The Holder scowled, but took the blade, grudgingly handing over his own.
For a beat, his eyes flickered a faint, faded blue and he looked worried, but he caught himself as quickly. “The Tobar Ghorm is an odd place for —”
“The Blue Well is the only place for honest men to settle a matter of such import.” Ronan fixed him with a stare, encouraged when the older man looked away first.
“I can think of fairer ground . . .” The Holder pulled at his beard.
“You know it must be the well.” Ronan broke the quiet when the other man fell silent. “We spoke of the like the last time we met there.”
Dungal Tarnach’s brow creased.
Ronan waited.
He closed his hand around the hilt of the strange blade, the deep lines in its owner’s face and the stoop of the man’s shoulders bothering him more than it should.
Even worse, he felt a concession forming on his tongue.
“If you feel unable to accept my challenge yourself,” he heard himself saying, “then I will face your best sworder in your stead.”
Dungal Tarnach hesitated, but his gaze flicked to a younger man standing nearby. Stocky, fierce-eyed, and ruddy of complexion, the man strode forward now and took Ronan’s sword from Tarnach’s hands.
“I will cross blades with you,” he announced, his voice ringing.
“Then so be it.” Ronan nodded. “If I better you, you tell me how to destroy the stone and then you leave our territories forthwith and forever. If I lose, you take your stone and leave as well, ne’er again setting foot in these hills.”
“It is agreed.” Dungal Tarnach returned the nod.
The other Holders looked on in silence, but finally inclined their heads as well.
It was enough.
And more than Ronan had hoped for.
Chapter Twenty
Hours later, in one of Glen Dare’s darkest corners, on a wooded islet in the middle of Loch Dubh . . .
“The stone, if you will, Raven?” Dungal Tarnach stood beside the Blue Well, his hands outstretched. “I will hold it the while.”
He indicated a cleared circle of deturfed ground not far from the well. “As you see, we have made preparations for your challenge.”
Ronan nodded, not about to show his relief.
He’d forgotten the wild tangle of dead heather and blood-red bracken crowding the well’s little clearing.
But he wasn’t about to relinquish the Raven Stone.
“The Tobar Ghorm can safekeep the stone.” He crossed the naked, hard-packed earth and stepped around the Holder to set a heavy leather pouch on one of the tumbled stones guarding the well shaft.
Straightening, he looked round. “I trust it won’t be touched until we finish?”
Dungal Tarnach frowned. “How do we know yon sack holds our stone?”
Another spurt of hope shot through Ronan. “I would think you’d sense its power.”
“You doubt our strength?” The older man lifted an arm, pointing at the leather pouch.
At once its ties came undone and the pouch fell open, its sides slowly peeling back to reveal the Raven Stone before disappearing completely.
