He said, “It’s true that the council heights will be as busy as the wharf of Derry. I’ll keep you as far from the crowd as I can, but we may have to press close. The most important men will be inside the circle of sacred stones, where the—”
“Sacred stones?” She pressed her palms against his chest. “Do you mean dolmen stones?”
“Aye. On the height above Loch Fyfe is where the clan’s leaders are named and given the rod.” He drew back another measure. “I told you about that when we visited the dolmen stones on Inishmaan, remember?”
“No, no.” Her breath came fast as her thoughts raced. “I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten completely.”
“What does it matter?”
“The stones will help me.”
“Lass, I’m fonder of stones than most,” he said, “but how can they ‘help’ you in anything?”
Lost in her own thoughts she’d forgotten that he wouldn’t understand. “Dolmens—all sacred stones—have a magic of their own. They were built on places of great power and resonance, where our world and the Otherworld meet.”
He mused for a moment. “It makes sense. Our clan has crowned kings on that hilltop for as long as memory serves.”
“When I’m near the dolmen stones on Inishmaan, I can hear men’s minds so much more keenly.” Her excitement rose. “The rush of thoughts can be overwhelming, even painful.” Stories of those who disappeared, became deranged, or even died after touching the stones wisped through her mind but she pushed them aside. “Getting too close to the stones isn’t a good idea, but if I just edge toward them, the surge of power may help me make sense of the crowd.”
He raised one brow. “So that’s why you dragged me to the height that day.”
She bit her lip, abashed at being caught. “I was desperate for any trick to slip into that mind of yours.”
“Sneaky little wench.”
“It didn’t work.” She leaned into him with a smile. “With you, I needed a different kind of magic.”
He laughed and then lowered his head. His lips captured hers, warm and full of promise. She fell into his kiss with new eagerness. Mind-sickness or no, the dolmens would expand any power she had left, at least to the point that she could identify his enemy.
He pulled away from her lips and held her face still as he gazed upon her for a long moment.
“Stay with me, Cairenn.”
Though she couldn’t read his thoughts, she understood that he wasn’t just asking her to stay for the night, or the next day, or the next week, or even the next year. No matter what happened tomorrow, he wanted her to stay with him through better or worse.
She brushed her lips against his in silent assent.
Then his fingers made short work of the laces of her tunic as she unknotted the rope belt around his waist. Their simple clothes puddled in heaps. She laughed as they stumbled over them on the way to the hay-stuffed pallet. She tumbled back onto the linens as he cushioned her head with one gentle hand. Rolling to her side, he cupped one breast before lowering his head to rub his bristly beard against her tightening nipple. She grasped his hair, gasping. Then he guided his thigh between her legs so that every tiny movement made her body tighten with delight.
She murmured, “Let me touch you, Lachlan,” as she reached down between them.
He stopped her hand with his own. “Lass—”
“I want to touch you like you touch me. I want to taste you—”
“The night is young,” he interrupted, raising his head so that the light from the tallow candle fell kindly on his face. “You’ll have your turn, I promise you that.”
His fingers ran soft across her skin, finding all the aching places. He kissed her throat, her jaw, and then captured her lips only to pull away and trail his mouth across the curve of her ear. With her eyes drifting closed with pleasure, her fingers followed every ridge of his muscles, every smooth plane of his warm skin, memorizing the shape of his body, which she would hold in her mind forever. Finally, she ran her fingers down his chest to where she could feel his heart pounding between them. Pressing her palm against the vibration, she imagined she held that precious heart in her hand.
When she could barely breathe for wanting him, she whispered his name. Seizing her hips, Lachlan rolled on his back, lifting her so that she straddled him. Startled and upended, she flattened her palms on his chest and looked at him in surprise.
“You wanted to have your way with me, lass.” He positioned her hips until she felt his hardness press between her thighs. “Now’s your chance.”
The hollow ache inside her intensified and she realized what she must do. Grinning at him, she began to sink down.
“Easy,” he said, stilling her. “I won’t have you hurting yourself—”
“I want you,” she interrupted, her breath in her throat, as she leaned down so her hair made a curtain around his face. “I want to feel you deep inside me.”
She teased him with a slow kiss. His rigid heat impaled her as she lowered herself to the root. His choked moan made her whole body tingle with pleasure.
“Ach, Cairenn,” he said through his teeth. “You’ll be the death of me.”
A laugh rippled in her throat. She squirmed around his shaft, loving the fullness of the sensation. Lachlan inhaled sharply and dug his fingers into her hips. Though her mind had already launched into that bright, white place that she shared with him whenever they merged their bodies, some small thinking part of her noted the thrill of being able to give her man pleasure. His hands flexed on her hips and he pressed his head back against the pallet as she moved in different, exciting ways.
“Cairenn,” he said between his teeth.
She laughed out loud and gave way to the will of his hands, finding a rhythm that rippled sensation through her. Her inner muscles tightened around him and, in a breathless moment, unfurled in a sudden, sweet madness.
