The Wolf of Kisimul Castle (Highland Isles)

by McCollum, Heather

  A man rushed past them and then another, carrying buckets. The ferry Kenneth had ordered built had brought over twenty men, and they were forming a bucket line from the bay, through the gate, and into the bailey. Rotating through the line while holding their breath, working blind, they were able to survive the smoke.

  Alec leaped up next to Ian and helped him hobble on his broken leg. He left Ian to be part of the line and ran with Tor and Cullen and a few of their men to pull up more water from the bay. As if God himself was angered, lightning cracked across the sky, cleaving the clouds that had moved in.

  “A bloody blessing,” Kenneth called as rain started to fall in heavy drops. A cheer rose up along the line, invigorating the men.

  Alec dumped a bucket of seawater into the blazing hall. It spit and sizzled in the smoke. He could see across to where flames shot out of the well room, the door completely burned away. What had made the fire burn so hot, so fast?

  He grabbed the bucket from another man and threw it toward the small room off the hall. What was left of the walls burned with vicious, wavering flames, as if they were teased into a demonic frenzy. He’d seen this before on a raid long ago. Pitch—black, sticky pitch would burn with such wickedness.

  Alec backed from the room with hacking coughs and looked up at the pelting rain. He wiped two hands down his wet face. Someone had coated the well room in pitch.

  Ian ran awkwardly in from the gate. “The lass says the bastard priest wasn’t a priest, and he locked them in the well room.” Men abandoned their areas to converge on the great hall, buckets and axes in hand. Daisy dodged between their legs, rushing in and out, barking as if that helped. Alec took one more gulp of night air and led them inside the still-burning hall, a path of wet ash under his bare feet. Broken glass from the shattered windows stabbed at his soles, but he barely noticed.

  He grabbed another bucket from a man, throwing the water inside the blackened well room. The rafters had fallen in, a forest of burned trees laying haphazardly, like a pyre, over the top of the well. The floor of the room above had collapsed with various pieces of furniture, a privacy screen, a broken chest with smoking contents spilled out over everything.

  Alec turned in a tight circle as the men worked around him, throwing more water on the burned mess. “Mairi! Cinnia! Weylyn!” he yelled and coughed, spitting out the wet char on his tongue. Where were they? The mound of smoking debris was enormous. Could they be buried? Nay, God. Wrapping the sash of his plaid around his hands, Alec grabbed for a smoldering rafter, his muscles fueled by his desperate hope that he would find them somehow alive.

  “Grab the other end!” Alec yelled to Tor, and the two of them lifted the massive beam, rolling it to the side to grab another. The little room filled with men, some throwing water, others lifting beams from the pile. One at a time, smoldering wood and splintered furniture were rolled off until the edge of the well was uncovered. A blue hood lay under it, and Alec snatched it up in his blackened fingers. Mairi’s hood. His gaze met Tor’s. “They are here. Somewhere, they are bloody here.” His words were a snarl, and the two of them dove back into the pile, flipping crumbling wood over and off the edges of the well. With each lift, Alec prayed he wouldn’t find a lifeless limb or dull eyes in a blackened face.

  “Where are they?” Cullen asked.

  Alec leaped over the moved boards, digging at the charred remains of clothing and burned, fallen plaster. Were they here? The more frantic he became, the faster he moved until he was throwing piles off the well, digging in the black ash and still-hot embers, singeing and blistering his hands.

  “Alec,” Ian said, and Kenneth grabbed his shoulders, causing him to stop.

  “Maybe they got out,” Kenneth said. “Maybe they are somewhere else in the castle, hiding, away from the flames.”

  “Ye said Bessy saw him lock them in here,” Alec said, his gaze moving across the bared parts of the floor. “Pitch was painted on the walls and straw packed in here.” His teeth ground together. “A bloody oven, the bastard trapped them in a God damned furnace.” He held out the wrinkled blue hood that Mairi wore. Ash and water mottled it. “And this was here.”

  Ian looked at the gaping hole in the ceiling. “It could have fallen through.”

  But Alec’s instincts were screaming at him that they were close. His gaze scanned the wreckage around them, smoking black walls, pools of seawater between charred wood and fallen plaster. Damnation! Where are ye?

