She suddenly cried out as the force of the turbulent maelstrom became too much, and ran for the door. She grappled with the knob, finally got the door open and stumbled onto the porch, mindless to the frantic shouts behind her. She had to get out. She had to leave before she was consumed!
She ran down the steps and into the clearing, nearly tripping over Gesader when he suddenly appeared in front of her. “Help me,” she cried, groping for the fur of his back. “Please, help me.”
Blinded by tears and the swirling energy pulling at her, Winter clutched her pet’s fur as he led her stumbling up the overgrown trail. She had no idea how she did it without benefit of a stump, but the next thing Winter knew she was mounted on Snowball, leaning forward with her face buried in his mane, crying uncontrollably as her trusted friends took her away from the horror of Daar’s cabin.
Chapter Fourteen
“Get out of my way,” Greylen growled, preparing to move Robbie from the door if need be.
“Nay, Greylen,” Robbie said, leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. “Winter doesn’t need any of us right now. We’d only be filling her head with more questions. Trust me, Grey,” Robbie petitioned. “I had the same reaction she’s having when I came home from the army and my papa tried to explain my calling to me.” He smiled sadly. “I spent nearly a week alone in the forest before I was able to face anyone again, much less the man who had given me that calling.”
Grey gave Robbie a good glare, then spun to face Daar. “Ye lied, priest. Ye told Winter it was safe to hold the staff, but it nearly killed her!”
Daar held up his hands, backing away. “Nay, MacKeage, I didn’t lie. I just underestimated the strength of Winter’s gift. I didn’t know the staff would react so strongly.”
Grey felt Robbie’s hand return to his shoulder in a calming gesture, yet he didn’t turn to his nephew but continued to glare at the priest.
“She’ll be okay, Greylen,” Robbie said, moving around to his side. “She has Gesader to look out for her, and Mary will likely tag along in the shadows. Winter has a good head on her shoulders. She’ll eventually reason things out, and then she’ll come back as mad as hell, demanding answers.”
“But there’s a storm coming,” Grace said, lifting fretful, tear-filled eyes to Robbie as she hugged herself. “They’re predicting snow. She can’t stay away for days in a snowstorm.”
Grey reached out and drew his wife to him, holding her head to his chest and absorbing her shivers. “Winter knows every nook and cranny on this mountain,” he assured her. “And how to survive with nothing more than a knife no matter the weather. She has an emergency kit in her saddlebag, remember? Robbie’s right, wife. Our daughter doesn’t want anything to do with us right now.”
“But ye must go after her,” Daar interjected. “Ye forgot about Gregor. Ye didn’t tell Winter she has to stop seeing him. Ye have to go after her and tell her now.”
It was Grace who spun around and took a step toward the priest, her fists balled at her sides. “We are not telling her to stop seeing Matt,” she hissed. “She’s had enough bad news without realizing she has to spend the next two thousand years alone!”
“Gregor’s away on business,” Grey said, unable to stifle his smile as the old priest backed away from Winter’s formidable mama. “I believe he’s gone for a few days.”
It was Grey’s news and not Grace’s threatening stance that seemed to make Daar back off. The priest sighed, walked over to the woodstove, and peered into the pan of soggy bacon. “My breakfast is ruined,” he muttered.
“So’s my daughter’s life!” Grace shot back, going to the pegs on the wall and taking down her jacket. “I want to leave now,” she said. “I have to go to the gallery and explain this to Megan.” Grey helped her slip into the jacket, then turned her to face him. “Megan will worry herself sick if she doesn’t hear from her sister,” Grace continued as she buttoned up her jacket. “She was likely in on Winter’s spying this morning.”
Grey moved her hands out of the way and buttoned the last two buttons, holding her collar in his fists as he pulled her forward to kiss her frowning forehead. “I’ll go with ye to see Megan,” he said before looking at Robbie and nodding. “Thank ye, MacBain, for being the voice of reason this morning. We’ll try our damnedest to give Winter the time she needs.”
Robbie nodded. “If she’s not back in a few days, I’ll help ye go get her.”
