Читать книгу The Highlander - Heather Grothaus - Страница 7

November 1077, the Scottish Highlands,

near Loch Lomond

“I’m dying, Eve.”

The words washed over Evelyn colder than the icy sleet pelting her back through her cloak, causing her to stumble over a tree root in the night-soaked forest. She yanked on the bridle in her hand, halting the mare that carried Minerva, and tried to blink away the frigid rain running into her eyes. Thunder, low and threatening and foreign to this cold November storm, drowned out the old healer’s rasping breaths.

Evelyn swallowed, her own throat thick and raw in the brutal wind. “Now?” she croaked. At Minerva’s nod, barely a twitch of rough, black wool, Evelyn released the exhausted mare and reached patting, grasping hands up the old woman’s bony thigh. “Give me your hand. I’ll—”

But to Evelyn’s horror, the frail woman teetered to the far side of her mount and slipped from the horse’s back, landing in the wet darkness without a cry, but with a sound that mimicked dropping a bundle of dry sticks. As Minerva hit the ground, a delicate thread of lightning struck deeper in the forest and the mount reared in fright, bolting away before Evelyn could regain hold of the beast. In a blink, the mare—and the women’s few remaining supplies—was absorbed into the dense wood.

Evelyn stood in the sleet, as rooted to the ground as any of the thousands of trees crowding around her, stealing her breath with their evil, eager closeness. The stinging rain seemed to sizzle on her fevered cheeks and brow, and her chest tightened even further, painful wheezes her only sustenance as she stared down at the still jumble of ragged clothing that was Minerva.

So this is how it is to end, she thought apathetically, and for a brief moment, she let all the fragments of her life swirl around her like dead leaves in the stormy gale, nicking her cold, thin skin with painful memories. The horror of her own birth; her father’s vicious murder; the hellish priory she had escaped. Only weeks ago, Evelyn had felt there was nothing and no one left for her in England, and so had impulsively accepted the invitation to accompany this dying witch on the month-long journey to the land of the old woman’s birth—the wild, inhospitable terrain of the Scottish Highlands.

Evelyn had thought to make a fresh beginning. A new life.

Instead, it looked as if her life would end, lost in the malicious depths of this Caledonian forest, her body too ill and weak to carry on alone now that the ancient healer was dead. No mount. No food. Not even a flint and blade.

Mayhap the monks were right, her fevered brain reasoned. I am evil, unnatural. This is God’s punishment for my wickedness.

So be it, then, she rallied. I am weary—let Him judge me.

Evelyn sank to her knees on the wet, rocky ground. What little faith she still retained would not allow her to seek death outright, but she would no longer try to evade it. Let Him take her in His time. She would but wait.

Then the bundle of dry sticks that was the old healer rattled and stirred and rose up in a lumpy mound.

Evelyn could only blink as the ancient one crept across the frozen forest floor, a strange, breathy moaning coming from her with each spindly limb she dragged forward.

“Haah. Haah,” Minerva wheezed, inching relentlessly onward.

Evelyn felt tired, helpless tears well in her eyes at the pathetic sight, but she had no strength left, no will.

Until she heard Minerva’s next rasping whisper.

“Haah. Ronan. I’m coming, Ronan. At last, at last…”

Evelyn’s eyes narrowed. Was it a man’s name Minerva had spoken? Mayhap they were nearer the old witch’s clan than Evelyn knew.

Mayhap there was hope for them yet.

Evelyn scraped together the last crumbs of energy she possessed—she’d not eaten in four days—and drew herself forward onto numb hands to crawl after the old woman.

“Minerva,” Evelyn called, the voice coming from her blistered throat as little more than a creak. “Wait.”

“Ronan,” was Minerva’s only answer as she pulled herself up a low drift of jagged rocks piled at the base of a tree so wide and tall that Evelyn could not glimpse its ends in the winter night’s gale.

Evelyn followed Minerva up the rocks, then crouched over the woman now propped against the massive oak. Evelyn snaked an arm behind Minerva’s thin shoulders and drew her close. Overhead, the invisible branches of the tree clicked and scraped and crashed together in maniacal glee, wicked applause for the women’s arrival. Evelyn began to shake.

“Ronan,” Minerva sighed again.

“Minerva,” Evelyn croaked, “who is Ronan? Where is he? Are we at last on Buchanan lands?”

The old woman’s head lolled back on Evelyn’s shoulder, and she rolled her watery, black eyes over Evelyn’s face. “Buchanan lands? Nay, lass—we left Buchanan lands days ago. Days and days and days…”

Evelyn’s heart froze in her chest. “What?”

