Ghost Clan

by Heather Walker

  Callum’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “What does that book say?”

  “Naught tae do wi’ us or our business, I ken tell ye that.”

  “Ye ken tell us what it says, an’ what happened in the wee cottage. Tell us that, at least.”

  Angus sighed. He couldn’t keep it to himself any longer, and if that woman was right, this thing had to do with his brothers as much as him. “She ga’e me the book. That’s all ye really need tae ken about it.”

  He knew that wouldn’t satisfy them. He saw them exchanging suspicious glances right in front of him where he couldn’t fail to miss it. He had to tell them.

  “All richt. I’ll tell ye, but ye winnae believe it when I do tell ye. Faither…. I dinnae ken how to tell ye. Maybe it winnae him a’tall. I dinnae ken ought any longer. Ye’ll think me daft to say it, so here i’tis. Faither, or grandfaither, or one o’ our line, belonged to an ancient Throne, the Phoenix Throne. I dinnae ken more than that. Ye want tae ken what’s in the book? It’s a heap of bollox if ye ask me. Here. I’ll read it tae ye, and ye ken decide for yerselves.”

  He pulled out the book and repeated the passages over he just read.

  Beyond the Phoenix Throne lies the King asleep in his grave.

  Around him dwell the ten maidens clad all in white.

  Daisies, roses, asters, paperwhites,

  The thistle grows wild and free far away,

  Never taken or plucked for the long feast table.

  Only the King can command her to grow in the hallowed halls….

  The Law surrounds the Knights on their Quest.

  The Law binds the King on his throne.

  The Law forbids the Errant from entering the Sacred Chamber.

  The Law requires the King pay the Phoenix Tribute

  To find the thistle growing alone and sturdy on the distant hillside….

  “Ye’re richt, Angus,” Jamie offered. “It’s bollox.”

  Fergus whapped him on the arm. “Stick yer sock in it, ye mingey hamshank! Is that the way ye flap yer gob out the’ windae? Gi’e the mon some respect.”

  Jamie’s hands flew up to defend himself against his brother. “He said it, not me.”

  Fergus shot him a black look before he turned back to Angus. “Tell us the rest, mon. Tell us about the Phoenix Throne.”

  “I dinnae ken naught tae tell,” Angus replied. “That’s all I ken. She says…. weel, she says I’m tae ascend the Phoenix Throne, but if I break e’en one o’ these Laws, it’s on the slates fer us all. She says the witch’ll ascend the Throne in me place, and that’ll be the worst disaster fer the whole land. She says I’m tae bite it raither than let that happen.”

  The whole group stared at him in silent shock. Only Robbie found voice to answer. “Wasn’t she the witch? Wasn’t it she that ga’e ye that book?”

  Angus shook his head. “I dinnae ken who she was, but she an’t the witch. I’m sure o’ that now. She…. she’s magic. I ken that, but she told me about the witch. The witch’s name is Gahkra, and that woman wants tae help me defeat her.”

  “How’ll ye do that?” Fergus asked.

  Angus shook his head. “I dinnae ken. I dinnae dare believe it’s possible, especially….”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. The words stuck in his throat, and he looked away. He could only hope his brothers didn’t read the truth in his face.

  He stared off into the darkness so long they went back to what they were doing, but the day’s events kept him on the edge of his seat. He lost Connor today. Another man down. Only eight left, and Angus dared not count Ross.

  Maybe Ross feared Gahkra too much to approach the castle. Ross showed his face just long enough to rob Angus of Carmen. Ross dropped out of the sky to tell Angus to pick her up and take her with him. Now, just when Angus got attached to her, Ross took her away again.

  Ross worked on his own timetable, according to his own projects. For all Angus knew, Ross was working for Gahkra. If Carmen was the thistle, Gahkra could have Ross deliver her into the witch’s hands. That would be just splendid.

  Well, Carmen couldn’t be the thistle. She wasn’t even Scottish, and besides, he wasn’t attached to her. She was a liability in a situation already fraught with danger. He didn’t need any woman running around waiting to die on him.