Grey took his own jacket down from the peg, shrugged into it, and pointed at Daar. “Ye leave her alone, priest. She’ll come to ye when she’s done cursing ye out. Then she’ll probably plague ye with questions.” He grinned. “She’ll likely come back with a plan to make her destiny fit her desires.” Grey suddenly frowned. “Now what in hell are ye grinning at?” he snapped at Daar. “Ye look as pleased as a cat in a milk jug.”
Daar had his hands clasped to his chest, standing in front of the woodstove, smiling quite smugly. “I just realized something,” he said, his bright blue eyes sparkling. “For as distraught as Winter was when she left here, I notice she took her staff.”
Unable to do more than simply hold on to her horse’s mane as violent sobs wracked her body, Winter didn’t know and didn’t care where Gesader was leading Snowball. A raw northeast wind blew down from the summit, ripping what few leaves remained from the trees as it raked through the denuded branches with an eerie, ominous moan. Winter was oblivious to the building storm as she fought the emotional maelstrom howling inside her.
How could this be happening? How could her parents have kept such a terrible secret from her for twenty-four years? And Robbie. How could her cousin have betrayed her so wretchedly?
But even more horrifying, why her? Why had she been cursed with such an unimaginable destiny? She was nothing more than a dot of paint on a three-story-tall mural, not even significant enough to warrant a complete brushstroke. One human being in billions, and her parents dared to tell her the fate of the world lay in her hands?
And the power of knowledge? Most days she wasn’t bright enough to come in from the cold when her passion for her work kept her focused only on her canvas. She certainly wasn’t smart enough to find, much less defeat Cùram de Gairn.
Winter recalled the stories Robbie had told her about the young powerful wizard, when Robbie had given her the tiny black panther cub he’d brought back from medieval Scotland two and a half years ago. He’d returned from his eight-hundred-year journey not only with the tap root he’d stolen from Cùram’s tree of life, but with the hissing, squirming bundle of fluff she’d named Gesader.
Cùram was a tricky bastard, Robbie had told her, his description conveying a perverse sense of admiration as much as distrust. Diabolical, he’d called Cùram, powerful enough to move mountains and cunning enough to hide his precious tree in a cave in the center of a lake he’d created.
One day when Robbie had come across Winter sketching in the woods and shared her lunch, he had told her he’d actually seen Cùram. And despite there being hundreds of yards separating the two men eight hundred years ago, Robbie told Winter how he’d still been able to feel the young drùidh’s anger. But he’d also sensed that the centuries-old war between Cùram and Pendaär was not over, but truly just beginning.
Untangling herself from Snowball’s mane to close her collar against the chill settling in her bones, Winter suddenly realized she was still clutching the pinewood staff in her hand. She immediately tossed it to the ground.
Gesader stopped, which caused Snowball to stop. The panther padded back beside her, picked up the staff in his mouth, looked up to give her a deep rumbling snarl, and once again headed up the trail.
“I don’t want it!” she shouted to his back, quickly grabbing the reins when Snowball started after Gesader. “Spit it out!”
Her pet ignored her, her words uselessly carried away on the wind. Winter hunched low in her saddle, burying her face in Snowball’s neck as tears overwhelmed her in another wrenching fit of self-pi
ty.
She didn’t want to be a wizard. She didn’t want to live for centuries, to become old and cranky and barely tolerated by people who provided for her from a sense of obligation. She would watch her parents die, and her sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews, until she was left alone with only Daar. She might love the old priest despite himself, but she didn’t want to emulate him. She sure as heck didn’t want to become him.
She wouldn’t do it, she decided. Providence had no right to saddle her with such an impossible duty. She was only a young, untried woman against a powerful drùidh, no matter that her parents and Robbie had promised to help her. She didn’t even know what she was supposed to do, much less how to do it.
Darn it, she had just started to get her life on track. She’d just found Matheson Gregor and fallen so deeply in love with the man, the mere thought of knowing he’d die a timely death while she went on living without him made her heart wrench in despair. There had to be a way around this mess, a way she could help Daar and Robbie defeat Cùram without completely binding herself to Providence.
