His eldest son could be so stubborn sometimes. After three failed betrothals, he was so blinded by doubts about himself, so hell-bent on wedding, that he was unwilling to entertain anything that might seem to threaten his upcoming nuptials. He was going to marry, and tarry not in the process.
Although Silvan knew they needed to rebuild the Keltar line, he suspected marriage between Drustan and the Elliott lass would entail a lifetime of deception that would inevitably result in misery for both of them.
A wee bampot, was she, this Gwen Cassidy? Silvan wasn’t so certain about that.
16
Besseta Alexander fumbled above the mantel for her yew sticks, dread coiling like a venomous snake in the pit of her stomach. A deeply superstitious woman, her charms were as necessary to her as the air she breathed. Of late she’d taken to scrying daily, frantic to discover what threat was moving ever nearer her son.
When she and Nevin had first moved to Castle Keltar, she’d been thrilled to return to the Highlands. No flatlander was she; she’d ached for many years to return to the misty caps, shimmery lochs, and heathery moors of her youth. The Highlands were closer to the heavens, even the moon and stars seemed within reach atop the mountains.
Nevin’s post was a prime one, priest to an ancient and wealthy clan. Here he could live out his life in security and contentment, with no risk of the kind of battles in which she’d lost her other sons, for the MacKeltar housed the second-finest garrison in all of Alba, second only to the King.
Aye, for the first fortnight she’d been elated. But then, shortly after their arrival, she’d cast her yew sticks and seen a dark cloud on her horizon rolling inexorably nearer. Try as she might, she’d been unable to coax her sticks or her runes or her tea leaves to tell her more.
Just a darkness. A darkness that threatened her only remaining son.
And then, the last time she’d read them, the darkness had extended to one of Silvan’s sons, but she’d been unable to determine which one.
Sometimes she felt that great sucking darkness was reaching for her, trying to drag her into it. She would sit for hours, clutching her ancient runes, tracing their shapes, rocking back and forth until the panic eased. Vague fear had been her lifelong companion, even as a small lass. She dare not lose Nevin, lest those shadows gain substance and tear at her with wicked claws.
Sighing, she smoothed her hair with trembling fingers, then cast the sticks upon the table. Had she cast them with Nevin in the hut, she would have gotten yet another tedious lecture about God and His mysterious ways.
Thank you very much, lad, but I trust my sticks, not your invisible God who refuses to answer me when I ask Him why He gets four of my sons and I get only one.
Studying the design, the coil in her belly tightened. Her sticks had fallen in the identical pattern they’d formed last week. Danger—but she had no way of knowing from what quarter. How was she to prevent it if she knew not whence it came? She dare not fail with her fifth and final son. Alone, that hungry blackness would get her, carry her off into what must surely be the oblivion of hell.
“Tell me more,” she beseeched. “I can’t do anything until I know which lad presents the danger to my son.”
Despairing, she gathered them, then suddenly changed her mind and did something a good fortune-teller rarely risked lest evil forces, ever attuned to fear and despair, cunningly ply a false design upon the limbs. She cast them again, a second time, in quick succession to the first.
Fortunately, the fates were inclined to be gentle and generous, for when the sticks clattered upon the table, she was granted a vision—a thing that had happened only once before in her life. Etched in her mind’s eye, she clearly saw the eldest MacKeltar lad—Drustan—scowling, she heard the sound of a woman weeping, and she saw her son, blood dripping from his lips. Somewhere in the vision she sensed a fourth person but couldn’t bring that person’s face into focus.
After a moment, she decided the fourth person must not be relevant to Nevin’s danger since she couldn’t see him or her. Mayhap an innocent onlooker.
The woman weeping must be the woman her sticks had told her would kill her son—the lady that Drustan MacKeltar would wed. She squeezed her eyes shut but could glimpse only a wee form and golden hair, not a woman she’d e’er seen before.
The vision faded, leaving her shaking and drained.
She had to somehow put a stop to things before Drustan MacKeltar wed.
She knew he was betrothed—all of Alba knew he was betrothed for the fourth time—but Nevin was infuriatingly closemouthed about the occupants of Castle Keltar. She had no idea when the wedding was to be, or even when the bride would be arriving.