Beyond the Highland Mist

by Karen Marie Moning

  “You are so unbelievably dense you can’t even see the truth when it’s right in front of you, can you?” Grimm snapped.

  The Hawk swayed drunkenly, God, where had he heard those words before? Why did they make his heart lurch inside his chest? “What are you doing up here, Grimm?” he repeated stubbornly, clutching at the parapet to steady himself.

  “Waiting for a blasted falling star so I can wish her back, you drunken fool.”

  “I don’t want her back,” Hawk snarled.

  Grimm snorted. “I may have mucked it up once, but I’m not the only one who let his emotions interfere. If you would just get past your foolish pride and anger, you’d realize that the lass would never have left you willingly for that blasted smithy!”

  Hawk flinched and rubbed his face. “What say you, man?”

  Grimm shrugged and turned away, his dark eyes searching the sky intently. “When I thought she was breaking your heart, I tried to keep the two of you apart. ’Twas a damn fool thing for me to do, I know that now, but I did what I thought was best at the time. How the hell was I supposed to know you two were falling in love? I’ve had no such experience. It seemed like a bloody battle to me! But now, thinking back on it, I’m fair certain she loved you from the very beginning. Would that we all could see forward with such clarity. If you’d pull your head out of that bottle and your own stubborn ass long enough, you might develop keen vision as well.”

  “She-said-she-loved-the-smithy,” Hawk spit each word out carefully.

  “She said, if you’ll recall, that she loved him like Ever-hard. Tell me Hawk, how did she love her Ever-hard?”

  “I don’t know,” Hawk snarled.

  “Try to imagine. You told me yourself that he broke her heart. That she talked of him while you held her—”

  “Shut up, Grimm!” the Hawk roared as he stalked away.

  Hawk wandered the snow-covered gardens with his hands pressed over his ears to stem the flood of voices. He removed his hands from his ears only long enough to take another swig from the bottle he’d pilfered from the stable boy. But oblivion never came and the voices didn’t stop—they just grew louder and clearer.

  I love you, Sidheach. Trust you, with all my heart and further then.

  None of my falcons have ever flown my hand without returning, he had warned her at the beginning of that magic summer.

  You were right about your falcons, Sidheach, she’d said when she left with Adam. He’d wondered many a night why she’d said those words; they’d made no sense to him at all. But now a hint of understanding penetrated his stupor.

  Right about his falcons …

  Had his own jealousy and insecurity about the smithy so muddled his vision?

  None of my falcons have flown my hand …

  Hawk lurched to his feet as a terrible thought occurred to him.

  The day of their wedding she’d been gone from his side for more than two hours. He hadn’t been able to find her. Then she’d walked hurriedly out of the broch. He’d wanted to take her back into the sweet coolness to make love to her and she’d carefully and determinedly steered him away. They’d gone to the stable instead.

  What had she been doing in the broch on their wedding day?

  He sped through the frosty garden and leapt the low stone wall, racing through the lower bailey. He threw open the door of the broch and stood, gasping great breaths into his lungs. It was too dark with night falling. He went back outside and drew open the shutters. Not much light, but maybe it would be enough.

  Hawk stood in the center of the round tower, memories tumbling around him. Eventually his eyes adjusted to the gloom. What were you trying to tell me, lass?

  His mind whirled while his eyes searched the floor, the ceiling, the walls …

  There.

  He crossed to the wall by the door and there it was in tiny letters. Printed on the dark wall with chalky white limestone.

  None of your falcons have flown you willingly, my love. Always yours! A.D.S.D.

  A tiny leak sprang in the dam that had held back his anguish, releasing a trickle of pain that went on and on. She’d tried to tell him. He uses no coercion against me, she’d said. But coercion the smithy had obviously used against someone or something that Adrienne cared about more than she’d cared for her own happiness.

  How could he have not figured it out before? That his cherished wife would have sacrificed everything to keep Dalkeith safe, just as he would. That hers was a love so deep, so unselfish, she would have walked through hell and back again to protect what she loved.

