Then, with a breathless lift, she was on the council hill above Loch Fyfe and the stones were where they belonged except they were not. What she saw were ghosts of the portal stones, with moisture slipping down their sides though there was no rain. There was no wind, or warmth, or life, either. At the foot of each ghostly stone the earth was churned and red like blood and she heard the slap and clatter of many hands and feet, like a hundred thousand creatures trapped beneath the face of the earth.
Her heart raced so hard it ached. A distant voice warned her to pull her fingers away from the stones but they felt nailed to the surface. The dolmen grew hot beneath her palm. She tried to fight off the power of the assault but it was like pulling a wild wolfhound by a leash. She scolded herself that she’d experienced this feeling before—when she stepped onto the shore at Galway as a girl new to her gift, and when she arrived at Derry, still unused to the rush of hundreds of minds. She mustered what she’d learned from both those experiences, struggling to master her senses so she would not collapse under the beating of so much keen, indiscriminate awareness.
Dizzy and disoriented, she squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself back to the mead-hall. Only when she could feel the ground beneath her feet could she control the power that made her pulse throb painfully and her head swell with bursting pressure. She mentally forced herself back up the path to where she’d first laid eyes upon the castle, when she’d sensed the initial pull of the stones. The portal dolmens had called to her in winsome singing voices that pulsed with longing and pain. Once inside the mead-hall, she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off the carved, glittering surface that now lay flat under her palm. So long they’d been bereft of the bright caress of the sun, the gentle watering of the rain, and the feel of the wind flooding over their surface.
The assault eased a fraction. With effort she rose above the mental battering long enough to draw a breath. She began to separate colors from sounds, thoughts from noise, moods from mischief, and doubts from decision. She realized that the chattering she was hearing all around her did not completely emanate from the stone. Her brain was alight with all the noise. It flowed through her from the minds of the people in the mead-hall around her, a cacophony of hopes and lusts and worries and plans—plans—plans.
Lachlan.
Among all those minds she even recognized his, bright and open to her, filling up with curdling worry as he lunged toward her to pull her away from the stone.
I will not fail…I must not fail.
Even as she became aware of his hands yanking her back, she squeezed her senses to chase down that one whisper out of thousands and isolate that single dark murmur of murderous intent.
In an instant she was sucked into the murderer’s mind. She saw thick fingers slip poison in a flagon. She saw the flagon carried through the mead-hall, swiped away from those who would have their cups filled not knowing any better. She saw the flagon taken toward the dolmen stones, and felt the murderer’s mind growing blood-dark with intent.
My daughter will be queen.
My daughter will be queen.
My daughter will be queen.
Cairenn saw the flagon tip and the cup filled. Then she saw the achingly familiar face of the man marked to die.
***
Lachlan watched in frozen horror as Cairenn touched the stone and then shuddered as if in the throes of death. Her head fell back as strange thunder shook the walls of the mead hall. Her eyes rolled up to show the whites.
He lunged and yanked her away. She pitched back against his chest. He gathered her so close that the ale in his tankard sloshed out of his cup. It spilled on her kirtle as he whispered, “Cairenn.”
He felt a force ripple through her. She wrenched herself from his arms and, swirling, knocked the tankard out of his grip. The shocked, sonorous silence that had settled in the wake of the booming thunder was broken by the clatter of his tankard upon the flagstones, spewing ale everywhere.
Then another sound could be heard, a terrible thrashing and grunting and rattling of claws. Gasps went up at the head table. People leapt up and cleared away. In the space left behind, a hound convulsed on the floor, white froth bubbling around his snout.
“Poison,” Cairenn blurted, weaving where she stood. “MacGilchrist’s wife.”
She pitched forward. Lachlan caught her in mid-fall, his heart stopping. He seized her jaw and raised her lolling head only to see her eyelids flutter closed. His throat tightened and his mind went blank with fear.
