Ran needed to tell him something. A warning. Something was . . . wrong. She did not know she was shaking until he took her by the shoulders once more.
“What ails you, Ran?”
Her teeth chattered and he wrapped her cloak more tightly around her. She could not put into words what she’d felt as she put her hand in the water. Something was wrong with the water.
“Something . . . I touched . . . Wrong . . .”
A shock traced a path through her then, as she realized what had happened. The dark voice echoed in her mind like a siren’s call, forcing her to move.
“We need to get away from here, Soren,” she said as she pulled the reins of her horse free from under the rock where Soren had secured them. “We must leave now.”
Soren put his hands out and helped her mount quickly. Securing his sword, he was on his horse and leading the other one that carried their supplies a second later. They followed the road until it narrowed where the two lakes almost met. She sent out a plea to the water to separate and let them pass.
When Soren stared at her, she nodded and he led them across the strip of now-dry land. Almost to Brodgar’s Ring, the bad feeling eased and Ran felt as though she could take a breath without shaking. Soren eased the pace and brought them to a halt. He climbed down from his horse and walked to her.
“Are you well now, Ran? Can you tell me what happened?” he asked. He let out a breath and dragged his hands through his hair. She’d seen him do that same motion hundreds of times in the past; it meant he was worried. His eyes looked haunted when he said his next words. “I thought I had lost . . . you . . . again.”
From the pauses though, she was certain he was thinking of a different woman. The other woman he’d lost. The one who had fallen or jumped off the cliff not far from here. She cleared her throat and met his gaze. “I felt evil, Soren. I heard evil,” she whispered. “It is not coming. It is already here.”
Eleven
Soren believed her.
It took but one look at the intensity in her eyes, the paleness of her skin or the shaking of her hands to know Ran truly believed it, too. She was not a woman given to histrionics. When she’d discovered what her father wanted her to see—him and Aslaug naked in bed together—she simply studied him for a very long moment and then walked out. And he’d never heard about her reacting with tears or an emotional collapse. Ran evaluated every person, every situation, with a cool, clear look. If she said that she had touched and heard this evil, he believed her. The sight of her being pulled into the dark water was enough to prove it to him.
For a moment, he had seen something else. Someone else.
Aslaug.
Had she leaned over, reaching for something, and slipped, as they’d told everyone? Or had she been pulled over the side by the lure of evil? Or desperation?
He shook off these heavy thoughts and looked at Ran now that they’d stopped. The sun had begun its slide down toward night and they needed shelter. Ran needed shelter. Soren had planned to stay with a friend farther up the road but he did not think Ran would make it that far now. There was a small shepherd’s hut on the other side of the stones, near the numerous cairns that lay around Brodgar’s Ring.
The winds whirled above and around them, whipping their cloaks and sending dust and dirt at them in waves. Something was indeed wrong here and now.
“Come, we will seek shelter there,” he said, pointing off in the distance.
He gathered his reins and hers and walked the three horses across the rising to the hut. She did not fight him on it; indeed, she gave little reaction at all. The fear sat deep in her eyes now. The winds tried to rise against them now, and it took more concentration to make them ease their force. By the time they arrived at the small shelter, Soren wondered if something was happening to his powers.
He cleared out the hut and tossed a thick blanket on the ground. Helping Ran down, he settled her there and then saw to the animals. Soren offered her the skin filled with ale, but she refused it. Once he saw to setting things in place and had them in a covered place, he sat next to her. Taking a breath and letting it out, he told the winds to protect them.
This time, they obeyed him without resistance.
Strange that.
“I had planned to reach Digby’s farm before stopping for the night,” he explained. “You do not look as though you could ride much farther.”
“D-D-Digby?” she stuttered out.
“His father passed just over a year ago and Digby inherited the farm,” he told her. “I am surprised that Einar did not tell you that.”
“Are you angry that he wrote to me?” she asked, shifting to face him in the growing twilight.
“Nay. Just surprised. The first, truly, in what looks to be a long series of surprises about my grandfather.”
“Sometimes, people are simply not who we think they are,” Ran said softly.
“That sounds like an accusation.” The words were out before he could stop them. It was a subject he did not want to discuss. It was a topic that could only cause trouble. More trouble than they already had before them. He shook his head. “That is a topic for another day.”