  Hawk groaned aloud as memories tumbled through his mind. Adrienne bathing with him in a cool spring on their return from Uster, and the simple reverence in her eyes as she surveyed the untamed landscape that was Scotia. Adrienne’s eyes glowing every time she gazed up at Dalkeith’s stone walls. Adrienne’s tenderness and gentle heart hidden carefully behind her aloof façade.

  The bastard smithy must have found her in the broch, or perhaps he’d been trailing her. Adam had obviously threatened to use his strange powers to destroy Dalkeith, and Adrienne had done whatever he’d asked to prevent that. Or was it he, the Hawk, Adam had threatened to destroy? That thought sent him into an even bleaker rage. So, his wife had given herself up to protect him and left him a loving message to let him know what she couldn’t risk telling him. That she would always love him. Her strange words had been carefully selected to make him wonder why she’d said them. To make him go to the falcon broch and look around. She hadn’t been able to risk being any more explicit for fear Adam would catch on.

  She must have written the words only moments before he’d found her the day of the wedding. Knowing that she had to leave him to keep him safe, she had wanted one last thing—for him to hold fast to his belief in her.

  But he hadn’t. He’d raged like a wounded animal, quickly believing the worst.

  He swallowed the bitter bile of shame. She’d never stopped loving him. She’d never left him willingly. Small comfort now.

  How could he ever have doubted her for even a minute?

  The bottle dropped from his hands with a thump. Sidheach James Lyon Douglas, most beautiful man and renowned lover of three continents, man the very Fae might have envied, sank to the ground and sat very still. So still that the tears almost froze on his cheeks before slipping to the ground.

  Hours later, Hawk made the slow, sober journey back up to the rooftop and sat heavily beside Grimm. As if their earlier conversation had never been interrupted he said, “Ever-hard … She said he used her for a fool, and she cried.”

  Grimm looked at his best friend and almost shouted with relief. The wild black eyes were mostly sane again. The jagged, brittle pieces of his heart no longer dangled from his sleeve. There was just a glimmer of the old Hawk’s determination and strength in his face, but a glimmer was a good start. “Hawk, my friend, there is not a man, woman, or child at Dalkeith who believes she left you willingly. Either I can stay up here and freeze my ladycrackers off trying to find a falling star, or you can do something about it yourself. I—and my freezing nether regions—would thank you most assuredly. As would all of Dalkeith. Do something, man.”

  Hawk closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Like what? You saw them vanish into thin air. I don’t even know where to look.”

  Grimm pointed to the smoky crest of Brahir Mount in silence, and the Hawk nodded slowly.

  “Aye. The Rom.”

  Grimm and the Hawk passed a moment staring silently into the swirling gray mists.

  “Hawk?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “We’ll get her back,” Grimm promised.

  CHAPTER 33

  IT TOOK MORE THAN A MONTH OF FRUSTRATED SEARCHING TO find the Rom. They’d moved on to warmer climes for the winter. It was Grimm who finally tracked them down and brought Rushka back to Dalkeith. Unknown to the Hawk, recovering Adrienne had become Grimm’s personal penance, and finding the Rom had been but a minor step along the way
.

  “Who is Adam Black, really?” Hawk asked.

  Everyone gathered in the Great Hall had wondered that same question at some point during the strange smithy’s stay, and they all leaned closer to hear the answer.

  “You Highlanders call his people the daoine sith. Adam is the fairy fool. The jester at the Fairy Queen’s court.” Rushka sighed and ran worried hands through his silver hair.

  “Fairies,” Grimm echoed carefully.

  “Oh, don’t go getting spooked on me, Grimm Roderick,” Rushka snapped. “You heard the banshee yourself the night your people were killed. You saw the bean nighe, the washerwoman, scrubbing the bloody gown of your mother before she died. Just makes me wonder what else you’ve witnessed of which you speak naught.” Rushka broke off abruptly and shook his head. “But that’s neither here nor there. The simple fact is that the Fairy inhabit these islands. They have since long before we came, and they probably will continue to do so long after we’re gone.”

  “I’ve always believed,” Lydia said softly.

