Time of a Highlander (Arch Through Time, #12)

by Baker, Katy

  Oswald stepped back with a sheepish look on his face. “Sorry. Will ye be coming back to work with us? We’ve been practicing the techniques ye showed us. Even Aibne says we’re getting better.”

  “Yes, of course I’ll be back working with you,” she glanced at Clara. “Um...when Brody lets me, that is.”

  Oswald nodded and stepped aside to let Aibne approach. The bluff old mason wore a warm expression that Georgie had rarely seen on his face.

  “Ye gave us all quite a scare there, lass,” he rumbled. “But I’m mighty glad to see ye well again.”

  “Thanks, Aibne.”

  People called out greetings and good wishes as she and Clara made their way through the hall. She nodded and murmured thanks, feeling a strange mixture of warmth and embarrassment to be the center of attention. When had she become so close to these people? It had happened without her noticing.

  She was grateful to reach the high table and sink down onto the bench. The short walk from her room had exhausted her. Blair, Sean and the rest of his captains weren’t there, having already ridden out on patrol. Georgie felt a pang at Blair’s absence and a niggling worry. Charles Beaumont had been quiet for days and that made her uneasy. Knowing Blair’s penchant for taking risks only made it worse. She hoped he was being careful out there.

  She and Clara ate a hearty breakfast of porridge and oatcakes and Georgie found she was ravenous. Brody, who came in halfway through, took this as a good sign.

  “A hungry stomach is a sign of a mending body,” he said.

  The hall began to empty as the men finished their meal and made their way to their assigned tasks for the day. Soon there was only Georgie and Clara in the hall and Clara busied herself with taking away the dishes and wiping down the tables. Georgie offered to help but was told in no uncertain terms that she was to stay exactly where she was.

  Georgie propped her chin on her hands and looked around. The hall was not a grand place and contained none of the comforts of her life in the twenty-first century. It was rustic and sparse, with only the rugs on the floor and the shutters on the windows adding any comfort.

  If anyone had asked her a few short weeks ago how she would feel living in such a place, she would have been horrified. But now? There was a familiar homeliness to the hall. This was the place where everyone gathered: to eat communal meals, to chat with friends, to play games and listen to stories in the evenings. Some of that life, that vibrancy, seemed to have seeped into the room’s bones and left its residue, turning it from a sparse, drafty place into something that was beginning to feel like home.

  The realization startled her. She thought about her father all the time and she missed him terribly, but she’d not thought about home much at all. Not the house, nor the workshop, nor the business.

  What did that mean?

  She glanced at Clara cleaning the tables, at the open door through which she could see the green vista of the Highlands spreading out and hear the chatter of men outside.

  It seemed so peaceful right now, but she knew that if Charles Beaumont and Adaira Campbell got their way, all of this would be under threat. Then she wouldn’t see a green landscape outside but one filled with enemies. The bailey wouldn’t be filled with the sound of men chatting but with screams and the stench of fear.

  Her heartbeat increased, and she found herself gripping the edge of the table so hard her knuckles went white.

  No, she thought. I won’t let that happen. I will stop Adaira Campbell from coming here. I must.

  She rose abruptly, scraping the bench back. Clara looked up from her work, a questioning expression on her face.

  “I’m just going to get some air,” Georgie said.

  Clara looked as though she might object then thought better of it. She nodded and Georgie made her way to the door and stepped into the bailey. It was another fine, bright day, with a light breeze to take the edge off the summer heat. The smell of grass carried on the breeze and Georgie paused for a moment, breathing deeply.

  Then she felt her eyes pulled towards the ruins of the tower. Already Aibne and his team were busy sifting through the wreckage for any stones that would be suitable for repair work. Even from this distance Aibne’s voice carried to her, berating someone for something or other.

  She turned away, walked around the outside of the hall until she came to the kitchen entrance. She ducked inside then passed through the stiflingly hot room to the corridor that connected the main keep to the older, more disused parts of the fortress. It was cooler here and the sounds from the bailey did not reach, so Georgie soon found herself alone with only the sound of her footsteps to keep her company.

  Ahead loomed the entrance to the forbidden east wing. It was locked as always but Georgie pulled out the key Blair had given her and hesitated only a moment before unlocking the door and pushing it open. The crypt was as eerie and silent as ever and she passed through the tombs as quickly as she could, trying her best not to look at the faces of the effigies lying atop them. She came into the room that held the double-arch and stopped.

  It towered over her, as high and large as the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. It was a little awe-inspiring and looking at it, Georgie felt her heartbeat quicken. She marveled at the expertise of the stonemasons who had constructed it. The whole arch seemed to have been carved from a single piece of rock, with no joins or seams in evidence anywhere. The decoration, the knot work, stylised animal heads, plants and flowers that decorated it were exquisite, far beyond the skill of any stonemason she’d ever met, save perhaps her father.

  Who had built it? And why?

  The Fae, a voice murmured in the back of her mind.

  She seated herself cross-legged in front of the structure and took out the plan Adaira had given her and then the half Blair had handed her yesterday. Unrolling them on the floor, she slotted the two halves together and studied it intently before lifting her chin to stare up at the arch.

