The Raven's Wish (20 page)

Ruari tried to turn on Duncan, who pressed the dirk against his back.

"Nor will you harm this man," Elspeth said, her voice clear and hard. "He is Duncan Macrae, the queen's own lawyer. You must honor this man's authority."

"Macrae!" The word was a snarl. Flaring his nostrils, Ruari slid a glare at him, and spat. Duncan watched him steadily, quelling the bitter anger that rose in him. He gave support to Elspeth's warning by his unwavering gaze and the pressure of his dirk point.

With a powerful wrench, Ruari burst away from Duncan, and began to run. When Duncan leaped forward to pursue him, Elspeth leaped too, pulling hard at Duncan's arm.

"Let him go!" she said. Duncan looked at her with surprise.

Reaching his pony, Ruari vaulted up, lifted the reins and rode out onto the moor. A sudden explosion of thunder ripped through the tree cover.

Elspeth looked up at Duncan silently, breathing fast.

"
Dhia
," he muttered, shoving his fingers through his hair. "We would be safer if the man were dead, girl."

"I wanted you to do it," she said, "but I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"If you killed him, you might seal your own fate. He is John MacDonald's nephew, and you are the queen's lieutenant in the eastern Highlands. You could be brought to trial."

He sighed, knowing the truth of it. Seeing that she trembled, he wrapped his fingers around her arm to steady her. "Cease your fretting," he said. "No harm will come to me." Thunder rose, wild and loud, and the wind tore at their hair. He looked up. "A bolt of lightning is a much more serious threat now. We need to find some shelter."

Nodding, Elspeth grabbed his hand. "Come this way."

She yanked on his arm and they began to run through the birches and down a little hill. In the distance, a stiff thread of lightning spooled to the ground. The first drops of rain began to splash, fat and cold.

"This way!" she shouted over the storm.

Chapter 12

`I'll grow into your arms two

Like iron in hot fire;

But hold me fast, let me not go,

Then you'll have your desire.'

~Tam Lin"

Thunder rolled through the sky and lightning struck the moor behind them with a frightening crash. Within moments, they were running through a soaking, pounding rain. Seeing a little thatched-roof hut between some trees, Duncan headed there, pulling her with him.

The door swung open easily, and he yanked her inside, slamming the door shut. Leaning against it, breathing hard, only then did he look around to see who stood there, no doubt surprised by their sudden entrance.

"No one lives here," Elspeth said, breathing fast. "This is a shieling hut, used by the herders during the summer pasturing." She wiped at her wet face with the palm of her hand, pushing at the tangle of hair that had slipped out of her braid. "We can make a fire. There will be blankets here, too."

Nodding, Duncan continued to lean against the door, feeling wind gusts batter against it, and looked around the hut. A small window admitted stormy light into the dank room; a stone hearth lay in the middle of the floor, cold and empty.

A flash of lightning illuminated the room. Elspeth walked over to a wooden chest, opened it, and took out folded plaids. A blast of rain swept in the little window. Duncan could feel the cold spray from where he stood.

Elspeth went to the window and closed the shutter, fastening it with a leather loop. In the sudden darkness, cracks in the door and window emitted thin light.

With her back turned, Elspeth unwrapped her long plaid. In the dimness, her linen shirt was a pale blur, her bare legs a slender, graceful gleam. She drew a blanket over her shoulders and tossed the other toward him, then draped her plaid over the table to dry.

"Your plaid is wet," she said. "Use the other blanket." He moved away from the door and took off his belt, then unwrapped his plaid and removed his boots, to stand in his long shirt. He draped the old blanket, which smelled pungent and musty, over his shoulders, and hung his wet plaid over the table beside hers.

Elspeth sat by the cold hearth, holding two sticks in her hands. Setting one upright against the other, she began to twirl the vertical stick. After several attempts, she emitted a little cry of frustration.

"Let me," Duncan said. Slipping his dirk from its sheath, he went over to kneel beside her. He felt the chill in her small fingers as she handed the sticks to him.

His father had taught him how to make a need-fire when he had been a child. With the dirk, he sliced at one stick, sharpening the end. Then he set the point into a depression cut in the other stick, and rolled the upright stick patiently between his palms.

Soon he smelled a wisp of smoke. A flame jumped up, a tiny golden light in the dark. With a little tug at his heart, he remembered the wide grin of approval his father would give him whenever Duncan had managed to start the fire.

He glanced at her, and she smiled. The faint gold light revealed the elusive dimple in her cheek. "There are peat blocks in the back corner," she said, and went to fetch them, stacking them inside the stone circle. Adding the flame, Duncan nurtured it, blowing, waiting. The glow caught and spread into the dry peat with a crackle and a waft of musty sweetness. Smoke stung his eyes as it drifted upward towards an opening in the roof.

Duncan sat beside Elspeth, and held his hands out to the growing heat. They listened to the moaning wind and the steady patter of rain on the thatched roof. She jumped slightly at a loud burst of thunder, followed by a close crack of lightning.

"The storm will not last," he said.

"I wonder if my cousins found shelter," she said, as another growl of thunder rolled past.

"They might have made it back to Glenran before the storm. Ruari, though, was surely caught by this."

She nodded. The low firelight threw a web of amber patterns across the smooth skin of her cheeks, and lent a golden sparkle to the curls that framed her brow.

"You showed courage to face him as you did," he said.

"I was angry," she said. "And I knew that you would never let him harm me."

"Why did you strike him for Bethoc?" he asked.

She looked down. "He hurt her, once," she said softly.

He nodded. "You gave him a cut and a damning. He ran from you, not from me," he said, and lifted a brow at her.