The old woman gave a skeletal grin. “We’re on MacKerrick lands. Ronan’s lands. Where my journey ends”—she drew a shallow, hitching breath and Evelyn felt the reverberations of it like a chilling sizzle in her spine—“and yours truly begins.”

It was then that Evelyn noticed that the sleet had stopped, the wind quieted. Impossibly fat snowdrops, the size of the tip of Evelyn’s thumb, now floated down, luminescent in the blankets of glowing lightning that rolled within low clouds. The forest seemed to hold its breath.

“Minerva,” Evelyn pressed, desperate to make the old witch understand. “The mare has fled, and our last provisions with her. In which direction do I seek this Ronan to aid us? No more riddles—I beg you.”

The old woman’s eyes closed, her mouth gaped open, and her frail frame quivered.

Minerva was laughing.

Then the black eyes opened and a gentler smile further creased the lined face as lightning flashed again. “He’s already here, lass.” She let a knobby arm fall to the rocks beneath her and she patted them fondly, the sound like wet parchments sliding together. “I’ve returned to him at last.”

Evelyn let her fledgling hope melt away like the snowflakes on her flaming cheeks. The old healer was obviously delusional in these last, horrible moments of her life. Evelyn could harbor no ill will toward Minerva, even though the woman had led the pair of them blindly past the certain aid of the Buchanan clan to die in this cold, vast wood.

Because there was naught else to do, Evelyn laid her cheek atop Minerva’s rough hood with a sigh and wondered if she herself would go to Heaven when it was all over with, and if she would at last meet her mother there. If she did, Evelyn knew the first thing she would ask Fiona is: Was I worth it? Was I worth your own life?

It seemed such a waste.

“Ye’ll nae die,” Minerva whispered, startling Evelyn from her morbid fantasy. The old witch raised her trembling hand from the rocks and swiped her thumb across Evelyn’s lower lip. “Nae for many a year.”

For an instant, Evelyn thought she felt the stones beneath her seat shudder. She realized she must have been biting her lip, for when she swiped her parched tongue across it, she tasted rich, warm blood.

Evelyn drew a searing breath, choosing to ignore the old woman’s cryptic prediction. “Shall I say a prayer for you?”

Minerva gave a silent chuckle. “Nae, lass—none of yer fancy prayers.” Her eyes locked onto Evelyn’s gaze, and when she spoke again, the old woman’s voice held a pleading note Evelyn had never heard in all the weeks she’d known Minerva.

“But we all should leave this world with love, do ye nae think?”

Evelyn swallowed past the slicing blades in her throat, the taste of blood still sweet in her mouth. “I do.” She leaned down and pressed her tingling lips to each of the old woman’s cool cheeks, in turn. “Go in peace, Minerva Buchanan,” Evelyn whispered. “You were indeed loved by many. Including me.”

Evelyn drew away and looked down into the ancient healer’s face, glowing pale in the dark, wet night, like a withered moon. Her black eyes were faraway and happy, her thin lips curved into a satisfied smile.

But the old woman made no reply.

Minerva Buchanan was, at last, dead.

Her own startled cry woke Evelyn from her slumber and she squinted, heart pounding, against the watery, gray sunlight filtering through the frigid fog of the wood.

Her throat felt as if it had been turned inside out and left out to dry, but the painful tightness in her chest had lessened by half. Her fever must have broken as well, for she felt frozen to her very bones.

Evelyn looked down at the dead healer, still cradled in her arms. Minerva’s face was covered by a crystalline layer of blue frost, her eyes open and staring at Evelyn, but now silvered and full of nothing. A gnarled hand still clutched the front of Evelyn’s cloak and she worked quickly to pull the garment from the rigid grasp, a sudden superstitious desire to be unlocked from the corpse causing her to pant and whine. Once the talons of death were empty, held frozen in the air, Evelyn saw the thin gash in the pad of the old woman’s thumb.

Evelyn scrambled from the pile of rocks with a whimper and tumbled to the frozen forest floor, her hand going instinctively to her lips. She scrubbed at her mouth with her fingertips—no tenderness—then drew her hand away to look down at it.

No blood, either.

Evelyn stared warily at the old witch for what seemed like hours, as if expecting Minerva to rouse from her icy sleep and descend the rock drift. When the corpse remained quiet, Evelyn rose gingerly to her knees and clasped her hands before her breasts. Closing her gummy-feeling eyes, she raised her face to the low sky.

But no prayer came. Try as she might, Evelyn could not beg the most simple, memorized verse from her mind. After months of prayerful life at the priory, her faith felt used up, tired, and impotent.

