by Willa Blair
“We left the Aerie for the MacAnalen. It can be done.”
“Nay, lass. We didna try to go right into Colbridge’s camp, under his very nose, fer God’s sake. And we had enough trouble with his patrols when they didna expect us. By now, they’re looking for us even harder. It willna work.”
Aileana realized he would not be swayed. Desperation seized her. If he would not be convinced to help her, then she could only do one thing. Now that they were married, she hated to use her Voice to compel him, but without it, she would not be able to get free of Toran and the Aerie to save Ranald. The risk was great. If he resisted, and if he realized what she was doing, he would gather his defenses and just might be able to prevent her. But she had to try. It was the only weapon she had left.
“Let me go,” she commanded, and sighed in relief when his arms dropped from around her. Now what to do? She reached out in the darkness and took his hand as another complication occurred to her. She was a fool not to have thought of it before. “Is there a gate at the end of this passage?”
“Aye.”
“And another guard?” A guard would add to her problems. She’d have to control both men at the same time. She hoped she could do it.
“Nay, I took his place. There was only me to await ye.”
“Is the gate locked?”
“Aye.” How could one syllable sound so satisfied?
“Do you have the key to unlock it?” she asked, suddenly sick at heart. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? If he did not have a key, they would have to go back upstairs to get it. And she’d have to count on her Voice to keep the one man who could withstand it under her control all the way up the long, dark steps.
She felt more than saw his nod, then heard him grunt his “Aye,” as if he struggled against telling her.
“Give me the key,” she demanded, eagerness lending more power to her Voice than she had ever used before. He used his free hand to pull it from wherever he had carried it and held it out to her.
She took it, nearly fainting with relief when he complied. “Go upstairs to your chamber,” she told him. “Forget you have seen me. Lie down on your bed and go to sleep. And when you wake up in the morning, you won’t remember that you saw me here or even that you came down here.” A wrenching sense of loss nearly undid her, but she stiffened her resolve, bending only to make a promise to Toran that she truly hoped she could keep. “I will return. I will. Now go.”
Aileana let go of Toran’s arm and held her breath as he turned away. She listened to him walk across the cave and released a sigh of relief as he started up the stairs. Then his steps hesitated and her breath caught in her throat. She waited, hands clenched in front of her, trying to hear what she could not see in the blackness of the cave. Was he resisting her commands and coming back for her? “No,” she murmured under her breath. “Go, go on. Leave me alone.” The silence lasted for another moment, then the sound of his footsteps continued up the stairs.
Aileana strained to hear the noises he made as they faded away up into the darkness. Then she resolutely put Toran out of her mind and moved quickly down the twisting passage until she encountered the thick iron bars of the gate. She fumbled for the latch. The key turned easily, and the gate swung open on well-oiled hinges. Quickly, Aileana locked it behind her and secreted the key in a crack in the rock face where she could find it again. She congratulated herself on her presence of mind not to take the key with her into Colbridge’s camp. If worse came to worse and she was captured, they would not find it on her. She might be forced to tell Colbridge about this way into the Aerie, but she would not make it easy for him to breach it.
Still in darkness, she followed the passage wall as it angled once more. Finally, a faint glimmer illuminated the last few steps. She reached the entrance and stepped out into the star-filled night.
Chapter Sixteen
Aileana was breathing hard and her heart was pounding by the time she finally reached the edge of the glen by Colbridge’s camp. Her confrontation with Toran had taken precious time. Then it had taken her much longer than she’d expected to make her way around the tor, through the woods to the edge of the glen, and then on to the main part of the encampment where Ranald had been hung out like a slaughtered deer. Thankfully, she’d encountered none of Colbridge’s guards. They would be alert for the sound of horses pounding out of the main gate of the Aerie on the way to attack the camp, not for a woman alone, on foot, in the deep of the night, so she’d been confident that she was safe from them unless she blundered right into a patrol.
