Legend of the Mist (17 page)

Fourteen

Again Torsten did not attend the evening meal.

His continued
absence drew curiosity and speculation from both sides in the hall, especially after this day. He had been at the training that morning, after all, and had seemed in good spirits. If Einarr and Garrett could show their mottled faces then surely Torsten could as well.

Perhaps Einarr’s elbow had done more damage than anyone realized. And if the man’s errant elbow, thrown without aim in the midst of a fight, could send a man running for cover ...

Norah, however, had no need for speculation. She knew exactly why Torsten was not there. It was because he could not face her, could not face the truth of who he was to her, nor she to him.

She had vowed to give him the time he needed to accept what was,
and what had been. And she was still prepared to do so. Still, she could not help feeling disappointed by his avoidance of her.

Dragging herself up the keep stairs to bed that night
she fought to smother the tears that threatened to break her. She kissed her mother and father good night, assailing them with an over bright smile.

With nothing else to occupy her thoughts, she lay in bed, suffering Roisin’s flailing limbs as the little girl slept and
refusing to let her tears fall. There had been much to cry about in recent years. If she had not shed tears for those things, she would not shed tears for this. Despite the hollow ache in her chest which would not relent, she drifted off.

I
n her dreams the beautiful, painted faces appeared to her. Smiling, they floated before her eyes, encouraging her. Reassuring her. There was an overarching sense of relief about her dreams, the painted faces a touchstone for the future which she and Torsten were destined to share. The faces were a promise. A premonition.

He’s coming
, they called in their sing-song voices and lilting language.
He is ready.

The sun had not yet risen when she awoke,
the promise of a new day evident by only a hint of light sifting through the sky’s indigo canvas. In her hours of slumber an acute sense of knowing had infiltrated her being. More than just the knowledge of mind it was a knowledge that saturated every part of her. Something had clicked into place over night; a piece of the enigma, like the broch or the sea which had conspired to drive her mad since her birth, had aligned. A purpose had taken shape in those dark hours.

Something was ...
right
. Utterly and absolutely right.

Fortified
by this new, unnamed purpose, Norah rose from her bed, disentangling herself from a deeply asleep Roisin.

Her hair she left as it was, a tumble of stray, crimson locks. With a lightness of foot that
even a faerie would admire she crept to her dressing table and removed the ruby amulet suspended by the chain of Persian gold from its box where she kept it. When it was securely fastened around her neck, she slipped on her shoes and, wearing only her rumpled shift, crept down the keep stairs, through the silent fortress and out into the pre-dawn air.

The mist
, thick and low-lying at this time of morning, rose to her waist, undulating around her as she moved through it. She skimmed her hand across its surface, dappling her fingers as if in a pool of water.

He’s coming. He is ready.

He would be at the inlet where she’d played as a child. The knowledge which coursed through her being told her so. Her feet swished through the brush as she walked, and the hem of her shift grew moist from the heavy dew.

When
at last she stood at the top of the inlet’s grassy embankment and gazed down at the beach below, it did not surprise her to find a solitary figure standing there, staring out over the water.

Norah’s
breath caught in her throat as she absorbed the sight of Torsten, for there was not a doubt in her heart that it was him. But he was changed, different in some intangible way. Perhaps it was the way he stood, or it might have been the set of his shoulders.

Whatever it was, the transformation in him spoke of acceptance, of understanding who he was and who he had once been.

He must have heard her footsteps as she crossed the rocky beach, but his eyes did not move from the horizon over the water. When she reached his side, she looked up at his face, more visible now with the lightening sky. Dark bruises smudged the tender flesh beneath his eyes where he’d caught his brother’s wayward elbow. At least the swelling in his nose had gone down.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Ask me a question like that, and I know you must never have suffered a broken nose,
fifla
.”

“
I’d have to say ye’re right,” she grinned.

“
You
were right, too.”

Norah hesitated, a tingle of excitement building
within her. “About?”

“A
bout what you said. That we have known each other before. I know it now.”

“Ye’ve kent it all along
.”

“Yes, but I am ready to admit it now.”

“Why?”

Torsten did not answer her
immediately. Instead, he faced her. His crisp, blue eyes, so much gentler than his brother’s, looked deep into hers as if he were trying to read the secrets locked within.

Her heart began a rhythmic fluttering in response. Even the quality of his gaze had changed. It was older, not in the wisdom of years but of centuries.

She let him search her soul, hoping that whatever he found there would be the affirmation he needed to continue. When his eyes slid down her slender neck to the ruby amulet at her breast he was ready to speak.

“
Einarr says that I am no true Viking, for I cannot accept what Vikings do: we kill. In a way, he speaks true, for I have never agreed with raiding. To take innocent life, whether man or woman, young or old, is something I cannot abide. But what Einarr does not realize, what no one realizes, in fact, is that all my life I have never been able to accept what a warrior is, what a warrior must do in battle, even to those who deserve it. Death and killing—I have never become accustomed to delivering it. Each death, no matter how well deserved, cuts me, takes a little piece of me away from myself.”

He paused, drawing a shaky breath. “
I have often wondered what sets me apart from the rest. After all, we Norse are not the only ... what word should I use ...
kingdom
of warriors. Your Celt brothers are renowned for their fierceness in battle, are they not? Why, then, should I not find myself battle hardened like they are?”

