Broden: Immortal Highlander, Clan Mag Raith Book 4, page 15
Now, somehow, she had to make Broden understand that.
Reaching out to touch the scar Sileas had left on him, Mariena felt her lover flinch. “The night I came here, I held a dagger to your throat. If your clan had tried to hurt me, I would have used it. You had done nothing to me, and I would have killed you. Our hearts, they are the same, mon charmant.”
His mouth thinned. “You defended yourself against strangers. I meant to slaughter a tribe. My tribe. Old ones, young lads, mothers, bairns.”
“You did not slaughter them, and no one can say what you would have done. You might have changed your mind, gotten free, run away. Or someone who cared might have helped you escape.” Suddenly she thought of the other men of the clan. She had seen how close they were, and all of them treated Broden as they did each other, as family. “Before she left with you, Sileas would have told the hunters, no?”
His expression darkened. “Aye, she took particular pleasure in shaming me thus.”
“Just so. I think Domnall and the others, they would do nothing to help you.” She pretended not to see his startled look as she tapped a finger against her chin. “She knew that.”
“I belonged to Sileas as her property, my lady.” He sounded as if she’d punched him in the belly. “’Twas naught they could have done for a slave.”
“No, I think she wouldn’t worry. She knew they would not care. She was so sure that she let you hunt with them.” She made a sweeping gesture. “I know they called you their brother, but they did not mean it. You don’t share the bloodline, and among your people, that is what counts, no?”
Broden scowled. “You dinnae ken my brothers.”
“Do you? Once they learned that Sileas had made you a brute’s sex slave, perhaps they would have been glad to be rid of you? To never hunt with you again? They must have thought you deserved such a terrible fate for being…” She stopped and peered at him. “Too handsome? No, they don’t seem to resent your perfect face and body. Your poor hunting skills, then…only they think you are the best trapper in Scotland. Hmmm.” She smiled. “Well, there is your voice. It is far from perfect. Maybe they despised you for that.”
Broden looked so dumbstruck she would not have been surprised to see him drop in a heap. “I never reckoned they’d care what became of me.”
“Then you are still blind, and not so very clever.” She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Why do I sleep with you? I could do much better.” Gently she pulled him close and murmured against his ear. “Now, you listen to me, mon ange. This is what I can promise you: Domnall and the others, they would never have allowed you to go to that terrible headman. They would have taken you away from Sileas. They love you, as you love them.” As I love you, she added silently.
“I’m no’ so noble as my brothers,” he said into her hair. “Since we escaped the underworld, I’ve never told them of the vengeance I’d planned.”
She knew that her power could not heal this terrible unseen wound in him, but she suspected revealing his secrets would. Yet that would have to be his choice.
“Whatever you choose to tell your clan, that part of your life is gone, mon charmant. You can never go back and change the wrathful man you were. You survived Sileas, and the Sluath, and now you are here. You must live as the fine man you have become.” She felt him tremble and turned her face so she could kiss his. “My very handsome, skilled man with the terrible voice.”
Silently he held her until his shaking stopped. He didn’t weep, but when he drew back she saw a line of blood on his bottom lip where he’d bitten it. Gently she brushed her fingers over the small wound, and grimaced as she tasted blood.
“My thanks, my lady,” he said.
“I’m glad you told me,” she said, looking down. Mariena suspected Broden was in no state for more unnerving revelations, so she turned away and headed for the door. “I promised the chieftain I would explore all the castle today. There is much more to look at, no?”
“I ken your secret,” Broden said, stopping her. “You took Nellie’s arrow wounds from her back after the battle. You healed my neck, my knee, and even my eyes. You’ve a power that takes injuries from others, and makes them yours.”
She tensed for a moment and then her shoulders sagged. Her carelessness had not gone unnoticed. But of course, how could it not? Had she secretly wanted him to know?
“Yes,” she finally said. “I have only to touch the injuries.”
