A Kind of Magic (2 page)

Rowan considered. He was much troubled and not only by the night’s odd occurrence. The others had been urging him to consult the wisewoman of Glenshael since the message had come from the lord of the Isles. He didn’t like to, for he preferred real answers to magical ones. He was the only one of the clan who seemed to. If he was going to do it, now was as good a time as any.

Though not until after he’d had his porridge, he decided.

* * * * *

“So you’ve come to ask my help at last, Rowan Murray?”

The White Lady of Glenshael did indeed have white hair but she was no bent-over old crone with gnarled hands and warts on her nose. Indeed no, she was fair of face and form, though hardly young, with bright eyes and soft cheeks and all the pride in the world in her manner. Her hair hung down to her waist in thick plaits and her dress was of purest white wool. A golden-jeweled brooch fastened her plaid mantle at her throat.

Her house was small, tucked neatly beneath an overhang of rock on a ledge high above the glen. Rowan thought that it perched like an eagle’s nest above the trees and peaty 9

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stream below. It gave a fine view, not just of the valley but of the hills to the north and the wild sea beyond.

It had been a hard climb up the narrow path after leaving Aidan to watch the horses. Rowan stood before the White Lady a few moments while she watched him and he caught his breath. Finally he nodded in answer to her question and followed her into her house.

A fire burned at the center of the room, lighting and warming the interior of the stone structure. A pot simmered over the fire, full of a rich, meaty broth seasoned with herbs. Whatever the White Lady was cooking, was no doubt for her dinner and not some arcane love or healing potion. Her greatest gift was in seeing the shape of the future. Her wisdom was so revered that any who came to her had to vow to obey her advice or risk being eternally cursed.

He disliked spells and curses and magic riddles though he didn’t shun their usefulness. He disliked making promises before he knew what was asked of him, but still, here he was.

“Last night’s portent was too much for even your dour stubbornness, I see,” the White Lady told him as they took seats by her fire.

Rowan was a man who preferred keeping his thoughts to himself. Words did not come easily to him but he gathered as many as he could together and spoke his concerns aloud. “We Murrays have troubles. The Harboths and the Norsemen raid our cattle and crops, and the land and sea have been hard enough on us these last few seasons. Now the lord of the Isles comes within two months’ time to trouble us.”

The White Lady nodded. “You have many a mortal care, Rowan Murray. And a few magical ones as well.”

Rowan nodded his head. “The fair folk are troublesome,” he admitted.

She laughed. “I spoke of the would-be wizards and wisewomen within your own walls.”

Rowan’s habitual frown deepened. “I come here not to discuss my family but to seek advice for our troubles. Nature has been hard on us this year,” Rowan told her.

“Fires, storms, sickness. The lights in the sky last night seemed a dread omen to me.”

She stabbed him with a proud and angry glare. “What do you know or any of yours know of reading omens, Rowan Murray? Have you the gift or have I?” she demanded.

He ducked his head. “You do, Lady.”

“That I have, so you let me decide what that noise and fire was all about.” Her expression grew softer. “I saw your fate last night, Rowan Murray. Shall I tell it to you?”

“My own fate is not so important to me,” he answered. “I fear the lord of the Isles plots to destroy my clan. My people need help and hope and I know not where to turn.”

“You are their hope so your fate is tied to theirs.”

He considered then nodded.

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She stood. He rose with her, and though he was far taller than the White Lady of Glenshael, it seemed that she towered over him as she spoke. “Hear me, Rowan of the Murray Clan, laird of the seafaring people. Hear and obey or lose all that you hold dear for your defiance of my aid.”

Rowan knew what was expected next, though no one had ever told him just how the vow was made to the White Lady. He bent over and slipped a small dagger out of the top of his boot. With the sharp tip of the blade he pierced the skin of his hand, just enough for a few drops of blood to seep onto his palm. He held up his open hand.

“With my own blood I swear,” he told the wisewoman.

She pressed her palm flat against his, the small prick of pain dissipated at her soft touch. “Your blood speaks true.”