When he paused again,
Norah waited patiently, not moving, hardly breathing. He seemed to be mustering the courage to tell of the burden which pressed upon his heart, and she understood that he needed to speak in his own time.

“I think,” he said at length, “that one lifetime of battle will harden a man. But more than one lifetime of it makes a man weary. I believe you were right, that we have lived lives before this. I have seen more battles, in more lifetimes, than my brother could eve
r imagine. But you knew that already, ja?”

Instead
of answering, she placed her hand against his rough cheek, taking care to avoid the tender spot along his cheekbone where the bruising from his injury spread.

“It’s this island. Ever since I set foot on this island I’ve known it.
Perhaps not outwardly but on some level the knowledge has been there. Even its name. I remember hearing it for the first time and feeling like I’d been plunged into a winter
fjord
. This island feels like home in a way no other place has ever felt. I am a part of this island in a way I cannot explain.

“And you,” he
finished. “A part of me knew I would find you here, waiting for me. Finding you again, after all this time, was inevitable. But it frightens me. It does not make sense. How could I have loved and lived before? Tell me, how is that possible?”

“It isna,” she answered
, her voice hoarse with emotion. “Or, no’ in this world, at least, this world of reason and logic, in which memory of the past is lost to time. If it were possible, the people of this island, the people of my own clan, wouldna think me mad.”

“If it were not for you I would think myself mad,” Torsten said, a
reluctant grin softening the intensity of his eyes. “Still, I wish there was something,
something
that I could touch, or see, or feel, to prove what I know in my heart.”

The moment he said that, Norah’s skin began to tingle on her right side
—the side that faced south. The pull of the broch, dormant until now, resumed its familiar tug, and wisps of voices floated to her on the breeze.

There
was
something that he could see, touch and feel. It had been there all along, only he had not known of its existence. A knowing smile crossed her lips, and she placed her open hand palm up in the space between them. He laid his hand atop hers; it was warm and strong, rough with a lifetime of hard work.

The instant they touched, the
force which had existed between them since the first time they met coursed through her arm and down to her core. The slight, indrawn breath from him testified that he felt it too.

“Come wi’ me,” she said.

Torsten allowed her to lead him away from the beach and back up the embankment. She followed a southern route, one he did not know but did not question. Wherever she was taking them, he would find the answers he was looking for.

They were the answers to questions which had lain asleep within him the whole of his life.

The mist thickened the further south they went. It rose higher and higher, until it covered their heads and they were walking through a sea of white. Nothing was visible but what was immediately in front.

Quiet closed in; even the
calling of the gulls faded away. Though the ground was rough, Torsten’s feet were steady as were Norah’s. He knew this ground, knew where every dip and peak and divot were. With his hand firmly ensconced in hers they traversed the length of the island to a secret place that no one, neither Gallach nor Norseman, knew existed.

A
s the morning light lifted the last of the night sky the mist thinned, leaving a translucent film over Torsten’s eyes. Through it, he saw the most amazing sight, the one which Norah had led him here to see.

It was a stone structure. A large, circular stone structure, its bones in
a state of bad decay. One side of the outer wall had completely crumbled away, leaving the interior open to the elements. Green fingers of vines and brush climbed up over its surface like they were trying to pull the heavy, grey stones back to the earth from whence they’d come.

The atmosphere of the place was
alive, infused with the spirits of the dead who had been waiting for this moment when two of their own would return. Torsten could feel them there, old friends; he was comforted by the sense of their presence.

“Where are we?”
he whispered, wary of the sound of his own voice in this quiet, sacred place.

“This is the southern edge of Fara.”

“Do your people come here often?”

A secret smile spread across her
lips. “No one comes here, ever. But me.” When Torsten raised an eyebrow in question she explained. “I have been coming here for as long as I’ve been able to leave the fortress on my own. But even before that, I kent it were here. It has a power over me, this place. It pulls at me like a ribbon tied to my breast. For some reason, though, none of the others come. It’s as if they dinna ken that it’s here, that there even is a southern half of Fara to be explored. I think that whatever pulls me here must repel the others, for they dinna belong here. This place is no’ for them.”

“Was it a castle
?”

“It was a broch, the ancient home of my ancestors. My eyes have never seen them of course, but I am told that old, dying brochs like these exist all over the islands.
This broch, here on Fara, is the home of my past. It is here that I ken myself best. I see the faces of those I loved long ago and I hear their voices. When I come here ... I am home.”

Torsten nodded,
taking in the broch with reverence. “I feel the same.”

“Why dinna we go inside and have a closer look?”

Hand in hand they crossed the remaining ground that separated them from the broch, and stepped over its threshold. The walls, Torsten saw, were actually composed of an inner and outer ring, with a narrow space about the width of two large men in between. Holes in the stonework spiralled upward, suggesting that timbers had once been lodged there to provide the framework of stairs.

His guess was confirmed when, inside,
he saw more holes in the inner walls that formed two, level rings, one on top of the other. They must have been the second and third storeys.

The roof had long ago rotted away, and the foliage which could be seen devouring the outside of the broch had made its way inside as well. Through the dense green mattress, mounds of rock
that had once separated the structure into different rooms divided the space like a grid. At the farthest point opposite of where the outer wall had crumbled open, a patch of blackened earth suggested the place of ancient fires.