“You blinded yourself for me.” He turned her around to face him, a scowl deeply furrowing his brow. “How could you be so reckless? Did you ken you would heal?”
“I always do.” Mariena shrugged. “Very well. The next time you are blinded, I will not touch you.”
Broden’s grip gentled. “Tell me why you kept your power a secret.”
“I made a promise. The demon who helped us escape sent me here on a mission, but I cannot remember it.” She saw how his muscles tensed, making his inked glyphs bulge. “There is more I have kept secret. The demon also gave us our powers, and Dun Chaill did not save the women of your clan. The tattoos on their bodies brought them back to life.”
He released her. “How?”
“I don’t know that,” she admitted. “The demon told me that mortal slaves were marked so they could be brought back and made immortal, but only by their Sluath masters in the underworld. All I can tell you is that it should not have happened here.”
Broden rubbed his brow. “We must find Domnall, and go to the forge.”
Mariena followed him out of the room. “If we are to tell your chieftain, we should bring the others.” She heard a sound from the other end of the passage and turned to see a tall, figure watching them. “Broden.”
Fury filled his eyes. “Galan, you fack.”
The tall man bared his teeth in a horrible smile, and then fled into the tower.
Chapter Twenty-Four
PRINCE IOLAR EMERGED from the dismal cottage he occupied, startling the two demons standing guard. He ignored them as he scanned the horizon. He saw no storms approaching, but felt again the trace of power that had stirred him from his lethargy. The stench of the mortals he’d butchered in the night crept out to envelop him. While it was his favorite perfume, it also stoked the hunger he could no longer assuage.
In the underworld Iolar abided far more comfortably in his father’s towering manse of snow-white stone. Once staffed by dozens of humans the king had personally trained—and Iolar had later gleefully butchered—it had contained every priceless treasure His Majesty had filched from the time stream.
A stunning number of useless objects had cluttered the place. Bowls of diamonds, some as big as Danar’s fist, had sat beside chests of gold and pearls. Tapestries embroidered with rare silks that depicted fantastic creatures once covered the walls. One room alone had been packed with scrolls taken from some infamous library in Alexandria before it had been burned. As soon as the king and his retainers had died miserably, Iolar had ordered the demons loyal to him to help themselves to whatever they liked. It had been the easiest way to clear out the damn place. The scrolls he’d burned, one by one, imagining how the king would have screamed to see such wanton destruction of his precious mortal scribblings.
The one treasure Iolar had kept for himself, the one every demon still coveted, had provided him with all the pleasure he could ever desire.
“I should have taken Nellie Quinn,” he said, almost feeling wistful now. “She would have told me where she hid my treasure.” And if she hadn’t, he still might have amused himself with her.
A large silhouette blocked out the sun.
“My prince.” Danar bowed. “How may I serve?”
“Send someone to clean out this hovel,” he told the big demon. “It’s beginning to stink of rotting corpses. Oh, and take out the rotting corpses first.” He noticed something as he glanced around the village to select the next candidates for his amusement. “Where are the village idiots?”
Danar nodded toward the mess inside his cottage. “Those you took were the last of our stocks, my liege. Galan promised to procure more for your needs, but he has not yet returned from the Emerald Glen.”
Iolar doubted Galan would. “Then you must do it. Make sure that they’re young and strong. I don’t want any more gnarled old men or their cross-eyed crones.” He eyed him. “Why are you still standing here?”
The big demon bowed and trotted off.
Iolar walked through the village, aware that every guard and sentry watched him with open fear and barely-concealed anger. The longer the Sluath remained stranded in the mortal realm, the more they hungered for the pleasures of the underworld. Although they were immortal and couldn’t literally starve, neither could they sustain themselves here. To thrive as they were, they needed to cull souls they could enslave.
Soon some of the stronger, more malicious demons would challenge him for rule. Iolar could prevail over a few, but he had depleted his power twice now. If enough banded together against him he would end as his father had, skewered to his throne by iron and slowly decapitated.