Winter bolted upright in the saddle. That was it. She would find a way to lure Cùram into the open so her cousin could finish him off. Aye, Robbie was a guardian, and guardians had the power to protect mankind from drùidhs. He could defeat Cùram. He’d done so once before, he could do it again.
But cùram was Gaelic for guardian. Was it possible to be both a guardian and a wizard? Was that why even Robbie needed her help?
So many questions with only more questions for answers.
Snowball suddenly stopped, and Winter blinked at her surroundings. How long had she been riding? She was still on TarStone, but she couldn’t recognize where exactly.
And then she saw it, just off to her right, the broad trunk of a majestic white pine. She moved her gaze up the perfectly straight trunk, from the fluffy pile of leaves and pine needles at the bottom, up past several jutting branches as thick as her waist, all the way up to the piece of tin covering the bluntly cut top. Broad fingers of dried pitch oozed down several feet from under the cap, mingling with shiny wet slivers of fresh sap.
This was it. Gesader had brought her to Daar’s tree of life. He must have followed the priest or her papa or Robbie here at some time. But why had he brought her here now?
Gesader sat down in front of the pile of leaves at the base of the pine, the thin, puny staff still held in his mouth. It stuck out over two feet on each side of his head, a pale contrast to his solid-black fur.
“What?” she snapped, scrubbing tears off her face. “Leave it with the pine,” she told him. “I want nothing to do with the magic.”
Gesader emitted a rattling growl from deep in his chest as his long thick tail whipped angrily back and forth, stirring a flurry of leaves behind him.
“I don’t care. I want to go—” She snapped her mouth shut. Where did she want to go? Not home. Nor to her gallery; she couldn’t face Megan right now. She couldn’t face anyone, not even Robbie. Whenever she had been beside herself with grief or worry or excitement or joy, she had always gone to Robbie. But she couldn’t even seek comfort in her dearest cousin. Not yet. Not until she could sort out the mess she was in.
Tom, then. She would go stay with her good friend.
And say what? I’m sorry for crying all over ye, but I’m a wizard and I don’t want to be one. Nay, she couldn’t go to Tom; he saw too much with his sharp blue eyes, read her too well.
Matt’s camp. She could go to Bear Mountain and stay in the cozy little den Matt had made. He was in Utah for several more days, and surely she’d have her emotions under control by the time he got back. Aye, she just needed to be alone for a while, just long enough to figure out what she was going to do.
“Come, Gesader,” Winter said, taking up Snowball’s reins to head toward Bear Mountain. But the old horse didn’t budge, even when she clicked her tongue and dug her heels into his sides. “Get going, you accursed beast,” she growled.
She was answered by another growl coming from the direction of the pine. She looked over to see Gesader, standing now, the hackles on his back raised in anger. “What is it you want?” she shouted. “Why have ye brought me here?”
Gesader turned with the puny staff still in his mouth, leapt over the pile of leaves, and dropped the stick against the trunk of the pine. A deep, resonating sound—like that of a tuning fork—started the tree humming in shuddering puffs, sounding as if it were gasping for breath.
Winter blinked in amazement. She slid off Snowball and walked toward the pine, unable to look away from the pulsing trunk. Stepping through the thick pile of leaves, she slowly reached out and touched it.
She gasped, pulling her hand away at the realization that it was alive, that she had felt its weak spark of life struggling to surface. Without questioning why, driven by some unfathomable yet urgent need, Winter stepped up to the tree, wrapped her arms around it, and lay her cheek against the cold, rough bark.
A rainbow of colors immediately swirled through the air. Her arms and fingers tingled and her ears roared at the sound of pitch moving along the trunk’s veins. With her chest pressed into the rough bark, Winter felt the pine’s energy slowly shifting…until it finally matched the steady rhythm of her own pounding heart.
A calmness settled over Winter, both the internal and external storms receding, the swirling colors slowly fading away until only the purity of white remained. A loud caw came from above, and Winter looked up to see a plump black crow perched on one of the pine’s remaining branches over her head.
