Warrior Reborn (21 page)

“There’s aplenty we don’t know, that’s sure enough,” Hall agreed. “For instance, were you aware that our little healer travels the Vision world?”

Chase nodded slowly, wondering how Hall had learned of it.

“Were you also aware that you somehow figure into those visions? That Torquil hopes through his sister’s visions to determine which of the two of us is meant to suit some purpose of his?”

That, he had not known.

“I thought as much.” Hall ran a hand through his hair, blanking the expression of worry from his features. “The web is already woven, little brother. We can but pick our way through, hoping we choose the best paths.”

They’d reached the main hall of the keep. As they drew to a stop, Hall knocked upon the door of Torquil’s solar.

Chase watched as the familiar, carefree grin returned to Hall’s face just before Torquil opened the door. It was a skill he could only hope to copy.

“What’s this?” Torquil asked, looking directly at him as a wide smile spread over his face. “You’ve returned. Excellent. Saves me the trouble of repeating myself.”

They were hardly inside the door when another knock sounded and Artur and Ulfr joined them.

“I thought you were unloading the wagon?” Chase knew for a fact Ulfr had intended to do exactly that. Perhaps he’d learned of this meeting from Artur.

“There were others for that sort of work,” Ulfr said.

“Very well,” Torquil began, seating himself behind the big table at the side of the room. “Since everyone is here now, I want you all to be aware that I’ll be sending you as a delegation to call upon the old Sinclair, announcing my desire to bring together the northern clans to counsel on what challenges we could well face in the near future if, as is rumored, the English march against us.”

Chase wondered how great a part Christiana’s visions played in Torquil’s preparation for these challenges.

“Only to Clan Sinclair?” Hall asked.

“Of course no only to the Sinclair. I’ve already dispatched riders to the other houses in each direction within a three-day ride. I’ve but a few preparations left before I send you on yer way. Ulfr, see to it the Tinklers break camp and move on before our guests begin to arrive.”

“We stand ready to do yer bidding, my lord,” Artur offered, earning himself a glare from Ulfr as they all filed out of the solar.

Hall scratched his beard thoughtfully, visibly wincing as his finger passed over the recent wound.

Artur, unwisely, could not let the movement pass unnoticed.

“It’s yer whore what’s done that to you?” he asked, an idiot-like grin breaking over his face.

Hall didn’t answer, but widened his stance, arms loose at his sides.

Chase backed away from the two of them, having seen such a move often enough. You didn’t need to be a body language expert to recognize someone preparing for a fight.

“She’s highly spirited, that one,” Hall said at last.

A normal man would have let it go at that, but Artur didn’t seem to notice the threat he faced. Instead, he pushed forward with another foolish question.

“Perhaps you’d care to share her with some of us, now that you’ve had yer fill of her, aye?”

“And perhaps you’d care to impale your skinny arse on the pointy end of my sword.”

In a flash of polished metal, Hall drew his weapon, the ring of steel loud in the stone entryway. He pointed the blade toward Artur, its tip mere inches from the man’s throat.

“You’d do well, little man, to mind what business is yours. I’ve not yet had my fill of what she has
to offer. And as I told our good laird last night, I’m not a man to share what is mine. Best you remember that and keep your distance, aye? I won’t take it well if I find you sniffing around Mistress Christiana’s tower as long as the woman is there. Do I make myself clear?”

Artur nodded frantically, turning and running the instant Hall lowered his sword.

“I’d be watching my back if I were you,” Ulfr warned, his gaze following after the departing soldier. “He’s no likely to forget this incident.”

“Neither will I, good captain.” Hall’s smile had returned to his face. “Neither will I. Come along, little brother. We’ve much to do to prepare ourselves.”

What Chase wanted to do was to go check on Christiana. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a way for him to do that without drawing attention to both the women staying in her tower.

“I’ve a suspicion about our good laird.” Hall clasped his hands behind his back, increasing the speed of his stride.

