soul through the palms of her hands, and with a shuddering cry, she dropped to her knees, crying out in pain. “Brendan!”

  Just as Brogan wrapped his fingers ’round it, something tore the scepter from his hand. There was a sudden, complete silence, then a hiss as the air around him prickled with energy. The fleeting figure of a man appeared, but was quickly swallowed by a dark tear in the atmosphere.

  Brogan’s moment of distraction gave Eilinora the advantage. She pushed away and turned on Sarah.

  Without hesitating, Brogan sent her a killing blast. The murderous witch faltered and fell, but Brogan did not stay to watch the dissolution of her body.