Two back-to-back crescent moons, just as he remembered.
Only now they glowed with the same bluish light as the druid’s wand.
Behind him, Gelis gasped. “The tomb,” she cried, hastening to his side. “I knew you’d find it!”
Valdar humphed. “Finding it doesn’t mean old Maldred is in there,” he scoffed, stepping forward to eye the carving. “I doubt we can even pry up the stone to look beneath it.”
“The stone will give way.” Torcaill strode over to them, his staff pulsing bright silver-blue. “The time is come. It would open now even if we hadn’t uncovered it. Somehow we would have known.”
Ronan shot him a look. “Now you say so,” he groused, the words escaping before he could catch them.
But the druid only lifted a brow. “Likewise, it was your task to search, my friend. The journey has been good for you.”
“Then let us make it better by putting it to an end.” Dropping to one knee, Ronan glanced at Hugh MacHugh and the Dragon.
“Come, lads, let us see if we can budge this stone. And Hector” — he called to the boy — “run and fetch a coal spade from the kitchens.”
Eyes round, the lad spun about and streaked up the stairs, returning as quickly with the requested spade. Ronan shook his head when the boy offered it to him.
“Nae, lad, you keep it,” he said, already using his dirk to pick at the seams where the stone slab was set into the floor. “When we hoist up the stone, I want you to thrust the spade into the crack, see you?”
Hector nodded.
But the moment Hugh MacHugh and the Dragon knelt to assist Ronan and all three men dug their fingers into the groove of loose grit Ronan had freed along the stone’s edges, the massive lid shifted, sliding upward and then sideways with the unpleasant screech of grinding stone.
Fully without the need of a spade’s leverage.
It did remain heavy.
“Now, lads!” Ronan’s muscles strained against the stone’s weight. “Heave to!”
And at last it came free, revealing an icy black void beneath.
“Hech, hech!” Valdar was the first to peer into the hole. “There is naught down there but — hell’s afire!” He jumped back when the Dragon held a torch above the opening. “There is something down there!”
“The Raven Stone.” Torcaill lowered his staff into the opening, its shimmering light almost dim against the blaze of blue pulsing in the dark below. “Such light can be from naught else.”
“And Maldred?” Gelis pushed her way through the little knot of men. “He’s there, too, is he not?”
Ronan nodded and reached for her hand, drawing her to the opening. “See, he’s there and . . . blazing heather, look!”
Not believing his eyes, he looked on as the glow from Torcaill’s wand stretched toward the shimmering blue stone, the combined brightness revealing what he’d been suspecting for days.
Maldred the Dire’s mortal remains not only sat crouched against an enormous carved slab, his precious stone cradled to his breast, he’d died peering up at the opening.
A chill ripped down Ronan’s spine and he shook himself, the unexpected clutch at his heart changing everything he’d ever known about his clan’s ill-famed forebear.
His lady squeezed his fingers, her touch grounding him in a world set to reeling. I told you he wasn’t the fiend he’s painted to be, he thought he heard her whisper.
But he couldn’t be sure. Too loud was the roar of his own blood in his ears.
“I knew it,” he said, not missing Torcaill’s grim nod. “He had himself buried with the stone. Taking it alive into hiding to —”
“It was an act of deepest penance,” the druid finished for him. “I’ve suspected it for long. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy the stone, but he knew its power would be the end of his clan. So he did the only thing he could, sacrificing himself in the old way, for the good of all.”
“I’ll not have the thing in these walls!” Valdar jammed his hands on his hips. “The stone, I mean,” he added, quickly crossing himself. “Maldred can stay where he is. Requiescat in pace and all that! But the stone comes out o’ the tomb —”
“Begging pardon, sir, but I don’t think it is a tomb. Not a real one, anyway,” Hector chimed in, his face bright with his daring.
“Eh?” Valdar’s brows shot upward. “What’s this, laddie? Since when is a stone hole with bones in it not a tomb?”