“Ah, the good old days,” he murmured fondly. He had enjoyed sawing off the old bastard’s fat head, and placing it on a pike in the center of the slave arena, so the rest of the demons could watch it slowly shrivel into twisted ash.
That had set the perfect note for Iolar’s coronation gala.
In those days the supply of mortals had been a constant deluge, thanks to the savagery rampant in the mortal realm. Iolar could remember times when he’d culled a thousand souls at once, returning to the underworld during the same storm he’d used to hunt them. The Mongols in particular had provided so many tasty delights. From their time the Sluath had culled so many slaves they’d had to suspend most of them in ice.
Thanks to the inherent inanity of mortals there would always be wars and genocides and plagues enough to keep the demons well-supplied. Yet those glory days of taking as many souls as the Sluath wanted were gone. They could use the time stream to move through the millennia, but it never allowed them to revisit a time in the past or future that they’d already culled. The only exception was this time in Scotland, a mystery that the king had never explained to him.
At the edge of the village Iolar sniffed the air until he caught the scent of the diminutive source. As he expected it stank of child and druid. He followed it into the forest, where he spied a young boy sitting in the oak tree.
It seemed his grand plan had been a success. “You’re late.”
“Forgive me, my prince. I had to change several times.” The druid toddler jumped from the branch to the ground, where he gazed up at Iolar with soft, innocent eyes. “Everything went exactly as you wished.”
The prince smelled fear and bared his teeth. “Convince me of that.”
“I persuaded the idiots of the Emerald Glen tribe to give me to Galan when he came looking for Druman,” the boy said. “It wasn’t at all as difficult as I’d imagined. That Bhaltair Flen fellow must instill terror wherever he goes. Also, I pulled the vision of the boy out of their minds with no effort. We should consider trying to cull—oh, but he’s a druid. Never mind.”
Rolling his hand kept the prince from lunging and tearing out the boy’s thin throat.
“Yes, well, Galan stole me from them, as he’d promised you. He never tried to come here, however. He took me as his hostage to the ruins of an ancient settlement. It smelled of those bones he brought back for you to resurrect.” The boy showed his little teeth in a wide smile. “There he tormented me, but only a little, and demanded I tell him about the disappearance of the Mag Raith and their tribe. As you commanded, I told him what we know.”
Iolar felt the first pleasure of his day. Stirring the druid’s madness into a froth had become a little game for him—Galan made it remarkably easy, too—but the real work had been awakening what lay dormant inside him. That had required very careful calculation.
“Where is Galan now?” he demanded.
“I can’t tell you, my prince.” The boy took a wary step back. “He disappeared just outside the settlement. He also took with him what was left of his spies.”
Pleasure, as usual, became fleeting. “You let him get away?”
As Iolar came at the boy he dropped and prostrated himself in the leaf rot. “Please, my liege. I could not follow him. He sent me to look for myself, and he’d never believe I was one of his spies. I thought it more important to keep him from discovering my subterfuge.”
Iolar raised his claws. Tempting as it was to shove a bolt of power through the bumbling idiot, he’d actually done far better than expected. After waiting long enough to taste his fear, he slapped his hand atop the small head, and drew from the demon the power he’d lent him so he could retain his shift-forms longer and disguise his scent.
Seabhag instantly changed from the druid boy to a helpless-looking young mortal female. “Forgive me, my prince. I could not risk ruining your plan–”
“Stop cowering, fool. If I wanted you dead, I’d have already torn you to pieces.” Iolar turned away, sighing with pleasure as his increased power surged through him. “What did you do with the real druid brat?”
“I fully intended to bring him as a gift for you.” Seabhag cautiously rose to his feet. “But when I arrived at the settlement, Druman had already been taken away. They wouldn’t tell me where, but once I killed a few of them, they agreed to help me convince Galan I was the child.” His pretty face took on an uneasy expression. “It was a little odd, how cooperative they were. They didn’t expect me, of course, but I think they knew the mad druid was coming for the boy. I just don’t know how.”
