Legend of the Mist (18 page)

A
wisp of memory flickered at the back of his mind: Norah seated on a wooden bench, illuminated by the soft glow of firelight. Himself at her side. Pulling her face to his, he pressed his lips to hers, kissing her passionately. Strange, pulsing music engulfed them, penetrated them, mingling with laughter and voices.

Norah ...

Niria ...

“We belonged here once,” he said, his throat tight with longing for
the past.

“Aye, we did,” came her
reply, a soft caress at his ear.

He turned
to her then, studying her face as if for the first time. “You look different. But so much the same.”

“Ye look exactly the same,” she smiled.

A sound caught Torsten’s attention, and he turned his head sharply. “What was that?”

“Did ye hear something?”

“I heard ... wait—there it is again.”

“What is it?”

“It’s ... music.”

He
peered through the shroud of fog. Indeed there were the strains of music coming to him on the breeze. Or perhaps not on the breeze but on the mist.
From
the mist. A strange sort of music, soft at first, then growing louder, echoing off the stones of the broch. The tune was frenzied, but joyful. The beat thrummed inside his chest, and he laughed, incredulous.

Norah, too, laughed, delighted by his reaction to the music she’d heard many times before. With a devilis
h grin she pulled his hand, still clasped in her own, urging him farther into the broch.

The smile which lit his face was one of pure elation as she began to move to the beat of the music, inviting him to dance with her. Whether or not he believed what was happening did not matter. If it was madness, he was
more than happy to submit.

He allowed her to entice him, his body swaying and hopping with hers. It was a merry dance; together they laughed and swirled to the ghostly music, spinning and spinning until the walls around them were no more than a blur of grey-green stone.

Soon the light in the broch began to change. It darkened, and an orange glow flickered against the walls like lighted torches. The smell of food and of rich turf fire drifted through the space. Torsten raised his eyes and saw the image of an ancient wooden floor, translucent, painted over the morning sky of the present.

T
he laughter and voices which he’d recalled in his brief memory ... were no longer a memory. They were there, mingling with the music.

Then the faces, the beautiful faces painted with symbols of woad. The
pictii
of a long lost age. They smiled lovingly as Norah and Torsten danced. They
had
been waiting after all, and were welcoming them back with a feast and merriment in the ways that were their custom.

Torsten’s eyes flew wide
at the spectral faces. He scanned the room, both frightened and thrilled by what he saw. Norah, in his arms, radiated joy as she danced. He didn’t know quite how to describe it any way other than that she was joy itself.

They whirled and
spun, faster and faster, until he grew dizzy. Until he began to pant from the exertion. His lungs burned with exhaustion, but Freya help him, he could not stop.

He did not
want
to stop, even if he died from the exhilaration which threatened to burst his heart.

And then ...

And then as suddenly as it came it was gone. The orange light dimmed, overtaken by the grey glow of morning. The mist around them swirled one final time, then stilled, taking the faces of old with it into the past.

Norah slowed, and Torsten with her.
Heaving and laughing they stared at one another, both recognizing the rare and amazing gift they had just been given. The proof that Torsten had so desperately wished for. It was more than Norah had expected him to find.

“I cannot believe what I have just seen,” he
huffed.

“Aye,” she giggled, “nor would the people on this island—neither yers nor mine—which is why I’m believed to be mad.”

He paused, searching her face. “It’s true then?”

She nodded,
moving close to him. So close that he could feel her body against his, could feel as their laboured breaths melded together in a shared rhythm.

In that instant
Torsten lost all sense of the world which existed outside the broch. There was no Einarr, there was no Fearchar, nor Freyr nor Iobhar. The war which his brother waged against Harald Fairhair could not touch them here. The only thing that mattered was that he, Torsten, loved Norah as much now as he had in lifetimes before this one. She was his destiny, and he was hers. That fact could not be denied forever.

I
t
would
be denied no longer.

His heart raced as he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, hair the rich colour of blood. He threaded his fingers through
the loose locks, cupping the back of her neck. In response, she slid her delicate hands up his waist and to the small of his back, holding him in her embrace. A silent shiver tickled his spine.

He’d seen the devastation that the desert could wreak upon a man in his travels. He saw wretches desperate for water, choking on sand and parched beyond repair. He had not realized that he was one of those men, parched and desperate for
her, for the one soul he could not live without.

When Torsten touched his lips to hers, he did so gently. He was in no hurry, there was no question in his mind that her lips were his to claim.
For several long seconds he contented himself with the thrill which ran through him at this simple encounter. Then with indrawn breath he opened his mouth, inviting the kiss to deepen. She did not hesitate to accept, and moved her lips in rhythm with his.

The tip of her tongue
as it caressed his was his undoing. With a moan, he possessed her mouth, kissing her long and deep. This was not his first kiss, but it might as well have been for the way his heart thumped madly behind his ribs.

When it ended,
he pulled Norah close, holding her in his strong arms and burying his face in her fragrant hair.

“I cannot let you marry him,” he moaned
. “Even if he is my brother, I cannot let you. You do not belong to him.”

A wave of relief crashed over her
. He knew now, he had accepted what had been, and what was meant to be. Tears stung at her eyes and she smiled against his warm, solid shoulder.