Hector shuffled his feet, the coal spade clutched in his hands. “I have good eyes, sir,” he offered. “Everyone says so and . . .”
“Go on.” Ronan put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “Why do you think it’s not a tomb?”
“Because . . .” The boy swallowed, then rushed on, “it’s a circular space, and the stones lining the walls look like Maldred’s old crest stone above the keep door. The heights are about the same, though the stones at the back look a bit taller than the others.”
He bit his lip and glanced round as if he expected someone to naesay him.
“I’ve heard the seannachies,” he continued when no one did. “The ones that claim Maldred’s crest stone was taken from an ancient stone circle and . . . and if you look close” — he glanced at the opening in the floor — “you’ll see there’s a stone missing down there. And —”
“— tradition says, this keep was built atop that circle,” Ronan concluded for him.
The boy nodded.
“He speaks true,” Torcaill confirmed, glancing up from where he knelt at the opening’s edge. “The old crest stone would fit perfectly into the gap in the circle. And” — he used his staff to pull himself to his feet — “Maldred is sitting against the circle’s recumbent stone. Even its two flankers are there, still guarding the recumbent.”
He smoothed a hand down the front of his robes. “So, aye, the lad supposed rightly. Maldred did choose the circle as his tomb.”
“And he can fine well stay there — as I said!” Valdar assumed his most stubborn look. “You” — he wagged a finger in Ronan’s direction — “can do what you will with his stone. Just see that it vanishes.”
“Dinna you worry.” Ronan slid an arm around his lady, pulling her close. “I already know what needs —”
“Sirs!” One of the kitchen laddies trampled down the stairs, coming to a panting halt at the bottom. “The guards at the gatehouse sent me. A great knightly host approaches, riding in fast from the west.”
Ronan raised a brow. “Any word who they might be?”
But he already knew.
“MacKenzies.” The boy’s answer confirmed the worst.
Gelis gasped and Ronan flashed a look at her, not surprised to see that her face had drained of color. Apparently she, too, knew the riders were anything but her kinsmen.
“Sir.” The kitchen boy tugged on Ronan’s sleeve. “What shall I tell the gate guards?”
Ronan kept his tone neutral, not wanting to frighten the lad. “Tell them I shall ride out to meet with the riders,” he said, a chill sweeping him.
When the lad turned and raced back up the stairs, he frowned.
Dungal Tarnach had kept his word.
He’d come for his stone.
And he hadn’t wasted any time.
“You can’t think to ride out to meet them alone.”
Ronan resisted the urge to squirm beneath the fire in his lady’s eye. Saints, but she could look at a man. And this look wasn’t one of his favorites.
Frowning, he wrapped a hand around her arm and drew her away from Dare’s open gate and out of his long-nosed men’s hearing range.
“I must go alone.” He clamped his hands on her shoulders, willing her to understand. But when he sought the right words and none came, he simply spoke the truth. “I have to risk a chance on honor.”
“From those who would guise themselves as my kin?” The heat in her eyes kindled. She jerked free of his grip and tossed back her head, her anger almost sparking. “They will skewer you before —”
/> “Have you so little faith in my sword arm?”
“I have all confidence in your skills with a blade.” She swiped a hand across her cheek, glaring at him. “But those are not ordinary men. By your own admission, they —”
“But, my sweet, they once were mere men.”
He left out how greatly he was counting on that truth.
Glancing aside, he stared for a long moment at the deep pine woods where he knew they waited. For so bitter cold a day, the skies were slowly brightening and several slanting rays of morning sun slipped through the clouds, gilding the tops of the trees and the broad sweep of hills rising behind them.
A few cloud shadows drifted over the high moorlands, shading them inky-blue and softest lavender, colors he’d not seen there in years.
The sight gave him hope.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to change his plan.
“I do not like it.” His lady raised her chin. “ ’Tis foolhardy.”
“Nae, it is the only way.” He took her face between his hands, forcing her to look at him. “And you will obey me this time. I’ll know you and everyone else safe within these walls until my return.”