A shadow fell over them. He glanced up to see Angus with Callum at his side. The chieftain’s eyes widened. Only then did Lachlan become aware of a cool breeze against the back of his bare head, the weight of his woolen cowl upon his shoulders, and the shocked gasps arising in the hall.
The thought passed through his mind like a wisp: He’d been recognized.
He didn’t care.
All that mattered was the woman who sagged unconscious in his arms. With the pressure in his chest growing, he dipped down and swept an arm under her knees to lift her into his embrace. He had to get the woman he loved far away from these dolmen stones. He had to take her far from the assault of the thoughts of a thousand curious onlookers. He had to bring her to where she would be safe.
“My tent is in the field outside,” Angus said, his nostrils flaring. “I’ll send you a doctor.”
Lachlan barely nodded as he turned toward the trestle tables, seeking the straightest path out of the mead hall.
Before him, women clutched their hands close. Knights stared in wonder and placed their palms over their hearts. Servants lowered their gazes, pitched their heads forward, and bent their knees.
He took one step forward and the crowd parted. Bareheaded and barefaced, he carried Cairenn through a sea of bowed heads.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Gripping his head in his hands, Lachlan sat on a stool beside the pallet upon which Cairenn lay. Moments ago, Callum’s private doctor—a man Lachlan had never met—showed up at the tent with his bag of powders and nostrums. The doctor declared he could find nothing wrong with the woman, but took out his lance to bleed her.
At the sight of that flashing knife, Lachlan had thrown the man out of the tent. Whatever caused Cairenn to look so pale against the wool blankets, he knew the affliction was of the mind, not the body. No doctor except her own father knew anything about that kind of sickness, and that doctor was across a wide and frothing sea.
He dug his fingers deep into his scalp. By knocking the poisoned chalice out of his hands, she had saved his life. There was always a price to pay to change one’s fate, and that price might be too steep to bear.
Come back to me, Cairenn.
He gazed upon her lovely face and willed her to open her eyes.
I need you, mo chridhe.
He heard footsteps outside the tent. No matter how hard he willed it, they did not stop in their approach.
Angus swept the tent flap aside and bent his head as he entered. Callum Ewing followed, looking grave. When a third head emerged—with an all-too-familiar mane of salt-and-pepper hair—Lachlan shot up from the stool.
Rage boiled up inside him and made the edges of his sight go red. Everything around him became a blur of motion until he found himself holding The MacGilchrist up by the throat, pressing him against the center strut of the tent so that the wood shuddered with the force.
“You sent your wife to kill me,” Lachlan said between gritted teeth. “A coward’s way, Dermot.”
MacGilchrist sputtered, his eyes wide.
“The men who put a blade in my back,” Lachlan continued, the words like gravel in his throat, “and the men who threw my father off the cliff—will you deny that they were all Campbells?”
The MacGilchrist’s sharp fingernails clawed against Lachlan’s grip, but Lachlan didn’t loosen it to hear the answer he already knew.
“The question is,” he argued, “whether you sent your wife to do that too—”
“I sent thos
e men myself,” interrupted another voice, “because my husband is a coward.”
Lachlan turned to see MacGilchrist’s wife standing just inside the tent. He stared at her fading blonde hair hanging straggly around her shoulders, at her mud-streaked tunic, at her bound hands. His fury became a wild, hot thing pounding in his chest. He had to dig deep to find what chivalry was left in him so he wouldn’t reach for the knife in his boot and take his revenge.
Lachlan loosened his grip on the chieftain enough for Dermot to slide down the wooden post. At least now his good hand was free.
The woman shifted her gaze to her husband where he slumped at the foot of the tent pole. “That man is a lapdog,” the woman spat, “always groveling at Fergus’s knee. Giving up all hopes of the chieftaincy with a shrug, even after Fergus was dead—”
“You stand before me,” Lachlan interrupted, his palm itching for the leather hilt, “and confess you killed my father.”
