A Templar's Gifts (16 page)

T
he dread of not knowing what was to come was like a sour berry in my mouth. And as if I were a plaid unraveling, Bertrand's healing was failing with every league I traveled.

“Work yer shields.” Bertrand's parting advice prodded
me as I traveled. The road grew dark and the moon hung as a bare sliver in the sky that waned as I crossed the wooded land toward the coast. The keening wind played deep in my ears as thoughts of losing Aine battled with those of losing everything else. My eyes were gritty and the ache of backlash pulsed in my jaw. I worked my shields as I rode, trying to break free of the thoughts that haunted me.

Focus.
The sound of night crowded my ears.
Ground.
I reached for the solid earth beneath the hooves of my mount.

And with no warning at all a searing pain slammed into my shoulder, knocking me from the horse.

I hit the ground with bone-jarring contact and hissed as my fingers groped and caught the shaft of the arrow that had pierced me. Out of habit and desperation, I reached for the power.

No, Tormod!
The voice that filled my mind demanded that I take heed, but it was beyond too late. Power came at my frantic call, crashing its way through me. Dark became light and flowed once more to dark. Heat flowed in my veins and my body felt as if I had burst into flame. The pain in my shoulder was nothing compared to the agony tearing apart my mind and body.

I hadn't felt the attack coming. I couldn't sense it.

That should have explained it all.

“N
ice o' ye to rejoin the waking world, Tormod.” My guts surged to my throat as Gaylen gripped my hair and yanked until my neck was stretched and I opened my eyes. I felt the blade press against the sensitive skin there. “Where is it?” he said in a dead soft voice that made me quiver. “Don't think to play with me, Tormod. I guarantee it will go badly for yer precious lass.”

Aine.
“What are ye talkin' about?” I stalled.

I had hoped that he was bluffing, but his next words squashed the notion. “The thing that ye found, Tormod. The vessel o' power that the whole o' the world is now seeking. Ye will give it to me,” he said in a way that brooked no argument. “There are things no man can withstand.”

I stared hard, trying to understand how he could know about the Holy Vessel and why it meant anything to him. “Ye shot me? Why?”

He looked at me as if I were daft. “Ye were fleeing,” he said. “I need ye.” He said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. My pain and injury were nothing that troubled his conscience.

“Why would ye need me? I'm nothing.” I struggled to find a way out of this.

“Oh, no, ye're worth quite a bit to many, as is the thing that ye found.” His eyes were eerie in the dark. Blank like his soul's signature.

“I don't have it,” I said boldly.

“Aye, but ye will take me to it,” he replied a bit too smugly.

“What makes ye think I would do that?” Bravado in the face of the knife at my throat, but I felt good for it still.

He was unmoved. “If ye don't, yer fair lass will pay the fee.”

“I'll kill ye if ye lay one hand on her!” I snarled.

“Touching. Young love,” he mocked. “Shame I'll have to cut it short this way.” He pressed the knife harder and I felt it pierce my skin. Not by much, but enough to sting.

“Get up.” He took the knife from my throat and yanked me to my feet. “There are some willing to pay just about anything to possess this thing an' ye. I am no' such a one, but I would no' turn from an opportunity thrust my way.” With no preamble he reached down and snapped off the arrow about a thumb's width from the wound. Pain ripped through me and I nearly dropped in a faint.

“Here now. I thought as a trainee to be God's hero,
ye'd be a bit hardier than that,” he said with a smirk. I wondered what it was about Templars that set him off. I'd never heard anyone utter even the slightest degree of disrespect toward the Order.

I could scarcely catch my breath before he shoved me forward. “On yer horse,” he snapped. I stumbled and landed hard against my mount. The arrowhead twisted and I cried out.

He showed no pity, just remounted and waited with thinly veiled contempt while I struggled to drag myself into the saddle.

We rode through the night, hard and fast. And as the pearl pink of the morning sky dawned, we continued. I ate astride from the remnants of Cornelius's sack and drank until the skin was dry. When I could hold my water no longer, I begged leave to stop. Gaylen allowed it but watched me carefully and kept his hand on the lead of my horse. Throughout the whole of the trip I worked my shields, praying for the moment I could attempt escape.

