by Nina Mason
“A warrior is brave, strong, and vigorous, a protector and defender of his people,” his father would say. “He is invulnerable and victorious, refusing to yield or retreat in fear. He is tenacious in pursuing enemies and ruthless in applying his vengeance once he catches them. He is fierce, especially when roused, and his enemies fear him.”
After saying his prayers, he would stand there under the icy spray imagining himself to be Odin hanging upside down from the sacred tree whose branches and roots reached into the nine worlds.
The rest of the day, he remained inside the cave, reading, meditating, or carving runic talismans. Though an enchantment shielded him from the eyes of the tourists who visited the glen during the daylight hours, he would rather not venture out among mortals. Doing so only reminded him he would never die in battle and be taken by the Valkyries to Valhalla.
Because he’d been taken from the battlefield by the faeries instead, and made a breeding drone to Queen Morgan Le Fay instead of an einherjar to Odin.
Still, the life of a portal guard was vastly preferable to the life of a knight. At least he enjoyed a modicum of autonomy here in Faery Glen. Provided he remained at his post, he could govern his turf as he saw fit. On occasion, he was still summoned to the bedchamber of his queen, but the rest of the time, thankfully, he was at liberty to live as he chose.
He relished his freedom, limited though it was. The glen, a beautiful and tranquil alternative to the barracks he had been confined to in Avalon, was thickly wooded with beech, rowan, ash, hazel, and oak, and contained a millpond and two waterfalls. In the spring, bluebells and primroses carpeted the ground. Apart from missing the brotherhood of war, the thrill of battle, and feeling a bit lonesome at times, he was content.
Ready to start his day, Axel flung away the quilt of animal pelts he slept under, climbed off the cot, and crossed the cave to the natural shelf where he kept his runes.
His little make-shift altar displayed the figures of Odin, Thor, and Freya he had carved from a branch of ash, the most hallowed of the nine sacred woods. Around the statues, he’d placed offerings gathered in the glen: a chunk of smoky quartz, a raven’s black feather, assorted pebbles he found pleasing for one reason or another, and small bundles of wildflowers and herbs.
He took the leather pouch in which he kept his runes to the rustic chair he had built from logs and hides when he was first reassigned as a portal guardian. Setting the bag upon the crude table he had fashioned from fallen limbs, he reached inside and randomly selected a stone—the topaz inscribed with what looked like a letter “x” with one short leg.
Nauthiz, the glyph of constraint, necessity, and pain.
In the position of his past, the symbol made sense. He had suffered because of his enslavement, but also found his way through the pain by using it to know himself better. And self-knowledge was the first step on the never-ending journey toward illumination.
Reaching into the bag again, he chose another stone and placed it beside the first. This time, he drew the amethyst depicting the solitary parallel line of Isa—the rune of standstill and impediments. Isa, which symbolized the ice of winter, advised patience and reflection while awaiting the spring thaw.
In the position of his present circumstances, this rune, too, seemed right. He was at a standstill, unable to move because of his bondage.
As he pulled the next rune from the pouch, surprise pricked his heart. It was the ruby bearing the X of Gebo, the rune of partnership.
Surely, the runes were not forecasting his marriage. Though he had felt lust many, many times, he had never had the seeds of physical attraction flower into deep affection, which was just as well. He was a spiritual warrior, first and foremost. His duty was to the gods and his queen. A relationship would only bring him trouble and distract him from his higher calling.
So, why had the gods shown him Gebo?
Even if he wanted a partner, which he did not, he was chattel. A breeding drone. A white knight captured by the black queen. His life was no longer his own to command.
Opening his eyes, he returned Gebo to the pouch and blindly chose another gemstone. This time, he pulled out the emerald inscribed with the upward pointing arrow of Teiwaz, the rune of the warrior.
Axel rubbed the smooth gem between his fingers, heartened by the glyph’s simple yet challenging counsel: undertake your quest with courage, dedication, compassion, and with complete trust in the will of the gods.
He stood ready to do so, apart from one tiny hiccup. To what quest did the rune refer?
Whatever it turned out to be, it would involve self-sacrifice. Teiwaz was the rune of the god Tyr, the deity who’d sacrificed his hand to save the cosmos from destruction.
Axel first heard the god’s story as a wee laddie. Fenrir, the eldest child of the trickster god Loki and the giantess Angrboda, was a warg—a gigantic and terrible wolf-like creature. When the gods learned of a prophecy in which Fenrir and his family would one day destroy the world, they brought the warg to Asgard, the home of the gods. There, they locked Fenrir in a cage and charged Tyr with his care and feeding.
As Fenrir grew in size and ferociousness, the gods decided more must be done, but were too afraid to approach him. So, resorting to trickery, they challenged the warg to break the chains they gave him. Fenrir put on the fetters, but broke them easily. The gods then sought the help of the dwarves, who devised a magical ribbon to secure Fenrir.
When presented with the seemingly fragile binding, Fenrir, suspecting trickery, asked the gods for a token of good faith: one of them must put his hand in the warg’s mouth while they secured him. Only Tyr, the bravest among them, was willing. Fenrir struggled, but could not break free, so, in retaliation, he bit off Tyr’s hand.
