Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (34 page)

That had to be the reason the younger woman had pleaded such a secret meeting.

Even so, with the journey beginning to seem endless, it took all her will not to turn back, not to abandon her wild trek across the boggy, rain-drenched ground.

A fool’s expedition to be sure, with bursts of eerie greenish lightning outlining the dark mass of the hills and illuminating the broad, high moorlands. Each flash driving home not only the folly of it, but the danger.

She shivered, tried not to feel the wind tearing at her cloak or pay heed to how hard the pellets of sideways rain stung her face, striking her cheeks like a peppered onslaught of thousands of tiny needles.

Keeping her head lowered, she strained to see through the fast-moving swirls of thick gray mist—and saw naught. She began mumbling curses, aloud this time, simply because doing so made her feel better. She also drew her cloak’s hood deeper onto her forehead, blessing for once old Devorgilla for gifting her with such a warm, voluminous mantle.

But when at last the burial cairn’s low-mounded pile of bluish-gray stones came into view, her stomach clenched with icy-cold ill ease.

As promised, Janet waited for her. The younger woman sat stiff-backed and rigid in the cairn’s runic-carved Beldam’s Chair, a MacKinnon plaid wrapped around her tiny frame, one tartan fold draped over her head to protect her from the gushing rain.

Only, rather than come forward to greet Amicia or even lift a hand to acknowledge her arrival, Janet stayed where she was, her delicate features contorting into the most bizarre and terrifying expressions Amicia had e’er seen.

Half-afraid Janet had been seized by some strange malady and couldn’t move or speak, Amicia hastened her step—even when a distinct voice deep inside her warned her that she ought to run back to the castle as swiftly as her feet would carry her.

But morbid curiosity and genuine concern drove her forward even though Janet was now rolling her eyes and casting panicky yet somehow pleading stares in the direction Amicia had just come. The way back across the high moors to Coldstone Castle.

Comprehension coming at last, Amicia realized that, for whatever reason, her erstwhile rival was urging her to flee.

The direness of the situation became frighteningly apparent when, not ten paces from the ancient burial cairn, a sinewy arm slid around Amicia’s waist from behind, seizing hold of her in an iron-hard grip, and the cold blade of a deadly-sharp dirk pressed tight against her throat.

“Ach, lassie, to be out a-walking in this black weather, and after such a bliss-filled night.”

Dagda’s voice, the same yet horrifyingly
different,
identified her assailant.

“You?” Shock ripping through her, Amicia struggled against the older woman’s viselike hold. Her efforts won her a stinging nick in the tender flesh beneath her ear.

Amicia stilled at once, her heart plummeting to the sodden ground, icy dread washing over her in great, sickening waves.

“Aye, ’tis me.” Dagda gave a bloodcurdling chuckle. “I am the force behind the
dark deeds
and
curses
stalking Clan Fingon,” she said, her voice mocking. “I’ll be taking your cloak, too, though I regret the need. It will ill-serve you where you are going, but its ermine lining will fund a life for me far from these wretched shores.”

Careful to keep the dirk at Amicia’s throat, the old woman divested her of Devorgilla’s cloak with amazing dexterity, and swirled it around her own shoulders with surprising speed, almost before Amicia could even blink a mute protest.

“She’s mad!” Janet cried, finding her voice at last. Still sitting in the Beldam’s Chair, her water-soaked clothes plastered to her trembling body. “Full mad, and meaning to kill us!”

Her eyes at their widest and her face blanched a deathly white, Janet looked far more deranged than Dagda. Clutching her arms about her middle, she rocked back and forth on the stone seat, wailing and sobbing her misery.

“Ooooh, milady, I am so sorry. . . . I ne’er thought it’d come to this . . . ne’er meant to—”

“Mad, am I?” Dagda cut her off. “And who would not run mad after seeing her beloved young husband put his own self to the cliff, and taking his two innocent bairns with him when he jumped?”

“W-what?” Amicia almost spun around to face the old woman, but self-preservation and rank fear stopped her from even thinking about moving when Dagda pressed the dirk blade harder against the quivering flesh of her neck.

“Och, you thought Niall and my bairns died of a fever?” Dagda stepped around in front of her, an expression of mock confusion on her face. “Tsk, tsk! My sorrow for keeping you so ill-informed,” she said, and Amicia caught the light of madness glinting in her eyes. “But never you fret, lassie. No one kens the truth, so you are not alone in your ignorance.”