  Daisy barked, her front feet perching on the still-covered edge of the well. Her tail wagged, and she dropped to circle the low wall around it. “The well,” Alec yelled. It went fifty feet down into the ground that held up the mighty castle. He met Tor as they both leaped toward it, ripping back the planks and plaster. Daisy barked, trying to jump onto the hole.

  “Off,” Alec said, pushing the dog to safety. He opened his mouth to call down the dark hole when a sound wafted upward. “Shut your mouths,” he called, and his breath and heart held tight, waiting for the high-pitched whistle he thought he’d heard.

  It came again, the dog whistle that he’d given Weylyn to train the new hounds.

  “Weylyn? Cinnia? Mairi?” Alec yelled, his voice funneling downward.

  “Da?” Weylyn’s little voice hit him, cracking his tight chest open. Alec hung his head between his shoulders as he leaned on the well’s edge, relief nearly crippling him.

  “Aye,” he called down. “We will get ye out. Are Cinnia and Mairi with ye?”

  “Aye,” Mairi’s voice came up. “The three of us are here. The priest isn’t a priest. He’s a Cameron,” she called up.

  “He’s dead,” Tor yelled down. “Are ye all right, Mairi? The children?”

  Kenneth helped Alec carefully pull off the last of the wood over the top.

  “I think so,” Mairi said, coughing. The haggard, weak sound pushed Alec over the edge of the well.

  “I’m coming down to get ye,” he said.

  “Bloody good idea,” Mairi whispered from below. “Someone should get blankets for the children.”

  Alec grasped the iron rungs built into the wall of the rectangular well, thankful it was large enough to let him pass. His bare toes curled around each rung as he lowered. “How far are ye down?”

  “I don’t know,” Mairi answered. “When the roof began to fall, we went as far as we could.”

  “I’m just above the water,” Weylyn said.

  “Da?” Cinnia’s whisper caught at Alec, and he nearly slipped in his haste to reach her.

  “I’m coming, Cinnia,” he said. “Hold on.”

  “I’ve got her,” Mairi said. “Don’t fall or we’ll all end up in the water.”

  Her voice was still far below, but Alec concentrated on keeping hold of the slippery rungs. “Keep talking,” he said.

  “Ye were right,” Mairi said. “About Kisimul.”

  “I think ye were right,” he answered, listening for her words, a lifeline to everyone he loved. Aye, loved. “Kisimul is cursed.”

  “Not its heart,” Mairi said, her voice beautifully close now.

  “Its heart?” Alec asked, coming closer. Step after careful step. It was dark, but he could almost feel the life below his feet.

  “Aye,” Mairi said. “The well gave us a way to survive. It is the heart of Kisimul, and it saved us.”

  The pressure of gratefulness rose behind Alec’s eyes, and his palm brushed against the damp well wall. Its strength and stability had protected them. He looked down into the blackness. “I think I’ve reached ye,” he said.

  “Cinnia first,” Mairi said. “Come on, sweet. Your da is here to take ye up.”

  Cinnia’s quiet sobs made Alec’s fists clench around the iron. If Angus Cameron and his bloody priest weren’t already dead, he’d cut them end to end. Letting go with one hand, he reached down. “Grab my hand, Cinnia.” His fingers sifted through the dark air until they brushed against her little cool fingers. “That’s it, climb up to me.”

  “Here’s a
rung,” Mairi said below. She must be guiding his daughter’s feet. Little by little he pulled her up until Cinnia was in his arms. She clung to him, and he reveled in the feel of her strength.

  “I’ll get her up, then I’ll be back for ye two,” Alec said. “Just hold on.”

  “Aye, Da,” Weylyn said, and Alec lifted Cinnia up the ladder until the darkness opened up to torchlight and half a dozen faces leaning over the well. Kenneth reached in to lift Cinnia out. Dazed and pale, with smudges of ash over her face, she gave Alec a small nod, and he lowered back down.

  “We’ve climbed up a bit,” Mairi said. “Weylyn’s above me now.”

  Alec reached down for his son, his little hand grasping tightly to his forearm. “Ye just hold on, Mairi. Don’t try to climb. I don’t want ye to fall.”

