Night Visitor (19 page)

“Aye. Well, then, I think I must walk a deasil and make the place fit for the still folk to again inhabit. Else it shall be a long and unpleasant night.” So saying, he stepped into the cave and circled it thrice around, whistling some eerie, if not quite musical, tune as he did so.

With each pass by the cave’s mouth, the atmosphere within grew clearer, until with the third turn, the worst of the unpleasantness had dissipated.

Taffy and Smokey entered eagerly then. The sun had crested the hills, and they knew that just as they were favored by night, the daytime belonged
to their foes—Campbells and Covenanters and human carnivores of every stripe.

They settled into rest, but though Taffy was very tired, her sleep was troubled first by evil dreams where she and Malcolm were pursued by a faceless, relentless evil. She woke, only to find a peculiar and realistic vision of a long, black crack opening in the back of their cave.

Taffy stared at it, horrified. Inch by inch, the opening grew, silently—and there were many pairs of eyes peering out at them from the black beyond.

Malcolm! Where was he?

It took a mighty effort, but she moved her head, inch by inch, until she could see him sitting with Smokey near the mouth of the cave. He stood with her rifle in hand, his head cocked at a listening angle as he stared out into the bright outside.

Taffy tried to speak, tried to waken herself that she might give warning that someone was coming—and not from outside the cave but from within—but a strange stillness had settled over her, paralyzing her limbs and voice. It was a magic more powerful than she had ever encountered or imagined.

“Waken, lass! We are attacked!” she heard Malcolm shout, as he raised the rifle and fired out into the brightness outside the cave.

His words and the rifle’s loud report freed her
of the dream paralysis, and she rolled to her knees, prepared to rush to Malcolm’s side. But in that moment, several tall, lean bodies swarmed inside the cave through the crack in the back wall and leaned down over her, grabbing her arms with long, white hands.

“Malcolm!” she screamed, trying to reach for the rowan thorn jammed into her collar, but there were too many hands upon her. They were not cruel grips that held her, but they were relentless as they dragged her toward the ominous black crevice at the rear of the cavern.

She saw Malcolm turn and raise the rifle in their direction, but he hesitated to fire, and then it was too late.

“Taffy!” he shouted, his eyes wild, leaping toward her. But behind him came two soldiers, and then four, iron swords in hand. They were checked a moment by the cave’s darkness, which was as muffling as any blindfold to human eyes, and that allowed Malcolm to gain another leaping pace away from them.

“Malcolm!” Taffy strained with every fiber in every sinew, but she couldn’t break the hold upon her limbs. How had these Campbells found them? Had the still-folk led them here to serve as a diversion for when they meant to steal her away?

“Lass!”

Taffy saw half the still-folk who had come for
her turn about and drop to the floor on bended knee. Their long white hands slapped down upon the stone in front of Malcolm, and before the echo had reached the ceiling, another giant crack had opened in the floor.

As though overpowered by the sudden blows, the ground canted crazily and Malcolm and the soldiers—and even the still-folk who had kneeled to open the ground—tumbled into the black crevasse that tore the cave’s floor.

Taffy saw one of the faeries catch Malcolm with his long, pale fingers hooked into a claw, and grab for purchase on the stony ledge. For a moment the two clung, hanging at the edge of the deep pit by the strength of that one pale fist.

The still folk who had her shackled paused for a moment, as though considering whether to rush to their comrade’s aid and risk her escape.

Malcolm looked past his rescuer and up to Taffy’s face. His eyes were wide and black as he addressed her.

“Be strong, lass,”
he said, the voice in her ear implacable.
“Donnae give in tae fear. Ye must keep yourself whole, yer thoughts strong, so I may find ye again.
“

“Malcolm!” she cried, unable to obey, her fear a sickness spreading through her heart like freezing water that replaced her own blood. “Don’t let go!”

The floor shifted again. A panicked wail filled the air as several soldiers plummeted further down into the depths of the crevasse, and the terrified echos made the cave tremble.

“Promise me, lass, that ye’ll be strong! That ye’ll not be magicked.”

“Malcolm,” she whispered, too frightened of further shaking the collapsing cave to overcome the hands restraining her.

“Promise me, lass! Ye must fight and live!”

