Lord of the Highlands (37 page)

The militiaman wavered, gave an uneven shake to his head, and then collapsed into the river.

The third and last man approached fast at Will’s back, and he spun to face him, just in time to see Ormond hobbling behind, arms still trussed at his back. His friend dove for the militiaman, slamming awkwardly into him, both falling with a splash into the river.

Ormonde struggled to stand but his feet kept sliding on the viscous muck of the river bottom. His trussed hands made his body awkward, and his head slipped below the surface of the freezing water. He bobbed up, inhaled sharply, and disappeared again.

The militiaman had recovered from his fall and stalked toward Will, Ormonde ready to drown if he didn’t act fast.

Rollo reached down, his frozen fingers fumbling along his calf. His dagger. He gripped it, careful to keep ahold of the wet hilt. Standing tall, he took the blade of the
sgian dubh
between his thumb and fingers, and threw.

The man teetered, clawing at the knife stuck in his throat, and then disappeared into the black water.

Will stumbled, leaping for his friend. Hooking his hand under Ormonde’s arm, he pulled him to standing.

“That was quite a pretty throw,” Ormonde said, steadying himself. He feigned nonchalance, but Will heard the relief in his voice.

“MacColla’s woman showed me the trick.” Will stood behind him, studying his wrists. The knots were tight, the bonds cloth, not rope.

“Good Lord,” Ormonde exclaimed. “You’re better men than I with these . . .
uncommon
women of yours.”

Will laughed low, picking at the knots. The water had made them tenacious, and he leaned down to tear the fabric with his teeth. “I seem to always be saving your hide,” he grumbled, then spat a thread from his tongue.

“It’s the hair, Will.” Ormonde shook out his arms, and gestured to his bright red curls, dusky brown in the moonlight. “I stand out.”

“Then how did you manage not to get shot?” Rollo asked, eyeing his friend for injuries. “Such fireworks. The Gloucester militia must’ve expelled their munitions stores for the next month.”

“Stand out I may,” Ormonde assured him, “but I am also quite wily.”

“I see.” Will chuckled. “Or the militiamen are blind in the dark, more like.”

There was a light splashing along the bank, and, locking eyes, both men froze. Turning in unison, they poised for attack. But it was only Massey, chest heaving with exertion, peering into the darkness of the river. “Oh,” he said simply, seeing Ormonde standing shoulder to shoulder with Will.

Will smiled. Massey’s single “oh” spoke volumes. He turned his attention to the water, scudding his feet along the riverbed.

“Is this what you’re looking for?” Ormonde slipped under to dig in the silt, coming back up with Will’s muddied staff. “You took a great risk, helping us,” he said, dashing the water from his face. “You have my gratitude. And it seems it is I who owe you now.”

Will raised his hands in protest. “Och, please man, let’s just call the tally even.”

The two men laughed low. “Now go, friend,” Ormonde said, handing Rollo his cane. “You’ve done enough. Go to your woman.”

“
Now
you’d have me leave?” Tugging his wet collar from where it clung at his neck, Will shook his head. “Soaked, cold, and disarmed? Thank you, no.” He shivered, looking downriver to where the fishing boat bobbed near the dock. “We’ll take that tub down to Bristol and part ways there. I might hate sailing, but it’ll be the fastest way between here and Lochaber.”

Ormonde laughed, clapped Will on the back, then shuddered as a sudden chill seized him. “Good Lord, man,” he said, a smile still on his face. “Lochaber? You must really love this woman.”

“Aye,” Will said simply. “Love her I do.”

Chapter 39

Will stood before the stone tablet, cane forgotten at his feet. He turned the star chart in his hands, careful not to tear the tattered paper. It had gotten a thorough soaking in the river, and some of the lines and dots had bled into formless clouds of gray ink.

He placed it over the stone. Rotated it, studying the map from a different angle.

He needed to be certain. He’d have only one chance to go to Felicity, and he hoped he knew what he was doing.

“The hubris of youth!” a voice cackled, and even before he spun to see, he knew he’d find the old witch Gormshuil there.

