by Jill Jones
Erica’s voice intruded into her thoughts. “Genevieve could never become Healer…”
“…because she did na have it in her to call for the murder of someone who broke the laws of the Dragon,” Keely finished for her, feeling her blood turn cold. She understood now why Genny had run, and why she had been unable to speak of her reasons. And why she had been so afraid.
“‘Tis na murder,” Erica insisted. “‘Tis punishment under th’ law. And she needn’t have made such a thing of it. A Healer has na had t’ call down punishment anytime in recent memory. If she had na run away and broken th’ law herself, none of this would have happened.”
A ghost of a memory stirred at the back of Keely’s mind. She was a child, hiding in the pub, listening to Alyn and others discussing what to do about a young man who had broken the laws.
It had happened in her lifetime, to someone named…Timothy Jenkyns. Shards of words from the ballad crashed through her mind:
To the Dragon’s back a young man came,
And Timothy Jenkyns was his name…
Timothy Jenkyns. Who had taken the Keeper’s bribe and agreed to marry an island girl, but who had absconded with the money the night before the wedding.
He ran away, thought he’d not be found,
But the morning tide brought his body, drowned.
“Timothy Jenkyns,” she murmured, looking at Alyn. “Ninian was Healer then, too, wasn’t she?”
Erica frowned, not knowing what Keely was talking about. She was too young to remember. But Alyn knew. He looked away, but Keely lashed out.
“Ninian ordered his death, did she na, Uncle?”
Alyn Runyon looked perfectly miserable. “Aye,” he answered reluctantly.
She turned on Erica. “It has happened, Erica, in recent memory. And Genny knew it could happen again. Murder may mean nothing to ye,” she fumed, “but your sister was a decent woman. Ye are right, she could na order someone’s death, na because she was weak, but because she refused to believe that death was a justifiable punishment for breaking laws that are archaic and senseless. Murder, in case you do na know, is against the laws of both England and God. She was right to flee.”
Erica raised her head and jutted her chin out defiantly. “She knew th’ secrets of Keinadraig,” she said with silent menace. “She would tell. She promised she would na, but in time, something would have slipped out.”
“She did na tell me,” Keely reminded her.
“Genevieve was a traitor. In time she would have betrayed us all. As ye would have done if left on th’ outside. ‘Tis why Ninian ordered ye be brought back here. To keep safe our sacred secrets.”
“Sacred! Profane secrets they are! And they’ll not be safe much longer, for Alyn made a bad mistake. He thinks he closed forever the mouth of the one who witnessed Genny’s slaying. But he did not. That man is alive, and ‘tis only a matter of time until the police catch up with you. Kill me, and you will only make matters worse for yourselves.” Keely hoped she hadn’t just issued a death warrant for Brad. It was possible Alyn might try to finish the job. With these two, anything was possible. But she hoped that instead they would see the cruel insanity of what they had done and would spare her life.
Erica raised one lip in a snarl. “I’ve heard enough. Alyn. Lock her behind the sea door. We must get on with the purification.”
With a look that bespoke deep regret and confusion, Alyn Runyon reached for a torch with one hand and took Keely again by the arm with his other and led her out of the chamber. He virtually dragged her to the other passageway, the one she had not explored when looking for Jack. She did not know what the sea door was. Neither did she wish to be locked behind it.
“Alyn, please, don’t. Let me go, I pray ye.”
But he did not reply. Finding a niche, he secured the torch to light the way for his foul deed. Then with arms far stronger than hers, he shoved her down the narrow tunnel. In the dim light, she saw a door secured across the passageway, fashioned of wide wooden planks held together with two rusted iron crossbars. The wood was wet and encrusted with sea salt. Beyond, she could hear the hungry appetite of the sea.
“Uncle, no!” she begged, but he would not hear. Instead, he lifted a heavy latch, shoved the door open, and thrust her through it. She landed with a splash in shallow water, surrounded by darkness. Behind her, she heard the squeak of rusty hinges and the sound of the latch falling back into place. She righted herself and, following the sound, groped her way toward it until her fingers reached the soggy planks of the sea door. She pounded on it and called out until she was hoarse.