“There
willna be a marriage,” she vowed. “Something will stop it from happening. When the moment is right, the hand of fate will descend to put an end to this.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I hear the voices and see the faces? I canna say, I just ken it.”

Without letting her go, Torsten pulled his
head back, gazing down at her with furrowed brow. “And you trust it,
fifla
?”

She nodded. “I do. I trusted it to bring me
ye
, did I no’? Of course I didna ken fate were bringing me
ye
exactly, but I did trust that it would bring what was intended for me.”

Sighing, Torsten stepped back, and took Norah’s hand in his. Leading her to the nearest stretch of crumbling wall, he seated himself on top of it, shifting to accommodate her as she sat beside him.

“I wish I had your faith,” he lamented. “I wish I could trust as you do. But I do not know what it is that I am
meant
to trust.”

“Do you no’?”

Her slightly reproving tone caught him off guard. “You say that like you do not believe me.”

“It isna that,” she chuckled. “
Rather, I’ve lived on Fara all my life, and I’ve known the voices and the ... the
magic
, if ye will, for a long time. But
ye
havena. Ye’ve kent nothing of Fara until now, so how could ye expect to trust any of it so soon?”

“You think I might learn to trust it in time?”

“I think ye must learn to listen.”

“Listen to what?”
Torsten asked, confused.

Norah held his eyes intently with her own, then they swept across the walls of the broch. “
To this,” she answered simply.

He followed her lead, a look of doubt crossing his face as he gazed about the broch, listening for something which he did not expect to hear. But soon the doubt lifted. It was slow at first, a gradual smoothing of the brow. Then it changed, a doubting of his initial doubt.

“What d’ye hear?” Norah prodded as she watched the change come over him.

“I ... I do not
hear
anything—”

“I dinna mean wi’ yer ears.”

Torsten hesitated, struggling to accept the thing which his mind told him he could not know, but which his heart promised was true.

“Trust it,”
she encouraged.

A smile spread across his face, a child’s excitement at discovering something new.
“Wait here,” he said. Standing, he strode back to the open edge of the wall, listening all along to the direction his heart told him to follow.

“Where are ye going?” Norah called after him
when he disappeared between the inner and outer walls.

She
jumped from her seat, rushing to join him. When she reached the spot where he’d stepped from her view, she saw him, his silhouette barely visible. He was wedged in between the two walls, and had begun to climb, moving his feet from peg hole to peg hole with his arms braced against the sides of the walls for support.

“Be careful,”
she cautioned him. “The walls are no’ sound.”

Halfway
between the ground and first floors Torsten stopped, studying the stones on his right. Shifting to stabilize himself with one hand, he began to feel the bricks with the other, one by one.

A grunt of pleasure echoed through the narrow,
dim space, and Norah could just make out in the darkness that he had started to claw at one stone in particular. It was not long before he succeeded in dislodging it. The stone fell to the ground with a muted thud, and he began to make his way down again. When he stepped back into the light, he was holding something in both his hands.

Norah’s
eyes widened. It was a small, wooden box adorned with what looked to be antler of some type. The box, having been hidden behind the damp stones for probably centuries, had rotted on one side, and the lid caved in one corner where the frame could no longer support it. Despite its dilapidated state it was still a thing of beauty.

“How did ye ken that were there?”

“How do you hear the voices and see the faces?” he teased. “I listened. I had the oddest feeling that something was hidden up there behind one of those stones. But I did not expect that I would find anything.” Handing her the box, he added shyly, “I believe I might have given this to you once.”

A
fragment of memory returned to Norah when she took the box into her hands. An image of Torsten, of the warrior he had once been, presenting her with this box as a token of his love. She lifted the lid, and the hinge gave way where the box had rotted through.

“Sorry,” she muttered sheepishly.

“It is not the box that is important.”

He was right. Sheltered in the small, carefully crafted box was an even smaller, even more carefully crafted ring. The band, gold, was etched in a pattern that weaved and crossed over itself. Though it was tarnished from ages of abandonment,
a ruby, which was set atop the band in an ornate mount, still glittered brilliantly.

“A ruby, just like
in the necklace ye gave me.”

“Ja ...
but, the necklace was a coincidence.”

“
Nay,” she disagreed, shaking her head as she stared at the precious item in her hands. “I dinna think it was. I think ye were meant to give me this necklace.”

The possibility intrigued Torsten. Could she be right?
Gulnaraj’s voice echoed in his ears as he watched a multitude of emotions flicker across Norah’s beautiful face.

When I saw the necklace I was taken by the ruby in particular. Something about it made me think of you, made me feel you might have a need of it one day.

A ruby ... if it was a coincidence, it was a frightening one.

“Here,” he said, his voice gruff. “L
et me put the ring on your chain. I do not think you can wear it on your hand without someone asking its significance, do you?”

“
I daresay I couldna,” she agreed.

She bent her head and
allowed Torsten to fiddle with the clasp at the back of her neck. Her skin tingled where his fingers brushed against her, and grew warm when he allowed his touch to linger.

Slipping the ring on the chain, he let it fall to her breast. It made a small, metallic clink as it settled next to the larger pendant already suspended there.