“Yes. If I can,” she answered. Then, fiercely to her captors: “Help them!”

But before they could move, there was another deafening crack of breaking stone. The ledge gave way and the clinging faerie and Malcolm both disappeared into the same black maw that had swallowed the soldiers.

Neither of them cried out.

“Malcolm!” Taffy screamed with all the force in her lungs, as though her voice might defy cruel gravity and call him back to her.

A horrible new howling tore the air of the cavern and a trembling, wild-eyed Smokey, spurred by his mistress’s thwarted will, leaped recklessly into the void after the piper.

There came another abrupt silence, followed by more splintering of stone from overhead.

“Nooooooo!” she screamed, as her captors caught her up and dragged her into the tunnel at
a dead run that had her feet skimming over the ground.

She was still screaming for Malcolm when the stone wall snapped shut behind her and the cave collapsed in upon itself.

Ever after, Taffy’s memories of the period that followed her exodus from that cavern were nightmarish and hazy. After Malcolm had toppled into the abyss and his voiceless presence was abruptly ripped from her, she had passed from acute anxiety about his welfare into a furious hysteria where she wailed his name over and over. The sound of her voice was a violent concussion in the confined space of the tunnel into which they’d escaped, and it seemed to shake the walls around her, and loose a smell that was half earth and half living trees which had been sundered. The stink of bleeding sap prevailed.

Even as she fought against her invisible abductors in the smothering dark, she knew that
she was being half-dragged and half-carried down another faerie road. Her eyes were wide open, but through her streaming tears she could see nothing more of her surroundings than several points of dancing golden light, like torches being carried at a great distance on a foggy night.

She grieved without cease, but after her throat had been rasped raw, she stopped calling for Malcolm and fighting so vigorously. She calmed enough to realize that she was not being taken back upon the road that brought her to this time. Unlike that journey, when she had traveled from her time to Malcolm’s, there was no sound around her, except the eerie padding of nearly silent feet slapping on hard stone.

She was minimally relieved to know that they were not returning her home yet, and she tried to pay attention to her surroundings. But strive as she might, Taffy could see no one in the dark, not even great shadows moving against lesser ones. Foiled by the lack of light, she recoursed then to her other senses, and from her sensitive ears she deducted that the echoing noises about her came from such a multitude of directions that she must be in the midst of a party of enormous size.

She had screamed herself into a voiceless state and wearied her body, but she still continued to periodically try and free herself. There was always the hope that she might return to Malcolm.
In the meanwhile, she continued calling for him with her heart and mind, hoping against the evidence of her eyes and ears—and the silence in her mind—that he might still live.

But her captors did not allow her to escape, never relenting their hold until she finally collapsed from her exhausting struggles and went limp, and it seemed to her that somehow they were muffling her thoughts and appeals to her love.

When she hung heavily in her living shackle, which had not loosened their pitiless grip no matter how she struggled and pleaded, the raiding party finally paused in their hurried travels.

She sensed that they had met up with another band of still-folk and were exchanging news. As her body folded in on itself, they released their hold on her arms and stepped back from her.

Do not run.

Taffy ignored the alien voice in her head. She was no sooner freed from her living bonds then she summoned a last bit of strength and clumsily attempted to run back through the darkness to where she had last seen Malcolm.

But before she was more than a step away, something viney tangled about her ankles, and her hobbled legs gave way beneath her.

She put out her arms and screamed again—this time with fear for her child—but without any sound coming from her ruined throat.

There was a breath of displaced air and someone caught her about the waist before she hit the floor. Her rescuer lowered her gently onto the ground and after a moment padded away.

There was a quick whisper of voices that sounded more like the rustling of leaves than human speech.

The padding steps quickly returned to her side. Rather than continue to drag her along in her now supine state, as she half-expected they might, someone untangled her hobbled legs, and before she could kick out, she was taken up in one of her captors’ arms.

Taffy thrashed feebly and tried to speak with her broken voice, but was held tight against a narrow chest with limbs that were whipcord lean and impossibly strong. Struggle feebly though she did, those arms allowed her no leeway, except what she could achieve by movement of her neck.

The journey resumed. The black went on for what seemed miles, but eventually began to change in tone, taking on a reddish hue. Occasionally, a breeze would pass over the party and a stray lock of her abductor’s hair would brush over her face. It was insubstantial, soft…not
human.

