Chapter Fourteen
Rose used tolike walking in the rain. Back home, when it was raining she would often take a stroll around the lake, watching how the surface danced and shimmered as the raindrops hit it. Elise had told her she was crazy, but she had always found it relaxing.
Now though, she was beginning to wonder if Elise hadn’t been right all along. Walking around the lake in the soft, gentle showers that they often got back home was vastly different to riding through this wild, angry maelstrom that seemed intent on ripping her from the saddle and dumping her in the mud.
And yet, it was exhilarating too. The storm was alive with power and potential. It sang along her senses, stirring her blood. It was so raw. So present. No past. No future. Just the vast powers of the earth singing along her nerves.
Poor Snip though wasnotsharing Rose’s enthusiasm. The horse’s head was hanging down as she plodded along the muddy track looking thoroughly miserable. Rose patted the beast’s neck.
“Sorry, girl. I promise you a nice extra big bag of oats when we get back. How about that? And maybe some apples if I can pilfer them from the kitchen. Eh?”
Snip flicked her ears and carried on plodding.
Rose’s hood had blown back ages ago and she’d given up trying to keep it in place. Now her hair was plastered to the sides of her face anddroplets kept running down her back, making her shiver. Still, they had made good time, despite the weather. Rose had needed no maps to know where she was going. Her destination pulled at her like a lodestone. She was pretty sure she could find the place even with her eyes closed.
The path sloped down through two high banks topped with stunted trees. She was close now—she recognized the bend in the track where the gorse bushes thickened and the ground dipped toward the low stone wall that marked the boundary of the village of Hemkirk.
Finally, she rode in among the first of the houses. The place was eerily deserted. No candlelight shone from the windows and no voices could be heard from within the buildings. Even the dog that had barked at her and Cailean last time they were here was gone. The wind had ripped one of the doors of the wooden houses open and now it banged incessantly in the wind.
Rose pulled the horse to a stop in the muddy street between two houses and gazed out at the bay. The wind was so fierce now that it squeezed tears from the corners of her eyes and whipped her hair out behind her like a banner. She shaded her eyes with one arm—and then she saw it.
Out in the bay, the waves were a lashing gray maelstrom. They thrashed against the rocks that littered the shore, sending up spumes of white foam. Breakers roared as they crashed onto the beach, leaving behind streamers of seaweed and bits of flotsam as they retreated.
And above it all, dancing across the surface of the water, was light. It was not jagged or actinic like lightning but rather formed a shimmery curtain of opalescent green, blue, and purple that flickered and danced like an aurora.
The hairs rose on the back of Rose’s neck.
“Stormlights,” she murmured.
She could feel the power in that light. It was vast and alien, not part of the magic that thrummed through the bedrock of this island. Itwas something… other.
And it was angry.
She dismounted and led the mare into an abandoned cottage. Taking off the saddle, she quickly rubbed her down, and then ducked back outside into the tempest. Rain streamed down her face, chilling her skin and blurring her vision, but she didn’t feel cold. Not really. Not anymore.
All she felt was the power of the storm.
Her boots slipped on the mud and slick stone as she walked down to the water and followed the curve of the shoreline. Waves crashed against the jagged rocks, foaming white and wild. The bay loomed just ahead, shrouded in mist and glowing with an eerie shimmer that pulsed like a heartbeat.
A narrow spit of rock stuck out into the bay like an accusing finger. She picked her way along the beach until she reached it and then stepped up onto the black rocks, slick with seaweed and rain. Lightning forked overhead, illuminating the dark sea—and the shimmering light down in the depths. Rose walked right to the end of the spur of rock and gazed down at the thrashing sea. A pale-green light spiralled just beneath the waves, moving like something alive.
She stared down at it, mesmerized. Some deep part of her whispered a warning. She was very close to the edge, and all that lay beneath her was the thrashing waves. One tiny slip, that’s all it would take, and she would be gone into the grasping water. But she seemed unable to move back. The pulsing of the power filled her, and the light in the depths held her in a spell.
The storm faded from her mind. The thunder, the rain, the wind—all of it melted away beneath the song she now heard. Not with her ears, but with her blood. A hum in her veins. A call in her bones.
And old magic. Ancient. Hungry.
The stormlights began to move, the green glow to gather in the water below her. The lights swirled and flickered in a hypnotic dance,like smoke trapped under glass. She found herself leaning forward, watching its slow dance.
It seemed to coalesce into a shape—a figure?—before breaking apart and swirling once more, beautiful, bright movement in the darkness.
“Who are you?” she whispered, the words snatched away by the wind and scattered out over the thrashing waves. “Why are you hurting the people of this island?”
There was no answer. At least, not one spoken aloud. Yet she heard a response all the same. Inside her head she heard a voice, like the roll of waves against a distant shore.
Come to me.
The voice was like silk and thunder all wrapped into one. It wound around her, through her, promising warmth and sweet oblivion. It seeped into her, filling the empty places in her heart she didn’t even know were there.
