by Laurin Wittig - Guardians Of The Targe 02 - Highlander Avenged
“Is there aught else you can tell us?” Nicholas asked Jeanette.
“They take her to the Story Stone.” She looked at Malcolm. “That is what we call the ancient standing stone I saw.” She looked back to Nicholas. “I could not see if anyone was with her there.”
“I found an abandoned English camp near that stone,” Duncan said, tension clear in the sharp planes of his face and the tight control of his voice. “They must be returning there.”
“Go, Duncan,” Nicholas said. “Get to her and keep her within arm’s reach at all times until you return here. We cannot let the English have her. We cannot let them get a hostage. Watch yourself, too. I would not have them capture either of you.”
Duncan nodded, then sprinted out of the clearing and up the ben.
“I pray he will arrive in time to keep her safe,” Rowan said, her eyes still fixed on the path Duncan had taken.
“As do I,” Jeanette said. “Perhaps, when I have learned better how this ability—”
“Gift,” Rowan and Malcolm said simultaneously.
“—Perhaps it is a gift,” Jeanette allowed, “but I do not ken that yet. I hope that when I understand it better, I will begin to know what is the future, what is not, and if what I see is carved in stone or if it can be changed. I pray it can be changed, else Scotia will indeed meet the English.”
Rowan and Nicholas started peppering her with questions about the visions: when they had started, what she could see. Jeanette spoke of the grotto, of how they had found it, and of what had happened to her there when she knelt upon the stone in the pool. Malcolm filled in details she could not, and of course neither of them spoke of the intimacy that had passed between them.
“Can you direct the visions to what you want to see?” Nicholas asked, excitement speeding his words.
“I do not ken. Not yet at least. I only just this morning tried to call the visions to me while awake.”
“And that worked, aye?” Nicholas asked. “That is when you saw Scotia?”
She nodded, then swallowed hard. Her next request was likely to cause much consternation with her cousin.
“Rowan, I would like to see if the Targe stone will help me with this gift.”
“Why do you think it will?” Rowan asked, much more calmly than Jeanette had expected. No Guardian in the records had ever shared the Targe with another until the Guardianship was passed along. Jeanette had never seen her mother even allow another to touch it while it was in her care—not even Jeanette, at least not until her mum had taken so ill. Even then, Jeanette had only handled it in its sack, never the stone itself.
“The stone I found in the grotto, the one in the pool, it had the same symbol as the Targe stone, three swirling circles within a circle, but it also had one of the symbols that are painted inside the sack.” She paused, letting that sink in. “It had the symbol Mum called the mirror, and ’twas when I found it that the visions erupted within me.”
Rowan pulled the sack from her belt without a word and spread it wide, draping it over her palm, where she cradled the fist-sized grey stone in the middle of it, covering the swirling circles in the middle of the sack with the stone itself, which had the same symbol carved into its surface. Three other symbols were spaced around the outer part of the sack that hung from her hand and there, clearly, was painted the same mirror symbol Jeanette had seen in the grotto.
Malcolm stepped close, examining the stone that had both protected them and brought them all this recent trouble.
“It is smaller than I had imagined,” he said. He pointed at the symbol on the stone and looked at Jeanette. “This is the one on the grotto stone?”
“In the middle, aye, but this is the other symbol.” She lifted an edge of the sack and laid it over her own palm, showing him the mirror.
“And you thought of the water this morning because it is like a mirror?”
“I did, and it was. I did not try to direct the gift this morning, but I was prepared for it and was able to look closer at the vision of Scotia, for it caught my attention as it tried to rush by me.”
Rowan was quiet and Jeanette gave her time to consider all she’d been told. At length she asked the question Jeanette had been waiting for.
“Is there anything in the chronicles that says there can be more than one Guardian?”
“I have searched, but found naught.”
Rowan nodded, the stone still held in her palm, the four of them standing close enough to shield it from those curious enough to shirk their duties. Protecting it was more habit than need here in the heart of the MacAlpin clan.