With a sad, almost regretful note entering her voice, she added, “My profound sorrow, too, that you must suffer for deeds that were none of your doing. I’ve grown rather fond of you. But it cannot be helped. Your demise will strike a much deeper grief into the heart of the MacKinnons than aught else combined.”

Prickles of coldest horror tingled along Amicia’s spine and she had the sickening feeling that the earth was sliding away beneath her feet.

“My demise?” she rasped, pushing the two words off a tongue gone dust-dry with fear. “But—”

Dagda snorted. “I will explain the whole of it once we reach the boat strand and you and yon lassie are comfortably secured aboard one of the new galleys—the one I’ve prepared for you.”

“She’s sawed holes in the planking and gouged out the caulking!” Janet wailed. “She means to leave us, tied and bound, aboard the galley so we’ll drown when it sinks in the storm! ’Tis her revenge on the MacKinnons! Magnus will lose you and the old laird will be convinced the curse has descended with a vengeance.”

“And you, you clapper-tongued strumpet, will hold your prattle unless you wish me to bind your mouth.” Dagda’s eyes flashed in irritation. “Now come here and tie the lassie’s wrists. The rope is draped o’er the litter hidden round the other side of the cairn. And dinna think of running away. You won’t get far, and even if you did—what do you think the MacKinnons would do with you once I tell them how you’ve helped me keep old Reginald’s curse alive and thriving?”

“Ooooh, Mother of God, help us. . . . I ne’er meant to do anyone any harm. . . .” Janet moaned, leaping up from the Beldam’s Chair to dash around the corner of the mounded stones.

She reappeared moments later, dragging a makeshift litter behind her, the rope Dagda had requested dangling from one hand and trailing along on the soggy ground.

Tossing a wild-eyed glance full of apology at Amicia, Janet took Amicia’s hands and managed to bind them with surprising speed, considering her fingers trembled so badly Amicia wondered she could even hold the rope.

“I am so sorry.” She turned another pitiful gaze on Amicia. “I only wanted Magnus, see you? I’d thought I loved him. Now I know I ne’er did, but back then—”

“Back then, you hoped that if you helped me destroy Clan Fingon, Magnus would be so grief-stricken and vulnerable,
you
could step in to comfort him,” Dagda finished for her. “That was the way of it, was it not? Your hope that, by helping me avenge my loved ones, you’d make Magnus dependent on you—so much so he’d marry you out of sheer gratitude.”

“Aye, that is what I thought. Oh, God in Heaven, how could I have been so blind?” Janet crumpled to her knees, stared at Dagda in sheerest horror, great tracks of tears streaming down her cheeks. “I ne’er thought you would harm anyone. Our own kinsmen!”

“
I
have nary a drop of that tainted strain running in my veins,” Dagda corrected her, using the dirk to urge Amicia onto the litter. “My Niall was the one with ties to Clan Fingon. And a good thing, for I used that blood bond and the tradition of Highland hospitality to secure myself a trusted position in their household after their meddling at sea ruined Niall’s fortunes and drove him to take his own life. His, and my bairns!”

“Your husband brought about his own downfall,” Janet argued, showing her first bit of spine since Amicia had walked into this nightmare.

“’Tis true,” Janet railed, throwing a wild-eyed glance at Amicia. “Dagda and her husband lived on the most barren of isles. After years of trying to eke an existence from the sea, he tried to better their lot by informing the English and their turncoat Scots friends, the Balliols, of any Scottish loyalist activities in Hebridean waters.”

Her teeth chattering, she paused to dash the streaming rain from her forehead. “Their wee isle was little more than rock and sand, but its location gave them firsthand knowledge of any passing war galleys, supply ships, or couriers moving between these isles, England, and the Irish coast. But each time Dagda’s husband arranged a secret meeting with his benefactors, he ran up against Clan Fingon galleys and couldn’t perform his promised duties as an informant. Af—”

“After a while, they stopped coming. And they ne’er paid him a
siller
for his trouble!” Dagda glared her wrath at Janet. “The MacKinnons and their watchdog presence in the waters hereabouts ruined Niall’s chances of making a fortune and left him seeing no way out but to widow me. Clan Fingon stole my husband and my sweet bairns . . . my life!”

