by E M Graham
Lights from a vehicle flashed on behind him, a motor started, and he disappeared into a white van waiting at the beach side.
All contact with him was now gone.
I drew back into myself and found Hugh closely staring into my eyes.
Catching a breath, for this had been hard work, I gasped and pointed north. ‘He had a boat. North shore. A van was waiting for him and Sandy, and now they’re gone.’
Hugh nodded quickly, then turned with the lantern still in hand. He left me to find my own way down along the spiralling stairs in the dark, still dazed from my experience, keeping the stones to my back as my feet looked for purchase.
I STOOD outside in the walled garden, Sandy’s favorite place, and watched as the helicopter arrived to bring the horde of elders needed to rebuild an unhackable barrier to the tunnel and the Crystal Charm Stone. I felt a presence at my side and smelled the perfume of a cigarette burning on the sun warmed air.
‘You doing all right?’ I asked Fergie.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ She was silent for a moment. I waited for the recriminations, but they didn’t come.
‘Sorry about all that,’ I mumbled.
‘Christ,’ she said finally. ‘I knew the very first day you had a lot of power, but I never suspected you could ever pull that off.’
‘It wasn’t just me doing it.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I could feel him too, when they silenced me. Were you, I mean they, were you planning to do away with the stone? To steal it?’
She couldn’t know the extent of what had happened, and I didn’t have the energy to explain it to her. I simply nodded and changed the subject
‘This Ice King, I’d never heard of him before coming to Scarp.’
‘Your parents never told you stories of him to ensure you toed the line?’ she joked, then realized her faux-pas. ‘But of course, not with your history. Well, the Ice King and his line have ruled the northern reaches for millennia. It’s rumored to be a strange and wondrously harsh land and mysterious reign, a place like no other.’
‘A terrible place,’ she added. My friend grew silent as if lost in thought.
ONCE EVERYTHING had settled back into place, Hugh and I went walking in the hills. In that short space of time, spring had arrived on the island, the balmier days growing longer, the wind no longer cutting like a knife. Birds sang in the low bushes, celebrating the new warm smells of regrowth. As we walked, my eyes would occasionally stray to the coastline, searching down along the beaches, but I could see no sign of Haggis, my erstwhile pet rock beast. Ah well, he was a wild creature, and needed to be with his own kind. Besides, he was very smelly when he got up close, the kind of stink that stayed on your clothes when he rubbed up against you, like a wet dog, so I can’t say I missed him that much.
The fruitless search for Willem on the mainland had been aborted. The sorcerer was long gone, as I’d expected; he would have had his escape route planned out to the split second, leaving nothing to chance and making sure of his own safety above all. Sandy had no doubt accompanied him, his new partner in crime.
We sat outside on the hillside, soaking in the sun. Back home, I’d learned from speaking with my aunt, everything was still buried under six feet of snow, with cold winds and ice underfoot and the gruel of endless shovelling, but here in the Outer Hebrides in the northwest of Scotland, there were palm trees growing in sheltered suburban gardens and spring-like weather in the midst of deepest February, all compliments of the Gulf Stream straight from the warmth of Mexico. I could grow to love this place, I thought as I closed my eyes and breathed in the salt air.
Hugh had been uncharacteristically quiet since asking me to accompany him on this short walk outside the castle gates, but that was okay, because I was steeling myself for a confession. It was long past time I told him about the whole affair, especially with Willem’s most recent disappearance.
He said nothing as I poured out the whole story of the coin’s involvement in my affairs and my mother, since meeting the sorcerer last December. As I talked, I couldn’t avoid the conclusion that I could have saved a lot of heartbreak if he’d listened to me the first time and allowed me to tell him all.
He evidently thought the same. ‘But why? Why couldn’t you tell me, or at least your father? He’s been scouring the globe both in and out of Alt for word of your mother, and has been for the past ten years.’
I had no answer for that, for I’d had no idea; Dad had never confided in me about his search. My father had withdrawn from me when Mom disappeared and we rarely spoke, and I had first thought he had done it, then I’d assumed his wife was behind it all.
‘Mom is up in the land of the Ice King.’
Hugh drew in a sharp breath. ‘Dear God,’ he said. ‘Willem had seen her there? Can you trust his word?’
I nodded.
‘I saw her too, remember.’ The breeze was turning direction, and I shivered as I watched the waves roll in from the north on the sandy beach far below, whitecaps forming as the tide battled the changing wind.
His hand found mine, lending me his warmth.
‘Well,’ he said, but nothing further.
‘Can we go up there?’
‘Not that easy,’ he said slowly. ‘Especially not now, not with the political situation as it is.’
‘I understand,’ I told him, but my mind was thinking elsewise. Willem was probably headed up north as we spoke, and he’d said the coin would help me find him. Just because Hugh and the Kin wouldn’t go to the Ice Kingdom for political reasons, didn’t mean I couldn’t. I’d find a way, it wasn’t so far away from where we sat here in the north of Scotland. Just over the northern horizon, beyond the swelling waves. If I could get there from here.
‘This coin,’ Hugh said as if reading my thoughts. ‘Can I see it? Do you still have it?’