  When the fire collapsed into embers, Ewan readied his weapons. Angus didn’t offer to watch in Ewan’s place, but he entertained no plans to go to sleep. He had to stay up, but he didn’t tell anybody. After falling asleep on watch once, the others wouldn’t close their eyes with him guarding them—not any time soon.

  Ewan set up his guard, but he smiled every time he noticed Angus still awake. No one wanted to watch through the night in the dark under the witch’s very towers. Angus drew his saber and rested it across his knees. He let Ewan walk the perimeter, but he kept watch just the same. Angus kept watch so many times he no longer felt the mind-numbing fatigue of days without sleep.

  Ewan made another circuit. Fergus tried to sit up, too, but in a few minutes, he gave it up. These young sprats just couldn’t pull it like the older fry. They needed their sleep, and he stretched out on the grass next to Jamie. In minutes, they both snoozed in soft relaxation.

  Ewan came back. His eye scanned the forest, and his shoulders remained tense and hunched when he sat down next to Angus. “It’s comin’. I can feel it.”

  Angus nodded. “Wi’ any luck, it’ll be like the other times an’ naught worse.”

  Ewan shot him a sidelong glance. “I dinnae lik’ tae say so in front o’ the others, but I believe ye about the Phoenix Throne.”

  Angus’s head whipped around. “Ye do?”

  Ewan nodded, but he wouldn’t look his friend in the eye. “I believe it. Ye belang on a Throne of some kind, I dinnae what. I sensed it in ye a lang while ago, but I dinnae lik’ tae say so. Ye ken how i’tis.”

  Angus stared at the outline of his friend’s face in the firelight. “What mak’s ye say that?”

  “I dinnae ken. I really don’t, so dinnae ask me. It’s just a sense I had about ye. Ye ken, I’ve ken ye all me life. Ye were allas the best o’ ‘em, Angus Cameron. Ye were lik’ a king when ye were a bonny wee laddie on yer faither’s knee. Ever since ye left hame an’ led these lads o’er heath an’ heather, ye’ve became mare a king than e’er. Now yer a king all through. I cinnae say mare than that. That’s the way I feel about the matter, is all.”

  Something told Angus to tear his eyes away from Ewan’s profile and face front. Never in all their long acquaintance had Ewan ever revealed so much about his inner thoughts. His relationship with Angus touched on adventures they shared, experiments and skills they learned together, and wild frogs they caught in ponds on summer afternoons. They never discussed how they felt about each other. That subject remained locked away, never to be touched.

  Now Ewan told him he knew all along Angus belonged to some secret lineage belonging to some mystical Phoenix Throne nobody knew about. Okay, so maybe Ewan didn’t really know all that, but he divined it. He sensed it, as he said, lying dormant in Angus all these years. It took this suicide mission to bring it to the surface, and now Angus knew it, too.

  Angus didn’t want to be any King. He didn’t want even to be Chieftain of his Clan. Old Alastair Cameron, Angus’s father’s uncle, did that job just fine. Angus would never challenge him as Chieftain of the Clan.

  The two men sat silent for a long time until Ewan betook himself off into the dark and left Angus alone with his thoughts. How Angus missed Carmen right now! He could talk to her about anything, and he always trusted her to keep a level head. She would take all this information and turn it into something coherent. She would tell him straight to his face if there was anything in it, and he would believe her.

  She wasn’t here now. He would never talk to her again. His heart ached for her somehow. He didn’t want any Throne, but if he had to have it, he needed a woman at his side. His instincts told him that much at least. A King needed
a Queen. That was the simplest thing anybody knew about kings. They couldn’t rule without queens, and not just to produce the royal heir.

  No man in any position of power could function without that close confidante. He couldn’t get that from a man. He needed a woman at his side, a woman he could trust to talk over the hard decisions and give him an honest reflection of what he ought to do.