Teiwaz, thus, represented a sacrifice made for the larger good.
Axel returned the runes and their pouch to the altar and took up the ash-wood staff into which he had carved the runic sequence for making fire. Striding to the mouth of the cave, he lit the wall-mounted torches with a tap of his stick before stripping off his saffron tunic, boots, and tartan trews.
Naked, he stepped through the icy waterfall into the cool, pre-dawn air. Cold-water baths, an age-old warrior practice, rejuvenated his body, mind, and spirit while attuning him to the temperature and essence of the natural world. Only before sunrise and after sundown, when the glen was closed to visitors, was he assured the privacy the ritual demanded. Though none but witches could see him, thanks to an enchantment he had cast over the glen, other mortals could still hear his prayers.
As the icy water tumbled over his naked flesh, he said to the sky, “Father Odin, far-wanderer, grant me wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Mother Freya, goddess of beauty and battle, give me heart. Brother Thor, hammer-wielding god of thunder, grant me courage and strength. I ask that all of you walk beside me in trinity this day and always.”
* * * *
As the sputtering engine gasped its last, Jenna Cameron set her forehead against the steering wheel and groaned. Could this day get any worse? As if it weren’t enough her world had turned upside down, now her car decided to quit in the dead of night on a desolate stretch of road with no bloody cellular signal.
If not for the dream she’d had last night, she’d be Mrs. William Comstock right now, on her way to the honeymoon cottage she’d rented with the man she’d waited five long and frustrating years to marry.
The thought sent a shudder through Jenna. In the dream, she’d seen herself driving off the edge of a cliff. She was married to William and utterly miserable. As her car soared over the edge of the precipice, she heard her mother’s voice. “The right man is out there, waiting for you to find him. But it will never be if you bind yourself to a man you don’t love.”
As soon as she awoke, she rang William. When she told him about the dream, he said, as she’d secretly hoped he would, “I was willing to overlook that your mother was a witch because I believed your father had safely guided you away from the path of darkness,
but now I see that, like her, you have been led astray. I pray someday you will embrace the Light of God, Jenna. I truly do. But, for now, I cannot risk my own immortal soul by marrying someone so susceptible to Satan’s influence.”
William, a Presbyterian pastor like her father, blamed everything he did not understand on the devil.
As relieved as Jenna was to have escaped, the sudden change of course had thrown her life into chaos. Expecting to be married, she’d given up her job and flat in Edinburgh and, consequently, was left with no source of income and nowhere to live.
So, she was on her way to the rented cottage in Rosemarkie, a small seaside town on Scotland’s Black Isle. Since she couldn’t get her deposit back, it seemed like a good idea to use the cottage to reflect and regroup.
Coming all this way alone had suddenly lost its appeal, but here she was—and wallowing in self-pity was not going to solve anything. According to the Google map she’d printed out, she wasn’t far from her destination. She might as well suck it up and walk the rest of the way. When she got there, she could ring a garage about her car.
Grabbing her purse, her forest-green wool cloak, and the battery-powered torch she kept in the glove box, she climbed out of the car and set off along the rural tree-lined road, which was dark and a little spooky. No cars passed her in either direction. Crickets chirped all around and small rustlings from the surrounding woods startled her sporadically. Senses alert, she stopped repeatedly to check her mobile for a signal.
Her heart pounded and, despite the chill in the air, she was sweating under her cloak and sweater. The only good thing she could say about her present predicament was that her fear of being torn to pieces by wild animals had temporarily eclipsed her other worries.
She didn’t know how long she’d been walking when she came to an old stone bridge. Just beyond was a sign. She shone the beam of her torch at the words carved into the wooden plaque.
Faery Glen.
Jenna took heart. She’d read something about the glen on the website for the cottage, so she shouldn’t have much farther to go. Unfortunately, she needed to pee rather urgently. Might there be somewhere to go in the glen?
Venturing into a forest in the middle of the night might not be the smartest thing she’d ever done, but her bladder was bursting and she wasn’t about to tinkle by the side of the road. Just because no cars had gone by since she’d started walking, didn’t mean one wouldn’t appear the moment she dropped her knickers. Besides, there was a carpark abutting the glen, so there might be a public lavatory there as well.
Up above, the sky was an indigo canvas splattered with specks of white, some larger than others. She crossed the small asphalt lot. Finding no bathroom, she squatted in the bushes. When she’d finished her business, she shone the torch into the glen. Everything outside the beam was pitch black. Water ran somewhere nearby. Thirst drew her down the footpath. All that crying had made her as parched as a dry sponge.
I’ll only go a little ways, find the stream, and take a wee sip.
The hollow clomp of her footsteps disturbed the silence as she crossed a wooden bridge. On the other side, the path curved sharply. In a clearing just beyond the turn were the falls. In the silver light of the full moon, the cascading water reminded her of the bridal veil she might never get a chance to wear.
Then, she saw him. A man in the pool below the falls. He was stark naked, soaking wet, and had his back to her.