My right hand reached into the pocket of my hoodie and played with it. I could have given the coin over to him right there and then, told him to keep it; the Kin magic would have found a way to figure out where the magic had originally come from, and the part it played in my mother ending up with the Ice King. They would de-spell, detox and post-mortem it, and I’d never see it again, never feel that shiver as I looked upon it and remembered all it had brought to me.
But it was my one link to my mother, my only way of reaching her in that far off land.
I turned to look up at him, and he inclined his face so close it was mere inches away from mine, his green eyes showed no barriers between us. Gone was the patina of professionalism, the burden of his work, the ice which overlaid him Hugh Sabiston, Officer of the Kin. In his place was the man I first met on the harbor of old St. John’s that fine fall day, the real Hugh Sabiston, the carefree half-blood witch.
I brushed a stray lock of tousled dark hair from his fine cheekbone and he drew in a quick breath, then caught my hand and brought it to his mouth, brushing it with the merest touch of his lips while me, I melted inside.
When we kissed, that inevitable touch, it was a promise binding us for years down the road, for the future time when I had found my feet and grown into the witch I was destined to be. Not yet, no, there was still too much for me to do, to learn, to become, before we could link our fortunes together.
‘We’ll go there, to the Ice Kingdom,’ he said as he held me. I could feel the vibration of his voice rumble through me. ‘Together. When all this is over, when you’re working beside me and we...’
I nestled my head under his, fitting my body against the length of his. It felt right and natural, and this what I’d yearned for all those months, and his kiss told the promise of more.
Yet I couldn’t begin this future with a lie between us, that could never provide a firm basis for us. They had called me an errant witch, and I had been, but no more.
On the other hand, I had no intention of giving up my coin to the Kin. Hugh would want to do the politically correct thing and hand it over for inspection, but I
wasn’t going to allow that. And it was best to set the ground rules right from the get go.
I drew the coin out of my pocket.
‘I’ll show it to you,’ I said. ‘But first I need a promise which you may not want to give. Mom doesn’t have the time to wait for me to become a fully-fledged witch, or for me to work through my apprenticeship with PANEC. I don’t care about the state of politics between nations, and I don’t care if I upset the delicate balance of negotiations. You have to help me get to the Ice Kingdom to free my mother.’
He looked at me for a long moment. I could tell he was deliberately weighing the pros and cons of my demands, and not just the immediate concerns but the long-lasting, far-reaching effects of what I proposed, both for the Kin he worked for, and for himself and me personally.
Finally, he gave a short nod. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘And we will get you there. Somehow. But you have to finish your year here at Scarp. The Kin won’t allow you to not get your full education, especially now you’ve shown what you’re capable of.’
He looked away and sighed. ‘I fear that you are becoming an infuriating, enchanting and alluring witch. We will go to the Ice Kingdom, you and me. Soon. I promise.’
‘I’m going to hold you to that,’ I said with a smile as I drew him back into my arms. ‘Because I’m an obstinate witch, too. Never forget that.’
AN OBSTINATE WITCH
The Ice King’s wintry grasp. A witch cursed. A deadly Chronicle.
Contact with the Crystal Charm Stone caused deep changes in Dara Martin, leaving her with a power so great, it scares even the elders. This had only happened once before in the centuries of the Kin’s rule, but the witch Meg’s fate is a secret buried deep in the past. Dara has no idea what her future might hold.
Whisked away from Scarp to study under the Venerable Nacthan in Edinburgh, she’s forbidden to practice until the elders can understand her new magic. Yet she knows she now has the resources to rescue her mother from the Ice King’s grasp, if only she knew how to get there from here.
A chance meeting leads her into the depths of the Edinburgh Vaults to Auld Meg, who’d been cursed to stone by the Kin to write the most dangerous chronicle of all. If Dara can break the spell and free the crone, she’ll be able to bridge realities to the Ice Kingdom.
There’ll be hell to pay with the Kin. But only if she makes it back alive.
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER FOR SEPT. 15, 2021!
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who helped with this book, especially Alexa Opal Hamilton, my new gem: you made this book and taught me so much along the way. And of course my Gremlins with their incredible eyes. Thanks also to the Feral Feline Rescue and Rehabilitation folks in Lethbridge, Newfoundland who solved my catless issues during the Great Isolation. Twice. I love my feral rescues Daisy and Bob. Given time and regular treats, they will someday love me too.
And mostly thank you to my readers – you have the magic in you.
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OTHER BOOKS
E M Graham - Witch Kin Chronicles:
An Ignorant Witch
An Arrogant Witch
An Errant Witch
An Obstinate Witch (September 2021)
Liz Graham - St. Jude Without Mysteries:
The Cut Throat
The Garrote
The Iron Dog
Liz Graham – The Unlikely Heroine Series:
An Imperfect Death
Portuguese Death (Dec/ 21)
About the Author
E M (Liz) Graham has always been a voracious reader from, and her taste in books covers almost every genre imaginable. This is probably why her writing also spans genres, from romance to mystery to paranormal. All of her works share the same wicked sense of humour and love of mystery.
You can find out more at https://LizGraham-Author.com, or visit her on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/witchkinchronicles
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