Amicia shuddered on the litter. Saints, did the old woman mean to drag her clear across the moor to the boat strand? When she ordered Janet to bind her feet to the litter as well, it seemed that must be her intent indeed.

Her stomach heaving, Amicia fought an overwhelming urge to retch. Struggling to suppress it, she listened to Dagda’s rantings and prayed Magnus would notice her absence—as well as Janet’s and the seneschal’s—and head out with a patrol to search for them.

And that if he did, he’d find them soon enough.

“Put your hands behind your back, girl.” Dagda snatched the rope from Janet. “I’m going to bind them, but not so tight you won’t be able to help me pull the litter to the boat strand,” she explained, making short work of knotting the strong heather rope around Janet’s wrists.

Apparently satisfied with her handiwork, Dagda lifted a fold of Amicia’s cloak and dragged it across her forehead, using it to momentarily stanch the endless stream of rain coursing down her brow.

To Amicia’s surprise, the old woman knelt beside her in the oozing peat mire, that odd look of regret clouding her dark eyes again.

“Aye, lass, ’tis sorry I am that I require your help in this,” she said, a sad smile twisting her lips. “But the loss of a much-loved wife will speak louder than the burning of a thousand empty chambers and sawed-through latrine seats.”

Shaking her head, she stared down at Amicia, and with each bright burst of lightning, the crazed glint in her eyes grew wilder, more terrifying.

Not that Amicia could see her all too clearly lying prone on the makeshift litter, the lashing rain now pounding unhindered onto her face and blurring her vision. Unable to swipe at the raindrops, they gathered in her eyes, near blinding her.

But not so fully that her heart didn’t freeze with fear when she caught the silvery flash of the dirk blade as Dagda raised it high above her head.

“Because I’m fond of you, I’ll put you out of your misery now,” Dagda said, almost as if she indeed meant to soothe. “Your whiny friend will have to suffer her fate through to the end. You will have the mercy of sleeping through yours.”

“No-o-o-o!” The denial burst from Amicia’s throat as the dagger swooped downward, the roar of her own red terror and a smashing pain of bright-splintering agony, ending what should have been the first day of a new and beautiful life.

Chapter Sixteen

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
she is gone?”

Magnus stood on the threshold to the great hall, staring at Colin. Hot disbelief pounded through him, and his good humor from just moments earlier vanished like a puff of smoke.

“She can’t be . . . gone.” Agitation—and fear—welling inside him, he clenched his hands lest he seize his friend by the neck opening of his mailed hauberk and rattle a better answer from the lout’s lying lips.

But even before his stopped heart could resume beating, Dugan and Hugh came barreling into the hall from behind him, their own blanched-white faces underscoring without words that Colin was speaking the truth.

Bitter-cold dread squeezing the breath from him, Magnus stared at the three men, razor-sharp fear twisting his gut.

Now he knew why his scalp had prickled earlier.

Swallowing against the tightness in his throat, he focused on Hugh. “Tell me this is madness . . . that it is not true.” Saints, just putting his fear to words sliced his heart. “There must be some mistake.”

But Hugh shook his head. “They are nowhere to be found,” he panted, bending forward to brace his hands on his thighs. “We’ve searched every corner and cranny in the castle—even looked behind doors and beneath beds. They—”

“They?”
Magnus’s already-hot-burning nape flamed with a fresh rush of scalding heat, even as his blood turned to ice. “Who are
they
?”

“Your lady wife, wee Janet, and that old she-goat, Dagda.” His da spoke up from where he stood, wringing his hands before the displaced high table. “The three of them have vanished without a trace. No one’s seen ’em since earliest cockcrow.”

“Christ . . . in . . . His . . . heaven!” Magnus roared, blood pounding hot in his ears.
“My heart’s treasure . . .”
That last was spoken on a thin breath of defeat, and so low he wasn’t even sure if he’d said the words aloud.

He only knew the entirety of his world spun and whirled around him and that he was struggling to draw air through a throat that seemed too tight for even a sliver of a breath to pass through.

“Why didn’t someone fetch me?”

“No one went for you because we did not think aught was amiss until just a short while ago. It was expected they’d be found,” Colin said. “Sakes, you ken they could have been anywhere—minding women’s business or suchlike.”

Magnus’s stomach turned over. His heart plummeted. It was the
suchlike
that terrified him.