“Perhaps my gift is not enough to protect us from the English king,” Rowan said quietly. “Let us find out if you are a Guardian, too, as you were always destined to be.”
SCOTIA HAD BEEN happy to stay behind at the warriors’ camp when Rowan, Nicholas, and the annoying Duncan, along with a handful of warriors for keeping the Guardian and the chief safe, had left before dawn. She had no use for the women’s camp, for women hiding in caves, trembling in fear of their enemies. And now, at last, she was free of the ever-watchful eyes of Duncan and Rowan. Uilliam had no doubt been left with orders to keep a tight rein on her, but it would be easy enough to slip by him as he had his hands full overseeing the watches.
She’d not be managed any longer.
Triumph and anger mixed with the deep slash of festering grief within her, heating her blood like a fever, making her more determined than ever to do what she had sworn to do: avenge her mother’s death.
Sure, the man who had murdered her mum had died by Kenneth’s hand in front of all the castlefolk, but she had found little satisfaction in that. She wanted the English to fear the people of Clan MacAlpin. She wanted the English to fear her. She had lived in fear of them for far too long. Today she would end that once and for all. Today she would prove to everyone that she was not some wee lass that had to be managed and protected. She wasn’t a wee lass anymore. She thought about how she’d spent her days, flirting with the lads and manipulating everyone she knew to do her bidding . . . except Duncan. He was the one person who never fell for her charms. He was the one who always had the sour face when looking at her, as if he could approve of nothing she did. As if she needed his approval. Hah.
Today she would show him and all the rest of her clan just exactly who she was, and wouldn’t they all be surprised when it was Scotia who brought the English to their knees, quaking in fear.
She slipped into the tent she shared with several women who did the cooking and washing for the warriors. Once inside, she donned the tunic and trews she had “borrowed” from one of the kitchen lads before she left the castle, then dug in the sack that contained everything important to her, including her mother’s eating knife and the dirk, long and mortally sharp, that had been used to kill her. That bastard spy’s dagger would do more damage this day. She secured the weapons in the belt she had buckled about her waist to keep the trews up.
Now the question was simply, Where would she start looking for the English? Duncan, the ass, continued to claim he had not found them, only their abandoned camp near the Story Stone, though he had let slip that it appeared there were only a handful of English in the glen so far. The Story Stone was west of the castle, not far from the loch, while she was south and east of her home now, huddled in a glenlike fold of the mountain. She peeked out of the tent and waited until she could exit it without being seen. Quietly, she slipped around the side of her tent and headed into the thick wood in which the warriors’ camp had been set up. She passed a place where someone had been chopping wood. A small ax lay on the ground, left behind by its owner. She picked it up and slid the smooth wooden handle through her belt without stopping. It was no battle ax, but then she could not wield a heavy battle ax. She could hear Duncan’s derisive retort in her head: “You cannot wield any weapon. You are just a scrawny lass.”
; “Not anymore,” she said aloud from between clenched teeth, and banished Duncan’s voice from her head.
Indeed, since before they had left the castle, Scotia had been working hard to make herself stronger, running up and down the ben, hefting stones ever bigger, ever heavier, until at night her fingers would be bloodied and her extremities and back would ache. She had not been able to do any of that since they had been driven out of the castle. She cursed Duncan again, even though she knew he was not responsible for that decision. She hadn’t been able to train, but she had watched the warriors training since she’d come to the warriors’ camp, memorizing their moves and the tips they gave each other, so she could move as lethally as they did when her chance arose.
Just then the trees opened up, allowing her a view of her home. She stopped, her breath caught in her throat. She missed her home. She missed her mother. She missed how safe she had felt there, and how simply she’d viewed her world and her place in it. She knew how naïve she had been. She had never been safe there. No one had. Wall or no wall. Guardian or no Guardian. If her mum had not been able to keep them safe, Rowan had not a hope of doing so.