“Only one?” For his own part, Chase had many. “I’m pretty sure we aren’t working for the good guy, Hall.”

The big man answered with a snorting noise. “Of that I have no doubt. At the moment, my concern is more centered on the possibility that Torquil attempts to deceive us.”

Them and everyone else on the planet, would be Chase’s guess. “What exactly makes you think—”

“The man lied to us in there. No riders have left Tordenet. Not a single one. I know the faces and none are missing. If he can’t be honest regarding something that seems so small, chances are good that it’s not small. The time has come to be tying up our loose ends and making preparations to leave this place. And that’s exactly what we go to do now.”

Chase agreed wholeheartedly. Nothing around here felt right, except Christiana. She was one loose end he definitely intended to tie up.

“Where are we headed?”

“To have ourselves a chat with the Tinklers,” Hall answered, wearing the first real smile since Chase had returned to Tordenet. “To seek out the assistance of your people.”

T
wenty-seven

I
S THERE ANYTHING
else you need?” Christiana watched doubtfully as her guest drew a stitch through her ripped chemise.

“No,” the other woman replied, head bent to the task at hand.

Christiana had found an old overdress, but it was much too short for Bridget, making it all the more important that they repair the rent in her chemise so that she would have something to cover her legs from her shins down.

“In that case, I’ll retire to my bedchamber. Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything.”

Though she was exhausted, it wasn’t sleep on her mind as she picked up the clay pot holding the elixir Orabilis had prepared for her. There was much she needed to know, and a visit to Skuld’s world was the only place she could find her answers.

She began the slow trek up her winding stairs. Her ankle was healing but stairs, she’d quickly found, aggravated the injury.

After shutting the door to the room at the top
of her tower, she dragged the heavy wooden bar over and fought it into place to ensure she wouldn’t be interrupted. Had she not been tired before she began, that effort alone would have seen to it.

But tired or not, she had to do this now. Torquil had twice sent word for her to hasten to his tower that he might be present while she traveled the Visions, and twice she had sent her excuses.

Her half brother was not a patient man. He would not take no for an answer the next time, and she desperately needed to know what she would confront before she was forced to share that information with him.

She removed the stopper from the clay jug and lifted it to her lips. Flavors of the infused herbs flowed over her tongue, coating her mouth in a burst of familiar sensation.

A sigh of relief heaved up from deep in her chest. At last, she was within reach of that which she needed most—foreknowledge.

She stretched out on her little bed, closing her eyes and clearing her inner senses. Within seconds a tiny speck appeared in her mind’s eye, growing into the brilliant doorway she sought.

Stepping through the opening, she filled her lungs with the warm, moist air permeating the center of the Nine Worlds, then slowly made her way toward the figures sitting under the sheltering arms of the great ash tree.

They ignored her completely, their hands flying
over the colorful threads forming the tapestry on which they worked. All was as it had been before, reassuring her that her last encounter with the goddesses had been nothing more than a bad dream seated in the depths of her own imagination.

She paused at the Well of Fate, dipping her hand into the icy depths of a freshly drawn bucket and lifting the magical water to her lips. The liquid rolled down her throat, sparking a tingling sensation in every part of her body and lifting her from the ground upon which she walked, allowing her to float high over the gates guarding Past, Present, and Future.

“Wait,” she whispered, and her body hung motionless in the air.

Though her time here was always limited and she had much to discover, she shifted her weight to veer off toward Urd’s world of the past. She’d done this only once before, to confirm her suspicion as to what had caused her father’s sudden “illness.” Since finding that proof, she’d avoided this area, finding it more unsettling than that which was yet to come.

But this time something from the past called to her, demanded that she see it. Filling her thoughts with an image of Chase, she pushed forward.

Below her, a sparkle of light drew her attention. A flash of brilliant green burst open like the petals of some gigantic flower and just as quickly, it disappeared, leaving in its wake the body of a man lying on the ground. Chase’s arrival in her world.