But now she sensed daybreak was only a few hours away. She had to stay out of sight while getting Ranald well enough to move. And she had to do all of that much more quickly than she had planned before they could escape back to the Aerie, since Toran had delayed her. And she was cold, so cold. She hadn’t dared carry a cloak when she left her chamber. It would have been impossible to explain why she wandered the halls of the keep with it.
She moved silently along the edge of the camp. But Ranald no longer hung from the trees where they’d seen him! Oh, no! Was he dead? Or had someone had sense enough to keep him alive by cutting him down and getting him out of the frigid night air? If they had, he must be in a tent nearby. Surely, they wouldn’t have bothered to carry him far.
Carefully and ever so quietly, she avoided the glow of the banked fires and moved in the shadows to peer into the nearby tents.
The first one sat empty. She found Ranald in the second. A small brazier on the floor gave off as much smoke as light or heat, but it was enough to see him by, and Aileana almost wished that she could not. He shivered, despite the blanket pulled up to his chin, perhaps as much from pain as from the cold. He roused as she approached and touched his hair.
“Aileana,” he groaned. “No. I’m dreaming. You can’t be here.” His gravelly voice told her he’d choked back screams as he’d been tortured.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said. “Lie quiet and let me Heal you.”
“No. No…” He continued to moan as she pushed the blankets back from his chest and saw that he’d bled from scores of wounds. Some were mere nicks, but others were long slices. Choking back a sob at what had been done to him in her name, she touched him, and began to assess what else he’d suffered. Besides the wound to his good leg that Colbridge had boasted about, Ranald had been beaten. His ribs were broken, and he was bleeding inside. She wasn’t sure what kept him alive.
“You must go,” he gasped, pushing weakly at her hands as she began to heal the worst of the stab and slash wounds, reaching in to stop the bleeding inside his chest. “If you heal me, he’ll just start over.” He tried to push her hands away, but in his condition, he could not. “Let me die.”
“No, I won’t. And he won’t touch you again,” she whispered, frowning as she tried to work and talk to him at the same time. “You’re coming with me.”
Silence greeted her pronouncement, then he took a shuddering breath and spoke between gasps while she continued to heal him. “Aileana, be sensible…you’ll be exhausted…we’ll both be trapped. Save yourself. Go back…where you came from. You’re not safe here.”
“No, Ranald. He’ll kill you. He’s already come close.”
“Aileana.” Ranald grasped one of her arms. His voice sounded stronger. He was gaining strength as she healed his hurts and lent him energy. “I love you. I’d rather die than let Colbridge harm you.”
“He won’t Ranald, not again.”
“He will. I won’t let you sacrifice yourself for me. I want you to go.”
“You won’t let me sacrifice myself for you, but you’ll sacrifice yourself for me? Is that it? You’ll let Colbridge slice you to ribbons and beat you and stab you and think I’ll walk away?”
Ranald had the grace to look abashed. “Yes. That’s it exactly. You can escape. I cannot. Don’t let him have both of us, Aileana. Please. Go.”
“But he’ll kill you. Slowly.”
“It doesn’t matter.
As long as you live, my life doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does,” Aileana argued and put her hands back onto Ranald’s belly. “The sooner you let me finish, the sooner we can leave.”
She’d barely begun again when the tent flap was pulled aside and Colbridge entered, silhouetted briefly by the faint first glimmer of false dawn. Ranald groaned. Aileana froze in shock, then cried out as Colbridge grasped her arm and roughly pulled her away from her patient. She sprawled on the tent floor and cried out, “No! Please! Let me help him.”
Colbridge merely laughed.
She scrambled to her knees and lunged for Ranald. Colbridge cuffed her aside. Ranald tried to sit up, tried to aid her, but Colbridge pulled his dirk, planted the tip in the skin over Ranald’s breastbone and pushed him back down. Aileana wailed as a thin trickle of blood started from the new wound, and Colbridge turned back to her, dirk in hand.
“Witch! See what your defection has won you? You dared to aid my enemy. And you wonder that your lover suffers for your actions?”
