Dungal Tarnach’s voice.
But sounding more like the benign-grumbling graybeards who gathered round Dare’s hearthside on dark winter nights than anyHolderhe’d ever known.
“MacRuari! You not only destroyed the stone, you’ve freed the raven.” Tarnach glanced up at Ronan’s approach. “Come, lad, see for yourself.”
His brow lifting at the friendly tone, Ronan joined them, these bent and frail men who knelt to peer down into the Blue Well.
He saw at once the shattered Raven Stone. He’d destroyed it indeed. Its two halves rested on a jagged ledge deep in the heart of the well shaft.
He also recognized the reason for the old men’s wonder.
The awe in their voices and their surprising turn of heart.
Peering into the well, Ronan saw that the split stone revealed the skeletal remains of some kind of ancient, long-moldered bird. But what truly stilled his heart was the raven. Black-winged and full of life, the bird was slowly spiraling upward through the shadowy well shaft.
“ ’Tis as I knew it would be.” Dungal Tarnach pushed to his feet and stepped back, one hand pressed to his berobed chest as the raven crested the stones lining the well’s edge to whir away on glossy, blue-black wings.
The raven circled back once, half-closing his wings to dive at them and sail past in a fast glide before soaring upward again, speeding away across the hills and moors before Ronan and the Holders — a pathetic clutch of stooped, withered old men — could even acknowledge what they’d seen.
“Sakes!” Ronan breathed, running a hand through his hair. He could scarce believe it himself.
More shaken than he cared to admit, he turned to retrieve his sword, but it appeared in his hand before he could. He blinked, not surprised to find Dungal Tarnach at his elbow.
“We will see to Nathair,” said the Holder, his gaze flicking over to where a few of his brethren already knelt beside the body. “Though I’d ask your permission to bury him here.” He spread his hands and Ronan noted they were gnarled and age-spotted. “Unlike Nathair, the rest of us do not have the strength to carry him far.”
Nor, Ronan was sure, did they have the stamina to journey very far themselves.
Their druid wands might work a bit of flummery for them, but their bones were old.
And though he couldn’t be sure, he suspected much of their magic had lain with their now-broken stone, whether it’d been in their possession or no.
“ ’Tis true,” Tarnach said then, proving he could still read thoughts, regardless. “The stone fed our power. ’Twas the life force of the sacred raven trapped within. Each beat of its heart craved its stolen freedom and its sorrow bled into the stone, drenching it with the bird’s power. Now . . .”
He looked aside, then back at Ronan. “Two wrongs have been righted. Maldred no longer holds the stone he took from us, and the raven has regained the freedom we took from it. There are many among us who will be gladdened that our craft is now reduced to” — he held out his hand and Ronan’s empty leather pouch appeared in it — “a few simple wizard’s tricks.”
Ronan took the pouch, an uncomfortable tightness beginning to spread through his chest. “You —”
“We are not all as Nathair. We will keep our word.” Dungal Tarnach hitched up his robes to turn away, revealing that his shoes were cracked and worn. “We might need a few nights to reach the end of your glen, but then you will see us no more.”
“Hellfire and damnation!” Ronan swore against the tightness in his chest. The fool sensation had somehow spread to his throat, sitting there hot and persistent.
And he feared he knew only one way to rid himself of it.
“Have you e’er heard of a Highlander turning away guests?” he blurted, certain the husky, rough-edged words had come from someone else’s lips.
“Eh?” Dungal Tarnach stopped in midturn. He looked back at Ronan, his eyes wet and red-rimmed.
Old-man red-rimmed and quite ordinary.
If an old man’s tears can ever be called the like.
Seeing them sealed Ronan’s fate.
He swore again. But the hot tightness in his chest and throat broke free, something inside him splitting as wide as the cracked Raven Stone, releasing him as surely as the stone had given up its bird.
Fighting back a ridiculous urge to throw back his head and shout his triumph, he reached out to grasp Dungal Tarnach’s hand between his own.
“Have you e’er heard of aMacRuariturning away friends?” he amended his first question.
