Eochaidh - Legend of the Horsemen (Book One) (11 page)

Lord John turned to Meaghan and shook his head. “And I don’t
suppose it will do me any good to ask you what you are doing outside of your
bedroom at this hour of the night, young lady?” he asked.

“I needed to check on Jepson. I needed to see for myself
that he was fine,” she said, standing straight and meeting her father’s gaze.

“You didn’t trust Fitz?” he asked.

“I have learned that I am not always told the truth under
the misguided idea that it is for my own protection,” she answered.

Jepson hid his laughter under a cough, but Lord John glared
at him, aware of his not-so- veiled subterfuge.

Sighing, Lord John turned to his daughter. “Touché,” he
replied, bowing slightly to indicate the hit. “And now, are you satisfied that
he is fine?”

She walked over to Jepson, noting the darkening bruises on
his face and arms. “How are you, really?” she asked.

“I am fine, miss,” Jepson replied. “I am honored that you
would come to check on me and I am more than grateful for your courage this
day. You saved my life twice and I will not forget it.”

Laying her hand over his, she shook her head. “You would
have done the same for me,” she said. “I just did what I needed to do.”

Jepson turned to Lord John. “And now you see what I say is
true,” he said. “This is no child that stands next to me. Here is a young woman
with the heart of a warrior. A warrior who needs to know the path that lies
before her.”

Before her father could speak, Meaghan turned to her father
and sought his eyes. Those eyes had never lied to her before. Perhaps he had
dissembled slightly, when it was for
her own
good, but
he had never told her a bold-faced lie.
 
She realized she trusted him.
 
Trusted him with her life.
 
Trusted him to do what he felt was best for her.
 
A calming peace entered her heart and she
knew, whatever she heard that night, she would always feel that same trust.

“Father, I overheard you and Jepson while I was in the
hallway,” she began. “I know you are keeping something from me.
 
And I also know you feel it’s for my
welfare.”

She looked away for a brief moment, trying to find the right
words. Then she turned back and faced him again. “If you decide not to tell me,
I will try not to imagine what this terrible secret is,” she continued. “I will
try to be patient.
 
I will try to be
careful.
 
But, I will, as I always have,
trust you. Because I know, above all, you love me.”

Lord John closed his eyes and hung his head for a
moment.
 
Silence stretched for several
long moments as the decision that would alter all of their lives was weighed.
Finally, he lifted his head, opened eyes that were moist with tears and nodded.
“Meggie,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Sit down, please. There are
things I must tell you.”

Perching on a small wooden chair next to the bed, Meaghan
sat, her hands clasped in her lap, her heart pounding in her chest and waited.

“Do you know the meaning of our last name?” he asked. “The
meaning of Herdin?”

Shrugging, she nodded, puzzled at the question. “Herdin
means pure of heart,” she replied. “That’s not a secret, Father.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “But it is an important part of
the information I am going to reveal to you.”

A little more at ease, Meaghan sat back in the chair and
stared quizzically at him. “What does our name have to do with a secret?
 
Everyone knows who we are.”

“A long time ago, a promise was made,” he explained. “A
promise between a nobleman and a great wizard. The nobleman swore that his
family, throughout the generations, would honor the promise. No matter the
cost.”

“And what did the wizard swear?” she asked.

“The wizard swore that when the time was right, he would
help the family fulfill their duty,” he replied.

“Father, this is the stuff of fairy tales,” she said with a
soft sigh. “I am not a child anymore, to be pushed off with stories of knights
and magic.
 
Please, I beg of you.
 
Tell me the truth.”

“The truth is, Meggie, the fairy tale is true.
 
The Eochaidh do exist. Merlin saved their
lives by making them immortal and only someone from our family can break the
spell.”

Searching her father’s eyes for a hint of humor or a hint of
mischief, she found none and gasped quietly. “Then, those people…the Magistrate
and his supporters…they truly want to kill us?”

Nodding, he pushed himself away from the wall and walked
over to her, kneeling in front of her chair and taking her hands in his. “Yes,
they do,” he said. “For some reason they believe that this is the time of the
Eochaidh.
 
Our family has had enemies
before, but never an assault so fierce and transparent.”

“They must be very sure of themselves,” Meaghan said.

“Or very desperate,” Jepson added.

“Desperate?” Meaghan asked. “Why would they be desperate?”

“She must know that the signs show this is the pinnacle time
for the curse to be broken,” he explained. “Through divination, there must have
been a stronger warning.”

“She who?” Meaghan asked.

“Morganna,” her father answered.

Shaking her head, she felt the fear rising up from her belly
and clamped down on the hysteria that was longing to escape. “Morganna is
dead,” she said firmly, keeping the quiver from her voice. “She’s been dead for
more than a thousand years.”

“The spell she discovered, the one the knights exposed,
allowed time travel,” her father explained. “She has the ability to move
forward in time and prevent the curse from being broken.”