  “I’m not staying here,” she said with a croaking edge of stubbornness. “Lead us up.”

  “Don’t fall,” he said.

  “Not planning to.”

  He began to climb with Weylyn before him, slower this time. “Ye have a stubborn nature, lass,” he said, waiting for her soft voice before he took another step higher. Weylyn didn’t seem to be in a hurry as long as Alec had him against his chest.

  “Ye are going to have to get used to it,” she whispered.

  Alec stopped, questions cluttering his head, but now was not the time. He needed them safe, out in the light, where he could check them over for injuries. “We are almost to the top,” he said. The climb seemed longer as he stopped to listen for Mairi’s movements. Every other step, he thought he heard her whimper. “Almost there. See the light?”

  She didn’t answer. “Mairi?” No answer. “Mairi?” he yelled.

  “I can climb,” Weylyn said. “Go get her.” With that, his brave son pulled upward away from him, counting out loud each rung as he moved toward the men at the top.

  Alec wanted to dive down the rungs, but he couldn’t knock Mairi or chance pushing her into the deep pool below. “Mairi, answer me.”

  “Damnation,” she whispered. “I…I can’t feel my arms anymore.” Her words were like the tiniest of breezes through the leaves of a tree. He felt them more than he heard them.

  “Hold on,” he said, using the same voice he used to push his warriors. “Don’t ye dare let go.”

  “I love ye, Alec MacNeil,” she whispered. It sounded like good-bye.

  “Tell me to my face, Mairi Maclean.” Panic surged through Alec’s muscles as he felt frantically with his toes until they touched the top of her hair. “I’m here. Don’t let go.”

  “I don’t… Can’t hold on.”

  “Your brother is above. He’ll kill me if I let ye die down here.”

  A whispered laugh was right below him. How to get her without knocking her off the ladder? Alec pushed his back against the opposite wall to lower around her. He felt for her arms and realized she’d threaded them through the rungs, her hands limp and dangling. She’d worn herself out keeping his children alive.

  He looped an arm around her waist, pulling her up against his chest, and felt her stiffen. “Ye’re hurt,” he said. She didn’t answer. Slowly disentangling her arms from the rungs, he turned her in to him to set her arms over his shoulders. “I’ve got ye. I’m not letting go. Never, Mairi. I’m never letting go of ye.”

  “Ye promise,” she murmured, the brush of her lips against his bare chest, completely limp in his arms.

  “With all my heart,” he said, lifting her higher with each strong step.

  “I see them,” Tor called from above, his arms already reaching for his sister.

  “Be careful,” Alec said. “She’s hurt. I’m not sure where or how badly.” He loosened his hold for Tor to take her, but Mairi’s arms wouldn’t let go. “I’ll bring her up,” Alec said, stepping into the torchlight.

  “Good God,” Cullen said, and Tor held a blanket up to gently lower it over her shoulders. “Her back.”

  Alec stepped over the lip of the well, and a cheer flooded the tight room. Weylyn ran to hug his leg and Kenneth sat holding Cinnia. They seemed to be well. Dirty, exhausted, but smiles on their faces.

  “She needs a healer,” Tor said, his face grim, making Alec tuck Mairi against his shoulder. Through the rain, he carried her into the relatively untouched soldiers’ quarters. Millie, her head bandaged, hurried over as Alec set Mairi on the bed Ian had occupied earlier. Slowly he turned her to face the mattress and lowered the blanket.

  Anger and fear rose up in him like bile as he stared at the open gashes that had raked through her bodice. Charred and blistered, her flayed skin bled. Weylyn came in with Tor. “She made us climb below her, so when the ceiling caved in, anything that fell down the well would hit her first. She told Cinnia and me to press flat against the wall.”

  “Something fell down the hole?” Alec asked, his words gruff.

  “Aye,” Weylyn said, blinking back tears. “And it was on fire.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mairi slept and, in the darkness, nightmares popped in and out. Burning rooms, a sneering priest who wasn’t a priest at all, fire eating up her dress, scorching her back.