Alarm electrifying every nerve ending, she stepped back into the shadows. Her first thought was that he might be a homeless man who’d taken refuge in the woods. He had a beard and long hair, so it seemed the most logical explanation. Her next thought was that he might be performing some sort of ritual. She was on the Black Isle, after all, in a place called Faery Glen on the night of a full moon, so his being a New Age warlock or druid didn’t seem all that infeasible. A long shot, perhaps, but not meters outside the realm of possibility.
When curiosity overrode her apprehension, she stepped closer to get a better look at him. The moonlight bathing his glistening physique revealed a tall, slender frame with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a shapely bum. Wetness and poor lighting made telling the color of his hair impossible. Light brown, maybe, or dark blond. She started a little when he bent over and shook his head like a dog. As he threw it back, he raised his muscular white arms to push the clinging wet hair off his face.
Despite her long engagement and having achieved the ripe age of twenty-five, she’d never seen a naked man before. Not in the flesh, anyway, and watching this one bathing in the wild was making her feel things she shouldn’t. The prospect of being caught spying on him was even more unsettling.
Ducking behind the thick trunk of the nearest tree, she watched as he continued his bath. Drunk on a tart cocktail of shame and lust, she took in the graceful slope of his shoulders, the long muscles supporting his serrated spine, and the alluring dimples just below the small of his back. His beautiful form and the way the moonlight sparkled on the droplets clinging to his skin made her pulse race and her knees weaken.
A strong urge to touch him welled up inside her. How badly she wanted to run her hands over every glistening curve and indentation of his manly form—both for prurient reasons and to absorb some of his confidence the way plants absorbed sunlight. As exposed as he was to the elements, he seemed admirably comfortable in his skin.
She’d never felt that at ease with herself, even when alone. All her life, she’d been made to feel inferior. As much as she didn’t want to believe that she was, part of her did.
Mesmerized by the man in the pool, she went on watching. Something told her he was like her mother. Esoteric rather than religious. Open-minded instead of rigid. Accepting, not judging. She couldn’t say how or why she sensed this about him. She only knew she felt it deep down in some instinctive part of her psyche.
Hope fluttered in her heart. Could he be the one her mother spoke of in the dream? Scoffing at her romantic delusions, she smashed the thought with the rock of reason and headed back to the footpath.
The moon had gone behind a cloud and the glen was darker than before. Even with the aid of the torch, she could only see a step or two in front of her. All at once, the wood seemed haunted. Eyes watched from behind every tree. Nothing looked familiar. The hairs on the back of her neck prickling, she shone the beam right and left, unable to recall which way she’d come.
Choosing a direction, she hurried down the path a little way, searching the illuminated shrubbery for anything familiar. Gnarled roots reached out to trip her. Branches clawed at her face and hair. Spider webs endeavored to ensnare her.
An owl hooted, shattering Jenna’s courage along with the silence. As fear flooded her system, she broke into a run. Heaven help her. She was lost in a dark wood inhabited by God alone knew what.
Over the pounding in her ears, her rational mind whispered, “You are acting like a complete imbecile. There are no creatures more terrifying than badgers in these woods.”
Returning to her senses, Jenna slowed to a walk and threw a backward glance toward the waterfall. The man was just a man, and his reasons for bathing in the falls were no business of hers. Extreme fatigue coupled with the emotional distress of her cancelled wedding, looming poverty, and unresolved car trouble had robbed her of her logic. She was quite sure that, in the sobering light of morning, she would look back on this momentary episode of madness and have a good laugh. Right now, however, she just wanted to find that bloody cottage and put herself and this crappy day to bed.
After walking in circles for another half hour, she sat down on a rock she’d passed several times and opened her handbag. As she felt around for the directions, her fingers grazed an item she’d forgotten all about in her anguish. Her mother’s scorched grimoire. On a whim, she’d put it in her purse, thinking she might finally summon the courage to look through its pages.
When she’d first saved it from the fire, she couldn’t understand the words and drawings inside. It
seemed to be written in gibberish and glyphs. A cipher to protect dark secrets, no doubt. Later, after her father, who’d set the fire to burn his late wife’s Pagan books, frightened Jenna with his talk of Satan, she grew too afraid to look again. Not sure what to do with the book, she hid it in the back of a drawer and eventually forgot all about it. A few days ago, she came upon it while packing up her flat.
I cannot risk my own immortal soul by marrying someone so susceptible to the darkness.
And she could not give up all hope of happiness by marrying a man who condemned who she really was. Her gifts, God bless them, had saved her from following in her mother’s tragic footsteps.
Leaving the spell book for later, Jenna studied the map under the beam of her torch. The cottage, to her relief, was hidden in the trees a few yards ahead. Numb and leaden-limbed, she found her way there and, after struggling for a minute with the combination lock-box, released the key.
As she opened the front door, the disagreeable smell of mildew rushed out to greet her. Too tired to care about the mustiness or anything else, she threw her purse on a chair, kicked off her shoes, and curled up on the sofa under her cloak. Moments after shutting her eyes, she tumbled into a deep and dreamless slumber.
Table of Contents
Books by Nina Mason
Knight of Cups
Copyright
Dedication
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2