And while the rest of them seemed content to wait for the English to arrive in force, she was done waiting. She was taking the fight to them, even if she had to do it alone.
MALCOLM AND JEANETTE led Rowan and Nicholas to the burn where Jeanette had seen Scotia in trouble this morning. They needed privacy for the next experiment and the grotto was much farther away than the burn. This place had worked for Jeanette’s scrying once, so it seemed likely, if she could use the Targe stone, it should work here again.
When they arrived, Rowan and Jeanette stood near the water. The men held back far enough to be out of the way, though Malcolm positioned himself close enough to Jeanette to catch her if she collapsed, as she had in the grotto.
Rowan handed the sack to her cousin, then joined the men. Jeanette placed the sack on the ground, loosening the ties until the circular piece of ermine pelt lay flat, the stone in its center, as Rowan had held it, and with the three symbols, now visible, painted around the edge. Jeanette knelt next to it and began to chant and move her arms in the air.
Malcolm recognized the graceful arcs and swishes of her hands in the air from yesterday and this morning, when she had whispered whatever she was now chanting. It warmed him, in an unaccustomed way, to know that he was trusted with this secret of Clan MacAlpin, that he stood shoulder to shoulder with these people who had lost much more than he had in the fight against the English, though they had never gone to war. They fought their own sort of battle for their home and their country.
Jeanette lifted the stone into her hands, raising it up as if she were offering it to God. They all waited, expectation thick in the air, but Malcolm knew it wasn’t working. She wasn’t seeing anything.
After a long time, she lowered her hands to her lap. “Nothing.” But she didn’t look at those gathered there, she narrowed her eyes and studied the open sack as if she’d never seen it before. No one moved. They clearly knew that look as well as Malcolm was coming to know it. She was working through the problem, sorting through all she knew and adding what she had just learned to it, before she came up with—
“Rowan,” she said quietly without lifting her gaze from the sack. “Will you help me?”
Rowan quickly joined her cousin, kneeling opposite her, the sack between them.
“How?” she asked.
Jeanette was quiet again, then nodded, as if she was satisfied with whatever she had decided. “Take the stone.” She laid it in Rowan’s outstretched hands, then Rowan turned the sack until the mirror symbol sat in front of Jeanette, and an inverted V with three wavy lines beneath it lay in front of Rowan. A third symbol that looked like an arrow broken in two places, so it formed the shape of a Z, lay closest to the men. Jeanette laid her own hands over the stone.
“Draw forth the power of the Targe, Rowan. Send it through the stone. Send it through me.”
“Send it through you?”
“Aye. ’Twas your use of the Targe without the protections that brought my gift forth, I am sure of it. Perhaps you will open the power of the Targe for me.”
“I dinna ken how to send it through you.”
“Clearly you have learned how to send your gift through the Targe in order to focus it where you need it to go, as I saw when you toppled the trees in a perfect triangle around those soldiers. Just send the power of the stone, the power that you direct with your gift, to me instead of a tree.”
Rowan shook her head. “I do not want to hurt you, Cousin.”
“And you will not.”
“You cannot be sure.”
“I trust you,” Jeanette said, and Malcolm could see Rowan’s breath catch but she nodded slowly and locked her gaze on Jeanette’s.
His angel didn’t chant and move her hands this time. The two women sat quietly, tension cascading off of them enough to fill the wood. Birds abandoned the trees nearby and even the little telltale sounds of small animals moving through the forest ceased.
Malcolm couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Jeanette.” He kept his voice soft, quiet, trying not to startle her. “Think of the water in the cup, the water in the pool covering the stone. ’Tis the water that brought you the waking visions.”
