One
NORTHERN HIGHLANDS, SCOTLAND
1294
JUST BECAUSE SHE could never tell a lie certainly didn’t mean Christiana MacDowylt could never deceive. She’d become well practiced in the art of truthful deception. She’d been forced into it. The truth, the whole truth, could get her killed in moments like this.
She kept her eyes fixed on the retreating forms of her brothers and the women they protected as they disappeared into the forest, leaving her behind.
I dinna want to leave without you. Her brother’s parting words echoed in her ears.
It wasn’t as if she wanted to remain behind. But staying was the only choice she had if they were all to survive. The gift she had inherited from her ancestor, Odin, the dream visions that displayed the future, had shown it to her.
As always, the future had presented itself as multiple paths, the inherent choices of the participants reflected in each. Two had been brighter than the others. On one pathway she accompanied her brothers in their bid for her freedom. That pathway led to a bloody battle, far worse than the one that had ended here within the past hour. The one she foresaw ended in the deaths of all.
On the second pathway, she remained behind.
There was no real choice. Her freedom was a small price to pay for the lives of those she loved.
Besides, a radiant light beckoned her down this pathway. A radiant light she’d been allowed to glimpse before. A radiant light that promised the freedom she sought, and more. A hazy, half-obscured face. His face.
If only she knew who he was or when he would come. But the Norns hadn’t shared that knowledge with her.
Still, her brothers were on their way, headed toward the shelter of Castle MacGahan. Patrick, Malcolm and his new wife, and the Elf upon whom so much now depended.
When no trace of her brothers’ party lingered, neither a hint of them through the trees nor a glimmer of sound from their escape, Christiana released the breath she had been holding for the last several seconds. Their safety was assured.
For now, at least.
With only moments to ready herself before the warriors arrived, she scanned the grove of trees, erecting a series of mental barriers to shield herself from the remains of the massacre where she stood. A deep breath to prepare herself sent the coppery tang of blood stinging up her nostrils.
Her half brother, her captor, Torquil of Katanes, mighty laird of the MacDowylt and descendant of Odin, lay at her feet, lifeless.
Lifeless, but not dead.
A being as powerful as he could hardly be felled by so minor an item as the fork that protruded from his neck. Had the unlikely weapon been made from anything other than the wood of the rowan, he would never have been felled by it.
Even though he was trapped in the middle world between life and death, the evil emanating from his soul permeated the clearing, lashing out with frenzied tendrils to find release. She felt it slither around her ankles as it bathed in the carnage littering the clearing, snaking through the hacked and decapitated bodies of the men who had accompanied Torquil. Swarming along with the flies around the body of her youngest brother, Dermid. Sweet, cherubic, maddened Dermid, who had betrayed them all.
No! She could not allow what had happened in this grove to distract her from what was to come. When Torquil’s warriors reached them and revived her tormentor, she would need to be at her most vigilant.
Indeed, it was these moments for which she had been forced to perfect the art of truthful deception.
Returning to the spot where she had lain when the battle had begun, she dropped to her knees. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she wept for those who suffered, for those who’d lost their lives so needlessly. For the younger brother she had lost, though in truth, he had been lost to her long before the battle here. And she wept for the horror of the life she would return to.
Lying back, she rested her head against a tree and closed her eyes. Her only possible defense in Torquil’s view would be her having been lost in the grip of the Visions during the battle. Her escape from Tordenet Castle would certainly compound his anger, but she would walk that fine line when the time came to explain.
For now, she must retreat to the only place of shelter afforded her. Pushing all that had happened from her mind, she silently called upon Skuld to show her what was to come.
As the darkness of another Vision descended, she heard the pounding of hooves nearby, the shouts of men. But they were too late to catch her. Already her mind had escaped to the crossroads that represented the future. Already her soul floated in the eyes of the warrior who would be her savior.
THE HEAVY, MURKY dark strangled him, suffocating him as it coalesced around his naked body. Its thick, sticky tendrils tightened their thorny hold, piercing his tender skin, wrapping around him as if he were some otherworld mummy.