  Angus tasted that for one brief day with Carmen. Now he would never have it again. That’s what Ross meant when he said Angus couldn’t succeed without her. The thistle image came back to him. He had to find her. He knew that now. He couldn’t go forward without her, but where was she? He had no idea where she went or even if she was still alive.

  Ewan came back, and Angus rose to meet him. He fell in at Ewan’s side for another circuit of their perimeter when that old familiar howling noise echoed out of the trees along the stream.

  In a fraction of a second, every man in camp rocketed to his feet. They clamored into a circle back to back with every weapon bristling, on the alert for the first white streak whistling out of the trees.

  Chapter 11

  Carmen’s legs ached from climbing so many stairs into the castle’s top towers. Every now and then, she passed a window through which she could see the rest of the castle. That’s how she gauged her ascent. As long as she kept going higher, she would get closer to the witch until she discovered the source of this curse.

  She didn’t try any more doors for a while after seeing that painting of the king. He haunted her eyes all the way up the stairs. What did it mean? What did that dragon throne mean?

  The tower narrowed the farther up she went until she could put both hands on opposite walls. This tower would culminate in a single room if she kept going.

  After several hours of tedious labor, she attained the topmost point where the stairs ended in a wooden platform. Two doors stood on either side. Which should she choose?

  One was as good as another, and if Carmen didn’t find the witch behind one, she would find her behind the other. She could flip a coin, but she didn’t have one to flip. She chose one at random and pushed it back.

  It opened into another bare room like the others. Grey stone stacked one tier on top of the other to form the walls, and the smooth floor extended to a window on the far side. The mountains and grey-green forests shone under the evening sun.

  Carmen froze in her tracks. The king from the painting stood in the middle of the room, big as life. He locked his eyes on her, and the saddest expression haunted his features. Now that she saw him up close, she wasn’t sure what color his eyes were, and that scar across his face transfigured his lined visage to the quiet anguish of old age.

  Was it Angus or not? Carmen couldn’t be sure, but her heart went out to him. He extended his hand in a beseeching way, but he didn’t say a word. In an instant, Carmen understood. This wasn’t a living man, but another magical apparition, the king from the dragon throne come to life.

  She remained rooted to the spot and stared at his haggard face. Was this Angus in later years, or some ancestor of his, come back to tell her something about their quest? Questions hovered in his face. He struggled to communicate them to her, but he couldn’t get his voice to work.

  She stood there a long time, just looking at him. She didn’t want to leave him like this, but he couldn’t help her accomplish…. whatever it was she came here to accomplish. She might help him by breaking the curse. Otherwise, she had to leave him behind.

  She backed to the door and put her hand on the latch, but he still didn’t move. He held eye contact with her in a desperate, pathetic way, but he didn’t act. He wasn’t real. She backed the rest of the way out of the room and shut the door.

  Once she left the king behind, her thoughts cleared. Maybe the witch held him prisoner somehow, or maybe she killed him long ago, the same way she killed Angus’s father. Maybe she carried her vendetta across the centuries to visit her revenge on all the men of his line. Now she was after Angus, too.

  That thought spurred Carmen forward. She turned to the other door and pressed the latch. The door swung back, and Carmen’s blood ran cold in her veins. White wraiths flew thick and fast all around the room. Their howling ricocheted off the walls. How had Carmen failed to hear them out on the landing?

  Magic, of course. Magic controlled everything in this castle. The wraiths clustered so thickly in the air Carmen dared not enter the room, but they paid no attention to her. A large oval mirror hung from the wall across the room, and a withered hag stood in the center of the whirling maelstrom with her back to Carmen.

  In front of Carmen’s eyes, the witch plucked a wraith out of the air and hurled it toward the mirror. The mirror sucked the wraith through it, and the wraith appeared in the reflection beyond.

  Carmen stared in blank horror at the image portrayed in the mirror’s surface. There stood Angus, sword in hand. Ewan stood at his right hand, and Robbie at his left. The others held their circle all around them, and they fought wraiths with all their might and main.

  The wraith the witch flung into the mirror materialized in front of Angus’s face. He swung his sword to cleave it in half. The witch sent one wraith after another through the mirror to attack the party.