“Alyn! Please! Let me go!”
She turned and faced the darkness. The water ebbed and flowed slightly, but with each incoming current, it seemed to edge higher around her ankles. To her horror, Keely realized the tide was rising. The ballad spoke of a number of “traitors” who had met with tragic accidental drownings. With sudden understanding, Keely knew none of them had been accidents at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alyn Runyon had been a loyal servant to the Dragon since assuming the responsibility of Keeper upon the death of his father more than three decades before. He had sworn his oath to defend the laws he’d held sacred since he was old enough to understand them. He believed in Keinadraig, and he believed in the Dragon, at least as a symbol of the unique power that protected the island and its people. The Dragon no longer rose from the fire and sang out to the people as it had to the first Healer, but his laws were sound.
With Ninian as Healer, Alyn had found the strength to do many things an ordinary man would not have had the courage to do. He was her servant, as well as the Dragon’s, and he’d loved her always. For Ninian, for the Dragon, he had lied, stolen, and murdered. He had never considered it wrong. He had not thought it murder when he’d locked the Jenkyns boy away behind the sea door, just as he’d now locked his own niece there. It had been rightful punishment of the Dragon. It was the Dragon, working through him, who had thrown the latch, leaving the traitor to drown at high tide, thereby keeping the secrets of Keinadraig safe from outside eyes.
Alyn paused, listening to Keely’s terrified pleas, her frantic pounding on the far side of the door. He thought about the startled look in Genevieve’s eyes when he’d shot her, and the blood that had spurted from her heart. He thought about the kiss of the Dragon he’d removed from her neck in his rage.
Were these the acts of a Dragon, or a man?
Genevieve had betrayed the Dragon by fleeing the island, but she’d shamed her mother by becoming a whore. Had he killed her for the Dragon, or for Ninian?
Alyn could no longer think clearly. Within the heart of the Dragon, Erica awaited him to assist with her mother’s purification ceremony, a sad but important duty if he wished to cleanse Ninian’s soul and free her of earthly bonds. Erica was the new Healer, and he must obey, although he was repulsed at the thought. Erica should not be the Healer. It was she, not Genevieve, who did not have the qualities of the Healer, although she had no qualms about ordering an execution.
Only Alyn knew the truth of Erica’s birth, that she was not the child of Ninian’s husband, but the offspring of a rape that took place here in this very chamber, by a stranger who had come, he said, at the request of the Reave, to move a shipment of goods from the caves to the mainland. He had attacked Ninian when she came to investigate, for she had discovered that he was not sent by Kevin Spearman at all, but was a local thief who had learned of their illicit traffic and had planned to pirate some of their goods. Alyn had come upon them, but not in time.
The intruder had already raped Ninian, although she fought him fiercely. Alyn had killed him, stabbing him repeatedly until his blood spilled freely upon the cavern floor. Together, they’d thrown him into the pit. He’d opened the sea door to allow the flood tide to wash away the man’s blood. To protect the traffic that kept Keinadraig economically alive, they’d agreed between them not to mention what had happened, but Erica had been the unfortunate o
utcome.
Alyn thought about that illicit traffic. It had started centuries ago as a means of protecting the Dragoners not from plague but from famine. He had never considered it a crime either.
But hearing the terrified screams of his niece, Alyn Runyon for the first time allowed doubts to enter his mind. He was the instrument of her death, and Genny’s, and that of Timothy Jenkyns, because they broke the laws. But had not the Keepers of old broken the laws when they began the trade? Had they not entered into commerce with strangers, the very thing most forbidden by the Dragon in the first place?
Let ne’er a stranger in thy door.
Many a stranger had passed through that sea door, when the tide was out and small boats filled with contraband could safely maneuver into the hidden cove just beyond where Keely was trapped. Yet none of them had been punished by the Dragon. Even Ninian’s rapist had died from Alyn’s fury, not because his death was called for by the Dragon.