“Took you longer than I’d thought,” she said. She walked toward him, her approach along the path almost leisurely. The morning sun cut through the trees at a sharp angle, turning her gray braid into a white rope hanging over her shoulder. Though long, the wiry wisps didn’t do much to conceal her pale scalp.

“You’re a stubborn one, William Rollo.” Gormshuil stopped, standing in front of him, sucking thoughtfully at her teeth. She smelled of earth and cherry-sweet smoke. “Who knows where you’d end up without my help?” she scolded, snatching the chart from his hands.

“What have you done?” She muttered and shook her head, studying the chart. Her features danced a medley of expressions: grunted annoyance, to anxious confusion, to squawks of impish humor.

“I kept it as safely as I could,” Will said, his tone uncharacteristically hesitant.

“Let’s pray you’re able to mind your own self better than you did this wee scrap.” Gormshuil’s eyes were the white blue of a hazy sky, and they hardened on him. “Do you know what it is you attempt?”

“Aye, of course—”

“
Ist
, boy, and listen. Do you know where it is you go? Your woman’s world is not your world.”

“Felicity
is
my world,” he answered quickly and surely.

“I pray you’re correct.” Gormshuil chewed thoughtfully at her lip. “Because I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to return.”

“I don’t want to return,” he said, and he meant it.

He thought on his family. Jamie was dead, and his mother might as well be. Will would mourn his father, but if the attentions of one attractive, older maid were any indication, the man was recovering just fine.

And though Will would miss his friends, he’d not miss how their obsessions had a way of drawing him in. He’d given his all to help MacColla, to help Graham. He loved those men like brothers, and would do it all again, but they lived on, with their own concerns and loves. While Will was left always alone, in the wake of the lives of others.

And then there was Ormonde. Will gave a fond and knowing chuckle. God love him, but the man was like the tides, pulling all under and down, to the neglect of anyone else’s desires but his own.

He considered his country. Oliver Cromwell was dead, and his son Richard ousted from power. Charles II was well on his way to being restored as king.

No
, he thought. He knew exactly what world he was leaving. “I know what I do,” he told the woman. “And I ask that you help me.”

She studied him silently, then with a sly smile and a brisk nod, Gormshuil returned the star chart to the granite tablet.

She licked her thumb, smudging at some of the lines on the page. “You’ll do like so,” she told him. Her finger was wrinkled and thin, the pad of her fingertip flattened with age, but it moved fluidly over the paper, gracefully outlining shapes on the chart. “Trace thus.”

Goose bumps pebbled his skin with the sensation that he glimpsed some deeper geometry, some overreaching structure to the universe.

“Clear your mind,” she snapped, and Will wondered if the witch had read his thoughts. “Reason not, Will Rollo. Keep your thoughts a tranquil pool. Felicity the only ripple on its surface.”

Dozens of questions gnawed at the edges of his brain, and he fought them all. Inner calm had always been, for him, hard-won. He wanted to ask just one more thing, but before he had a moment to seize on a single question, Gormshuil gave a sharp sniff and rolled her eyes back in her head.

“Now,” she hissed. “Off with you, now.” She wheezed a long exhale. “Go.”

The witch’s hands gripped his upper arms, turning him to face the tablet. Though an old woman, her grip was strong, and those long, bony fingers cut into him like talons.

“For her, time has slowed,” she intoned. “But it’s not stopped. She, a lone candle among millions. If you want to find the woman you seek, you must go. Now.”

He hadn’t considered he might travel forward in time, only to not find her. Panic seized him. He gripped the stone, anchoring the paper to the tablet with one hand.

The other flitted over the chart in rapid movements that felt almost automatic, remembered somehow. His arms were numb where Gormshuil gripped him, and he wondered distantly if she weren’t transmitting some secret magic through her touch.

The buzzing began at his feet, a warmth at the soles, as if he were being permanently rift from the earth. It intensified, crackled up his legs, molten heat locking his limbs.

Is this what Felicity had felt?
God, no.
Had he made her do this, made her feel such pain?

