Read Until the Knight Comes Online
Authors: Sue-Ellen Welfonder
Knowing better than to rush his movements, he dismounted with care, swinging down onto the black, peat-rich earth as respectfully as he could.
He turned toward the broch, the soft patter of rain on stone and the whispered murmurings of a thousand ancient voices greeting him . . . even if their acceptance came tinged with caution.
Kenneth didn’t blame them.
He, too, practiced prudence.
But he could feel them all around him, those broch-dwellers of old, their time here long past, their faces and names as shadowy and distant as the dark of the moon.
Once, they’d danced, sung, and told tales here, yet now they simply watched and guarded, mere shadows of the past, keeping vigil, he sensed, in the deep, ferny woods surrounding the broch.
Ever-present, but quick to melt into the mist if one looked their way too long.
Sure of it, he dipped his head to enter the low-ceilinged entry passage and, as always, his skin prickled when he stepped into the dank, circular interior. The dim enclosure held all the wet chill of autumn, and he welcomed the thin, gray light yet sifting into the roofless ruin, filtering in through tiny gaps in the walls.
He looked round, breathing in the earth-rich scent of leaf mold and cold ash, faint traces of ancient fires, long extinguished and never to burn again.
With luck, nothing more ominous than the echoing drip of rain would join him and he’d be able to retrieve the coin he needed and be gone before his fancies got the better of him.
Worldly-wise as he considered himself, only those totally lacking caution would forget that some believed such brochs were older than man.
Sithean,
the superstitious called them.
Fairy knowes, or forts.
Thin places, where the veil between the worlds might prove a bit translucent. Mysterious portals into the realm of the
Sidhe,
and the point of no return for those unfortunate souls carried off by fairies after darkness falls.
Even so, his susceptibility to such hazards was well tempered—especially with a lusty, willing-armed widow awaiting him.
Leastways, his uncle had assured him she’d welcome his attentions, urging him to visit the buxom, well-made Gunna of the Glen if ever certain manly needs became overpowering.
By all accounts well bitten by the letch herself, the widow was reputed capable of slaking a man’s most lascivious thirsts.
A cure Kenneth meant to sample—so soon as possible!
To that end, he made straight for the broch’s guard chamber, a tiny cell built into the thickness of the wall near the entrance passage.
Here, too, shadows greeted him, and air thick with the smell of damp, lichened stone. Meager light revealed his hiding place secure, each stone intact—just as he’d left them.
Again, relief washed through him and he squared his shoulders, flexing his fingers before laying his work-scarred hands on sacred stones.
A grave error for the instant he did, an unearthly light streamed out from the cavity he’d opened—a glow not only illuminating his undisturbed coin pouches, but also his much younger-looking and scar-free hands!
Kenneth froze, his heart slamming against his ribs.
The light pulsed and eddied, no longer coming from the wall, but now slanting down from a summer sun shining through the trees, its golden rays warming the stones beneath his youthful fingers.
Frantic fingers digging ever faster into the fake stone burial cairn he’d built behind
her
cottage.
A wee thatched cottage he could see as clear as yesterday for it stood with a scatter of other such humble, fisherfolk dwellings, the whitewashed line of them crouching together on the slope of a familiar but distant shore, the dank walls of Dun Telve nowhere to be seen!
Only the strangely glowing light and the long ago hiding place he’d erected with such care, believing the mock cairn would keep his savings secure during his absences at sea. And, too, that keeping his coin pouches outside her home might keep her safe as well.
Her, and her aging father.
Should e’er thieving scoundrels ride through their village and suspect they guarded such treasure.
Ne’er would he have believed her father would hand over the greatest treasure of all.
Sell his beautiful, green-eyed daughter to a shipowner more than twice the girl’s age.
Or that she’d consent to go with the man.
The betrayal made all the more bitter when her father offered to help Kenneth gather his savings, claiming neither his daughter nor his own bent-backed self had need of a bastard’s savings—the girl’s new husband had more gold than they needed, and an untarnished name!
Kenneth blinked, old anger flashing through him. Hot bile rose in his throat, the eerie glow mocking him, increasing in intensity until it shimmered all around him, so brilliant he could see every detail of that long ago day.
Most of all, the observant eyes watching him from behind cracked doors—doors that now swung wide—the fisherfolk stepping out to greet him, their hooded cloaks oddly luminous, the intricately worked silver brooches at their shoulders marking them as anything but simple men of the sea.
A tall, splendidly built youth broke rank with them and strode closer, his magnificent stature and beauty at stark contrast to his humble attire.
A cowherd’s rags, naught more.
Recognizing him, Kenneth opened his mouth, but no words came—not that it mattered, for the glowing-robed ancients crowded around Cormac then, one even resting a protective hand on the lad’s shoulder as others closed in, shielding him from view.
But the cowherd’s words reached Kenneth all the same.
Think hard, my friend, and act wisely.
No peace is so sweet as forgiveness.
Kenneth’s jaw dropped, his pulse leaping to a dangerous, heart-drumming speed, but before he could catch himself, Cormac vanished, the ancients and the fishing village disappearing with him.
The brilliant light faded as well, growing dim as it seeped back into the cold, wet stones.
“By the Rood!” Kenneth stared. He ran his hands along the wall and pressed his forehead to the stones, amazement crashing through him.
Had he truly seen such a wonder? Heard Cormac’s words?
Seen the faces of the ancients?
If so, only the rush of the wind remained. The same
drip drip
of the rain, and the two coin pouches he’d somehow wrested from his hiding place in the wall.
A gap he’d refilled with great speed, his hands trembling as he replaced the missing stones. Work-worn hands, he noted with relief, for once glad to see the crisscrossing of scars marring hands
she’d
once claimed so beautiful.