And now Erica was Healer. Erica, who was not of the pure blood of Ninian’s line. Erica, who had virtually commandeered the title even knowing it was not her mother’s wish and who had been caught many times with her nose between the pages of the Healer’s book of secret wisdom.
Everything was all wrong.
With despair in his heart, Alyn retrieved his torch and forced himself to return to the heart of the Dragon, where he listened absently while Erica chanted the ancient invocation for the dead, words that had been used since the time of the Black Death to purify the souls of the dead in preparation for them to be received into heaven.
He heard instead his niece’s faint cries for help. And suddenly, he heard something else. From outside the caves came a thundering clatter, an unholy commotion unlike anything he’d ever heard, drowning Erica’s incantations.
“What’s that?” Erica yelled at him. “What’s that noise?”
It sounded as if the Dragon himself were flying above Keinadraig. Ignoring Erica, Alyn ran from the inner chamber, through the outer cavern and onto the beach, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. Looking up, he nearly passed out from fright.
It wasn’t the Dragon. It was a white helicopter flying low over his head, close enough for him to see the figures of the men inside in the gray light of dawn. On the side of the aircraft, painted in white on a large red stripe, was the word, “Police.”
His mistakes had come back to visit him. Ninian had warned him not to punish Genevieve on the outside, but to bring her back to the mists of Keinadraig. Keely had told him that he had not killed the man who had been with Genny. Two mistakes that had now brought strangers to their shores who would surely discover the rest of the island’s secrets.
Alyn dropped his head. It was over. After seven hundred years, it was over. And it was his fault.
He turned back toward the caves. Mayhap it was just as well. Suddenly everything he had believed in all his life and worked so hard to protect seemed like a lie. Keely was right. The laws that once protected the people had now destroyed them.
Keely. Her name shot through his befuddled mind like a lightning bolt.
He had been wrong to kill, even in the name of the Dragon, and he would not do it again. He headed toward the sea door.
“Where are ye going?” Erica stood at the entrance to the Dragon’s heart, her hands invisible beneath the draped sleeves of the Healer’s gown.
“I’m going to free my niece,” he told her flatly. He saw her eyes widen as her face became contorted with fury.
“Ye will na!” Erica ordered. “I am th’ Healer, and I forbid it.”
Alyn could not hold back the words that he’d wanted to say to this loathsome girl for years. “Ye are a bastard child and do na even know it, Erica. Here in this very chamber, a thief, a common thief, committed an abominable sin against your mother. He raped her, and you were the progeny. Ye have tainted blood, Erica. Ye deserve not th’ honor of th’ ancient line of Healers. Ye are an obscenity in the eye of God and th’ Dragon.”
With that, he continued toward the sea door.
“‘Tis a lie! Ye are th’ obscenity!” Erica shrieked. “Halt now!” Her enraged voice echoed in the chamber behind him, but he did not slow his pace. “Die, then, traitor,” she screamed.
Alyn Runyon heard the sound of an explosion, felt something hot rip through his spine, saw blood gush from a hole in his chest, but felt strangely peaceful as he crumpled to the floor, enshrouded in a gathering cold darkness.
When it became apparent that her uncle would show no mercy, Keely had stopped screaming and leaned her head against the dank rock of the subterranean prison, sobbing. She wished with all her heart she had never left Jack, that by some miracle he would find her and save her take her away from this horrible place.
Keinadraig.
Her home. A haven. A place of protection.
Ha! she thought bitterly. The cold water lapping ever higher up her legs told of another Keinadraig.
Keinadraig. A refuge for murderers.
And Jack would not come. She’d worded her note to imply that she cared more for Keinadraig than she did for him. She had hurt him, and she didn’t expect him to follow her.
She had hurt him because she loved him, and her only consolation was that by leaving him, she believed she had saved him from death, not at the claws of a dragon, but at the hands of people she had once trusted.