Iolar had never liked druids, who died as strangely as they lived, and this last revelation unsettled him. But Galan’s people could never do anything to harm him or his demons, so it didn’t really matter. “Come. We must speak to Danar about preparing for Galan’s return.”
Seabhag shifted into a skinny old man and trotted alongside him. “Why should the druid come back to us, my prince?”
“Clamhan is better at following him than you,” Iolar assured him. “That’s how he found out where the druid hid his wretched wife’s bones. If Galan wants his precious Fiana, then he’ll have to come to me and ask nicely for them.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
BRODEN WENT BACK into his chamber, and with a jerk ripped apart the rope holding his trunk out of reach. Catching it as it dropped, he tore open the lid, took out their blades and handed Mariena’s to her.
“This Galan, he’s the druid who serves the demons now?” she asked as she strapped on her sword and tucked away her daggers. “The one who hurt Kiaran, and tried to kill all the women of the clan?”
“Aye, he’s that fack,” he told her. “We cannae permit him leave Dun Chaill. He’ll lead the Sluath back to us.”
“Ah, so then he dies before he can. Simple.” Mariena glanced at him. “Aren’t you going to tell me to stay here and be safe while you go and hunt him?”
“You can protect yourself, my lady,” he told her. “While I’m safer with you at my side.”
Her lips curved. “I love you.”
They rushed out into the passage, and ran to the arch leading into the rebuilt tower. Before they entered she made the clan’s signal for silence and drew her dagger. When Broden indicated they should ascend in diagonal flanking positions, she moved slightly ahead of his own to take lead.
Galan had extinguished the tower’s torches, leaving them to smolder in his wake. Broden eyed the tracks he’d left in the dust on the stone steps. They lead straight up, but were smudged, as if he had retraced his steps. Broden turned in the darkness as he examined the walls, and felt a tendril of air against his face. Stepping in that direction, he saw the curve of the outer wall, which Jenna had just rebuilt.
The center of the stones had been blasted out, allowing the dru-wid to escape the tower.
Like an experienced siege warrior Mariena kept her back to the wall as she approached the opening, her gaze fixed on the darkness beyond it. She stopped and tilted her head to peer inside, and then glanced at Broden and shrugged.
Picking up one of the fallen stones, he hurled it through the gap. He heard it strike more stone and roll away.
Before he could go through, Mariena darted inside the opening, her blade ready as she shifted to one side. Broden followed and mirrored her position as he scanned the interior.
They had come into a chamber, not the passage on the other side of the tower. The one torch burning inside showed sloping stone walls surrounding an odd floor of dark wood that had been cut with deep channels filled with some murky liquid. The pitted walls appeared to be fashioned from single boulders hewn in enormous rounds. Over time they had tilted, and now leaned against each other at the top to form an irregular peak. On the floor beneath the peak stood a narrow pyramid-shaped altar of sorts, fashioned from thin wood staves. Atop the altar a small, dark bronze sphere had been placed.
Broden didn’t know if it was a sacred place—he’d never seen the like made by dru-wid or Pritani tribes—but something about the chamber gave him pause. It felt as if he should know its purpose, yet he couldn’t fathom it.
He circled around to the back of the altar, but found no exit to the chamber. As he lifted his free hand to give Mariena the signal to retreat he saw another stone hurl in through the opening. It smashed through the pyramid, sending the bronze sphere whirling into the air. Instead of falling it kept rising, attaching itself to the center of where the stones met, where it began to glow with amber light.
A heavy stone panel abruptly dropped down over the opening, sealing them inside.
“’Tis another trap,” Broden said as he strode over to grab the panel and move it aside. The moment he touched it a jolt of power slammed into him, and hurled him across the chamber. As he slid down and fell to his knees, crackling blue light swept over the panel.