She’d once sought haven in religion but had encountered only death and debauchery, greed and hypocrisy. God had not heard her confused pleas then, and now she had forgotten how or why to ask for mercy. It mattered not. From the moment Evelyn had decided never to return to the priory, she felt she had damned herself. God would have no mercy for a strange young woman, once of noble station, who had deserted her calling out of fear and cynicism. A woman who would rather spend her time with animals than people, who understood them better than anyone had ever understood Evelyn. Her gift with beasts was an evil penchant, she’d been told many times by the monks. Sinful. Blasphemous. And evil, sinful blasphemies were aught in which the brethren were well practiced.

Her dark thoughts were interrupted by the screams of a horse, and Evelyn’s eyes snapped open. Had she, in her desperation, imagined the cry? Or had God not completely forsaken her, after all? As if in answer, the animal shrieked again, and Evelyn thought the horse sounded near.

Her heart pounded sharply—a hammer on cold stone. “Amen,” she breathed, although no true prayer had left her lips, and then scrambled to her feet.

She stumbled around the wide skirt of rocks that was Minerva’s pyre and farther into the wood, swerving drunkenly through the trees, ears straining for the horse’s whinny. It must be Minerva’s mare. It must be.

“Where are you, lovely?” Evelyn whispered. “I need that saddle bag.” Her life depended on it. Although it contained no food, the soft leather satchel tied to the mare’s saddle held two flint stones and Evelyn’s own dagger—items crucial to her survival. The other prizes in the bag were but outrageous luxuries at this point.

She paused, one chapped palm braced against the scarred skin of a straggling beech, and listened.

There! To her right, a rustling sounded, and a cracking like the snap of a fallen branch. Evelyn pushed away from the tree and tried to walk calmly in the direction of the sounds, despite the hysterical voice in her head screaming at her to run, run as fast as her watery legs would carry her. ’Twould do no good to spook the beast and send her deeper into the wood.

It began to snow again. Small, delicate flakes floating like goose down turned the world of the forest into contrasts of black and white, light and shadow, dusk and dawn at once.

From within a copse of pine just ahead, a plume of dry snow fanned out, once, twice. She heard a low snuffling, a snort, a ragged breath.

Evelyn stopped again and clicked her tongue. The snuffling ceased and all was quiet, save for the timpani of Evelyn’s own heart.

“Here, girl,” she called to the horse. She moved forward a step, whistled low. “’Tis all right—I’m here now.” She crept around the edge of pine, stiff, brushy needles snagging her cloak and then springing free, sending fresh, powdery white down upon her. The green scent was so thick here, Evelyn’s empty stomach churned.

A flash of black through the boughs caught her eye and then danced away behind the needles. She penetrated the heart of the copse.

The blood would have been enough to stop Evelyn in her tracks. Red, steaming snow, melted into black mud. Fresh crimson starbursts exploded and splattered away from the crater where a short but deadly battle had been waged.

Evelyn had indeed found Minerva’s mare. Lying dead on its side, its mouth slack around square, bloodied teeth, as if in surprise. Its throat was torn away.

But beyond the mare’s barreled chest lay an even greater horror, and it now growled at Evelyn—a low, wet sound full of fresh death.

A black wolf crouched on its haunches, its blood-slicked muzzle still clamped around shiny entrails ripped from the horse’s belly like satiny ribbons. The animal was enormous—big-boned and wide of chest beneath matted, shaggy fur.

“Oh my God,” Evelyn croaked as wild yellow eyes locked onto her. The wolf’s sides heaved in and out with exertion and alarm, and even from this distance, Evelyn could see skeletal ribs and the lump of thick hipbone jutting through the beast’s matted fur. The animal was nearly starved.

It growled again, this time more insistently.

Stay away. Mine.

Evelyn swallowed, her eyes flicking to the saddlebag still tethered to the dead horse. “I’ll not hurt you,” she said in a low, quavering voice. Her mind raced, and she decided quickly that the best course of action was to back a fair distance away and leave the wolf to its meal. The horse was of little use to her any matter, now. When the wolf had eaten its fill, Evelyn would return and retrieve the satchel.

She began to back away.

The wolf sprang to its feet, dropping the entrails with a spray of bloody saliva as it lunged forward, barking, and skidded to a halt in the snow not ten feet from where Evelyn stood.

Had she any water in her bladder, she would have lost it in that moment.

“All right! All right,” she rushed. “I’ll not move.”

The wolf growled and backed up slowly until it was returned to the horse’s torn underbelly. Its eyes never left Evelyn’s, even as it began to feed once more.