“Oh, Jack,” she whispered into the darkness. Only yesterday she had discovered her true womanhood in his arms. Today, she knew she would never see him again. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks unchecked, for her hands were bound, and she could not wipe them away.
“Jack.” She repeated his name like a prayer. “Please know that I loved you.”
Lost in her litany, she did not hear the sound until it was already loud in her ears. A strange rhythmical roar overhead shattered the quiet of her underground prison. A mechanical sound, a sound from the outside world. Her heart began to beat with hope. Had her prayers been answered? Had Jack forgiven her and come anyway?
She listened as the thunder of engines passed overhead, then faded away again. Come back! Please come back! she prayed silently from her watery tomb. As if in answer, the sound grew louder again.
Suddenly above the din, she heard the voices of Alyn and Erica, although at first she could not discern their words. They sounded harsh, argumentative.
“I’m going to free my niece,” she heard Alyn say, followed by something muffled from Erica. And then she heard the most astounding tale issue from her uncle’s mouth, and she understood at last why Erica was so unlike Genevieve.
“My God,” she croaked. Another dark and horrible secret brought to light.
Keely heard more sharp words between them, but Alyn seemed to have found the courage to disregard Erica’s commands. She could hear his footsteps approaching, and her heart beat faster. He was going to free her!
And then she heard an explosion.
And then silence.
She started to pound on the door again and call out for her uncle, but if that explosion was what she suspected, then Alyn lay dead on the floor outside the sea door, and Erica Sloan was out there with a gun. Where the girl had come by a gun, Keely could not imagine. But there was much of late her imagination could not encompass, and she was taking no chances.
The chamber echoed again with the sound of the mechanical beast that flew overhead, and a new fear suffused Keely. If by some miracle it was Jack coming to her rescue, he must not come to the caves, not while Erica was still here. Erica had just shot Alyn Runyon, the Keeper of Keinadraig. She would not hesitate to shoot a stranger. As much as she wanted to cry out to warn him, Keely bit her knuckles instead and willed Jack away with all her might. He must not come here. She must not cry out or do anything to attract Jack’s attention to the caves. For if he did, he would die.
“Nay, Jack,” she whispered. “Do na come for me. If ye love me as I love ye, do na come.”
“That’s him.” Jack had seen the figure emerge
on the beach before it retreated again into the mouth of the cavern. “That’s Runyon, her uncle. They must have her in the caves.”
“Where can we land this thing?” Sandringham asked.
“There’s no flat area, but there, just above the standing stones, I think the pilot can get us close enough we can jump out.”
The inspector instructed the pilot, who maneuvered the helicopter close enough to the ground for them to bail onto the island, then took off into the skies overhead and hovered on standby.
“This way,” Jack shouted over the din, and headed toward the path to the beach. But before they reached it, a throng of angry villagers emerged from the oak grove, bearing torches and headed directly for them. “Welcome party,” he said grimly.
“And I thought Iraqi guerrillas used primitive weapons,” Garrison remarked, looking at the rag-tag mob armed only with fire, the weapon of days long past.
Sandringham radioed the chopper. “Dive at them,” he ordered. “See if you can frighten them at least long enough to get us onto the beach, but hold them off as long as you can.” The ploy worked, and Jack, Garrison, and Sandringham dashed to the edge of the incline and scrambled down to the beach.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack glimpsed what appeared to be an armada of boats approaching the island, emergency lights flashing. He shot a quick glance at the inspector, who grinned and said, “I think in the movies you Yanks call that the cavalry.”
“The cavalry! Looks like half the damned British navy to me.” Jack returned his grin, giving the inspector an enthusiastic thumbs-up. The landing team would be more than a match for a handful of frightened, superstitious Dragoners. Sandringham’s cool control of what could have been a crisis situation again impressed Jack beyond measure.
“Let’s find Keely,” he shouted, and the three tore off down the beach toward the southernmost end of Keinadraig.
Their arrival at the mouth of the caves was greeted with a gunshot, and they dived for cover behind nearby boulders. “Must be the old man,” Jack said. “Cover me.”