For his part, Gaylen spoke only when necessary. He had the constitution of a hardened soldier. I believed he would ride for days on end with little discomfort, but it was not that way for me. My last call on the power
was the worst I had ever attempted. I felt as if I were dead inside. I could feel nothing beyond the endless pain in my shoulder and the grief in my heart.
The world would be better served if I let Gaylen kill me here and now,
I thought,
rather than to give him the Holy Vessel.

As low as I felt, I might have goaded him into killing me had the image of Aine not hung all the while before my mind's eye.
Please, Lord, help her.
The phrase became a prayer I repeated hundreds of times as I rode. I had to live, to make sure she was safe. To make sure they all were safe. In this I had no choice.

“Move along. I only have to keep ye in one piece to get the artifact. There are many degrees to the state o' being alive,” he said coldly.

I looked to him sharply. Could he read my thoughts? Was that how he knew?

He glared at me and I realized that I was just standing there, wavering. I wanted to move but couldn't.

“It will no' come cheaply, this thing you ask, de Nogaret. When the time comes, we will expect to be repaid.”

“You have my word.”

“It's no' yer word that I'm needing.”

“Yes. You have his as well.”

“Say it.”

“Don't test me, Gaylen. The King will give you his support. Troops and men against the English.”

The hillside came once more into view. “Move, I said!” Gaylen snapped.

Nausea bubbled in my throat. Every movement I made jarred the shaft of the arrow and fresh fiery jags of pain assaulted me. Blood seeped through my tunic and plaid. It was cold, wet, and sticky, and my shoulder pulsed. I remounted and we set off once again.

Heavy rain began to fall late into the night of the second day. Time passed in a haze of exhaustion. Only the stride of the horse echoed in my ears for company, and I barely clung to consciousness. Four wet days in, my body rejected any shielding I could call to place. Five days in, we came to the shore where a boat awaited our arrival, as did several olive-skinned swarthy men. No questions were asked, nor fares paid. We boarded and were underway in a time barely marked by the candle.

I huddled in a corner where Gaylen had shoved me, out of the wind and away from his ever-present gaze. I welcomed the darkness that crept closer as blood ebbed from my wound.

I tried to pull the shaft free only once; the pain was too heady for me to bear. The arrowhead was lodged deep in muscle and tissue. And though I called on the
power to try and heal myself, nothing came. All was silent and dead to me.

I was stripped of my gifts and alone, abandoned. I willed sleep to take me away or death to claim me, but neither happened. Instead the image of the Lady came to me, the woman whose likeness had been carved, whose essence still clung to the aged piece of wood when last I had seen it. She was just as I remembered. Her eyes of amber were filled with sadness.

And then without warning, before my mind's eye, I suddenly saw Aine. She lay on her side, her head wrapped in bloody linen. Her eyes were glazed and she drifted in the other sight. Then, all at once, it was as if we were looking directly at each other.

I sat up quickly, jostling the arrow shaft, and the pain yanked me from the connection. “No,” I murmured, and Gaylen drew near. I lay back down and feigned sleep, trying desperately to reestablish the link, but it was to no avail. She was gone, and yet, not lost. Aine was alive and trying to contact me. Nothing had ever been as welcome.

T
wo days passed as we made our way back to the shores of Edinburgh, but for the most part, I did not much mark the time. My body was wracked with a heat that drew me in and out of a place that could only be the Hell straight out of the priest's Sunday sermons.

Flames licked my legs, blistering the skin and roasting my bones. I was immobile, though I wanted to thrash and scream with agony. Conversations happened around me, but I couldn't open my eyes or make a sound.

“He's not going to make it, and I will not pull into shore with a dead boy on my ship.”

“It's just a fever. Nothing more.”

“Fever is deadly. It can take a village in a week.”

“No' this fever. ‘Tis just the wound. He's no' yer responsibility once we land.”

Faces drifted in and out of my sight. Torquil. The Abbot. The Templar. Aine. Bertrand. The bairn. Cornelius. Visions. Dreams. Nightmares. I could make no sense of them. I saw a palace surrounded by sand and a crypt deep beneath the earth. I recognized a prison cell, the smell of blood, and the taste of fear.

