Page 37 of Farlan (Immortal Highlander Clan McKeran #3)
Chapter Fifteen
I n the great hall Grace helped Ava and Doon set out food, and then with Olivia organized the cots the guards brought in, but none of the vassals seemed interested in eating or sleeping.
Tasgall came in for a few moments to count heads before leaving with a large group of patrollers again.
Only a dozen maids and two sculleries had been brought in by Farlan and Darro, who left again for a while before returning, this time with just a group of guards carrying extra weapons.
Her lover came over to Grace and hugged her for a moment. “You’re well, my lady?”
Overcome with emotion, all she could do was nod.
“Where is the rest of the staff?” Ava asked the chieftain .
“Vanished,” Darro glanced at Grace for a moment before he added, “We searched every room along the way to see if they’d been paralyzed as before, but ’twas no sign of anyone. ’Tis as if they’ve escaped the trap.”
“That’s not likely.” The laird’s wife rubbed her temple. “We’ll have to send teams to search the towers and outbuildings. Who can check the weapons storerooms on the walls?”
“All the archers and watchers on the wall, they’ve disappeared as well,” Darro said.
Ava dropped her hand and stared at him. “What about the garrison?” When the chieftain nodded she paled. “You’re telling me two bats snatched the clan, too? Hundreds of clansmen. Large, heavily armed, well-drilled clansmen.”
“The creatures move quickly, and without being seen,” Farlan told her, releasing Grace before he sent the guards he’d brought to the hall to stand guard in the archways. “Rory’s missing, and Inga as well.”
Filled with a strange foreboding, Grace started toward one of the arches. When Ava caught her arm, she nearly punched her. “I have to find my grandmother.”
“Leave that to the men,” the laird’s wife said firmly.
A maid named Ida suddenly screamed and staggered back from a window slit as if something had pushed her, and then fell on her back as stones exploded from the wall, pelting everyone.
Farlan and Darro stepped quickly in front of Grace and the other women and drew their swords as a dark shadow appeared in the air over the maid, coalescing into a giant brown bat that landed on top of her and bent over to bite her on the neck.
“Darro,” Farlan said as he jerked off his tartan and flung one end to the chieftain, who caught it. “Now.”
The two men charged at the bat, flinging the tartan over the creature and then running around it in opposite directions to pin its wings down and prevent it from flying away.
It made a shrill screaming sound as it struggled furiously to free itself, slinging a small object across the hall.
In the commotion Ava hurried over to grab Ida and drag her away, and Grace rushed to help her, astonished to see the stiff-bodied maid staring up at them as if she couldn’t move or speak.
Then she began to shrink, making Ava swear as she picked her up and held her.
“No, no.” A strange dark green shadow flared around the laird’s wife as she took a stone from her pocket. “I don’t know what to do—can anyone help me?”
The tartan suddenly collapsed, and a much smaller bat flew back out through the large hole it had earlier smashed in the wall.
Darro and Farlan jumped out after it. Grace almost went with them, but then saw the white mist of Torra MacBren’s spirit funneling down the chimney of one of the hearths.
The mist rushed out to whirl around Ava and Ida.
“Wait, Torra, I’m here. Use me.” She ran into the mist, opening her mind as the druid girl came into her body.
"My lady, put the stone against the bite, and say these words," Torra said through Grace to Ava. “Briseadh a 'gheasaidh.”
The laird’s wife repeated the phrase, and suddenly the now doll-size Ida grew back to her ordinary size in less than a few seconds. The maid immediately went limp and sagged against Ava, while Torra’s spirit left Grace, becoming a white mist again that rushed between two guards and left the hall.
Her head spinning, Grace went over to help the laird’s wife carry the maid to a cot, and found a blanket for her. When she and Ava accidentally bumped shoulders, a burning coldness sank into her skin, and she stepped away to avoid more contact.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I’d hurt you.” The laird’s wife pocketed the stone in her hand, and the dark green shadow surrounding her disappeared.
“Rory refused to tell me how to use this power.” She looked over as Tasgall rushed into the hall toward her.
“ Please let me tell my husband what happened later, once we’re out of danger. ”
“I won’t say anything,” Grace murmured before she walked over to retrieve the object the bat had slung across the hall. She froze as she saw it was Inga, who had been shrunken down to doll-size and lay motionless on the stone floor. “Ava, I need you over here.”