Shuddering with pleasure, she no longer cared if she never read the thoughts of another living being—so long as she could spin forever like this through Lachlan’s sweeping mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rain misted the road on the day of the council gathering. The constant drizzle made the ground soft, the air gray and dim, and the world noisy with the patter of raindrops falling off the leaves in the surrounding woods. The fog was so thick that even the horses sensed danger, for no one could see more than three-horse-lengths ahead on the grimy path that led to the council heights.
Lachlan clutched the hilt of his dagger as he scanned the woods from under the hem of the hood. Tradition demanded that no man bring a weapon to the sacred height, but that tradition didn’t apply to the three winding roads that led from each major sept to the hill that was the political center of their combined clan. These roads were bloody with tales of ambushes, of kidnappings, of murders, and so every man in the column rode or walked in tense anticipation of treachery.
Lachlan still did not know what he would do once Cairenn identified the man who’d ordered the murder of his father and himself. His cousin Angus expected Lachlan to sweep off his cloak, reveal himself, and call out his enemy, claiming he’d been told by the assassins who sank the knife into his back. That was the plan.
But once he made his presence known, his every move as the new chieftain would be watched and noted. He would be swiftly married to the willful girl who used to steal tarts from the kitchen and point a blaming finger at his half-brother Fingal. His visits to Cairenn would be curtailed, always slyly prearranged, like a man visiting a whore rather than the woman he preferred to marry.
His mind resisted that plan.
It was the only plan he had.
He hazarded yet another glance to where Cairenn walked beside him. No doubt it was the rain that made damp tendrils cling to her brow, but she looked pale and wan, as if beset by fever.
Hidden by the folds of his cloak, he covered her cold hand with his. “Any danger nearby?”
She shook her head with more violence than necessary.
Then she yanked her hand from his and pressed the back of it against her lips, as if holding back bile.
“What’s wrong, lass?”
She splayed the fingers of her hand as if to ward off questions.
He said, “Is it the crowd that’s causing you pain?”
“No,” she said, her voice strained. “All I hear is a crackling noise, like a thousand bolts of lightning sizzling in the air.”
The hair on the back of his arms rose. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
His senses sharpened. He peered through the thick fog ahead. He listened to the suck of horses’ hooves in mud, the ringing of harness and shield. He listened harder and thought he heard, from a great distance, the sound of muffled voices.
By reflex he pulled his dagger from its sheath and eyed the woods around them. He said, “We’ll stop here.”
“No.”
“You’re in pain.” She stumbled on a raised stone. He seized her arm to keep her upright.
“I need to be near the dolmen stones.”
“If you can hear the crowd from here, then why—”
“I just need to get closer.” Her voice was reedy, terrified, and determined all at once. “I need to do what I came here to do.”
He cursed himself for not telling Angus that she required a mount. Callum would have accommodated the request with a wink and a smile, and then Lachlan could have brought Cairenn close to the heights and retreated just as quickly. The woman he loved was paying a high price for an end she didn’t want.
As they came out of the wooded path and into the open area that wound up to the council height, the fog began to dissipate in the rising lake breeze. He saw shadowy movement through breaks in its density. He passed vassals holding horses and guards standing over piles of weapons. Cairenn pressed into his side to cover her face. Then they rose above the mist and the crowd came into view.
Into his tunic, she whispered, “Is this the place?”
“Open your eyes and see.”
He walked her a few paces out of the line of Ewing horses and men so she could better see the summit, not more than two dozen yards away. There was a crowd, but in gaps he could see the three stone monoliths lying on the grassy height.
“The council height,” he said, mentally marking the tartans of the septs. “Where the clan officially decides who will hold the rod of kingship.”
“But…where are the stones?”
“Look,” he said. “There are three of them there, lying in a triangle on the ground.”
“But where are the standing stones,” she said, her voice tight. “The ones that belong inside that triangle?”
“When my father became king,” he said, “he had the upright stones moved to the MacEgan castle.”
Her breath hissed through her teeth. Her whole body tightened in his embrace, like she herself had turned to stone.
“Tell me it’s not true, Lachlan.”
He had no time to respond. Around them, the Ewing men were unstrapping their swords, pulled daggers out of sheathes, and tossed maces and shields upon the ground. Callum Ewing and Angus were already heading toward the height, Angus furtively glancing over his shoulder in search of Lachlan.
“We have to approach now,” Lachlan said. “Callum and Angus will make the announcement as soon as they step inside the dolmen stones—”
“I can’t.”
The force of her resistance was strong.
“Lachlan.” She looked as pale as death. “I can’t hear anything.”
***
She did not feel normal. She did not feel right.
Noise flooded through her mind, crackling and sizzling like pork fat overheating in an iron pot. No matter how hard she tried to build walls against it, the pressure made rubble of them. She pressed her fingers against her temples and squeezed her eyes shut, tried to breathe through the assault. With every step she’d taken closer to this hill, the cacophony had intensified.
She was certain now: All the mind-trouble that she’d experienced since landing on Scottish shores emanated from this sacred but mutilated place.
“Cairenn?”
His voice rang with wariness and disbelief and her heart squeezed.
“Maybe,” he said, “if we drew back from the crowd—”
“It’s not the crowd.” Every word was labor. “The height…it’s desecrated.”