She slid him a quick look, her clear gray eyes reflecting flame. "I saw how easily you could have cut his throat. But you held back, though your blade shook with it. I thought long-robes were raised in libraries and fed on ink and paper. But you know hunting and raiding, and how to take a man to the ground and hold him there."

He twitched back a smile. "This long-robe has seen more than libraries and trial rooms. I have lived on both sides of the law. And with both Scots."

She tilted her head. "What do you mean, both Scots?"

"In the Lowlands, the Highlanders are called wild Scots. And they call Lowlanders the housekeeping Scots."

"Are you?"

"Am I what?" He relaxed back on his side, reclining on an elbow, sliding his bare feet toward the heat of the hearth.

"Are you a housekeeping Scot?"

"I have rooms in Edinburgh, and a woman to keep them."

She lowered her eyes away from him. "Ah. I see."

He grinned, knowing she did not see, and delighted that she was bothered by it at all. "The woman who keeps my house is at least a hundred years old, and related to my mother's family. Did you think I was married?"

She shrugged. He saw her cheeks ripen in the amber light.

"Could you not tell that with your Sight?"

"I cannot read you so well, I think," she said.

He nearly laughed at that. She read him better than she knew. He remembered what she had said about the scar he had gotten at the hands of the MacDonalds. But he would keep that to himself. "You told disaster for me fast enough when I first came here. I have suffered your angry warnings for some time now."

"But you will not listen to my warnings, even now that I have told you just what I saw for you." She turned wide eyes to him. "I have no anger toward you, only concern."

He raised an eyebrow. "Concern? Is that why you pulled a dirk on me in my bed, or cannoned a door into my face? Is that why you walk ahead of me as if you would rather speak to a stone about the weather than to me about any matter at all? Spare me your concern, girl. Enemies would be kinder."

She flushed. "I do have a temper."

"You do. And you have a well of pride in that red-gold head." He held out his hand, wiggling his long fingers at her. "Here, take my hand and try to read me with your Sight."

She looked at him but made no move. Sighing, he took her hand. "Here. You will find that I will live a very long life. Perhaps that will ease your concern."

She pushed his hand away. "I am no teller of fortunes like the gypsies that travel through here now and again. I am a seer. The knowledge seeks me. I do not look for it."

"You do not ask the future with bones and stones and such?"

"Bethoc looks with stones, or water, or fire. She taught me how to do that, but I prefer to wait for the knowledge to come. Sometimes I do sense what lies in someone's past, or I know when danger comes, or where the animals might be. The presence of cattle and deer is easy to feel." She shrugged. "But difficult to explain. But true visions—ah, they come fast and sharp and without warning."

"Did you know Ruari would attack you, then?"

She shook her head. "I only felt uneasy. Not every unfortunate thing is foretold."

"Have you had the Sight all your life?" He sat straighter, listening attentively. He could not easily accept the idea of prophecy. But he had to admit that Elspeth possessed some ability that could not be defined or measured. Because he was curious to know more about her, he was curious about the Sight.

More thunder, followed by the violent crash of lightning, seemed to shake the little house. Elspeth drew a breath and clutched the blanket around her shoulders.

"I was very small when the Sight first came to me," she said. "I saw a young gillie standing by the hearth in the great hall, wet to the skin, holding his hands out to the fire. He looked at me, and his face was pale like ice—" she caught her breath, and then went on. "I asked him if he wanted a blanket. He was dripping water where he stood, and shivering. I called my aunt. She came into the room and said that no one was there and scolded me."

"The gillie was not there?"

"The floorstones were dry. But I saw him, I spoke to him. I still remember his face. The next morning he drowned while crossing a river."

Duncan nodded, thoughtful. "Magnus told me that your visions are always true ones."

"I have never been wrong."

"But this vision will prove wrong." He raised his eyes to hers. The conviction that he felt steeled his glance.

She looked away. "You do not believe in the Sight."

"I do not. This vision frightens you, not me. This time you will be wrong, Elspeth."

"I should never have told you," she said. "No man should hear a prediction of his death. It is too great a burden."

He took her hand, sliding his fingers over cool skin, small bones. "I am not afraid of this." She would have pulled her hand back, but he held it. "Look at me, girl."

She lifted her eyes. He saw fear in her silver-gray gaze, not of him, but for him. He saw hurt there, too; if there was a burden here, she carried the weight of it.

Inside him, something seemed to give, seemed to open and melt. He wanted to offer her some comfort. She was hurting inside because of what she feared for him; he wanted to give her reassurance that none of this would touch him.

Letting go of her hand, he slipped his fingers along the side of her face. She looked up at him. Beneath his hand, the bones of her jaw and her slender neck felt small and vulnerable.

"Listen to me," he murmured. "I am not a doomed man. No vision has power over me."

She gazed at him steadily. "I wish that were true."

"It is. I will not let it happen."

She looked away. Beneath his hand, he felt her swallow.

"Do you understand? I will not let it happen."

"Bethoc says that when a vision comes like that, it is destined," she whispered. "How can fate be stopped?"

His thumb traced along her cheek. He thought he saw the limpid gleam of tears in her eyes. "Who can say what fate will hold for me, or for you? I feel no fear of this. None."

"I do not want this to happen to you. Before, I did not care so much, but now..." A tear slipped out, and the warm drop touched his hand.

A force gathered in him, like the pull of an eddy, like the force of a wind that moves the clouds before it. His heart thundered softly as he smoothed his fingers down her cheek, along her jaw. He swore to himself, then, that he would prove to her that the vision was wrong. No fear swirled in his belly when she spoke of this thing. He wanted to convince her—he needed to convince her—that he was safe.