For a brief moment, Aileana’s blood chilled, thinking that he referred to Toran. But no, he thought she and Ranald…yes, he’d made the same accusation as he taunted them from the glen earlier today, no yesterday.
“My lover?” she challenged, more boldly than she intended, anger getting the best of her caution. She hadn’t defected, she’d been taken! “Him?” She gestured at Ranald, and tried to put a look of contempt on her face instead of fear, hoping that Ranald would understand what she meant to do for him. “He’s not my lover. He never has been.”
“Then why are you here?” Colbridge demanded, frowning.
“Just because we are not lovers does not mean that I cannot take pity on my assistant, when you treat him so brutally.” Aileana stood, praying her voice carried more confidence than she felt capable of at this moment. “And for no reason,” she spat, letting her anger show, then changed her tone to one of conciliation. Would Colbridge let her get close enough to touch him?
“I did not leave you. I was taken by the prisoners when they escaped your”—she put all the contempt she could muster into the word—“guards.”
Aileana stood still, barely breathing. Any untoward move could easily get her killed. She knew Colbridge’s temper. But her strategy seemed to be working. At least now he was focused on her, and not on Ranald.
“The men who were foolish enough to allow your escape have paid for their stupidity,” Colbridge boasted. “The rest won’t make the same mistake. Now, where are the men who brought you?”
“Brought me? No one brought me. I came alone.”
She nearly flinched as Colbridge began to sputter, but she managed to keep her expression neutral. “You’re telling me you came back to save this…cripple….that you escaped an unassailable fortress, crossed the glen, and snuck back into camp alone, without an escort, to save his worthless hide?”
“Aye,” she said quietly, ignoring the twinge in her heart. She dared not lie, but she could not tell him how she’d gotten away. She carried knowledge about the Aerie that could aid Colbridge. This was the very thing that Donal had feared. And is that what Toran would think? That she had come willingly, left him and a life with his clan behind willingly? Risked their safety willingly? She almost shook her head, but held herself still by main force of will.
“And why should I believe this tale? Why would they let you go?”
Cold fear drenched Aileana. Colbridge’s fury pulsed at her. He wanted to take that fury out on someone, and Ranald was an easy target. “No…I mean, aye, it’s true. You can believe it.” She put all the sincerity she could muster into answering his first question and ignoring the second.
“You did not leave willingly with the Lathan laird when he escaped my camp?” Colbridge demanded, and Aileana’s fear turned to icy dread. No, he distrusted her, too.
“No, no. It wasn’t like that. He grabbed me when his men cut him loose. I had no choice…”
“No choice, eh?” Colbridge began to walk around her, circling her, and Aileana tensed. Did she dare risk reaching out to touch him, to use her Voice? Could she command him in his enraged state? Then he stopped by Ranald and Aileana knew she’d missed her chance. She couldn’t make a move toward him without risking that he would retaliate against the nearest target: her half-brother.
Colbridge, canny, stayed out of reach. Perhaps he feared that she would put him to sleep, as he knew she did to her patients after she healed them. Nay, she’d not put him to sleep. She’d stop his heart if she could for what he’d done to her brother. If only she’d listened to Ranald when they had the chance to stop his madman, to allow nature to take its course after he’d been wounded. But her heart had overruled her head and she’d let him live. She’d regret that for the rest of her life.
Please, don’t do anything foolish, Ranald. She willed him to stillness. Stay calm, still, like the hare when it knows it cannot run. The slightest move could set Colbridge off. His attention remained on her. Ranald was safe for the moment, as long as he stayed still and quiet.
Then Colbridge surprised her. “No choice but to bewitch the Lathan laird,” Colbridge hissed as he suddenly grabbed her braid and pulled her back against him. “So let’s see if we can lure him out of his fortress as this one”—he smirked at Ranald—“lured you. A damsel in distress might just do the trick.”