Both the laird and his wife joined her, and Tasgall motioned for them to stay back as he crouched down by the chatelaine.
“She’s been bitten on the arm,” he told Grace, and then eyed his wife. “Can you use your power again, Wife?”
“I can never keep anything a secret from you,” Ava said as if grumbling, before she took his place beside Inga and removed the stone from her pocket, pressing it over the two tiny puncture wounds on the chatelaine’s arm. The dark green shadow flared around her as she said, “Briseadh a 'gheasaidh.”
Nothing happened for so long Grace’s blood turned to ice, and then, very gradually, her grandmother began to grow larger. Halfway through returning to full size she opened her eyes, saw them all around her, and flung herself at Grace.
“Don’t be afraid.” She held her child-size grandmother carefully, stroking her back to calm her as best she could. “Ava broke the spell. You’re going to be all right.”
“I’m so sorry,” Inga said in a faint, high-pitched voice.
“I was making my way to you when I was attacked and bitten. Then I couldn’t move, and it flew off with me.
It was heading for the outer wall when it suddenly turned around and came back toward the stronghold.
” As her body reached its full size, her voice became lower and stronger.
“I think it meant to come in here and attack all of you.”
Grace helped her grandmother to her feet and held onto her hand as she regarded Ava. “These things want to turn all of us into dolls—why?”
“To control us, or to keep us out of the way. I’m not sure.” The laird’s wife wiped some sweat from her brow. “Maybe they’re making us smaller so they can eat… Never mind.” To her husband she said, “Take me to the outer wall. We’ll find our people, and I’ll break the spell.”
“The guards will protect everyone here,” Olivia said as the laird hesitated.
“’Tisnae that.” Tasgall took hold of Ava’s hands. “This power, ’tis dangerous, my lady. Rory but rarely uses his, and you’ve no training. Such spell-breaking may backlash on you.”
“I know,” she said, fanning herself with one hand. “He warned me.” She glanced over at Inga and Grace before she said, “But it’s worth the risk to save the clan.”
The laird hugged Ava tightly, and then called two guards to take positions on either side of the hole in the wall before he left with his wife.
Inga called all the maids over and gave them different tasks to keep them busy. She then picked up the torn tartan that Farlan and Darro had used while trying to catch the bat and eyed the hole the creature had made in the wall.
“We should try to block off that opening so it can’t fly back in,” she told Grace.
She looked around the hall. “If we wedge one of those small benches inside it, that might work.”
Together with her grandmother she carried the bench over to the damaged wall, and hefted it into place.
“This probably isn’t the best time to talk,” Inga said once they finished. “But I’d like to know more about you.”
Grace wanted to be angry, but she was too tired. “You want to know about Tonje. Go ahead, just ask.”
“I’m sorry. Time holds no meaning in this place, really, and after seventy years I haven’t changed. I suppose that’s why I kept thinking of Tonje as my little girl. She would have been in her forties when you were born.” She sighed. “Why did she have you so late in life, Grace?”
She hoped I would keep my father from leaving her.
“I think I was either an accident, or a way of trying to hold her marriage together. My dad just could never make her happy, I guess, but it doesn’t matter.
She had a very good life for the last nine years.
I made sure of it. That’s the important thing, right?
” She looked over at the maids, who were gathered and whispering in one corner.
“We should give the girls more work to do.”
“I came to the castle that day because I was looking for a job as a maid,” Inga said softly.
“I’d just found out my husband had been cheating on me with several women.
He was also drinking a lot and had started hitting our daughter as well as me.
I planned to work and save enough money to leave him and start over someplace else with my daughter.
He punished Tonje after I left, didn’t he? ”
“I don’t know what he did. She never spoke about him.” Grace regarded the chatelaine. “She survived, and in the end she lived her life exactly the way she wanted.” She had to force out another lie as she added, “She was a good mother.”
“I know that’s not true.” Tears welled up in Inga’s eyes. “Please don’t lie to me.”
“It won’t satisfy you,” Grace said softly. “Nothing I say will ever make up for you being torn from your child. My mother is dead, and what she did during her life is in the past. Isn’t it time for us to stop suffering over things we can never change?”
“The only thing that kept me going was the hope that I would see Tonje again.” The chatelaine’s shoulders slumped. “Now I don’t even have that.”