The words spoken, he drew her tight against him. But she brought up her hands between them, splaying her fingers across his chest and pushing back to peer up at him, her eyes glittering.
“Please.” She blinked, her usually strong voice quivering. “Will you at least tell me where you mean to tryst with them?”
“When the deed is done, aye, but not a moment before,” he vowed, lowering his head to kiss her. He slanted his mouth over hers in a devouring kiss, claiming her lips and giving her his passion, trying to show her beyond words that he had no intention of letting her go.
Or of endangering what he now knew they had together.
“Return to the keep and turn a braw face to my people.” He pulled back to smooth his hands over her hair and rain light kisses across her face, neck, and shoulders. “Show them what a brave lassie you are,” he urged her, nipping the soft skin beneath her ear, then nuzzling her neck again. “Do it for me, for us.”
“I would rather ride out with you.” She remained defiant.
Ronan shook his head, unrelenting.
Then he stepped back and folded his arms. “Go now. Away into the keep with you or” — he gave her his fiercest look — “I will carry you back inside and chain you to one of the hall pillars.”
She bristled. “I will not wait gently,” she vowed, but spun about and strode through the gates. “Don’t forget I’m a MacKenzie,” she called back as she disappeared into the gatehouse arch.
“See that she doesn’t leave the keep!” Ronan tossed the order to the guards, then swung up into his saddle and spurred toward the trees, not stopping until the prickles down his spine told him that he’d ridden into the midst of his foes.
He’d no sooner reined in than they stepped from shadows, a band of gaunt, sunken-eyed old men, their dark robes lifting in the morning breeze, their faces solemn.
They didn’t look anything like MacKenzies, and Ronan knew a swift surge of hope that they didn’t try to cozen him with such a ploy.
“So we meet again, Raven. I greet you.” Dungal Tarnach came forward, leaving the others in a quiet circle behind him. “Have you brought our stone or” — he lifted his staff and it glowed orange-red — “must we take it?”
Ronan ignored the threat. “I will bring the stone and —”
“I am rejoiced to hear it.” The Holder smiled, his wand sparking. He lowered it at once, his expression almost benevolent. “ ’Tis overlong that one of your race —”
“And,” Ronan continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “you may attempt to take the stone, but in a fair trial of strength and will. And not here —”
“So! You would challenge us?” The other’s smile faded. His voice rose. “And for that which is rightly ours?”
Ronan lifted his own voice, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “I would challenge you on your honor, if it means aught to you. And” — he raked the company with his stare — “for the safekeeping of this glen and we who dwell here.”
Withdrawing his blade, he offered it blunt-end first to the Holder.
“My blade in exchange for yours,” he said, following Torcaill’s advice to gain the other’s steel before his own could be charmed. “We meet in single combat at the Tobar Ghorm before the light fades — unless you fear an honest fight.”
The Holder scowled, but took the blade, grudgingly handing over his own.
For a beat, his eyes flickered a faint, faded blue and he looked worried, but he caught himself as quickly. “The Tobar Ghorm is an odd place for —”
“The Blue Well is the only place for honest men to settle a matter of such import.” Ronan fixed him with a stare, encouraged when the older man looked away first.
“I can think of fairer ground . . .” The Holder pulled at his beard.
“You know it must be the well.” Ronan broke the quiet when the other man fell silent. “We spoke of the like the last time we met there.”
Dungal Tarnach’s brow creased.
Ronan waited.
He closed his hand around the hilt of the strange blade, the deep lines in its owner’s face and the stoop of the man’s shoulders bothering him more than it should.
Even worse, he felt a concession forming on his tongue.
“If you feel unable to accept my challenge yourself,” he heard himself saying, “then I will face your best sworder in your stead.”
Dungal Tarnach hesitated, but his gaze flicked to a younger man standing nearby. Stocky, fierce-eyed, and ruddy of complexion, the man strode forward now and took Ronan’s sword from Tarnach’s hands.