Winter’s knees buckled and she slid to the ground. She sat curled at the base of the tree, hugging the trunk as tightly as she could, feeling TarStone’s vast store of energy moving through her. In her mind’s eye she saw roots stretching deep into fissures that spidered through the mountain’s granite. The trunk she was hugging expanded and receded with billowing breaths as the vital energy flowed up from the mountain and into the tree.
The crow gave another high-pitched caw, and Winter looked up to see it lift off the branch and flap skyward. It caught the wind and soared over the swaying treetops of the forest, disappearing into the dark, churning storm clouds.
Winter slowly straightened away from the pine, blinking in confusion. What had just happened? Had she actually become one with Daar’s pine? Could she really have felt its pulse as strongly as she felt her own?
Yes, that’s exactly what had happened, and Winter finally understood the true scope of her gift, as well as the very real threat Cùram de Gairn posed. For even though she knew the pine would live for months yet, she had also seen its eventual death—arriving on the chill wind of utter hopelessness.
Chapter Fifteen
The clouds had thickened and lowered by the time Winter crossed Bear Brook and entered the high meadow, the wind blowing at gale force and a wet snow falling with blinding intensity. Though she was wet to the skin and miserably cold, the closer Winter got to Matt’s cozy little cave the calmer she became. Despite all her questions and confusion, she was confident she could figure out a way to lure Cùram into the open for Robbie.
But what was she going to do about Matt while she dealt with the magic? How could she keep such a powerful secret from him? She couldn’t say when it had happened exactly, but Winter now accepted the fact that she loved Matheson Gregor with every fiber of her being. Until she had pictured herself having to live without him, she hadn’t realized just how deeply he had become entrenched in her heart. As she rode across the meadow through the driving snow, Winter vowed that she would not allow Providence or the magic or some angry drùidh to mess with that love.
Gesader disappeared into the woods that separated the meadow from the cliff, having to twist his head to fit the long pinewood stick through the trees. Winter had deliberately left the staff at Daar’s tree, but as soon as she’d found a stump and mounted Snowball, Gesader had taken up the lead again, once again carrying the blasted thing in his mouth.
Winter ha
d no idea how the big cat knew its importance, but he did seem determined the staff remain with them. She’d often wondered if the tiny cub Robbie had brought her from eight hundred years ago was something more than he seemed. Even though panthers were not indigenous to Scotland, he had been living in the cave Robbie said had held Cùram’s tree of life. But other than being unusually well-adapted to living with humans, Gesader had shown no signs of being anything other than a typical, semiwild leopard.
He’d never spoken to Winter the way Robbie’s snowy owl spoke to him, nor did Gesader appear to possess any magic, much less act the part of a familiar. He was simply Winter’s cherished pet and steadfast companion. Yet he’d brought her to the dying pine, somehow knowing she needed to feel its waning energy in order to realize the seriousness of the situation.
And the crow she’d seen sitting on the branch above her. What had that been about? Tom certainly loved crows; he’d told Winter they were the harbinger of renewal and transformation, to be revered as spirits who helped restore order to the heavens.
Had the crow she’d seen today symbolized some sort of transformation? Had he been there to encourage her to fight for humanity’s future?
Following Gesader, Winter guided Snowball through the narrow band of trees as she contemplated the meaning of the crow. They stopped at the granite cliff that rose thirty feet above the meadow. She slid from the saddle, nearly falling to the ground when her numbed legs buckled under her weight.
“I have to get us dried off,” she said to her wet, snow-covered pets. “Or Matt is going to find three frozen blocks of ice when he gets home.”
Gesader disappeared into the narrow opening of the cave, then quickly returned empty-mouthed. Winter undid Snowball’s cinch and pulled the heavy saddle off, groaning when its weight nearly buckled her knees again. She let it fall to the ground and dragged it to the cave, dropping it just inside the entrance. She rummaged around in her saddlebag until she found a flashlight, then trailed its beam around the interior of the cave, stopping when she spotted the pile of blankets.
Only With a Highlander Page 16