The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) (76 page)

Drops of rain splattered her face, or perhaps it was seawater, flung on the wind. The land dropped away at her feet, so sheer it caused hints of vertigo.

She found land’s edge, where mist washed the precipices and salt surf eroded the cliffs.

Eamhair’s presence merged with her, placing insubstantial hands on her shoulders. Where had she chosen to jump when she’d tried to kill herself? Morrigan needed to know. She walked back and forth, certain some inner sense would alert her when she found it. There were so many jagged boulders below. Yet Eamhair had found a place that wouldn’t crush her.

Hadn’t Mackinnon said the seal-lover carried Eamhair out of the sea and placed her on sand? There was no beach that she could see. No sand. Nothing but granite, pointed rocks, and restless tides.

It was a story. Something he made up. There are no selkies.
She doused the tale with a frigid downpour of logic.
This proves it. There is no sand, and nowhere to jump where she wouldn’t have been shattered on the rocks.

Morrigan gazed at the enormous, heavy swells.
No place to launch a currach, either.

Mackinnon had beguiled her with a faery tale. She wished now she hadn’t chosen Cape Wrath as their next destination. The chronicle of Eamhair and her wraith-like lover could have lived on, untarnished, unchallenged. Now it was ruined.

Her thoughts were in such turmoil that she didn’t hear Diorbhail until the woman was nearly upon her. With one shrewd glance into Morrigan’s face, Diorbhail clasped her hand and held it without speaking until Morrigan could breathe again, could return from disappointment and mangled illusions.

“Why d’you stand here, looking as though you’ve lost your only friend?” Diorbhail asked.

“I was dreaming.” Morrigan was ashamed to be caught in such foolishness. “Where’s Olivia?”

“With Master Ramsay. He’s the one pointed you out up here, and suggested I keep you company. But if you’d prefer to be alone, I can go.”

“No. I’m being daft.” She remembered something Diorbhail and she had talked about on the long voyage, in the stinking skaffie with its leering, scruff-faced captain, the only one they could find who was willing to ferry them, at, of course, an outrageous fee. “You were born near here.”

“Aye, by Durness.” Diorbhail cocked her chin to the east.

“D’you know this place?”

“Aye, I came here now and then. No one was ever here but for the lighthouse keepers. Sometimes they gave me soup and bread.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a beach anywhere?”

“Aye there is, over there.” She pointed, east again. “See the stack in the water? Right there. Folk who live around here call it Kearvaig.” She turned, gesturing to the south. “There’s another beach that way. I loved sitting on the sand, listening to the roar of the sea and the call of the kittiwakes. I’ve seen whales, too.”

“Are they far?”

Diorbhail looked slightly puzzled. “The whales?”

“No, the beaches. Can we walk to them?”

“Aye,” Diorbhail said. “Kearvaig is the closest.”

“Would you take me?”

Morrigan followed Diorbhail’s unhesitating steps along the coastline. Eventually they descended between several ridges until they found themselves on a sheltered sandy beach, framed at one end by the sea stack, rising offshore like a watchtower, and a great mess of stones, as though a child had thrown its blocks in a fit of rage. Yet, beyond them, Morrigan saw how the cliffs climbed higher, with straight, steep, plummeting precipices, lacking, as far as she could tell, those pulverizing rocks at the bottom.

An uneasy thrill ran through her.

He carried her from the sea and placed her on the sand.
‘
The songs you sang brought me to you. I thought no harm would come of it, and I could not keep away. But I was wrong. Now we love each other and you have chosen death
.’

Clouds of fulmars flew in and out of the cliffs, and the darker shags, and a thousand and one kittiwakes, all making a ruckus in competition with the massive, awe-inspiring boom of the sea.

Her lover was also a king. He ruled over the vast, spraying ocean. Though he’d proven himself wise, strong, a ferocious warrior when necessary, he hadn’t the strength or ferocity to leave her, nor could she leave him. She pledged herself to him there, near the ocean at the tip of Scotland
.

“Morrigan… Morrigan.”

It took her a moment to realize Diorbhail was speaking. “Sorry?” She blushed, for as she’d gazed upon the sand, her imagining of Eamhair, with tresses of copper and a mouth of autumn ivy red, and the selkie, dark-haired and green-eyed, had been erotic.

