Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(61)
Then she swiveled on her heel, skirts swirling. Lachlan froze as he heard the clank of flagon against tankard and the gurgle of ale pouring to the point where a good portion of it splashed all over the floor.
“This ale is for the cleric,” she said, blindly thrusting the tankard at him, “who has the wit to stay silent and bow his head. He could teach you something about the virtue of holding your tongue, husband.”
Lachlan took the tankard in his hand just as a hunting hound emerged from under the table to lick up the ale spill. Lachlan bobbed his head in silent thanks, but, mercifully, the Lady MacGilchrist didn’t linger to acknowledge it. She stepped over the dog and swept by him to stomp back in the direction she came. Aware of the attention he was drawing, he didn’t waste a moment to sweep past Callum and walk into the clearing in front of the portal stones.
For the lack of a place to sit, Angus’s men milled in that clearing. Cairenn stood with her back to the hall, staring up at the stones. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the rocks seemed to pulse in her presence. He moved close enough to speak in a whisper.
“How do you fare, lass?”
She took a shuddering breath. He watched the small muscles of her upper shoulders flex and straighten as if she were bracing herself.
“I fare well enough,” she said, “for a woman about to take fate in her hands.”
She stretched out her arm. He thought he heard a crackling sound as her fingers neared the glittering surface of one of the standing stones.
When she touched the dolmen, the room boomed like thunder.
***
A white-hot, sizzling sensation bolted through her. A cry rose up but the noise stuck in her throat. One moment she was staring at the vaulted ceiling of the mead-hall and in the next images flooded her mind, crashing over her in a cacophony of sound and color and sensation.
She glimpsed a grass-soft clearing in a circle of oaks. She heard the sound of fairy-music. She saw slim shapes idling among the flowering vines while tipping nectar into wooden tankards. Their laughter made the leaves rustle like the wind. She sensed curious glances upon her and saw a woman stretch out a hand.
Then suddenly she found herself on Inishmaan, racing up the hill to the lonely places. She watched a creature whirl up out of a crack in the ground to fall into step beside her, laughing. She saw herself as if from afar, brooding on a ledge as she gazed upon a ship passing by below. Small shapes sat behind her, mimicking her stance, their pointy chins in their slim hands. She saw her father grinding some herb with mortar and pestle while an older woman in gossamer white stood behind him, smiling a gentle smile. She saw seals upon the shore looking up at her with the faces of men.
Then, with a breathless lift, she was on the council hill above Loch Fyfe and the stones were where they belonged except they were not. What she saw were ghosts of the portal stones, with moisture slipping down their sides though there was no rain. There was no wind, or warmth, or life, either. At the foot of each ghostly stone the earth was churned and red like blood and she heard the slap and clatter of many hands and feet, like a hundred thousand creatures trapped beneath the face of the earth.
Her heart raced so hard it ached. A distant voice warned her to pull her fingers away from the stones but they felt nailed to the surface. The dolmen grew hot beneath her palm. She tried to fight off the power of the assault but it was like pulling a wild wolfhound by a leash. She scolded herself that she’d experienced this feeling before—when she stepped onto the shore at Galway as a girl new to her gift, and when she arrived at Derry, still unused to the rush of hundreds of minds. She mustered what she’d learned from both those experiences, struggling to master her senses so she would not collapse under the beating of so much keen, indiscriminate awareness.
Dizzy and disoriented, she squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself back to the mead-hall. Only when she could feel the ground beneath her feet could she control the power that made her pulse throb painfully and her head swell with bursting pressure. She mentally forced herself back up the path to where she’d first laid eyes upon the castle, when she’d sensed the initial pull of the stones. The portal dolmens had called to her in winsome singing voices that pulsed with longing and pain. Once inside the mead-hall, she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off the carved, glittering surface that now lay flat under her palm. So long they’d been bereft of the bright caress of the sun, the gentle watering of the rain, and the feel of the wind flooding over their surface.
The assault eased a fraction. With effort she rose above the mental battering long enough to draw a breath. She began to separate colors from sounds, thoughts from noise, moods from mischief, and doubts from decision. She realized that the chattering she was hearing all around her did not completely emanate from the stone. Her brain was alight with all the noise. It flowed through her from the minds of the people in the mead-hall around her, a cacophony of hopes and lusts and worries and plans—plans—plans.
Lachlan.
Among all those minds she even recognized his, bright and open to her, filling up with curdling worry as he lunged toward her to pull her away from the stone.
I will not fail…I must not fail.
Even as she became aware of his hands yanking her back, she squeezed her senses to chase down that one whisper out of thousands and isolate that single dark murmur of murderous intent.
In an instant she was sucked into the murderer’s mind. She saw thick fingers slip poison in a flagon. She saw the flagon carried through the mead-hall, swiped away from those who would have their cups filled not knowing any better. She saw the flagon taken toward the dolmen stones, and felt the murderer’s mind growing blood-dark with intent.