And yet, in a way, her captor was also familiar. And it was the comfort of this familiarity that allowed her to drop down into kind oblivion
when a soft, dark breath whispered to her:
Sleep, lady, do not fear.

Fear?
she thought. She did not fear. Grief would kill her before anything else could.

Nay, thou shalt live.
And with those words some comforting swaddling was drawn over her brain and she let go of consciousness in favor of the veil of forgetfulness that was offered.

When Malcolm opened his eyes, it was to a blackness so near complete that he was not certain that he had truly awakened. It took a moment for him to recall what had happened in the cave.

“Taffy?” he asked immediately, even then knowing that she was not there.

Head swimming, he groped about for a moment with clumsy hands to look for the faerie who had grabbed on in an attempt to save him from a fall into the void. His senses told him that he was alone, but still he searched for a body and also to assure himself that the floor about him was where it was supposed to be.

Presently, feeling nothing but firm, cold stone around him, Malcolm slowly and cautiously rose to his feet, then continued his investigation of the rough face of the wall before him.

There was a pungent smell of fresh sap in the air, dying quickly with every breath he pulled into his lungs. The odor explained why he was alive and the faerie was not lying broken beside
him. The deepest roots of the ancient trees had lifted up through the mountain’s stone at the faeries’ command to save them, even at the cost of damage to their subterranean limbs.

“Tapadh leibh,”
he thanked them in the old tongue.

Malcolm tried to orient himself, but it was difficult in the dark when his swimming head said that the tunnel was turning and his eyes could not lie to his other senses. He could only guess at where he was and what direction to travel.
Tomhnafurach
was to the south. It was the largest of the fairy strongholds and the nearest. That was the way he would go.

Still, he hesitated to leave his place without the certainty that he was moving truly toward Taffy rather than away. It was entirely possible that she was being carried to one of the smaller
shians.
Seeking confirmation of his plan, he went into the corner of his mind where Taffy dwelled and searched for her presence.

Nothing.

Taffy?
he asked automatically, hunting for her with his full attention.

Taffy lass, where are ye?

He peered south and called again. And then again.

When there continued to be no answer, he became alarmed and then nearly frantic that he couldn’t discover a trace of her mind.

Always, he had been able to find her when he looked. Now there was nothing, not even an echo of her thoughts that he might follow.

Night was falling above him, he sensed, and taking hold of his fraying patience, he waited for the sun to leave the sky. The night belonged to his kind, faerie kin that he was. He would be stronger then, he assured himself, able to track her.

Malcolm refrained from pacing, but only with great difficulty, as his nerves demanded that he start after her immediately.

Until this hour, some part of him had always resisted the pull of the still-folk’s magic. Just as a part of him had been closed off to his father’s kin for their hostility to his faerie blood, so too had part of him been kept from his mother’s unhuman kind. But he fought the ancient magic no longer. If faerie magic would take him to Taffy, then he would surrender to the pull and embrace it with his whole being.

Darkness. Malcolm felt it settle upon the world.

Taking a deep breath, he turned inward again and looked out through the window in his mind. He began hunting ruthlessly for his wife.

Ah!
He had her. He couldn’t speak to her because she was deep in sleep, a dreamless state that was so drugged as to seem near death.

He gave thanks that she was still in his world,
that the still-folk had not yet placed her beyond his reach in some other time.

He tried next to rouse her with a soft call, growing impatient and demanding when she failed to respond. For some reason she clung to her coma with desperation, as though terrified of waking.

Taffy, lass, awake,
he pleaded—needing to touch her alert mind so that he could assure himself that she was well, not wounded, bespelled, or drugged with some dangerous faerie decoction.

Malcolm frowned as he concentrated, again feeling the birth of alarm. The last glimpse he’d had of her, she had been in the still-folk’s keeping. They should have got her safe away from the band of Campbells that had invaded the cave.

But perhaps they had been caught in the shifting earth that caused the cavern floor to give way and were somehow trapped in the ground. Perhaps the faeries had deadened her senses so she would not panic.

Horrified that Taffy might also be lost, alone but for her captors and terrified in the thick dark of the underground, he strained outward with his mind, striving with all his will to know more of her circumstance.