He blinked in that way he did when she spoke of matters not of this world. She struggled to come up with a means to explain what no outsider was meant to know. Places like this one—dolmens, barrows, sacred heights ringed by oak trees—were hallowed links holding the worlds together. They were meant to be feared and loved and respected and holy. They were not meant to be disturbed by mortal men.
“I told you,” she stuttered, “that the dolmens are a portal between this world and the Otherworld. Your father moved that door.”
“A door,” he said, his voice full of musing. “Thus the two upright stones, a capstone, and a space in-between.”
“There may be other stones on a sacred height,” she said, “but the source of power is always the portal—”
A shout came from the crowd. The council was beginning.
He said, “I must go.”
“No,” she said. “You mustn’t.”
She seized him, crushing two handfuls of his cleric’s cloak in her fists. The crowd was a shifting menace atop the defiled hill. The gleam of so much chain mail was like a thousand light-daggers stabbing her eyes. Any or all of those men could be his enemies, planning to kill him the moment he threw off his hood.
“Don’t go.” She pressed her forehead against his chest. “Stay hidden.”
His fingers flexed on her shoulders. “The time has come, lass,” he said. “I have strong men all around me—”
“And so many enemies you don’t know.” She concentrated harder, trying to pierce the rattling din for some insight. “Perhaps, if I could just approach the portal stones—”
“Impossible.”
“But you said the portal stones were moved to the castle—”
“—to my father’s castle,” he interrupted, “where every man and woman within will recognize me the moment I cross the threshold.” He set her apart a space, forcing her attention to his face. “I cannot turn back from this path, lass.”
Words surged to her throat but he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers. Swathed in the darkness under his hood, breathing his breath, smelling the scent of wet wool and leather and man, she suddenly found herself in the white mind-place they shared in the most intimate moments of their loving.
“Long before I knew you,” Lachlan whispered, and she couldn’t be sure whether she heard him with her ears or her mind, “I put my life in the hands of men I considered friends. Today I must rely, as all men must, on faith and trust.”
Then, like a light snuffing out, he was gone.
***
Lachlan strode up the hill, pushing away his worries about Cairenn to concentrate on the danger before him. Her gift could not have failed at a worse time, but he couldn’t let himself be distracted by the capriciousness of supernatural abilities or her distress. In this moment, he had to concentrate on what he’d come here to do.
Keeping his gaze down and his head covered, he circled the outer edge of the crowd until he caught a glimpse of Angus, pacing with impatience. Without disturbing any other men, Lachlan found an unobtrusive spot in the outer circle, one that gave him a good vantage point of the proceedings.
Dermot, the chieftain of the MacGilchrist clan, paced in the open space. A short man with a lion’s head of salt-and-pepper hair, The MacGilchrist was the eldest under-chieftain of the three septs, beating Callum Ewing by only a few months. Thus it was his right to be the first to pace around the white rod of kingship lying in the center of the circle, just as it was his right to be the first to speak at council.
“These six weeks and more,” The MacGilchrist said, splayin
g a hand on his chest as he projected his voice over the crowd, “have been trying times for all of us. We’ve seen a king fallen off a horse, dead in his prime. An heir lost in the depths of the sea. Our lands raided, and our people murdered, all for no reason.”
Suspicion curled like a knot beneath Lachlan’s ribs. MacGilchrist had always been an ambitious man. Now, scanning the guards standing under the MacGilchrist banner, Lachlan could identify more than one Campbell among them, probably relatives of Dermot’s wife. Yet the chieftain’s aligning with such a rising clan was a dangerous game, for the Campbells could swallow the MacGilchrist’s smaller sept right up, leaving Dermot little chance to ever hold the white rod of overlordship.
Yet many men would be drawn to such strength—even if it subsumed them.
“You men know,” MacGilchrist continued, “that I did not always agree with Fergus MacEgan. His plan to have the chieftaincy handed down through only one family line smacked of selfish ambition. Of plain greed.”
A few shouts went up among the men. Lachlan’s chest tightened. He found himself reaching for a sword he wasn’t wearing, his fist closing on air.
“But Fergus MacEgan,” MacGilchrist continued, “was right.”
The words echoed on the hilltop. Lachlan waited, surprised but wary, for MacGilchrist’s next words.
“Already,” the chieftain continued, “Wales has succumbed to the might of King Edward. Our Welsh brothers are conquered. What more proof do we need that the English devour those who make themselves weak?”
The men around Lachlan shuffled and murmured. Few of these men had ever traveled farther than Derry or Galway Bay. What went on in the lands beyond the Highlands rarely concerned them.
“Why did the Welsh lose?” the chieftain asked. “Because the Welsh are divided as we are divided. They parcel their holdings among their sons, making those fiefdoms smaller, weaker, and impossible to defend. And we Scots argue with the death of every chieftain, dividing our clans with bitterness, splintering our loyalties.”
A single shout came from the crowd. “Do you hold yourself forth as the new king, Dermot? Will we forever have a MacGilchrist to reign as overlord?”
Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3) Page 17