She watched events of his past play out in a fast-forward movement of time as he was cocooned in the warmth of a sturdy plaid, and as men from Tordenet approached and rode away. She watched as he walked the trails beside a riderless horse, dressed as he had been when she’d first seen him. She watched until he entered the gates of Tordenet and arrived at the door to her very own tower.

Then, as if an unseen hand plucked her from her perch, her body floated upward and she found herself just inside the gates of Skuld’s world. Not that she had truly expected anything else. She had never been allowed to see herself as she traveled the Visions. Apparently that prohibition applied to the past as well as to the future.

Far, far off in the distance, she spotted a dark hole in the tapestry of the future. A shining circle of bright green light outlined the spot as if to draw attention to the flaw. A pang of guilt washed over her as she realized that was likely the spot from which Chase had been plucked. She, with the aid of the Elf, was responsible for such damage to the tapestry of time.

What was done was done. That moment belonged to Urd’s world now.

Curiosity urged her toward that spot, but she resisted. In prior Visions she’d seen awe-inspiring bits and pieces of Chase’s world. It was those bits and pieces that led her to fear his reaction when the day came that he learned of her part in taking him away from all that. Without giving him any choice,
she and the Elf had separated him from those wonders and perhaps even from those he loved. She wasn’t sure she wanted knowledge of all that he’d left behind.

Besides, it was his path from this point forward that concerned her now. The path he needed to travel to avoid an encounter with death before his appointed time.

As always, the trails closest to her were clear and easy to observe. It was only as they branched off, like roots of some massive tree, that the pathways became obscured with the Mysts of Choice.

Choice obscured what would be, because Choice altered what would be.

She dipped lower, floating over the course Chase currently followed, watching as he and many other men mounted up and passed through the gates of Tordenet, their animals carrying them north at a full gallop. Into the obscuring Mysts.

That was where she must go. It was on that pathway where she’d find the dangers awaiting Chase. The muddied colors snaking through the Mysts were sure proof that evil and death awaited the unwary.

Winds, strong and steady, whipped at her hair and clothing, holding her back, pushing her slowly back out of Skuld’s world.

“No,” she insisted as she found herself once again standing by the Well of Fate.

The bucket that had been drawn to welcome her had disappeared, a clear message that her visit
was at an end. She backed away, head bent, sending her silent thanks to the goddesses as she passed where they sat. It wasn’t their fault she’d wasted precious time here, satisfying her curiosity. Still, it was beyond frustrating to have learned so little. She prayed Skuld would once again allow her to visit, to seek the truths she so desperately needed.

As if in answer, a voice rang out from the circle under the spreading branches of the great tree, Yggdrasil.

“Only as you accept the truths we share will we continue to share them, daughter of Odin.”

They spoke, just as they had in what she’d assumed had been only a dream! It had been real then, not her imagination.

“I dinna ken yer meaning,” she called out, struggling against the winds that pressed her inexorably toward the gaping door ahead. She always accepted the truths of what they allowed her to see.

“But only after they’ve wrestled you to the ground in your attempt to deny them, aye?”

That wasn’t true. She never denied what she learned in her Vision travels.

“Oh, truly? Did you not deny the truth of your feelings for the one you seek to save? As you accepted that, so you must accept what you have seen today. Only then will I allow you to travel my world again.”

As if shoved by a giant hand, Christiana fell backward through the shining doorway, into the
enormous void that would lead her to her own world.

When her eyes opened, she once again lay in her bed. She had no idea how long she had been gone, only that the sun shining through the window high on her stone wall was gone, replaced with a shaft of moonlight.

Realization hit her like a slap to the face as she rose from where she lay.

Skuld had indeed shared with her something of great importance. And though she had no idea what the things she’d seen meant, she knew she had to find Chase as soon as possible to share what she’d learned. She had to convince him not to take any chances before she again traveled Skuld’s world, even if that meant confessing her own responsibility for his being here.