“I was thinking of one of my visions,” Diorbhail said. “That your mam gave birth to you in the forest, by the mountain, so that you’d have the strength of the mountain when you fight the seal.”

Morrigan stared.
How does she know what I am thinking? Have I no secrets from her?

“Aye,” Diorbhail said. “It came to me at Torridon. I saw many dead trees on the slopes of Liathach, from a fire, maybe. And I thought of how the tides rise and fall every day in their eagerness to consume the land. Yet the mountains remain, unmoved, unchanged. Snow does no’ wear them away, nor wind, nor fire. The seal will try to master you. But he’ll fail, unless you turn your back on the mountain and invite him in.”

Morrigan blushed again. From the moment she’d approached land’s end this morning, she’d been lost in Mackinnon’s faery tale. She’d rejected the mountain without realizing it, to reach for the seal.

Diorbhail didn’t know Mackinnon’s story of Eamhair. Morrigan had never shared it. Yet, somehow the woman sensed that something was wrong, something was trying to rip her away from Curran and Olivia.

“Tell me.” Morrigan rubbed her temples, trying to soothe the headache that had plagued her all morning. “Is there anyplace where the water is gentle enough to launch a wee boat, a coracle or currach?”

“The Kyle,” Diorbhail said. “The Kyle of Durness, near where we landed yesterday, as long as the wind is calm. ’Tis so shallow, anything much bigger would run aground. But a coracle would swamp when it reached open water, and a currach too, unless it was built to be seaworthy.” She waited, her gaze now questioning.

In the secret way no human knows, the seal changed Eamhair, and in the changing, healed her wounds and broken bones. Together the lovers swam away, and were never seen upon the land again
.

Morrigan couldn’t meet that expectant gaze. “Are you hungry? Let’s go before Curran comes searching.”

* * * *

Curran’s lungs burned, but he couldn’t stop running. If he did, the chief and his men would catch them. He and the woman,
Eamhair,
had to reach the shore, where a boat was waiting to carry her away from her father and brothers.

She was not fully healed, and the running was hard for her. She began limping. In the end, he had to carry her.

There was the Kyle, and a currach, just as Taranis had promised. They’d made it.

He placed her in the boat but she refused to release him.
I won’t go without you,
she cried.

Then their pursuers were upon them.

He tried again to make her go, but she wouldn’t. She was screaming.

Curran woke. Cold drafts slipped through the cracks into the bothy. The lighthouse keepers had offered it to the travelers, but warned it was old and in bad condition. The chill cleared his head from the life-and-death struggle in his memory.

It was Morrigan screaming.

He pulled her into his arms, though she clawed at him and fought until sense returned. Then she collapsed into his embrace.

“You were dreaming,” he said.

She nodded.

“So was I.”

She murmured, “It was….”

“Hideous.”

Diorbhail came to the bed in her thick woolen nightgown, holding a candle. “What happened?” she asked, setting the candle on the rickety table by the bed. Over in her cradle, Olivia began to fret.

“She had a bad dream,” Curran said. “Please, would you see to Olivia?”

Morrigan sat up. “I was being stoned!” Her eyes were huge and stricken. She stared at Curran then pressed her hands against his cheeks, moving them up and down and through his hair, as though to make certain he was real and uninjured. She blinked and drew in a deep breath. All the color fled her face. “No,” she cried, and fainted.

Curran extricated himself to fetch the bucket of water, and cooled her hot forehead with a wet handkerchief.

She woke after a moment. “What?” she whispered. “A… nightmare.” She glanced jerkily around the cramped room. “I’m so dizzy.”

He patted her forehead and cheeks with the handkerchief, saying nothing, though inside he careened at the possibility that they’d each dreamed of the same event. He could almost hear the dull thunk of the first stone striking the sand beside him as he tried to shield the woman.

What had she called him in the dream?
Cailean
….

Nothing but a nightmare, and yet….

“That’s bonny,” Morrigan said of his ministrations, and soon fell asleep again, her head resting on his shoulder. In the morning she regained her composure, though she was quiet, and ate only a bite or two of bread, washing it down with tea. Diorbhail suggested they walk over to the other beach with Olivia, saying it was pretty. Curran said he wanted to go the opposite way, so they separated after breakfast. Curran watched them until they were out of sight, then he went in search of the lighthouse keepers.