  Hawk shifted uneasily by the fire. He had been raised on legends of the Fairy, and the fairy fool—the sin siriche du—was the most dangerous of the lot. “Tell me how to beat him, Rushka. Tell me everything there is to know.”

  Keeping track of the past was an astonishing feat of memory, and not all of the Rom could maintain such exhaustive records in their heads. But Rushka was one of the finest lorekeepers, and he was revered for being able to recite the ancient tales word for word—his father’s words, and those of his father’s father before him—back fifty generations.

  “It was told to me as follows.” Rushka took a deep breath and began.

  “There are two ways to be certain one is safe from the Fae. One is to exact the Queen’s oath upon the pact of the Tuatha De Danaan. That is nearly impossible to obtain for she rarely bothers herself with the doings of mortals. The other is to secure the true name of the fairy with whom one is dealing. One must then pronounce the name correctly, in the being’s own tongue, while looking directly into the fairy’s eyes, and issue one command. This command must be explicit and complete, for it will be obeyed precisely and only to the letter. There is no limit on the length of the command but that it must be spoken unbroken, conjoined, never-ending. One may pause, but one may never finish a sentence until the entire command is complete. If the command is broken to resume conversation with anyone, the extent of obedience summarily ends.” Rushka paused a moment studying the fire. “So you see, our histories say that if you look directly into his eyes while calling his true name, he is yours to command.” Rushka paced uneasily before the fire in the Greathall.

  “What is his true name?”

  Rushka smiled faintly and sketched several symbols in the ash of the hearth. “We do not speak it aloud. But he is the black one, the bringer of oblivion. He has many other names, but ’tis only this one that concerns you.”

  Hawk was incredulous. If he had only spoken Adam’s name in Gaelic, he would have had it. “That simple, Rushka? You mean to tell me he was so smug and sure of himself that he called himself Adam Black?” Amadan Dubh. Hawk echoed the name in the privacy of his mind. Literally translated it meant Adam Black.

  “Aye. But there’s still a catch, Hawk. You have to find him first. He can only be compelled if he is present and you utter his name while looking directly into his eyes. And they say his eyes can send a man swiftly into madness.”

  “Been there already,” Hawk murmured absently. “Why didn’t you tell me this when he was still here? Before he took Adrienne back?”

  Rushka shook his head. “Would you have believed me if I had told you that Adam was of a mythical race? That we believed he had brought the lass here for some strange revenge? Lydia tells me you wouldn’t even believe she was from the future until you finally saw her disappear yourself.”

  Hawk’s eyes clouded and he rubbed his jaw impatiently. “There is that,” he allowed finally, grudgingly. “But you could have warned—”

  “I did, Hawk, remember? In as much as I could the day of Zeldie’s burial.”

  The Hawk nodded soberly. True. And his mind had been so filled with thoughts of his wife that he had put his own desires before the warnings.

  “Besides, even if I had thought you would have believed, I still probably wouldn’t have told you. Compelling the Fairy is a last resort. ’Tis a dangerous thing. With the fool’s true name you may compel him only once—and precisely to the letter of your law. The fool obeys only exactly what you say. Were you to say, “I command you to bring Adrienne back, he would have to bring her. But she might be dead because you didn’t specify in what condition.”

  The Hawk threw his head back and let out a wail of frustration.

  Rushka continued. “Or, if you were to say, ‘Take me to her,’ he would have to, but you might be dead. Or turned into a lizard if the thought appealed to him. ’Tis a very dangerous thing to try to compel the fairy fool.”

  The Hawk rubbed his clean-shaven face and brooded into the flames, listening intently as Rushka went on. He sorted through the flood of information, picking and choosing carefully. It could be done. Aye, it could. When Rushka finally fell still, they passed a time in silence unbroken but for the crackle of the hearth fire.

  “If you choose to try it, we still have one small problem, my friend,” Rushka warned.

  “What’s that?” the Hawk asked absently.

  “He’s gone. How will you find him? I’ve known men who searched for the legendary Fairy their entire lives, yet never saw so much as a stray kelpie, Hawk.”