  “Ye are safe.” The deep whispers penetrated the pain, and in her dream she looked upward to see a bright light, Alec’s face looking down. “I’ve got ye.” And then he did have her, his warmth penetrating the cold that racked her, making her lungs burn and convulse with coughs. Even the pain ebbed when he held her. Clean water slid down her throat, making her wince and choke. Warm liquid followed when her coughing stopped. Sweet with honey, it coated the soreness.

  She lay on something soft that smelled of flowers. The smell of smoke remained only in her fitful dreams. Mairi’s neck ached, and she realized that she lay on her stomach. She blinked, the effort causing the shadows before her to bend and change. But she was too tired to follow them and relaxed back into dreams.

  “Look at the stars.” Alec smiled across from her in the boat as they glided under a night sky, clear and pierced with bright constellations.

  “I’d rather look at ye,” she replied.

  He rose, moving along the boat, which didn’t even sway. She stood to face him as his lips came down to hers. His hands reached around to her back, sliding down her spine, and she gasped, rearing back. Alec’s face shifted, concern heavy on his brows.

  She blinked back tears, and the night scene shifted to daylight. The pain on her back ached and prickled at the same time, almost making her lapse back into darkness.

  “Stad, her eyes are opening.” Alec’s voice called to her consciousness, and she fought to follow it. “Mairi, can ye hear me, love?”

  Love? She was still asleep and let herself drift away again. Dreams flitted along with the churning chaos that comes with unconsciousness.

  “Mairi, dear.” Her mother whispered. “You will be fine. I’m here now.” Her mother’s strong voice faded into a scene of her childhood home, Aros, the blues and greens of the water offshore when the sun beat down. But then it turned into Kisimul, surrounded on all sides.

  “I will lift her.” Joan Maclean’s voice was as strong as it always had been.

  “I will,” Alec answered her, stubbornness making his voice sharp and lethal.

  “I am her mother.”

  “I am her husband.”

  Husband. Mairi clung to the word as water licked at her skin, making her shiver at the cold. Fingers, numb and aching, curled along the edge of a small boat moored in the bay, one of the unused boats Alec had shown her. It began to sink, and she pushed away from it, swimming toward Kisimul to crawl upon the rocks where the sun could reach her. The sun beat harshly on her bare back, burning it, blistering it until she whimpered.

  “Ye are strong, Mairi.” Alec’s words calmed her, and she felt his warmth. His heat was different than the burning on her back. His was a gentle sun. “Drink,” he said, and she opened her lips. It seemed that she was always drinking something. She relaxed back into oblivion.

  Mairi blinked, her eyeli
ds opening and closing slowly as if they were hinges that needed oil. She lay on her side, her face toward a low fire across the cottage room. This was Millie’s cottage. Through the darkness, Mairi saw the woman lying on a pallet before the fire, breathing evenly.

  Lips dry. Tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Mairi shifted in the bed, feeling the ache of unused limbs and a heavy binding across most of her back. A dampness clung to her body, as if she’d rested in morning dew. She needed to change her smock.

  A shadow rose from the chair beside her, large and familiar. Alec moved silently to a washstand and wrung out a cloth, the water trickling back in. He bent before her and wiped the wet cloth along her lips. Jaw covered with an unkempt beard, eyes dark, lips tight. His haunted look reminded her of the warriors returning from a long series of battles. How long had she been asleep?

  Warm fingers brushed some of her hair away from her forehead. She turned her face into his hand, looking up. Alec stilled. “Mairi?” he breathed and lay his palm against her forehead.

  “Och, MacNeil,” she whispered, her voice rough. “Ye’ve been battling.”

  Alec dropped the rag on the floor, bending over her, his hands wiping down her arms. “Your fever.” He cradled her face in his hands, his mouth parted. “It’s gone,” he breathed out in a rush. “Thank God, it’s gone.”

  She’d known she was hurt as she ran through her nightmares and dreams. “How long?” she asked and lifted her hand to grasp his wrist.

  “Ye’ve been in and out of consciousness for nearly a fortnight.”

  Two weeks. Mairi let her hand fall back to the bed. “I am sorry,” she said, feeling the press of tears in her eyes, but they didn’t come. Did she not have enough water in her body to shed tears?