  She could almost see the process by which it had been made. If she could only work it out...

  A soft tingling rippled across her skin. Slowly, her vision shifted. Her awareness went spiraling down, down through the stone’s outer seeming to what lay beneath. The structure wasn’t one continuous piece as it appeared, but was constructed of blocks so precisely crafted that they fitted together seamlessly. The individual stones became more and more apparent the longer she stared at it, resolving into shapes and contours that had been molded together in a sinuous, beautiful, seamless construction.

  The tingling increased, snaking down her arms, into her hands and all the way to her fingertips. A strange energy filled her. The headache, the dizziness evaporated and instead a burning vitality rushed through her veins. She suddenly felt alive.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she had moved to stand beneath the broken arch. The collapsed stones that had once formed part of it still lay around in heaps, cracked and useless. But each stone held a message, a template, a whisper of what it should be, and Georgie could read it. All she had to do was help it find that shape.

  She knelt by one of the largest blocks and ran her hands over the surface, finding it as smooth as glass. The tingling in her fingers increased, and the energy inside her roared. The stone flared to life in response. To Georgie’s senses, it suddenly sang.

  Her hand moved of its own volition, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her bronze chisel and hammer. She frowned. Strange. She didn’t remember bringing these from her room.

  She placed the chisel against the stone and began tapping it with the hammer. Something like euphoria washed through her as the block began to take shape beneath her hands. It was effortless. She worked in synchronicity with the stone, molding, shaping, helping it to find the form hidden deep within its depths.

  She’d never worked so quickly, so determinedly. When the first block was finished, she began the next. When this was done, she lifted it—it felt almost weightless in her arms—and slotted it onto the base before moving to the next block
. She lost all track of time. There was only her and the stone, working in perfect unison.

  But then a cough from behind broke her concentration, and she whirled to see Blair standing behind her, looking around with a wide-eyed, incredulous expression.

  “Lord save us, Georgie,” he whispered. “What have ye done?”

  Georgie blinked. She came back to herself and for the first time in hours, took note of her surroundings. Stone chips littered the floor. Her hair and dress were caked in dust.

  And above her reared the Great Arch, whole and complete.

  BLAIR STARED IN STUNNED silence. Georgie, covered from head to toe in dust, holding a bronze chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, looked like some wild wraith from a folk tale. But this wasn’t what quickened his breathing and sent an odd combination of dread and excitement coiling in his belly.

  No, that was caused by the towering arch that reared above her, once broken, now whole.

  How had Georgie done this? Alone, and in so short a time?

  The arch was difficult to look at, seeming to defy the eye. Now that the second of the concentric arches was complete, he could see the whole thing for the first time and he realized that its construction defied logic. It was oddly twisted, and whenever he roved his eyes across it, the angles didn’t seem to quite add up, as though they ended where they shouldn’t and began where he didn’t expect.

  “Blair?” Georgie said. She raked a hand through her hair and turned to look up at the arch, seeming a little confused. “What’s going on? I...don’t remember very much. It just sort of...happened.”

  Blair walked towards her but stopped short of stepping under the stonework. He held out his hand. “Come away. We dinna know what it might be capable of.”

  She took his hand and allowed him to lead her a few steps away where they turned and examined the structure from a safe distance. Blair shook his head in astonishment. This morning the arch had been a ruin. This afternoon it looked as pristine as it had when the Fae had first constructed it.

  “What did ye do?”

  Georgie looked from Blair to the arch and back again. “I...I don’t know,” she replied, confusion and fear in her voice. “I was examining the stones and studying the plan when it all started to make sense. I could feel the shape within the stone. I could almost hear them talking to me, telling me what needed to be done. I...can’t remember much of what happened after that. Instinct took over I guess.”

  She gazed up at the arch, seeming to see it fully for the first time. He watched her as realization dawned in her deep brown eyes. She’d constructed a Fae archway in less than a day—a feat nobody should be able to achieve.

  “My God,” she whispered, her eyes widening. “What have I done?”

  And that was the question, wasn’t it? She looked so bewildered that Blair longed to enfold her in his arms and tell her everything would be all right. But he couldn’t do that. Not until they figured out what was going on here.

  Irene MacAskill had brought Georgie here for a reason.

  Then it hit him.

  “Ye are a Builder,” he breathed.

  Georgie looked at him quizzically. “No I’m not. I’m no good at bricklaying and you should see my efforts at plastering. I don’t—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he interrupted. The more he thought about it, the more sure he became. Nothing else made sense. “Tales of the Fae are as old as time, woven into the fabric of the Highlands. Those tales tell of certain humans who carry Fae magic within them—either through a gift bestowed by the Fae themselves or a mingling of Fae and human blood somewhere in their ancestry. One of those mentioned are Builders, humans who were able to build Fae constructs—like the arches through time.”

  Georgie stared as if he was speaking gibberish. “And you think I’m one of these Builder things? That’s ridiculous! Okay, so I went a bit crazy and rebuilt the arch but it’s just a piece of stone. There’s no magic in it! There’s no way it will actually work! If you just—oh.”