  Hawk considered that a moment, then smiled. “Egotistical, you say he is?”

  “Aye.”

  “Vain, obviously.”

  “Aye,” Rushka confirmed.

  “Prone to fits of anger and mischief was how I believe you put it.”

  “Aye.”

  “And it would appear he came here, goaded by such a human thing as jealousy. Of me.”

  “’Tis true.”

  “Good. Then I’m about to really shake up his nasty little world.”

  “What do you have in mind, Hawk?” Rushka asked, the faint trace of a smile carving his weathered face.

  The Hawk grinned and rose to his feet. He had work to do.

  Adrienne raced up the steps at 93 Coattail Lane with more energy than she’d had in months.

  “Marie! Marie!” she cried as she plunged through the door, searching for the diminutive Cuban woman who’d become more than her housekeeper in the past month; she was now more like a mother and a dear friend.

  Adrienne had flatly ordered Marie to move into the house with her, and cautiously the two of them had settled into the lovely rituals of friendship; the nightly teas, the morning chats, the shared laughter and tears.

  “Marie!” She called again. Then, spying Moonie, she scooped her up and twirled the bewildered kitten around the foyer.

  “Adrienne?” She appeared in the doorway, her eyes bright with hope. Marie measured Adrienne a careful moment; her shining face, her sparkling eyes. “You saw him—zee doctor?”

  Adrienne bobbed her head and hugged Moonie tightly. The cat gave a disgruntled snort and squirmed. Adrienne and Marie beamed dumbly at each other over the kitten’s head.

  “And zee doctor said …” Marie encouraged.

  “You were right, Marie! That is why I felt so sick. I’m having Hawk’s baby, Marie,” Adrienne exclaimed, unable to keep the news inside a moment longer. “I have the Hawk’s baby inside me!”

  Marie clapped her hands and laughed delightedly. Adrienne would heal in time. Having the baby of the man she loved could graft hope into any woman’s heart.

  The Hawk hired fifty harpers and jesters and taught them new songs. Songs about the puny fairy fool who had been chased away from Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea by the legendary Hawk. And being such a legend in his own time, his tales were ceded great truth and staying power. The players were delighted with the epic grandeur of such a wild tale.<
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  When they had rehearsed to perfection the ditties and refrains portraying the defeat of the fool, the Hawk sent them into the counties of Scotland and England. Grimm accompanied the group of players traveling to Edinburgh to help spread the tale himself, while Hawk spent late hours by the candle scribbling, crossing out and perfecting his command for when the fool came. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, he would reach for his set of sharp awls and blades and begin carving toy soldiers and dolls, one by one.

  On the Island of Morar, the Queen smothered a delicate laugh with a tiny hand as strains of the new play drifted across the sea. Adam snarled.

  The fool had been gloating for months now over his defeat of the Hawk. Smugly he had said to the King, and to anyone else who would listen, “He may have been pretty, but he was no match for me. Just a stupid pretty face.”

  The King cocked a mischievous brow, unable to resist taunting the fool. “Stupid, is he? Defeated, was he? My, my, fool, ’twould seem we named you thusly in truth. The legend of the fairy fool has just been rewritten. For all eternity mortals shall remember your defeat, not his.”

  The fool loosened a giant howl of rage and disappeared. This time, Finnbheara went directly to his Queen’s side.

  “The fool goes to the Hawk,” he told her. Adam was in a dreadful temper, and the fool had nearly destroyed their race once before. The Compact must not be broken.

  The Queen rolled onto her side and measured her consort a long moment. Then she offered her lips for his kisses and Finnbheara knew he was once again in the good graces of his love.

  “You did well to tell me, my dear.”

  Sometimes, very late at night, Adrienne would dream that she walked the green slopes of Dalkeith again. The fresh tang of salt air scented with roses would lick through her hair and caress her skin.

  In her dreams the Hawk would be waiting for her by the sea’s edge; her kilt-clad, magnificent Scottish laird. He would smile and his eyes would crinkle, then turn dark with smoldering passion.