“Your father stole from us and from all generations yet born.” Her eyes gleamed. “Yet even with your father dead, I couldn’t trust my husband to seize the rod for himself. I had to kill you, too—”
“You stand before me,” he repeated, “and confess you sent men to kill me.”
“Yes.” She sneered at him. “Yes. For I knew my coward of a husband would put forth Fingal—and fifteen-year-old boys are easily swayed.”
The curl of her lip cut the last shred of his patience. He slid the knife out of his boot. The light pouring in through the open flap glittered on its edge as he strode across the tent to put an end to this.
“Lachlan.”
Callum’s strong, steady voice broke through the haze of his fury. Lachlan’s heaving breath hitched. He scraped to a stop an arm’s-length from the woman, an instant from committing bloody murder himself.
Callum loomed beside him. “The chieftain of the clan should render justice in this matter. And it should be done for all to see.”
Lachlan tightened his grip on the hilt and curled his free hand into a fist. Callum was right but that knowledge did nothing to master his anger. He made an effort to control his own breathing, to loosen the muscles of his jaw.
“Throw her in a storeroom,” Lachlan said. “Bolt the door. After the council has chosen a chieftain, her fate will be the first to be decided—”
“They’ll all rise for me,” she interrupted, mocking, as one of Callum’s men emerged from the shadows to lead her away. “The Campbells will come for me.”
“They’ll abandon you,” Callum retorted. “They know better than to go to war for a woman who killed a chieftain for her own ends.”
More war, he thought. More bloodshed for the sake of power. Lachlan’s anger took on an edge of despair. Strife and conflict infected his lands, and it wasn’t only due to stubborn Scottish pride.
Callum stepped in front of him to seize his attention. “Justice will be swift for her.” The chieftain tilted his head toward the tent pole. “But what are we to do with him?”
Lachlan frowned as he turned back to Dermot, slumped upon the ground. Lachlan remembered seeing The MacGilchrist in the mead hall earlier, before Cairenn had touched the stones. Lachlan remembered how his wife had denied him the poisoned drink. He remembered Dermot’s stormy look and his wife’s quick retreat.
Theater, he thought, nothing more, but the chieftain raised his hands above his head as if he heard Lachlan’s thoughts.
“By all that is holy,” the chieftain said, “I knew nothing of this.”
“You married a Campbell,” Callum interjected. “You’ve always wanted the rod.”
“It’s not true! I put forth Fingal—”
“Intending him to be your son-in-law,” Callum added. “Deny it if you dare.”
“Idle talk. Everyone knows that your daughter is betrothed to the MacEgan heir, Callum.”
A silence fell in the room. Lachlan glared at the chieftain and remembered a day in his own boyhood when The MacGilchrist had hauled him onto his great palfrey for a ride back to the MacEgan castle, where Lachlan was sure to get a beating for some transgression or another. Dermot had held him by the scruff, but he’d also talked to him about how, as future overlord, he must learn to take his punishment. For someday he would be charged with standing before men to judge them, and punish them, too, according to their crimes.
How Lachlan wished Cairenn stood beside him now, strong and healthy and full of wisdom, to uncover MacGilchrist’s lies—or his truth.
“Like your treasonous wife,” Lachlan said, “you will be brought before the new chieftain to be tried. In the meantime Callum will put you in one of the upper rooms of the castle where you will stay until the reckoning. Do not break my trust.”
The MacGilchrist nodded humbly and stumbled to his feet to follow Callum out of the tent. Angus fell in line and the other men in the tent trailed him out until only one man remained in the deeper shadows.
A young man, Lachlan noticed, with stubble upon his once-soft cheek, who stared at him with grave and solemn eyes.
All Lachlan’s anger dissolved. “Fingal.”
The young man who was no longer a boy stepped into better light. “I always knew that you would return.”