Desperate, she groped behind her for his hand, but encountered only the cloth of his sleeve as he shoved her ahead of him out of the tent. He shoved her again and she fell to her knees on the cold, hard ground. He stayed out of reach. Then he yelled for his guards to tie Ranald back up where he could be used to keep the Healer on her best behavior. The sight of Aileana’s tears made him laugh, and she flinched. She should have listened to Toran. She’d failed. Ranald was still Colbridge’s captive plaything. And now, so was she.
****
Toran awoke early, consumed with a sense of foreboding. Something hovered right on the edge of his memory, but try as he might to concentrate on it, whatever it was would not come to him. He threw the covers back and sat up. Confusion swept over him when he saw that he was dressed. In the Aerie, he always went to bed bare. Why the hell would he have gone to bed fully clothed? That made no sense. He wasn’t that tired last night—or that drunk. In fact, he didn’t remember drinking at all, or remember much else for that matter. What had happened to him? And why wasn’t Aileana in his bed?
He went to stir the fire into life and threw on some more wood. He stared at the glow and watched the smoke rise into the chimney, a frown of concentration on his face as he tried to recall the events of last evening. He’d gone to get some answers from Aileana in her chambers where she rested after the shock of seeing what Colbridge had done to her assistant…assistant? The sense of dread that had woken him suddenly deepened. But in the end, despite his accusations, when she told him she loved him, he’d forgotten his questions, and simply held her. He’d been surprised, and happy. But later, he’d remembered her anguish over Ranald, and feared that Aileana might do something foolish. But…what? Had she? If so, why couldn’t he remember?
There was only one thing to do: go talk to his wife. Perhaps she could explain why his memory was so unreliable. Despite the fact that Donal was now smitten with her, what if he’d been right about her all along, but Toran had been too entranced to see the truth? Perhaps she had abilities beyond her talent for healing the sick and injured, abilities that she hid until it served her purpose to use them.
Sudden traces of memory assailed him. Aileana defying Toran and leaving the Aerie for Colbridge’s camp with some damn foolhardy idea of healing a man who appeared to be well on his way to hell already, and escaping with no one the wiser. Her brother? Was that real? His heart leapt to his throat, and he bolted from his chamber.
Toran’s suspicions grew as he strode toward Aileana’s chamber. Scared and angry now, for her and at her, he yelled for Donal to attend him, not caring if he awakened the whole damn keep and Colbridg
e’s army besides.
As he marched down the hallway, a few doors opened a crack and quickly closed as he passed. Apparently one look at his face and no one dared accost their laird in this temper. Wise of them, he thought.
He reached Aileana’s chamber and slammed his fist against the door, popping it open. The sight that greeted him was the one he feared. Aileana was not there. Donal pounded up behind him, took in Toran’s fierce look and the empty chamber and yelled for the men following him to scatter and search the Aerie.
Toran pounded his fist against the wall, whirled and strode back down the hall, Donal in tow.
“This doesna feel right,” Donal muttered. “But perhaps she’s in the kitchen, or the herb garden?” he offered to Toran’s back.
Toran kept walking, his stride lengthening as he quit the tower and keep to cross the bailey. He wrenched open the gate to Senga’s garden and looked inside. Misery and fury warred within him, and certain desperate knowledge. No one waited in the pale glow of starlight. The garden was empty.
If Colbridge had Aileana back, he’d have the upper hand, not that Toran wanted to bargain with him. Nay, what he did want, what he needed, was Aileana. Not for the reasons Colbridge wanted her. Aye, her healing skills had worked wonders for the clan. But there was more than concern for his people, or for her safety, at work here. She belonged to him, with him. He wanted her back in his arms. He wanted her touch, her warmth, her kiss, the way she wanted and needed him. It was ironic that at the moment he realized he’d married the woman he could love for the rest of his life, more deeply than he thought possible, he’d lost her. She’d left him. He was certain of it. He’d lost her to another man who probably loved her, too, or to a man who feared and used her. Either way, she was gone.