Again, with the new effort, he was able to push past barriers and see through the window in his mind.

She was well, he saw—just exhausted and under a calming spell. The still-folk were carrying her sleeping body to
Tomhnafurach.

One of her guardians felt very familiar to Malcolm, though he could not say just where he had encountered this faerie before.

“Taffy, lass,” he whispered to her, this time gently and deep in her mind where dreams were made. “Ha’e I no’ told ye tae listen not tae yer despair? Ye’ll break yer heart for sure.”

Malcolm?

The touch was tentative, weak, sluggish, and wrenchingly disbelieving.

“Aye, Taffy, lass. ‘Tis yer husband.”

“You are a ghost again, Malcolm,” she cried, her brain painted with black grief as she struggled toward wakefulness. “You are lost! Lost!”

“Nay, lass. I am well,” he assured her. “The still-folk are taking ye to
Tomhnafurach.
I shall find ye there. Soon.”

“Malcolm, love, come to me, even if you are but a ghost…” The thread was growing fainter as Taffy slid back toward comforting oblivion.

“Sleep then, lass,” he told her, wanting to cling to the sweet brush of her thoughts, however despairing, but fearful that such prolonged anguish might be damaging to her. He said soothingly: “Rest and heal, Taffy, lass. I shall be wi’ ye soon.”

He wasn’t certain how he would keep this promise, lost as he was in some forgotten faerie
maze, but Malcolm knew that he
would
find her. Or he would die trying.

When Taffy awoke, she was curled on her side resting near a tiny streamlet that seemed almost to sing as it danced over its bed of sparkling crystal pebbles. Her fingers told her that she lay on cerements of soft green velvet. Her nose breathed happily of the faint scent of living moss and heather.

Someone had bathed her face, for chilling droplets still clung to her skin, cooling the fever of her tears, which had swollen her eyes to mere slits.

She rolled slowly onto her back and looked up into the sky. It was a perfect light blue, cloudless, but unnatural in its stillness. Not a swallow, thrush, or blackbird used these untrue heavens, or disturbed the silence with their summer song.

Tomhnafurach.

Yes, that seemed right. She had heard Malcolm’s ghost whispering to her that she would be taken here.

So, this was the faeries’ kingdom, where they dwelled beyond the call of human habitation, buried a fathom deep within the sheltering earth.

Aye, child.

Curiously unalarmed, Taffy turned her head and studied the tall, lean man seated beneath a giant flowering chestnut. He was dressed in a
modest cloak of green camlet spotted carelessly with a spray of spent heather blossom. He had an aquiline face—unlined but definitely lived-in. It was a face of seeming youth, but his eyes, silver and fey, were very old. And wise. Yet she had learned not to be deceived by the trappings of pretty faerie magic. Nothing about the still-folk was ever at it seemed.

“Do I not appear sufficiently benevolent?” the faerie asked in a soft voice, shaded with the music of every song that had ever been sung. It was so beautiful! So very like Malcolm’s voice that had she any tears left, she would have wept. “I could slump and age if you would find an old man less frightening.”

“I’m not frightened,” she croaked. And it was true, for there was nothing left to fear.

The man frowned at the harsh rasp of her voice. He rose gracefully and went to the stream. Taking a silver dipper from out of his pocket, he ladled up a small measure of water and then came to kneel at her side.

“Drink, child. Mend thy voice.”

Feeling how the magicked waters had drawn the swelling from her skin, Taffy gladly swallowed the healing potion, forcing the cold liquid past the tight muscles of her tender throat.

“We feared for thy life, child. And that of your babe. Would thou grieve this man so violently
that you endangered both your lives? Even when he commanded otherwise?”

“I have no life anymore,” she whispered, her voice already growing stronger. Perhaps it was the magic water, which held the waiting despair at bay as they spoke of her husband. She knew it was still out there, ready to wrap its icy arms about her heart and drown her in its endless sea as soon as the protection was withdrawn from her senses.

“And your daughter? Is she to have no life either?”

Daughter?

Taffy laid a hand over her belly and stroked it gently.

“Then so too must thou live, child.”

“Will you keep me here?” she asked, not caring particularly what the answer might be.