The space between them closed as Lachlan engulfed his half-brother in an embrace, his worries ebbing for a moment under a surge of relief and reunion. He squeezed the boy’s not-inconsiderable shoulders, and then found himself grunting as he hefted his half-brother off his feet. Fingal’s guffaw bore no resemblance to the mischievous giggle Lachlan remembered.
Fingal pulled away and gave Lachlan a half-smile, his teeth white against the stubble on his jaw. “After all this, I understand why you made your way here in secret, Lachlan. But I can’t think of a single reason why you didn’t reveal yourself to me and the clan upon the council heights.”
“There is a single reason.” Lachlan gestured to Cairenn sleeping upon the pallet in the corner. “And there she is.”
The boy glanced at her. “I don’t understand.”
“You will, someday, if fate is kind.”
“Fate has been kind, by returning the firstborn of The MacEgan to take up the white rod as you were meant to.”
Fingal’s words were buoyant but they weighed upon Lachlan like a mantle of lead. He and Cairenn had entered the mead-hall of his father’s house in an effort to change the fate that lay before them, but now, with his brother’s fervent gaze upon him, Lachlan began to realize that choosing a different fate for himself meant settling the fate he yearned to reject onto the young shoulders of his own brother.
“Our father’s truest wish,” Lachlan said, his heart rising to his throat, “was to do what was best for the entire clan.”
“It is my truest wish, as well.”
“Well then,” he said, placing his hands on Fingal’s broad shoulders. “You and I have a decision to make.”
***
The wind off Loch Fyfe tossed Lachlan’s hair as he stood within the stones on the council height. It felt strange to stand bareheaded before his people after spending so much time in hiding. He felt their scrutiny upon him, and their assessment, like a hundred thousand lances.
He straightened his shoulders, though it was like shifting the weight of a stone carrier’s yoke. Fate was rolling over him faster than he could comprehend, but he was resolved: He would do what duty demanded.
Once silence settled under the wind-whipped clouds, Callum Ewing walked into the circle, his snowy hair oiled and gleaming so that every man could see the tracks of the comb in it. The chieftain stopped in the center, where the white rod lay at his feet.
“These six weeks and more,” Callum bellowed, “have been terrible times for our clan.”
A murmuring of agreement rippled through the gathering.
“Our lands have been ravished,” he said, “our people frightened, and our own chieftain—a good man, a strong leader, and my friend—murdered on his own lands.”
Lachlan flinched at the reminder and sens
ed the same shock ripple through Fingal where his half-brother stood beside him.
“All this,” Callum said, “is what happens when we are divided. Fergus himself warned us of this. Fergus himself offered a remedy.”
Callum Ewing bent down and took the rod in his hand. When he straightened, he turned toward Lachlan.
“Lachlan MacEgan, the firstborn son of Fergus, is the true heir to the chieftaincy.” Callum pointed the rod at him like a sword. “This rod, and the lordship of all of us, belongs to you.”
The rod glowed like a beacon. Lachlan walked toward it though he was hardly aware of crossing the beaten grass. Ever since his father had made his intentions clear, Lachlan had known this day would come. He’d never wanted it, but he had envisioned it, the rod stretched out to him like this, glowing as the clouds parted and set the marble surface alight. His visions had never quite gone so far as to see that rod firm in his grip. Not like now, as his palm pressed against its chill girth.
It was heavier than he’d expected.
“Say hail.” Callum raised his arms to the crowd. “Hail to the chieftain of—”
“NO.”
Lachlan’s shout echoed across the hill. “No,” he repeated, as a restlessness began among the men. This was the fourth time the council had convened and these men had hoped to return to their homes, and to peace. “Before a decision is made,” he said, “heed my words.”
He walked in a circle and raised his own voice so that he would be heard by even the farthest man.
“My father, your late chieftain, was a man of great wisdom,” he began. “He recognized the source of English strength and chose to adopt it, so that we, as a clan, may be stronger.” He lifted the rod to show it to all of them. “But are we not Scots?”
Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3) Page 19