“What is this place?” she breathed.
“Bail Nan Cnoc,” Arran said softly. “The fairy glen. And the heart of Skye’s magic.”
“Let me down.”
Without a word, Arran swung out of the saddle, then reached up and lifted Jenna down. As her feet hit the ground, she stumbled and Arran had to put out an arm to steady her.
“Are ye all right, lass?”
She looked up at him. “Fine. I’m fine. Don’t you feel that?”
She’d stumbled because the moment her feet touched the earth she’d felt… something. There were tremors in the ground, but it was no earthquake or landslip; rather it was the thrum of power, deep within the earth and echoing up through the layers of soil and rock.
Arran cocked his head. “Feel what?”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’.” Jenna crouched, placing her palms flat on the mossy earth and closing her eyes. Her palms tingled. She’d never felt anything like it. There was power here, raw and primal. The life energies of the land lay just below her fingertips, golden lines of energy that vibrated with a frequency that matched the ball of power that nestled inside herself. It sang to her. She found herself swaying with it, becoming one with it—
“Jenna?”
A heavy hand settling on her shoulder snapped her out of it. Her eyes sprang open and she looked up to see Arran frowning down at her, a perplexed expression on his face. She climbed to her feet andpointed at the castle-like rock rising out of the valley.
“There,” she said. “That’s where it comes from.”
Without waiting for Arran, she began walking. After a moment, he caught up with her, leading Bran by the reins. The trail was not easy and beneath the carpet of grass and springy moss, the ground was humped and ridged, eager to catch an unwary foot or hoof. Huge boulders in a variety of random shapes and sizes dotted the landscape as if they’d been tossed there by a giant in a fit of rage.
Jenna picked her way with care along the vale’s base, skirting around the edges of a small, tear-shaped loch and then through a thicket of twisted rowan trees. The hanging moss stirred slightly at her passing, a faint whisper rippling through the air, so gentle as to be almost beyond hearing.
Glancing behind, she saw that although Arran followed close behind, his shoulders were hunched and tense, his face a little paler than usual. Even Bran seemed wary, snorting and rolling his eyes as he followed his master. It seemed she wasn’t the only one affected by this place.
Finally, the rowans pulled back and they found themselves at the base of the outcrop from which the square of sandstone rose. It reached up into the sky, taller than anything around it, and Jenna had to tilt her head back to look up at its summit. Thorny bushes grew out of the rock’s sides, and she could see old bird’s nests in its cracked and pitted surface.
The place had a feeling of antiquity about it, as though she was looking at the exposed bones of the earth itself, old beyond time.
“Stay here,” she instructed Arran. “I’m going to go closer.”
He frowned but didn’t argue as she made her way to the base of the rock and laid her hands against the rough sandstone. The shock that ran through her hand almost made her snatch her hand back. It reminded her of the time she’d touched an electric fence when out walking with her mother as a child. There was a kick and then a rushof sensation that ran right up her arm and into her chest.
If she’d wanted proof that Skye’s magic was real and wasn’t just folklore or superstition, this was it. The island wasalive. The power beneath her fingers pulsed like a heartbeat, golden and shining in her mind’s eye.
In her time, in the twenty-first century, whatever magic had once been in the earth was weak and fading. People had forgotten the old ways, had forgotten the forces of nature that had once governed people’s lives, and now there were only a few hidden places where the magic remained strong.
But not here. Here it pulsed with a vibrancy that took her breath away and made her heart soar. It was so primal, so pure, so… so… alive.
The MacFinnan spellweavers of the past hadnotcreated the magic that protected Skye, she realized. They had merelymoldedit. They had used their own powers to shape it to their will and employ it to protect the people who lived here.
Perhaps she could do the same.
Closing her eyes, she reached down into the core of power that swirled in her chest and reached out with it to the magic that thrummed through the rock. It was like stepping into a whirlpool. Her consciousness was suddenly grabbed and she was sent spinning, spinning away into the void, into ropes of shimmery golden power that crisscrossed Skye in an intricate web.
She struggled to keep hold of herself, to stop her consciousness being fragmented by the awesome elemental powers that buffeted it. But slowly, she brought the clinging threads of her being together.
How?she asked Skye.How do I help you?
She traveled farther along the web of power and saw that many of the links were broken, dark sections in an otherwise sparkling golden maze. At the cardinal points of the net she saw points of swirling energy that locked the protective magic in place. Some shone brightly,alive and vibrant, but others glowed dully, like the dying embers of a fire. It was these points that were linked to the dark strands of the mesh.
Allowing her consciousness to drift closer to those dark strands, she probed them with her magic, trying to weave them back together, trying to make the magical web whole. It didn’t work. Her magic merely dissipated into the void and evaporated like smoke.
Damn it, she thought stubbornly.There has to be a way.