She stepped back, her magic as thick around her as a dark cloak. Rowan could practically breath it in, like scented smoke. A glance at his palm showed him that the small wound had already healed.

“Very well.” She crossed her arms and closed her eyes. “This is the way to save your people,” she said.

“How?” Rowan leaned forward intently. He held his breath.

“You’ll meet the future standing in the middle of the road on your way home. You must marry her.”

He had not known what to expect. He’d hoped for some brilliant plan to defeat the Harboths once and for all. He’d hoped for a spell to make the weather more friendly to his fields and flocks, or some trick to make the fish more abundant in Murray nets. He’d hoped for foreknowledge of what the lord of the Isles intended. He was prepared for anything but what the White Lady told him he must do.

“What?”

She looked at him, far too much merriment in her gaze for his liking. “You must marry the first woman you meet on your way home.”

“What?”

“Are you deaf, man? Should I be more specific? You’ll know her by the golden necklace she wears about her throat. Besides, she’ll be the only woman you meet on the way back to Cape Wrath.”

“I’ve no mind to marry.”

“And I’ve no care what you have a mind for.” She pointed toward the door. “You made your vow, now live by it, Rowan Murray. Now be gone and get yourself married.

Name the first girl babe after me,” she called after him as he hurried angrily out. He heard her laugh as he slammed the door behind him.

Twice he nearly stumbled and fell headfirst off the cliff as he hurried down the path. Anger always made him heedless though he was not quite so angry as to fall to his death just because he didn’t like the woman’s advice. Advice he was oath bound to heed. He was more angry at himself than the White Lady. She was half mortal, half 11

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fairy born, and fairy folk were too mischievous for any mortal’s good. He knew that well enough.

It didn’t help that Aidan’s silvery green eyes were narrowed with perpetual amusement as Rowan approached him. “You’ve not got goat’s feet, brother,” he said.

“You should remember that when you’re leaping down mountains.”

Rowan frowned at his brother in answer and mounted his horse for the long ride home. Aidan’s laughter followed him down the track then after a little while so did Aidan.

When the lad caught up to him, Rowan said, before Aidan could ask what the White Lady had predicted, “Ride ahead to Cape Wrath. Tell Walter to send his daughter Meg out to meet me at the ford.”

“Why?”

Rowan didn’t answer. He knew Aidan had his own designs on pretty Meg but those designs were not the honorable sort. Rowan’s were.

On his hurtle down the mountain Rowan had considered just how to deal with the White Lady’s foolish requirement for him to marry the first woman he met. He’d decided to take his fate into his own hands and arrange the match himself. Meg was fair and mostly biddable—the Lord knew there were few enough tame women among his clan folk. If he must have a wife, the one thing he required was meek obedience from her. Besides, Meg was gifted with the sort of hips that told a man she would make a fine mother.

The wisewoman was right in that it was time he sired an heir, whether he wanted to share his life with a woman or not. Meg would do. For the most part he was cursed with a tribe of spell-chanting Amazons. Was it any wonder he hadn’t sought a wife before now?

Still, he feared that the White Lady had her heart set on his marrying a woman from the Harboth clan. In a few hours he would have a bride from among his own people. He didn’t like practicing deceit to fulfill an oath but if that was the only reasonable way he could fulfill it, then deceitful he would be.

“Just have her meet me,” he told Aidan. “Go on.”

Aidan gave him a disgusted look but rode on ahead. Rowan decided to take a longer way home to give Aidan time to carry out his mission and turned off to follow a side track through wooded hills that would lead him eventually to the river ford. The stony way he chose was more often used by deer than people. He had no fear of meeting any woman he didn’t want, with or without a gold necklace.

* * * * *

“Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”

Maddie spoke aloud to reassure herself. Actually nothing was fine and Maddie didn’t know what to do about it. She knew she was somewhere on the mainland but she 12

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didn’t know what had happened to Kevin Macleish or the pilot of the small plane they had taken out of Stornoway the night before.

