Beyond the Highland Myst(376)

Then a flash of white encompassed her, so blinding that she lost all sense of time and space and self. Whiteness filled her: She choked on it, breathed it, felt it beneath her skin, soaking into her cells and rearranging them according to some alien design. Terminal velocity for the average skydiver, the scientist within her recited in a chilly voice, averages ninety-three to one hundred twenty-five miles per hour. Sound travels seven hundred sixty miles per hour, on a humid day. Escape velocity is the speed required to exit the earth's atmosphere and achieve interplanetary travel, or twenty-five thousand miles per hour. Light travels one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. Then the peculiar thought: A cat always lands on its feet. Maintain an angular momentum of zero.

There was no sense of motion, yet there was a horrible vertigo. There was no sound, yet the silence was deafening. There was no fullness of body, yet there was no emptiness. Escape velocity achieved and exceeded, white and whiter, she was—in? on? off?—a long bridge or tunnel. She had no body to instruct to run.

The white was gone so abruptly that the darkness hit her like a brick wall. Then there was blessed sight and sound, and feeling in her hands and feet.

Maybe not so blessed, she decided. Taste was a bitter metallic bile in the back of her throat; weight was a sickening pressure after the terrible vacuum.

Stifling the urge to vomit, she lifted a head that weighed two tons and felt as swollen as an overripe tomato.

Around her, the night exploded. Driving hail pelted the ground, gouging tendrils of mist from the soil. The wind wailed and keened, flung leaves and snapped branches. Large chunks of ice stung her bare skin.

"Drustan!" she cried.

"Here, lass." He stumbled to her side, then slipped on the hail-covered terrain and fell to his knees.

"Drustan, what's happening?" As he drew himself erect, she saw that his face was pale and drawn; lines she'd never noticed before etched sharp grooves around his mouth. He was looking down at his hands with horror. Her gaze flew to them, wondering what was wrong with them. Whatever he saw, she couldn't see. They seemed to disappear into the mist.

"I erred when I sketched the final symbols," he yelled hoarsely. A large ball of ice struck his cheekbone, raising an immediate welt. "I went back too far. I thought I could come with you, but I cannot. Forgive me, lass, it wasn't supposed to be this way!"

"What?" Gwen could scarcely hear him, so deafening was the wind. Strands of her hair stung the skin of her neck as the wind whipped it wildly about her face. The gale was so lashing, it felt it was raking the skin from her cheekbones. The hail was bruising her scalp; her head ached in dozens of spots. She inched toward him and clutched at his arm. It felt curiously insubstantial beneath her fingers, although she could see the muscles in his arms bulging. He tried to close his misty hand around hers, but it sort of slid through hers.

"What's happening to you?" she wailed.

"Save me. Save my clan, lass," he yelled. "Keep the lore safe." Christ, he could feel himself being torn in two. Talking to her, simultaneously trying to reason with his past self. It wasn't working. It took immense effort merely to move his lips and form words. He was coming apart… two places in one time, and all the while reeling because he finally understood the next dimension… and he had to tell her what to say and do! He must tell her how to use the spell he'd taught her!

"What are you talking about?" she cried. "Ouch!" she cried, as a chunk of hail struck her forehead.

But he didn't answer, just flickered in a way that terrified her, as if he was fading but fighting to stay. Nearly hysterical, Gwen tried to cling to him, but he slid through her hands.

His silver eyes flashed, he looked wild, forbidding, a dark sorcerer from eons past. He thrust his plaid at her, wordlessly demanding she take it.

She closed trembling fingers over the fabric.

"Listen," he cried. His gaze swept over her and passion blazed in his eyes. Then he cocked his head as if hearing something she couldn't hear and glanced beyond her as if seeing something she couldn't see. His lips moved one last time.

The moment you see him you must tell him… show him—

"What?" she cried. "Tell who what?" Flying leaves and limbs rained down upon them. When he ducked and shielded his face to avert a blow from a particularly large branch, she missed most of what he was saying. Tell and show who what?

Abruptly, he was gone. Vanished as completely as the symbols had vanished from his chest in the cave days ago.

With his disappearance, the maelstrom died and the hail ceased abruptly. The night fell silent, the mist dissipated on a last, bitter gust of wind.