“I will cross blades with you,” he announced, his voice ringing.
“Then so be it.” Ronan nodded. “If I better you, you tell me how to destroy the stone and then you leave our territories forthwith and forever. If I lose, you take your stone and leave as well, ne’er again setting foot in these hills.”
“It is agreed.” Dungal Tarnach returned the nod.
The other Holders looked on in silence, but finally inclined their heads as well.
It was enough.
And more than Ronan had hoped for.
Chapter Twenty
Hours later, in one of Glen Dare’s darkest corners, on a wooded islet in the middle of Loch Dubh . . .
“The stone, if you will, Raven?” Dungal Tarnach stood beside the Blue Well, his hands outstretched. “I will hold it the while.”
He indicated a cleared circle of deturfed ground not far from the well. “As you see, we have made preparations for your challenge.”
Ronan nodded, not about to show his relief.
He’d forgotten the wild tangle of dead heather and blood-red bracken crowding the well’s little clearing.
But he wasn’t about to relinquish the Raven Stone.
“The Tobar Ghorm can safekeep the stone.” He crossed the naked, hard-packed earth and stepped around the Holder to set a heavy leather pouch on one of the tumbled stones guarding the well shaft.
Straightening, he looked round. “I trust it won’t be touched until we finish?”
Dungal Tarnach frowned. “How do we know yon sack holds our stone?”
Another spurt of hope shot through Ronan. “I would think you’d sense its power.”
“You doubt our strength?” The older man lifted an arm, pointing at the leather pouch.
At once its ties came undone and the pouch fell open, its sides slowly peeling back to reveal the Raven Stone before disappearing completely.
More shaken than he cared to admit, Ronan placed a hand over the top of the stone, its sudden glowing blue heat almost blistering his hand.
He kept it there anyway, certain the pain would vanish when he broke the contact.
Just as he was certain — or hoped, at least — that the Tobar Ghorm’s brilliant blue water, so deep below the earth’s surface, and undeni
ably blessed, would keep the Raven Stone from the Holders’ hands if he failed.
“You are a brave soul, MacRuari.” Dungal Tarnach’s gaze lifted from the stone. “A shame Nathair will defeat you.”
Ronan almost choked.
How appropriate to take up a blade against a Holder named snake.
Oddly enough, the irony undid his ill ease on seeing his leather pouch vanish. He threw off his plaid with an eagerness and speed that surprised him, then looked on as his challenger shrugged off his robes with equal relish.
Ronan’s own steel already gleamed in the man’s hand and a criss-crossing of scars on his broad, muscular chest revealed that he’d held his own in more than one swordfight.
Knowing himself equally branded, Ronan tested Dungal Tarnach’s steel, swinging it round, then spinning and dipping, lunging and feinting until the sword felt comfortable in his hand.
Almost sneering, Nathair simply waited.
“Come, have at me.” Ronan beckoned him, raising the blade in earnest now. “Show me your best so the devil will be proud of you.”
“Save your breath, Raven.” The man lifted Ronan’s blade. “You will need it.”
Ronan beckoned again, eager.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Tarnach and the others move to the edges of the cleared turf ring. They formed a silent, watching circle.
For one horrible moment, he was whisked back into Dare’s hall, facing Sorley again. But then Nathair sprang, Ronan’s own steel slicing the air to clang loudly against the strange blade in his hand.
The other’s strength jarred him, the force of the swing almost knocking him aside. Nowhere near as tall as Ronan, the man was nevertheless built like a steer and, apparently, possessed a stirk’s muscle.
Again and again, his steel clashed against Ronan’s in a fury of vicious stabs and slashes. They circled and swiped, blades windmilling and drawing back, the shriek and clank of steel on steel loud in the cold morning, though the roar of Ronan’s own blood muted the clatter.
Then Nathair spun, first feinting and then springing back around to make a vicious sidelong slash at Ronan’s middle. Seeing the arcing flash, Ronan ducked and rolled to the side, the other’s blade just missing him.
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