There were a lot of things she didn’t know and quite a few that were very mussed up in her memory. She remembered flashes of bright light in the sky, like fireworks—or a meteor shower. She remembered the plane starting the long, dizzying, spiraling plunge through the lights toward the ground and knowing that she was going to die.

Then she woke up. The plane was on the ground, intact but perched on a steep hillside instead of properly resting on the flat ground of a runway. The pilot was gone and Kevin was gone, she was the only person on board. She couldn’t imagine Kevin or the pilot going for help without waking her first. Nothing made any sense.

The plane’s radio didn’t work nor did the engines, though nothing seemed to be damaged. So far no rescuers had shown up to help them from the plane that wasn’t actually wrecked. It looked as if she were going to have to get down off the mountain and find help herself. She’d waited long enough, cowered actually, it was time for some decisive action.

Outside it was cool and damp, but she’d gotten used to that since she’d come to work in Scotland. Thick mist hung above the craggy peaks of nearby mountains. When she stepped out of the airplane door, the ground beneath her feet was rocky, scattered with patches of gorse and wildflowers.

She heard water trickling nearby and headed toward the sound. At the tiny stream she discovered a sort of beaten-earth track. It wasn’t exactly a road but it was a sign of habitation. So she followed it along a narrow ridge that led down into a wooded valley.

Just as Maddie reached a slightly wider path, a horseman appeared from around a turn.

He had long brown hair, was barelegged, wore a thigh-length dark yellow shirt and a plaid cape. The hilt of a sword was visible over his left shoulder. He was dressed in fact, exactly like an ancient barbarian Highlander.

Maddie peered at him for one confused moment. Then she put her hands on her hips and demanded, “Toby Coltrane, what are you doing in that getup?”

He looked about as out of place in modern Scotland as the small airplane back up on the hillside would have been in the Middle Ages. Besides, Toby was from Montana and didn’t have a drop of Scots blood in him as far as she knew.

“You’re supposed to be in Glasgow,” she reminded him as he continued to glower down at her from his incongruous presence on the big horse.

He was leaner than she remembered. His features were sharply chiseled and far too dangerous-looking for anyone’s good. He glared at her out of ice blue eyes. Those unfamiliar eyes flicked over her, coldly assessing. “At least you’re not a Harboth.”

She had to be dreaming.

Dream or not, Maddie considered running for it as he got down off his horse. She backed up a pace as he stalked toward her.

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Rowan Murray grabbed the red-haired woman by the arm. She was a stranger to him, dressed in odd gray clothes. She wore a close-fitting necklace around her slender throat. It looked to be twisted strands of thin gold and copper chains. The necklace was proof that she would fulfill the White Lady’s prophecy.

“Are you wed?” he demanded as he pulled the woman close.

Maddie looked wildly at the angry stranger who had to be Toby. “What?”

“Are you wed?” This time the words were even fiercer.

She was annoyed despite her sudden terror. “You know very well I’m not.”

“Have you a man of your own?”

This was insane. All of it. The meteors. The plane crash. Especially finding Toby dressed like a Highlander and asking strange questions.

“No,” she told him. How could he, of all people, ask her such a thing?

“Well, then,” he said, voice rough with fury. “I suppose I’ll have to marry you.”

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“What?”

Rowan tugged the stranger toward his horse.

“What are you talking about?” Her voice rose to an angry shout. “This isn’t funny.

Let go of me!”

Rowan grasped her around her waist and settled her on the broad back of his mount. He had questions for her but he kept them to himself for now. He wanted to be inside the stout gates of his stronghold before he encountered any more strangers. The chances were there were armed men about, from some raiding ship moored on the coast, he guessed. For he could think of no other way this stranger, who was to be his bride, had come onto his lands. The White Lady had not said he would have to fight for the woman but he didn’t intend to take the chance she’d left that little part out of the prophecy.

He showed her his dagger and said, “Be quiet.”

She gasped at the sight of the bare blade but said no more. He mounted behind her, put one arm around her waist and kicked the horse into motion.

“Why should I be quiet?” She snarled the words after a tense pause. He could feel her body tremble in his embrace.