Cold fear for her father’s life gripped her body. “She wants
you dead?” she asked.

Nodding slowly, Lord John tightened his hold on her hands.
“The spell Merlin put on the knights said a man, pure of heart, would break the
spell,” he said. “
Nobile
viri
pura
cordis
incantatores
conteram
.
It’s
a Latin phrase that has been passed on through generations.”

“And after you, there are no more men left in the Herdin
line,” she said. “Monty?”

He shook his head. “No, Monty is a second cousin on my
aunt’s side of the family.
 
The only
reason he inherits is because…”

“He’s a male,” Meaghan inserted.

“Ah, yes,” Lord John replied, shaking his head. “The sad
truth of it.”

“So, the only person standing in the way of the curse never
being broken is…” she stopped, her voice breaking.

“Me,” he said softly. “And that’s the terrible secret.”

The air in the stone-walled tower chamber was cold and steam
spilled out of the open torso, rolled over the slab of black marble and slipped
to the floor, making its way across the room in wisps of a macabre dance that
dissipated past the flickering glow of candlelight into the darkening gloom of
evening.

Blood still slowly pulsed from the open wounds, coursing
away from his body through narrow snakelike channels embedded in the table and
finally dripping into the large black ceramic pots positioned underneath the
channels’ outlets, its tangy metallic scent in the air.

At the top of the table, Murphy’s face was pallid, his mouth
open in a silent scream and his eyes staring, unseeing, at the tall ceiling
above him.
 
His hands, bound on each side
of the table in black leather, were still clenched in tight fists.

Running her fingers lightly over his arm, almost
affectionately, Morganna scrutinized the insides of his body cavity and nodded
with a satisfactory smile as she watched his internal organs convulse in their
final dance with life. “Very good, Mr. Murphy,” she purred, her eyes gleaming
with pleasure. “The longer your heart continues to beat, the longer your
intestines palpitate, the longer your stomach flutters, the closer I am to the
knowledge I seek.”

Turning, she glanced at the hourglass attached to an ornate
four-foot-tall pewter stand. The sands were slowly making their way from the
top bulb through the narrow passageway to the bottom.
 
“Nearly fifteen minutes,” she said,
impressed. “You were a better specimen than I thought. Now if you will only
bring me good news.”

Suddenly his body convulsed and he groaned loudly, the noise
echoing throughout the chamber.
 
The echo
continued and instead of weakening, it grew louder and more intense. The
henchmen in the room froze and turned to each other in terror.
 
The sound had not been human.
 
It sounded like something that had been
dragged up from the deepest pits of hell, clothed in misery and torment,
accented with fire and brimstone.

“No!” Morganna screamed, staring at the opened chest cavity.

Now, instead of the internal organs of the dying man lying
in a pool of his own blood, the body parts were being enveloped by a black
muddy substance that seemed to be bubbling up from his spine.
 
Quickly grabbing an ivory handled knife in
one hand, she reached her other hand in to grab the still-beating heart.

“
Owww
!” She pulled her hand back
immediately, wiping it on her apron, the blisters already appearing on her
hand. “It’s acid,” she yelled. “What kind of foul magic is this?”

Turning, she pointed to one of the henchmen. “You! Come
here,” she said. “Quickly.”

Terror and fear warred in the man’s face.

“You come now or you will die where you stand,” Morganna
threatened.

Running across the room, the man bowed meekly in front of
the woman. “Yes, my lady,” he said.

“Grab his heart and hold it up so I can cut it from its
moorings,” she demanded.

He reached in and shouted out at the pain. “It burns my
lady,” he cried.

“It will be worse for you if you drop it,” she hissed, as
she slipped her knife behind the veins and arteries at the top of the heart and
in one swift slice, cut through them all.

Blood seeped from the open blood vessels, beginning as red
then turning black and running down the man’s hands. “Please, it’s eating my
skin,” he cried, his hands shaking in pain.

“Hold still, fool,” she commanded, bringing her knife down
to the lower portion of the heart and cutting through the final vessels to free
it. “Now, put it there, in the silver vessel.”

Dropping the heart in the shallow silver bowl, the man
wasted no time in turning and running across the room to a barrel in the corner
and dunking his hands and arms into the cold water.
 
Nearly fainting as large chunks of his flesh
floated to the top, he turned to Morganna in panic. “My hands,” he cried. “My
hands are gone!”

She turned and glanced at him. “Your hands are gone?” she
repeated.

He nodded frantically. “Yes, my lady, my hands, they’ve all
burnt off,” he cried.

She shrugged. “Well, then you are of no use to me,” she
said.

With a quick toss of her hand in his direction, the man’s
eyes bulged, he gasped for air as his face turned purple and, after a few
moments, he dropped to the stone floor.

Morganna turned to the other henchman. “Get rid of him,” she
said. “And then get back here to get rid of Murphy.
 
Who knows what this acid will eat
through.
”

Picking up the bowl with the heart, she carried it to the
smaller table.
 