“Stand, or I will drag you up by the shaft o' that arrow.” Gaylen's voice held a threat that was real, and I struggled to wake and crawl to my knees. “We are here and the horses have been taken to shore. It's time.”

I could not climb down the ladder and so was lowered by a rope around my chest. The pain in my shoulder made me insensible. I could barely breathe when they dropped me into the coracle and we were taken ashore.

Once there, it took the last of my strength to remount and I lay along the horse's neck. “Where are ye takin' me?” I murmured.

“To the preceptory, lad. Where else would a Templar's apprentice seek healing?”

My shocked look made him laugh. “Did ye think I did no' know the Holy Vessel is within those walls? Closed to the world, but not to one of their own in need.”

“But I'm not an apprentice,” I protested.

“You are something to them, an' that's no lie. They are going to great lengths to try and find ye. I will just aid them in the search.”

Conversation with Gaylen was confusing. Mayhap it was the pain. Looking for me? If the Templars were seeking me, it was not because they wanted me safe. I remembered the vision. They were angry that I had used the Vessel. I had given away the secret to those who would use it for gain.

It did not matter what I thought, however. Gaylen had a plan, and getting me inside the preceptory was a part of it. I thought of the Abbot and prayed that I was not too late. If I were in time and could get him alone and tell him what was happening, they could arrest Gaylen and stop whatever was his intention.

I needed a plan, but in the late hours of night, when finally we gained the twisting path I remembered well, I still had not come to anything.

I tried, in vain, to summon even the slightest bit of the power of the land. Nothing came but a rising sense of panic. I shivered as the wind cut strongly across the hillside. The gates were as I remembered, enormous and impregnable, but Gaylen approached with no hesitation.

“Who are ye and what d'ye want? It's late,” called down the guard.

“An injured boy seeking a healer. He is one of yers,” said Gaylen.

“What say ye?”

“We seek the Abbot. Wake him,” said Gaylen with an authority I wondered at. The guard did as he was told. Dead to the power, I could detect nothing, but I wondered if Gaylen had the ability to whisper a push. I hunched against the cold, fighting off the waves of blackness that beat at me.

The gate opened slowly, and the sense of awe I felt
the few times I had been here returned. It was late and the grounds were quiet. I saw the shapes of men patrolling the wall walks atop the gate, but all the interior shops and huts were dark.

Two armed guards awaited us. “Come,” said a large knight near me. He was imposing, and yet I found reassurance in his presence. Exhaustion made my legs drag. Gaylen's palm was rough on my neck, pulling me up and jarring the shaft. I jammed my teeth together, hissing.

I struggled to stay on my feet and walk between the guards. By the time we reached the great kirk and the top of the winding staircase that led to the Abbot's chambers, I could barely catch a breath.

Gaylen shoved me inside, and I fought waves of dizziness as the dark of the stairs became the light of the study. Seated at the desk across from me was someone as different from the Abbot as I could ever imagine.

“Ye had better have a good reason to call me from prayer at this time o' night.” He was tall, wide, and loud, though attired as the Abbot had been in brown robe and tonsured head.

“Where is the Abbot?” I blurted. I was too late. The quick rush of alarm disoriented me, and I squeezed the edge of the desk to keep from fainting. The movement reopened the wound and a fresh spurt of blood soaked my sark. What if I were too late for all of them?

“Who are ye to speak to me in this manner?” the monk asked imperiously.

“Tormod MacLeod,” I said. In my mind I whispered,
Templar's apprentice and friend to the Abbot and Grand Master.

The monk's eyes grew wide and he looked me over from head to foot. “Take him to confinement.”

I gasped and Gaylen protested. “He is injured an' needs healing.”

The Abbot's replacement was unimpressed. “Ye have delivered yer charge. I see no reason for ye to remain within these walls. Ye will be escorted out lest ye find yerself verily confined.”

Gaylen's eyes narrowed, and though I could sense nothing from him, I knew there was a contained fury simmering. This had not been a part of his plans. Though I did not relish the prison cell awaiting, Gaylen could not follow, nor could he find and take the Holy Vessel.

As they escorted me away, I could not hide the smirk that creased my countenance.

“This is far from over.” His soft threat met my ears alone. “I wouldn't get too comfortable in yer room.”