After what seemed like an hour of watching the wolf gorge, Evelyn’s numb feet and legs would no longer support her and she slowly sank down to her bottom in the accumulating snow. The beast tensed at her movement.

“Just taking a rest,” she whispered.

It resumed its meal.

Evelyn ate a handful of snow.

She was covered in a blanket of powder and frozen to her core it seemed when, at last, the wolf stood. It stared at Evelyn, licking its muzzle noisily.

Evelyn swallowed. “Well. What are we to do now?” she asked lightly. The wolf cocked its head and Evelyn flicked her eyes to the saddle, blinking away the snowflakes clumped on her eyelashes.

The wolf shifted its weight and then sat down in the snow.

Evelyn drew a steadying breath. “I must have it, you understand.”

The beast stared at her a long moment and then stood once more and circled away from the carcass. It walked stiffly to the far edge of the copse and lay down with a grunt. It looked at Evelyn and yawned.

“All right, then.” Evelyn took another deep breath. “Just the satchel, I swear it.”

The wolf did not move.

She rolled to her feet so slowly it took her nearly a full minute before she stood upright. Creeping, she slid her feet through the snow, inching toward the horse, barely feeling the fiery cold burning the exposed skin above her worn leather slippers. Her heart felt swollen with ice and shuddered as if it would explode when she reached the mare and crouched down slowly. The smell of blood caused her to gag and her mouth to water, the fresh carcass still radiating a glowing heat.

The wolf lowered its head to its paws.

Evelyn slid a hand beneath the satchel’s ice-stiffened flap and grasped blindly until she felt the hilt of her blade, as cold as her own skin. She withdrew it from the bag slowly, slowly.

“’Tis not for you, lovely,” Evelyn crooned when the wolf’s ears pricked, praying the beast would not charge her before she had removed the satchel. She sawed clumsily through the strap holding the bag to the horse and dragged it to her, clutching the dagger to her bosom.

“There—that’s it. That’s all.” Evelyn stood, wanting to sob. Her salvation was in her own hands now. “The rest is yours, as I promised.” She began to back away.

The wolf raised its head with a low growl and Evelyn froze in place. But the animal was looking past her, deeper into the copse of pine.

Then Evelyn heard the soft crunch of snow behind her. She spun around.

No fewer than five more of the beasts ringed the copse—all gray in color and smaller than the black behind her, but still large and deadly. They watched her greedily, long tongues lolling out of their mouths and running with saliva.

Live meat. Fresh. Warm. Hungry, hungry…

Evelyn’s throat closed as images of her body being ripped open like the mare’s filled her mind. Fear unlike any she had ever known paralyzed her so that she could not have commanded her legs to move had she a place to flee.

She was trapped in the thick stand of trees.

The boldest of the newcomers hedged toward her in a swift, side-to-side motion and then stopped, as if taunting her. And this wolf had a different air about him—an awareness like a sinister fog that seemed to slither over the snow and swirl about Evelyn’s ankles. An old, old beast, grizzled and scarred, his bloody intent clear in his soulless eyes.

Run? Will you run?

The animals behind the leader began to whine and Evelyn heard her own wild squeal of fear squeeze past her throat. Oh, God, she prayed, at last able to address her maker now that she was mesmerized by the long fangs, the curled, quivering lips. Please make it quick.

The wolf leader pounced with a snarl and Evelyn closed her eyes.

She was knocked sideways with a cry, and the sounds of hellish screams filled her ears. But when no teeth sank into her flesh, her eyes snapped open.

The black wolf was entangled with the gray, their forelegs locked around each other in a writhing, blurry mass of teeth and fur.

Another gray leapt onto the black’s back, fangs bared, eliciting a bone-shuddering squeal from the larger animal.

Evelyn knew it would only be a matter of seconds before she, too, was attacked. She scrambled backward, her knuckles still clenched around her dagger and the satchel dragging through the snow, and then she was somehow off the ground and running—flying—through the forest away from the frenzy behind her, mumbled sobs bubbling at her lips as her breath roared in and out of her nose. Running, running for her life.

The life the black wolf had spared her. But why? Why? Yellow eyes glowed in her mind.

Evelyn ran for what seemed like hours before she saw the slope ahead—rounded, snow-covered ground that swelled away into a view of distant trees at midtrunk. How far was the drop? Two feet? A score? And what lay below? A forgiving bog? A frozen river, punctuated with jagged boulders?

Evelyn did not know, nor could she stop. She barreled toward the brink and prepared to leap.

She was still two yards from the precipice when she fell through the very earth itself, and the darkness swallowed her scream.