Pulling up a tall stool,
she sat next to the table and, using the tip of her knife, carefully dissected
the heart.
 
With long even slices, she
cut the organ in half and placed the portions side by side.

Sliding the bowl under a magnifying glass, she leaned
forward on the stool and studied the pierced organ carefully, paying special
attention to the shape and any distinguishing marks.
 
The veins and arteries seemed intact.
 
The superior vena cava, the main vein that
returns blood from the upper body, was positioned properly.
 
She sat back in her chair and let out a soft
breath.
 
The omens were good.
 
Things would be fine.

As she moved the vessel out from under the magnifying glass,
something dark caught her eye.
 
Pulling
it quickly back beneath the glass, she thrust her knife into the meat of one
side of the heart, turned it over and cursed. The inferior vena cava was
twisted and scarred.
 
The vein that
carried blood from the lower extremities back to the heart was corrupt.
 
Morganna picked up the bowl and threw it
across the room, smashing it against the wall.
 
The two pieces of the heart stuck against the stone wall for a moment
and then slowly slid down, leaving a trail of black behind them.

“Bring me my carriage!” Morganna screamed as she rushed out
of the chamber.

The sunrise glowed against the bedroom windows and washed
the walls with the soft peach of morning.
 
Meaghan sat on the window seat, her arms wrapped around her legs,
staring out the window and thinking about how much her life had changed in the
past twenty-four hours.
 
She had been in
this position since she returned from Jepson’s room.
 
She watched the moon slowly set, the clouds
move across the sky and the sun finally peek out over the horizon, and she
still hadn’t come up with a viable solution.
 
There had to be some way she could save her father.

Leaning forward, her forehead pressed to the cool glass, she
closed her eyes and let another tear slip down her cheek and splash onto her
nightgown. How many times had she heard the stories of her ancestors dying in
the aid of the Eochaidh?
 
She had thought
of the stories as nothing more than fanciful tales and of the ancestors, as
only faces from a portrait hung in the gallery.
 
But this was her father.
 
Morganna
couldn’t win this time.
 
She just
couldn’t.

Roughly wiping the tears from her face, she sat up and
looked out the window again, an idea forming in her mind.
  
She turned her head, looking off to the side
of the estate and was able to see just the beginning of the path to the Old
Woods.
 

The Old Woods.
The place that
contained enough magic you could feel it as you stepped through its
borders.
 
The fae hid in those woods and
called it home, if there were any place the Eochaidh would hide, it would be
there.

Jumping up, she ran to her closet and pulled out the
breeches and linen shirt she used the day before.
 
Pulling off her nightgown, she slipped into
the boy’s outfit and then stuffed her hair into an oversized cap. Looking
around, she found the pair of small leather boots hidden beneath her bed and
pulled them on, tying the laces tightly to make up for their slightly large
size.
 
Cautiously opening her door, she
looked up and down the hall to make sure it was still empty, and then slid out
of her bedroom and down the hall to the servant’s staircase.

Having used this route many times in her young life, Meaghan
knew exactly which step had a squeaky tread and when to place your weight next
to the railing.
 
In a matter of moments,
she had descended the flight noiselessly. With a deep breath of relief, she
opened the bottom door and stepped out.

“Good morning, Miss Meaghan,” Fitz said softly, his right
eyebrow lifted to his hairline. “I see we are dressed for a masquerade ball.”

Meaghan froze in her tracks, swallowed audibly and met
Fitz’s face. “You’ve seen me more than enough times in these clothes, Fitz,”
she said. “I’m just off to set a trap for Father.”

Fitz was not deceived. “It would seem, considering the
circumstances of the past twenty-four hours, your father would have expressly
forbidden you to do what you are planning.”

The memory of her father saying exactly that the night
before flashed through her memory.
 
And
although she did not mind a little teasing, she would never lie directly to
Fitz.
 
“He did forbid me,” she admitted.
“And I am not going to the woods to lay a trap for him. I’m going to the woods
to find the Eochaidh because only they hold the key to saving my father’s
life.”

“And why do you feel you will be able to find them?” he
asked, his voice genuinely curious.

“The fae like me,” she explained with a shrug. “They always
have let me find them and watch them in the woods.
 
I thought they might be able to help me.”

He pulled her sword and sheath from behind his back. “If you
are going to the woods, I would expect you will need your sword,” he said.

She took the sword and buckled it around her waist. “Thank
you, Fitz,” she said.

“But you must promise me that you also take this,” he said, pulling
out the same hunting horn he had offered Lord John the day before. “If you are
in trouble, you must blow on it and we will come to you.”

Slipping the cord around over her neck and arm, she let the
horn rest on the hip opposite her sword. “Am I ready?” she asked.

“Be cautious, Miss Meaghan,” Fitz warned. “There are many
things in those woods that do not wish you to succeed.”

“Who should I trust?”

He nodded and smiled. “Trust your heart,” he replied.