Beyond the Highland Myst(363)

MacKeltar, she thought, what on earth am I going to do with you?

* * * * *

Drustan wept.

The worst was true. He lay on his back in the Greathall, one knee bent, arms spread wide, his fingers laced in the tall grass, and thought of Silvan.

You have only one purpose, son, as do I. Protect the Keltar line and the knowledge we guard.

He'd failed. In a moment of carelessness he'd been taken unaware, enchanted, stolen from his time, and buried for centuries. His disappearance had triggered the destruction of his castle and clan. Now Silvan was dead, the Keltar line extinguished, and who knew where the tablets and volumes were? The possibility of such knowledge falling into the wrong hands dragged him down into a deep black place beyond fear. He knew that a greedy man could reshape, control, or destroy the entire world with such knowledge.

Protect the line. Protect the lore.

It was imperative that he successfully return to his time.

Although he had not changed so much as one hair, five hundred years had passed, and nothing remained to speak of his existence or the life of his father and his father's father before him. Millennia of training and discipline, all gone in the blink of an eye.

Tomorrow night he would enter the stones and perform the ritual.

Tomorrow night he would not exit the stones. One way or another, he would no longer be in the here and now.

And God willing, tomorrow her century would matter no more, for with luck, by Mabon-high he would have undone all the wrong that had been done.

Still, for the time he had remaining in the twenty-first century, his people were as dead as his castle was destroyed, naught more than ancient dream dust blowing ignobly across Scotland. Roughly dragging the back of his hand across his cheeks, he pushed himself to his feet and spent the next hour wandering the ruin, looking for graves. He uncovered not one new marker in the chapel yard. Where had his clan gone? If they'd died, where had they been buried? Where was Silvan's marker? Silvan had made it painstakingly dear that he wished to be interred beneath the rowan behind the chapel, yet no stone marker proclaimed his name.

Dageus MacKeltar, beloved brother and son.

He swept shaking fingers over the stone that marked his brother's grave. Unable to comprehend the passage of five centuries, Drustan suffered the fever-hot grief of having buried Dageus only a fortnight past. His brother's death had made him crazed. They'd been close as two people could be. When he'd lost his brother, he'd argued endless hours with his father.

What good is it to have the knowledge of the stones if I cannot go back and undo Dageus's death? he'd shouted at Silvan.

You must never travel to a point within your own life, Silvan had snapped, weary and red-eyed from weeping.

Why can I not return to a time within my own past?

If you are too close in proximity to your past self, one of you—either your past or present self—won't survive. We have no way of foretelling which one lives. There have been times when neither survived. It seems to stress the natural order of things, and nature struggles to correct itself.

Then I'll choose a time in the past when I was across the border in England, Drustan snarled, refusing to accept that Dageus was irrevocably gone.

No one knows how far away is far enough, son. Besides, you are forgetting that we may never use the stones for personal reasons. They are to be used only for the greater good of the world—or in extreme circumstances to ensure the succession of the MacKeltar. One of us must always live. But these are not extreme circumstances, and you know what would happen if you abused the power.

Aye, he knew. Legend handed down over the centuries claimed a Keltar who used the stones for personal reasons would become a dark Druid the moment he passed through. Lost to honor and compassion, he would relinquish his very soul to the blackest forces of evil. Become a creature of irreverent destruction.

The hell with the legend! he'd thundered defiantly. But even in his grief, he'd known better. Whether or not the legend was true, he would not be the first MacKeltar to trespass on such sacred territory. Nay, he would accept, as all his ancestors had accepted, and honor his oaths. He had not been given unfathomable power to abuse it or use it for personal gain. He couldn't justify using the stones to mend his own heart.

If he saved Dageus and became a dark Druid, what then would he do when Silvan grew ever older? Cheat fate again? A man could go crazy with so much power and no limits. Once he crossed such a line, there would be no turning back; he would indeed become a master of the black arts.

And so he'd bid farewell to Dageus and resworn his oath to his father. I will never use the stones for personal reasons. Only to serve and protect, and to preserve our line, should it be threatened with extinction.

As it was now.

Drustan ran a hand through his hair, exhaling. Dageus was dead. Silvan was dead. He was the only remaining Keltar, and his duty was clear. For five hundred years the world had been unprotected by a Keltar-Druid. He had to return and do whatever was necessary to restore a concurrent succession of the Keltar. At any cost.