  Carmen took a step forward, but the wraiths writhing and swooping all around brushed her face and made her draw back. She understood their eerie presence well enough to know not to go near them.

  The witch snatched wraiths with both hands. She pitched them at the men faster than the eye could follow. The wraiths clouded around the party’s heads. The men couldn’t fight them off fast enough.

  All of a sudden, a bunch of five wraiths made a concerted assault on Angus. One caught his sword arm and pinned it to his side. Another threaded through his knuckles and pried his fingers apart until the saber fell out of his hand. The point embedded in the grass.

  Another wraith flew at his head. Robbie spun around and slashed it just in time, but dozens more wraiths whizzed in from all sides to attack him, too. He had enough to do defending himself.

  Carmen’s heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t stand here and watch those men go down. No way, not after she fought by their sides out there. She had to do something. Her life meant nothing. She had to fight this evil with everything she had.

  She shoved all thought for her own safety aside and strode into the room. She fought to get her voice to function. “No!”

  The witch whirled around. Her lanky hair stuck straight out from her hideous green face. She fixed her glittering eyes on Carmen, and her misshapen lips curled back from snarling teeth.

  She danced from one foot to another. She threw the next two wraiths at Carmen before she went back to what she was doing.

  Carmen dodged the first wraith, but she no longer felt the cringing fear that caused her to hold back a few seconds before. She charged into the room. She ducked around the airborne wraiths in search of anything to fight this menace.

  The second wraith caught her around the shoulder. That icy dread sank into her bones, but she understood it now. She raged forward and bowled straight into the witch. She knocked the old woman aside.

  The witch stumbled sideways with a furious bellow. She pranced from one foot to the other. She raised both hands, and all the wraiths in the room screeched at Carmen in one terrible swarm.

  They wrapped around every part of Carmen’s body. They crushed her ribs until she couldn’t breathe. They shrouded over her eyes and nose and mouth. They smothered her and dragged her to the ground.

  Carmen’s mind raced for any way to fight these things. She couldn’t use her hands fast enough to tear them all. Something had to give. In her last desperate act, she caught up an iron poker from the fire place against the wall. She swung it hard, but too many wraiths crowded all around her. She couldn’t fight them. She might be able to save Angus, but she didn’t care anymore about saving herself.

  She struggled to her feet. She slashed the poker right and left, but she couldn’t
see well enough to find the witch. Through the thick woolen mask over her head, she heard the witch cackle with malicious glee.

  Carmen got one arm up and clawed the wraiths off her face for a fraction of a second. Her eye fell on the mirror, and she hauled back her arm and sent the poker somersaulting through the air. It struck the mirror in a splintering crash. Broken glass exploded into the room.

  The witch spun the other way toward her shattered mirror, but it was too late. An unstoppable sucking force caught everything in the room. It yanked Carmen off her feet and dragged her toward the treacherous hole inside the mirror’s frame. Instead of Angus and his party, Carmen looked down a bottomless yawning tunnel into nothing.

  She fought to catch hold of anything to stop herself falling into it, but it pulled her in with such force she couldn’t resist it. Her heels skidded across the floor. Her arms and legs floundered in all directions.

  Wraiths screamed into the hole all around her. She didn’t see what happened to the witch, but that foul creature wasn’t laughing anymore. Maybe the broken mirror already sucked her out of sight.

  The curtains around the window whipped toward the vacuum. The gravity ripped the wraiths off Carmen, but she couldn’t feel any relief about that. Where would she end up? She had no idea, but she was going there whether she wanted to or not.

  Her body struck the stone wall. She wedged her arms and legs against it to halt her inexorable fall, but the mirror tore at her hair and clothes and fingers. She couldn’t fight it. Inch by inch, it dragged her in until her head poked into the hole. She couldn’t hold herself back. All her muscles strained to the limit, but already fatigue robbed her of her strength. Her fingers slipped, and she tumbled headfirst into the hole.