Prologue
November 1077, the Scottish Highlands,
near Loch Lomond
“I’m dying, Eve.”
The words washed over Evelyn colder than the icy sleet pelting her back through her cloak, causing her to stumble over a tree root in the night-soaked forest. She yanked on the bridle in her hand, halting the mare that carried Minerva, and tried to blink away the frigid rain running into her eyes. Thunder, low and threatening and foreign to this cold November storm, drowned out the old healer’s rasping breaths.
Evelyn swallowed, her own throat thick and raw in the brutal wind. “Now?” she croaked. At Minerva’s nod, barely a twitch of rough, black wool, Evelyn released the exhausted mare and reached patting, grasping hands up the old woman’s bony thigh. “Give me your hand. I’ll—”
But to Evelyn’s horror, the frail woman teetered to the far side of her mount and slipped from the horse’s back, landing in the wet darkness without a cry, but with a sound that mimicked dropping a bundle of dry sticks. As Minerva hit the ground, a delicate thread of lightning struck deeper in the forest and the mount reared in fright, bolting away before Evelyn could regain hold of the beast. In a blink, the mare—and the women’s few remaining supplies—was absorbed into the dense wood.
Evelyn stood in the sleet, as rooted to the ground as any of the thousands of trees crowding around her, stealing her breath with their evil, eager closeness. The stinging rain seemed to sizzle on her fevered cheeks and brow, and her chest tightened even further, painful wheezes her only sustenance as she stared down at the still jumble of ragged clothing that was Minerva.
So this is how it is to end, she thought apathetically, and for a brief moment, she let all the fragments of her life swirl around her like dead leaves in the stormy gale, nicking her cold, thin skin with painful memories. The horror of her own birth; her father’s vicious murder; the hellish priory she had escaped. Only weeks ago, Evelyn had felt there was nothing and no one left for her in England, and so had impulsively accepted the invitation to accompany this dying witch on the month-long journey to the land of the old woman’s birth—the wild, inhospitable terrain of the Scottish Highlands.
Evelyn had thought to make a fresh beginning. A new life.
Instead, it looked as if her life would end, lost in the malicious depths of this Caledonian forest, her body too ill and weak to carry on alone now that the ancient healer was dead. No mount. No food. Not even a flint and blade.
Mayhap the monks were right, her fevered brain reasoned.I am evil, unnatural. This is God’s punishment for my wickedness.
So be it, then, she rallied.I am weary—let Him judge me.
Evelyn sank to her knees on the wet, rocky ground. What little faith she still retained would not allow her to seek death outright, but she would no longer try to evade it. Let Him take her in His time. She would but wait.
Then the bundle of dry sticks that was the old healer rattled and stirred and rose up in a lumpy mound.
Evelyn could only blink as the ancient one crept across the frozen forest floor, a strange, breathy moaning coming from her with each spindly limb she dragged forward.
“Haah. Haah,” Minerva wheezed, inching relentlessly onward.
Evelyn felt tired, helpless tears well in her eyes at the pathetic sight, but she had no strength left, no will.
Until she heard Minerva’s next rasping whisper.
“Haah. Ronan. I’m coming, Ronan. At last, at last…”
Evelyn’s eyes narrowed. Was it a man’s name Minerva had spoken? Mayhap they were nearer the old witch’s clan than Evelyn knew.
Mayhap there was hope for them yet.
Evelyn scraped together the last crumbs of energy she possessed—she’d not eaten in four days—and drew herself forward onto numb hands to crawl after the old woman.
“Minerva,” Evelyn called, the voice coming from her blistered throat as little more than a creak. “Wait.”
“Ronan,” was Minerva’s only answer as she pulled herself up a low drift of jagged rocks piled at the base of a tree so wide and tall that Evelyn could not glimpse its ends in the winter night’s gale.
Evelyn followed Minerva up the rocks, then crouched over the woman now propped against the massive oak. Evelyn snaked an arm behind Minerva’s thin shoulders and drew her close. Overhead, the invisible branches of the tree clicked and scraped and crashed together in maniacal glee, wicked applause for the women’s arrival. Evelyn began to shake.
“Ronan,” Minerva sighed again.
“Minerva,” Evelyn croaked, “who is Ronan? Where is he? Are we at last on Buchanan lands?”
The old woman’s head lolled back on Evelyn’s shoulder, and she rolled her watery, black eyes over Evelyn’s face. “Buchanan lands? Nay, lass—we left Buchanan lands days ago. Days and days and days…”
Evelyn’s heart froze in her chest. “What?”
