“She needs your protection.” Torcaill’s voice didn’t hold a jot of sympathy. “Her gift —”
“Hell’s bells!” Ronan glared at him. “Why do you think I began this mummery if not to keep her safe?”
“You mishear me, lad.” Looking annoyingly sage, the druid raised a hand, one gnarled finger aimed at a sliver of mist snaking across the ground toward their feet. When the mist wraith rose and curled back into the trees, disappearing behind the moss-grown trunks, the old man lowered his arm.
“Your bride,” he continued, “needs to be safeguarded from more than shadows and yon creeping menace.”
“Say you?” Ronan wrenched out his sword and thrust its business end into the dark, peaty ground. “I say such menaces ought to beware.”
He’d no sooner spoken the words before the pounding between his shoulders worsened. The night now thoroughly ruined, he tightened his grip on his blade’s hilt. Somewhere a high-pitched wailing broke the silence. Choosing to ignore it, he deliberately let his sword slide deeper into the soft, leaf-covered earth.
His earth, as some souls might need to be reminded.
He also glowered.
Just for the sheer pleasure of it. And as fiercely as any riled Highlander can.
At once, the weird keening faded. Even the nearby mist shrouds quivered, then withdrew. Whether from his fury or his blade, each billowing curtain slid away, finally settling over a tumbled gathering of ancient burial mounds and standing stones. The resting place of Clan MacRuari’s hoariest forebears and the tainted ground whence such thick fog often came.
Giving the crumbled relics one final glare, he knew a moment of triumph when the mist disappeared into the ground, leaving only the light haze of the moon. The wind dropped as well, though he’d swear the air went colder.
Either way, he’d made his point.
Or so he thought until he turned back to Torcaill and saw a look on the old man’s face that he hoped wasn’t pity.
“Your blade and your scowls will not aid the lass,” the druid warned, shaking his head. “Not when they realize the prize beneath your roof.”
“They?” Ronan tossed another glance at the ancient burial ground. “Why do I think you don’t mean the mist wraiths? Or the moldering bones of my ancestors.”
“Because I do not.” Torcaill followed his stare, his long white hair blowing in a wind Ronan didn’t feel. “You ken who I mean. I’ve seen it in your eyes. Just as I know their return is why you wished to journey to Santiago de Compostela.”
Ronan yanked his sword out of the earth, cleaned its tip with an edge of his plaid, then jammed the thing back into its sheath.
He looked at the druid. “Is there aught you do not know?”
“I know all that I am meant to know.”
Ronan folded his arms. “Might that include the whereabouts of that which my enemies seek?”
“The Raven Stone?” The druid looked at him as if he could scarce believe his ears. “Think you I would not have destroyed it years ago if I did? Rendering the stone worthless is the only way to break the curse and stop the Holders of the Stone from returning.”
“They have not been here since I was a lad.” Ronan frowned, remembering. “Valdar banished them. The battle near broke him, as you’ll recall. And now —”
“And now” — Torcaill tapped him on the chest with his walking stick — “you must fight them. Soon, they will show themselves. They will hide behind their mist and shadows only so long. Then they will seek your lady, believing her gift can be used to lead them to the stone.”
“A curse on the wretched stone. If I had it, I would smite it in two, proving its worthlessness.”
The druid said nothing.
“ ’Twas Maldred’s own wickedness that cursed the MacRuaris,” Ronan argued. “Not his foul stone. The Holders are fools to desire it.”
“Be that as it may, it is a treasure that is theirs by right, as well you know,” Torcaill said, looking unhappy all the same.
“To be sure, I know.” A chill passed through Ronan, even as the back of his neck flamed.
Every clansman of his name knew that Maldred the Dire was said to have stolen the Raven Stone from the Holders, thus acquiring his great powers, along with the eternal enmity of the magical stone’s true holders.
The dark souls believed to have originally trapped a living raven within the stone’s hollowed center, forever granting the stone’s holders all the power and wisdom of that ancient and sacred bird.