  She trailed off suddenly and went a little pale. Blair laid a hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”

  She swallowed thickly. “Remember I told you that I didn’t know how I came through Adaira’s arch? She said she couldn’t do it without the proper rituals and things. But it worked for me. It saved my life by bringing me back here. If it hadn’t, Adaira would have shot me.”

  Blair digested this in silence. It would certainly make sense. He nodded. “That must be why Adaira’s arch worked for ye. Ye are a Builder. Nobody should be able to construct something like this alone and so quickly—unless that person can call on Fae magic and also manipulate time. What should have taken weeks took ye only a day. This explains why Irene MacAskill chose ye.”

  He looked up at the arch and supressed a shudder. What did it mean that the thing was now repaired? Was it a threat? Should he be worried?

  Nay, he told himself. Campbell and Beaumont dinna even know it’s here, and even if they did, they canna activate it.

  His gaze fell on something laid out on the floor in front of the arch. It was the set of plans that Georgie had brought with her from the twenty-first century. She’d laid them out next to the piece that he’d given her—the one entrusted to him by James MacGregor. Put together, they formed the blueprints for the Great Arch she’d just restored.

  He walked over and squatted in front of the parchment. Lines and diagrams filled the page, but did not make any more sense now that the arch was complete. If it was a map, it was unlike any map he’d ever seen. He couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

  Then something caught his eye. Wait. Maybe they were looking at this all wrong. This was a Fae map after all, so why should he expect it to conform to conventional rules? He glanced up at the arch and then back at the map. There was something...

  Hesitantly, he reached out and took a corner of the map and bent it inwards to the center. Suddenly, one of the lines on the back met up with one on the front. Behind him, he heard Georgie gasp. She came to stand by his side. Blair took hold of a second corner and bent it over, then the third and the fourth.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he breathed.

  “3D,” Georgie murmured beside him. “That’s why we couldn’t work it out. We were thinking in two dimensions, whereas the Fae were thinking in three.”

  The map, which before had been a confusing jumble of lines and diagrams that didn’t match up, suddenly made sense. The restored arch formed the center and lines radiated out from this, indicating several points around it. According to the map’s scale many of these were a great distance away, in remote areas of Scotland, but one caught his eye.

  “Look,” he said, pointing at an oddly drawn symbol that looked something like a pick ax. “This is close, perhaps only five or six miles away.”

  Georgie crouched next to him, examining the symbol. “What do you suppose it is?”

  “I dinna know,” Blair replied, laying the map flat once more and then rolling it up. “But I’m damned sure we’re going to find out.”

  Chapter 11

  Georgie felt like a naughty school-girl as she and Blair snuck through the castle. He’d knocked on her door before the sun was even beginning to light the horizon and she’d scrambled up from the chair where she’d been sitting for the last hour, waiting for him.

  Now, as they stole down the corridor that led to the back entrance, Georgie couldn’t help but notice how silently he moved. His boots made no sound on the flagstones and his clothing made not a rustle. He was as quick and fleeting as a ghost. She, on the other hand, felt like a stomping idiot by comparison and she was sure someone would hear them.

  They had made their plans yesterday before returning to the main keep. Although loathe to leave without telling anyone, especially Brody, Blair acquiesced to her argument that if they told anyone—Brody especially—he would insist on sending someone with them, probably a whole contingent of warriors. Then, if they did find an arch through time, or something else of Fae d
esign, they risked the whole truth of Georgie’s origins, of time travel and portals and Blair’s family connection to the Fae coming out. There was no telling what such a revelation might do.

  And so he’d agreed that this mission needed to be just the two of them.

  They paused at the kitchen door. Brody put his finger to his lips for silence. From beyond, came the crashing of pots and pans. Even at this god-forsaken hour, Cook was still up before them.

  “Wait,” Blair whispered. “It’s about now he normally goes into the stores. When he does we’ll sneak through, but we’ll have to hurry.”

  They waited in silence. Then they heard the stomp of retreating feet. Blair pushed the door open a crack, stuck his head in, then indicated it was safe to proceed. They hurried through the kitchen, past the entrance to the stores where they could hear cook muttering to himself. Then they were through, and into the corridor that led to the east wing.

  Georgie couldn’t help glancing at the locked door at the end. It was the secrets they’d discovered down there that had brought them on this mission in the first place, and she had no idea where it would lead them. She was still getting used to the revelations Blair had told her yesterday.

  But they didn’t go through that door. Instead, they slipped outside, through a postern gate in the outer wall, and over to a copse of trees where Blair had tethered a horse. With trepidation, she realized it was Trouble, the stallion he’d tamed the day she arrived. The huge beast snorted at their approach and swung his head around to stare balefully at Georgie.

  “Dinna worry,” Blair said, reading her apprehension. “He’s a changed animal, aren’t ye, Trouble, old boy?” He patted the horse on the nose and to Georgie’s astonishment, the once-bad tempered beast nibbled at Blair’s shoulder as delicately as any lady’s palfrey.

  “I’ll take your word for that.”