So skilled.
And not just at robbing seabird nests!
Remembering, Kenneth’s blood chilled anew and the wonder of moments before receded as other, darker emotions surged up to replace them.
Long-seething anger. His determination to never suffer heartache again. And . . . lust.
The insatiable kind that knew but one quenching.
Scowling, he snatched up the coin pouches and took his leave of the broch, his need to sink himself into the sweet, silken heat betwixt Mariota of Dunach’s thighs so fierce his hunger for her near blinded him.
Pure need sated . . . no other concerns,
her friend had commented.
And he fully agreed.
His
needs raging, he swung up onto his saddle and spurred off into the fast fading light.
But not in the direction of Cuidrach.
“Mother o’ all the saints! There is naught of substance along Loch Hourn’s shore but Cuidrach Castle . . . and that pile o’ stanes stands in ruin!”
His opinion aired, Ewan the Witty paced back and forth in the dripping woods at the edge of Kintail, his every step hindered by the clinging, soaking bracken slapping at his thighs, his glowering face darker than the descending night, his entire wrath aimed at Wee Finlay.
“You are mad,” he seethed, “crazed as a loon if you think the Lady Mariota would hie herself to such a place!”
“That’ll be yourself—what’s mad,” Finlay shot back. “If you can’t recognize the truth when it’s laid at your feet!”
Ewan’s face turned red.
“The truth?”
Finlay glared, said nothing.
“I will tell you the truth!” Ewan roared. “For days we’ve been stumbling through these empty, forsaken hills and you have yet to find your magic-eyed fox!”
He raised bushy brows at the smaller man, ignoring the others and their corner-of-the-mouth mumblings. “How many false foxes have we followed, I ask you? Four? Six?”
“Three,” Wee Finlay admitted, his gnarled fists thrust against his hips.
“And now you’d have us follow yet another such sorry creature into the wilds of Glenelg . . . right to the black shores of Loch Hourn?”
Finlay shrugged.
“Have you stuffed your ears to all our talk about the
urisgean
known to guard these parts?” Ewan the Witty jabbed a finger at the towering black outline of Kintail’s peaks. “Ravening beasts, they are, I tell you. And a thousand times more fearsome than the Each Uisge that had done with our own poor alewife back in Assynt!”
“Even so, the Lady Mariota can be nowhere else,” Finlay insisted, puffing his chest. “This fox was the right one—I swear it.”
“Then why wasn’t he carrying the lute on his red-furred back?” one of the others wanted to know.
“Och, well . . . such matters are beyond my ken,” Finlay returned. “But some might say he’s too clever to make such a mistake.”
“The mistake will be yours if we continue into such benighted territory and do not find what we seek,” Ewan charged, his stare unyielding.
“Did you not hear what
they
said?” Finlay demanded, equally undaunted.
Turning a deaf ear to the hoots of the others, he jerked a glance at the small farmery they’d happened upon earlier.
Far below them now, and only a cluster of thatched cot houses and a few scraggly byres, the humble spread was still in view at the head of the glen.
Leastways for those whose vision wasn’t dimmed by spleen and fury.
Or ignorance.
The fox had led them there.
Finlay knew it.
Their friendly blether with the farmer proved it!
“Well,” he prodded, letting his own stare grow bold. “You heard the farm folk.”
“Och, now, to be sure and I did,” Ewan confirmed with a conspiratorial wink at the others. “A fox has been harrying the farmer’s best broody hens and two lassies passed this way a while ago—strangers to these parts. One flame-haired, the other dark.”
Finlay nodded. “And they were heading toward Loch Hourn . . . to the ruins of Clan MacKenzies’ Cuidrach Castle.”
Ewan the Witty snorted. “Do you ken how many flame-haired lassies walk these hills?” he snapped, kicking free of a clump of bracken that had somehow wrapped itself around his leg. “As for the herring widow, dark-haired wenches are even more common—there’s as many of them as sand on the shore!”
“But how many travel only of an e’en?” Finlay sent another glance at the now-sleeping farm. “And not only refuse to give their names but head off unescorted into lands known to be . . . dangerous?”
Ewan looked up at the night sky, blew out a breath.
“I say you, Finlay,” he growled, “if the Lady Mariota and the golden lute are not at Cuidrach Castle, you
will
be the Each Uisge’s next meal. And if I must dredge the whole of the River Inver to find the beastie!”
Wee Finlay gave a curt nod and said nothing.
He wasn’t the muddle-headed one. And ’twas well he knew the disadvantages of being a somewhat short-of-stature, leathery old man.
But he had his wits about him, even if others didn’t.
And, he decided, as he helped himself to a swill of heather ale from his belt flask, he was beginning to wish they ne’er did find the Lady Mariota and her friend.
Or the wretched lute!
There were some who simply deserved to be plagued by ill fortune and mishap.
And Ewan the Witty was one of them.
A
good many sea miles away, in the deep of a misty evening, Devorgilla’s heart skittered, the flash of familiar red fur and the sparkle of gold catching her by surprise as she knelt before the Clach na Gruagach, the Isle of Doon’s revered Stone of the Fairy Woman.
She gave a little cackle of pleasure, a cozy warmth spreading through her ancient bones. But she hadn’t expected to see her little friend again so soon.
Or the golden lute . . .
Not that she’d doubted the wee fox’s ability.
A rather new but trusted companion, he’d already proved himself a worthy helpmate—and certainly more adventurous than her own dear Mab who preferred dozing before Devorgilla’s hearth fire, it being beneath the dignity of her feline years to go traipsing through bog-filled moors and wild mountain fastnesses.