“Unless they knew something was wrong with it,” Cailean finished for her.
Rose nodded. In the wild, scavengers would leave carcasses of animals that had died from illness as they could smell the disease. Was that why there were no scavengers here?
Careful where she put her feet, Rose picked her way through the detritus and down to the water’s edge. The soft hiss and sigh of the waves seemed a strange counterpoint to the death that filled the water. The waves were littered with tiny corpses bobbing in the surf.
“There must be thousands of them,” Rose muttered, turning to Cailean. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
Cailean’s eyes were troubled as he looked around. “Nay,” he murmured. “Never. What could have caused such a thing?”
If this had been the twenty-first century, she would have suggested some kind of chemical spillage or other pollution. But there were no chemicals that could cause this in 1498.
She walked down to the water’s edge, to where the sand was damp from the tide, and crouched. Careful not to let the water touch her as it came in, she held out her hand, hovering it just above the level of the waves, and closed her eyes.
As she opened herself up to her power, the sigh of the wind and the movement of the waves seemed to come alive. They whispered against her senses like living things. The beach, the rocks, the hills, all seemed to vibrate with a kind of energy. She could feel the life forces of the horses they’d left at the top of the dunes, stronger and more pulsing than those of the land.
And Cailean…
Cailean was a whirlwind of energy that buffeted against her senses like a thunderstorm. He was coiled power and unleashed fury; he was granite strength and burning heat. It took an immense effort to pull her awareness away from him.
She forced her attention to the waves, sent her mind skimming along the ocean bed, through the kelp forests that danced below the surface, between the rocks and little gaps where tiny creatures lived.
Then suddenly, she felt it.
A sense of wrongness permeated the waves like black ink spilled into clear water. It was dark, unnatural—and she had felt it before. Itwas the same thing that had burned her when she’d examined Drew.
With a gasp, she opened her eyes and rose but staggered with sudden dizziness. Cailean’s arm shot out to steady her, his strong fingers closing around her upper arm.
“What is it, lass?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Dark,” she whispered. “Something dark.”
Cailean’s hand rose to grip her other arm. Gently, he turned her to face him. “What do ye mean?”
She swallowed. Took a deep breath. Forced herself to look at him. “I understand now. Why my magic didn’t work on Drew. Why none of Beatrice nor Maggie’s remedies has helped. This is not a sickness, Cailean. It’s a curse.”
Chapter Seven
Cailean stared ather, unsure if he’d heard her correctly. A curse?
Rose had gone pale, and there was a thin sheen of sweat across her forehead. Whatever she’d sensed, it had affected her badly. Beneath his grip, he could feel her shaking. That alarmed him more than anything. What could be so bad that it would scare a MacFinnan spellweaver like this?
“Lass?” he said. “Rose. Look at me.”
She licked her lips, sucked a breath through her nostrils before her blue eyes found his. “I felt it earlier when I examined Drew. I went deeper than before, and something didn’t like that. It attacked me.”
She pulled her right hand out of his grip and showed him her hand, where the puckered burn scar sat.
Cailean blinked, unease sliding down his spine. “Are ye sayingDrewdid that to ye?”
She shook her head. “Not Drew. The corruption inside him.” She waved her hand at the cove and its multitude of dead fish. “The same corruption that did this. It isn’t a sickness that is taking your people, Cailean. It’s magic. Dark magic.”
Cailean released her and staggered back a few paces. The beach beneath his feet felt suddenly like quicksand, and he was sinking,sinking, sinking…
He clenched his fists, closed his eyes. A curse. Dark magic. Anger flashed through him. Damn all the gods! How dare they?
He opened his eyes. “What is this magic?” he growled.
Rose wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t know yet. But it’s not native to this island. It feels alien somehow. It’s out of sync with everything else, slowly choking the islands like a vine around a tree. That’s what happened here, I think. The curse overwhelmed the bay’s life force and killed everything.”