* * * *

“Aye,” said Donald, the grey-bearded senior keeper, “there are legends attached to this place.” He drew in a mouthful of smoke and released it appreciatively. “Ghost stories.”

“Have you ever heard of the murder of a young woman?” Curran asked. “A stoning?”

The tobacco in the man’s pipe crackled again. “There is a tale about that. Folk do say they see her from time to time, floating over the cliffs, weeping. You should speak to my assistant. Jasper claims to have seen her with his own two eyes. He’s inside, making a supply list.”

Jasper was pleased to share the tale. He and Curran walked to the cliffs, where the murdered woman was most often seen moaning and calling for someone. He described her as young, with a great mass of hair.

“What do they say happened?” Curran made an effort to sound no more than mildly curious.

“A sad but common story. An unmarried woman fallen into shame, worse, supposedly, because her da was chief in these parts. It’s said she was stoned to death, and a man killed as well. Perhaps the father of her child, who knows?” With a careless shrug, Jasper added, “Such details never survive the passage of time. Have you heard of our tunnels?”

“No,” Curran said, feeling oddly off balance.

“Come with me.” Jasper took Curran into the lighthouse and threw open a trap door at the back, revealing a set of stone steps winding into the earth. Once he’d lit a lamp, he descended, motioning to Curran to follow. The air was musty, with a briny tinge of seawater.

At the bottom of the steps, Jasper held up the lamp, sending beams of light down long earthen passageways that extended in three directions. “Unfortunately, they’re all blocked nowadays with dirt and sand, but for that one, which takes you to a sea cave. I’ve found seal bones there.” He pointed. “This one leads south a wee way, to what we think was probably a secret escape route in and out of the fortress. Aye, there was once a walled fort somewhere around here. I believe stones from the ruin were used in the making of this lighthouse. That way,” he pointed again, “leads to the Kyle of Durness, and we believe it did go all the way at one time, because though it’s blocked now, we found the entrance on the Kyle side, and it lines up with this one.”

The tunnels were intriguing, but Curran wasn’t sure how they tied in with the poor murdered girl. In his dream, he’d known the men coming after them meant to kill her. He’d been desperate to save her, but he’d not had the sense that she was with child.

“There’s one more thing to show you.” Jasper took him into the tunnel leading to the sea. Curran heard the hollow booming echo of water ahead.

“Here.” Jasper held his lamp close to the wall. There was a rock embedded in the dirt, and words scratched on it.

Eamhair

Taranis

Even in death

“Eamhair,” Curran said wonderingly. “Taranis.”

“I looked them up in a book at Saint Peter’s, in Aberdeen,” Jasper said eagerly. “They are old Celtic names.”

Curran hardly heard him through the roaring in his head. He stared at the carving. Was it proof the girl in his dream had actually lived?

Did it mean he’d lived too, as
Cailean?
He remembered that other name,
Taranis
. With it had come three impressions: that Taranis was a monk, a criminal, and a liar.

“I believe the words were here for a reason,” Jasper said. “To mark this.” He pulled the block from the wall, revealing an empty alcove. “Donald told me he came down here once, thirty years ago, not long after he first began as assistant keeper; this slab was lying on the floor and there were footprints in the dirt. He was sure someone had come in during the night and taken something out. I wonder every day what was hidden in there.”

Curran followed Jasper out of the tunnels and obediently drank the tea, doctored with whisky, which was placed before him. He heard his companion say, “Your color’s returning,” and a few moments later, “Would you pardon me asking, sir, is the child’s fair nanny a maid, wife, or widow?”

* * * *

Curran pondered whether to share what Jasper had told him. Morrigan should know, yet his instincts gave warning. Physically she was healthy and strong, yet he always sensed the fragility of her spirit. How would she take the news that a real woman on Cape Wrath had been stoned to death?

Perhaps he should ask Diorbhail for advice. He didn’t like to think his wife was closer to her child’s nanny than she was to him, but he suspected she might well be.

The wind was sharp, cutting through his sark. He’d fetch a coat and go find them. But when he entered the bothy he heard their voices through the open window. They must have returned, and were sitting outside in the warmth of the sun. He heard Olivia cooing.