His legs, they were on fire now, and blooming into a pain beyond comprehension. Such pain, as if he were dissolving, a man carved of wax, melting to the ground.

Always, it came down to his accursed legs. With that thought, an alarm sounded. The witch said he must be a calm pool, and he tried desperately to blank his mind. But his thoughts kept returning to his legs.

His damned cane. He’d need his cane. But Will was already being sucked under. Immobilized now, but for a finger still moving over the paper, pure instinct driving his gestures.

Black seeped in at the edges of his vision, the world closing and tunneling until there was only the paper before him.

Light and sound screeched in his head. Blinding, numbing, deafening sensation. His head whirling, his body a raw nerve, unable to break free.

And then Will’s body slammed to the earth.

It took him a moment to realize the cool moss beneath his hands. To realize the stone cutting into his cheek.

Felicity.
Where was she?

Had he traveled? Was she there?

Will raised his head, darting his eyes, making sense of his dim surroundings. Ghastly walls of leaves and berries rose all around. It was belladonna, bearing deadly Devil’s Cherries, their color the rich and repugnant purple of a vicious bruise.

The labyrinth.
He was in the maze. It closed around him, like some malignant prison hemming him in. Keeping him from Felicity.

He must find her.
One among millions
, the witch had said. His mind blanked, all thought dumping from his brain but for the single image of Felicity. She was the only thing that existed, the only thing that mattered.

Frantic, Will scrambled forward. He scrambled on hands and knees, scrambled into a lope, and then into a run. He raced through the maze, his body careering off the soft and obscene give of the labyrinth walls. He moved like a drunken man, a possessed man. Frantic only to find Felicity.

He vaulted from the opening of the maze, and ran. Breath filled his lungs, the air suddenly fresher, clearer. His legs pulsed and his chest swelled, and he wondered at the strange sensations.

Will skidded to a halt. His legs.

He doubled over, hands on thighs, panting for breath.

His legs, they were straight and strong.

The maze had transformed him. A man whole once more. And all because of Felicity.

There was a strange sound from faraway, rising over the hill as surely as pipes on the eve of battle.

He sprang back into a run. Felicity had been right. They were destined to be together. Steely determination drove him hard, his arms and legs pumping.

He crested the hill to see a street winding at the base of the valley. And there were vehicles there, moving so fast along, so foreign and so unfathomable. He realized they must be the car that Felicity had told him about—a carriage of steel requiring no horse.

He grinned broadly, and a laugh erupted from deep in his soul. What a place of miracles this was.

Will bounded down the hill and stopped on the side of the road, panting and marveling. He thought he must look a crazed man.

A car slowed, then stopped beside him. Will knew he should be wary, but the open smile of its driver put him at his ease.

“Are you from the Renaissance Faire too?” the man asked.

Will leaned closer, trying to make sense of his accent. He shrugged his confusion.

A glass pane at the rear of the car rolled down. “Hey,” a woman said, leaning out. “Where’d you guys find those clothes? They’re awesome. So realistic.”

Will looked blankly. What to say? His Felicity,
a lone candle among millions
. He wondered if these people might be able to help. “Have you seen—”

“The woman in lavender?” she finished for him.

“The blonde,” the driver stated. “Are you missing a pretty blonde?”

“Aye.” Will tried to temper his sudden joy in front of these strangers. “I’m looking for that woman.”

“Hop in, dude.”

The door was barely closed behind him when the driver took off. Will barked out a laugh despite himself, to feel his body jolt so in space. It was exhilarating, this speeding carriage.

“Man, your friend was in some rough shape.” It was the person seated next to the driver who spoke.

“Is Felicity safe?” Will asked quickly, fear hardening his voice to steel.

“Easy, cowboy.” The driver chuckled. “She’s fine.”

“A little on the emotional side, though,” the woman said. Will had settled himself next to her, crushing himself as much as possible along the door so as not to press up against her so intimately. “Did you have a fight or something?”

“That explains it,” the driver said.

“Ohhhh,” another said, “now I get it.”

“She seemed pretty bummed out,” the woman added.

“Man,” the other chimed in, “I wouldn’t want to be you.”