She took a long, deep breath and nodded slightly. She kept one hand on the stone where Rowan still held it between them, and reached out with the other, letting her fingertips dip into the edge of the burn. A sudden wind whipped through the wood, scattering leaves and dropping bits of trees in its path. Jeanette threw her head back. Both women’s hair lifted and danced about them in the wind. Gooseflesh rode Malcolm’s skin. He took a step toward them and was stopped with an iron grip upon his arm.
“Nay,” Nicholas said. “Do not stop them. The wind is a sign that Rowan’s gift is active. She will not hurt Jeanette with it, but she will hurt you if you try to interfere. As will I.”
Malcolm itched to go to Jeanette with the same white-hot urgency that had propelled him into his last battle. In his mind Nicholas became Cameron, Malcolm’s cousin and best friend, who had also bade him not to act upon his instincts. Cameron, it turned out, had been right, he now realized. His men had been battle weary, injured, ill, but Malcolm had seen nothing but a chance to beat back the English and their Scottish allies. Cameron had seen more clearly than Malcolm that it was not time to engage in battle again. Nicholas understood his wife’s gift, and likely the Targe, far better than Malcolm could and he counseled patience. He shrugged off Nicholas’s grip but did not retreat from his position halfway between the chief and the women. Neither did he move to Jeanette’s side, though the need to do so was fierce. His angel learned from what did not work for her. He could do the same, learning from his mistake that had almost cost him his sword arm, but that had also brought him to this clan and Jeanette.
Just when he thought he could hold his position no longer, Jeanette yanked her hand off the stone. Rowan slumped and the wind immediately died; leaves fluttered to the ground in the sudden still and quiet.
“Now,” Nicholas said, striding to his wife.
Malcolm was kneeling by Jeanette instantly. “Angel? Are you well?” He brushed her silky hair away from where it tangled over her face, searching for any sign of injury. He was rewarded with a smile full of wonder, her blue eyes alight with what he knew was a look of understanding, of knowledge gained.
“What did you see?” he asked.
The light in her eyes went out like a storm cloud covering the sun. “They will be here soon, too soon,” she said. “Nicholas, the English are drawing near. I saw a soldier on a horse, leading I know not how many men. He had dark hair with a lock of pure white.”
Nicholas narrowed his eyes. “He rides a honey-colored horse, aye?” he asked Jeanette.
“He does. There were three red st
ars upon his surcoat, too. You ken who this man is?”
Nicholas took a deep breath and pushed his fingers through his hair. “I do. He is Lord Sherwood. I have met him several times during my service with King Edward. He is a very able commander of men. Sly, good with tactics. King Edward relies on him for advice in battle.” He shook his head. “He is a formidable foe. Did you see more?”
“I could not tell where they were, except that it looked like they were moving toward the coast—I could smell the salt air. I could hear the sound of men marching but I could not see them clearly enough to tell how many there were. I cannot tell exactly when I saw them, but ’twas still summer to be sure. The purple and yellow Heel Cups were in full bloom, so I cannot be seeing far into the future, for they will start blooming very soon now.”
Nicholas nodded. “It is as we thought, but good to have verification that they will be upon us soon. Did you seek out that vision or did it just come to you?”
“Both. Three times the visions have come through me in a stream, all jumbled together, but I am learning how to grab a specific one long enough to look at it. I can’t see much—there always seems to be a fog around all but something or someone specific. I searched the stream for something of the English this time, once I figured out how to call the visions to me through the stone.”
She leaned against Malcolm then, and he pulled her close.
“Thank you for reminding me of the water,” she said. “I was so intent upon the Targe that I forgot what I had learned only this morning.”
“You have learned a lot,” Rowan said, a smile on her tired face. “You learned how to use the Targe much faster than I did.”
Nicholas looked down at his wife where she stood leaning against him. “She used the Targe?”
“Aye, my love. It would seem we have two Guardians to fight the English,” Rowan said with a broad smile.
Malcolm felt Jeanette stiffen against him. “What is it, angel?”
“It is the destiny I always expected,” she said, looking at everyone standing in a circle about her, “but not the one I want now.”