Page 47 of Highlander’s Curse (The Daughters of the Glen #8)
Thirty-three
D o you hear that? What is that noise?”
Abby had drawn her horse up alongside Colin’s, her brow wrinkled in concern.
Even if he hadn’t spotted the brightly colored wagons in the distance, the familiar noise of pans rattling against one another assured him there was only one thing it could be.
“Tinklers.”
It was clear as the wagons closed the distance between them that their drivers were pushing the rigs as hard as they could.
“Turn back and save yerselves,” the first man called, pulling hard on his reins to slow his wagon to a stop. “You and yer lady will no want to be caught in what’s to come at the end of this road, lad.”
“What lies ahead of us, Tinkler?” Colin asked, even though he’d read the stories of the battle that would rage in this area.
“An army passed our camp in the night. Desperate men on the run. They warned that the English followed.”
His king knew he was pursued, but he knew not of the men who waited in ambush. An ambush Colin would be too late to prevent if he didn’t hurry.
“Turn back with yer lady. Yer more than welcome to ride along with us. Unless you’d rather no been seen in our company, that is.”
“I’ve no hesitation to ride at yer side, good sir.” Tinklers, long thought to have mysterious ties to the Fae, had always been welcome at his family’s home. “But I canna turn back, though I do appreciate yer warning.”
“Consider my words well, young sir. Men from all sides of the conflict roam the countryside ahead. It’s too dangerous for you and yer lady to—”
The Tinkler’s insistence was cut short by a woman’s hand to his shoulder as she leaned out from the flap of material covering the opening in the wagon.
“That’s enough from you, William Faas. These people chase their destiny. Can you no feel it?”
She turned to face them, her sweet smile seeming to spread a feeling of joy when it lit on him.
“My home is but a few days’ journey in the direction you travel now. There is safety at Dun Ard and you’ll be welcomed there.” Why he felt compelled to offer these people the protection of his clan eluded him at the moment. He only knew that it was something he should do.
“We are well familiar with Dun Ard. The lady Rosalyn is one of my best customers.” She smiled again and patted her husband’s shoulder. “We must hurry, William. This is no place for us to be right now. Go forth with our blessings, Master MacAlister.”
William snapped the reins he held, urging his team of horses onward as his wife disappeared back behind the flap of cloth. “Go with caution, lad,” he called over his shoulder as their wagon pulled away. “Go with faith.”
Colin waited, Abby at his side, until both the Tinklers’ wagons had passed them by.
“What did she mean about us chasing our destiny?” Abby’s voice seemed to blend with the musical sound of the Tinklers’ pots.
He shrugged, at a loss for any logical answer. “They are Tinklers.”
When he started off this time, he held his mount to a slower pace. They had need to be watchful from here out to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
Abby followed along at his side, silent after the encounter with the Tinklers. He should say something to reassure her after the dire warnings, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her such a falsehood. William Faas had spoken the truth. Danger did lie in wait, both ahead and behind them.
The afternoon sun rode midway down the western sky by the time they reached the crossroads.
They were close now. He might have lost his Faerie abilities, but his warrior senses were as keen as ever. The very air seemed to shimmer with the potential for violence only a great battle could bring.
Without a word, he turned his horse to the west, to follow the path his king’s army would have taken.
“That’s the wrong way.” Abby sat her mount in the middle of the crossroads, making no move to follow him.
“Robert’s men travel this direction.” West, to their own peril.
“That may be true, but even if it is, your friend isn’t with them. He’s this way. Or—” She shrugged, her face seeming to pale as she continued. “His wristband is this direction, anyway.”
East. Away from where he knew the ambush awaited.
“Yer sure of this. There can be no mistake?”
“Absolutely positive. If you want to find the wristband, we have to travel in this direction.”
She waited for him, moving not a muscle, trust shining in her eyes even as indecision rumbled in his gut, an unfamiliar, worthless emotion he had no use for.
East to find the wristband Dair always wore, or west to join his king.
One direction might well be an exercise in futility. The wristband could have fallen from Dair’s arm. Or—and this thought set his stomach to a full churn—the band could still be on his kinsman’s body. His lifeless body.
The other direction required risking not only his own life but that of his beloved Soulmate as well, and in the end it was possible he’d neither find his kinsmen nor reach his king in time to warn him of what awaited.
And if he did?
He could hear Pol’s voice floating through his mind as clearly as if the Faerie Prince stood at his side.
You cannot change the outcome of history. You may only alter the circumstances.
Certainly he had the power to ignore the edict, but at what price? If he was successful in his quest, the world, Abby’s world, would be forever changed. Everything she loved and wanted to return to might very well have never existed.
She might never have existed.
“Your call, husband. Whatever you decide, that’s what we’ll do.”
She’d not called him by that name before.
Hearing it from her lips set the very foundations of his world to trembling.
He would give all that he owned if only he had the faith in himself that she showed in him at this moment.
Abby felt her heart close to breaking as she watched the indecision radiate from Colin.
She’d never seen him like this before. For a fact, she suspected this moment was a first for her brave, hardheaded warrior. He was not a man given to vacillation.
How very odd it felt to realize that the whole of her world, the whole of their world together, rested on this one decision.
Right or left. East or west. See to his kinsman or attempt to change the future.
Colin would choose one or the other and that choice would change everything for them from that moment forward.
“Bollocks,” he muttered at last, reining his horse around and directing him toward where she waited. “Let’s have at this band you’re so sure you can find.”
They rode side by side, once again in silence. He was obviously on alert, constantly scanning the road ahead for any sign of danger. Confident in his ability to protect them, Abby allowed herself to sink inward, using the quiet to explore the extent of her ability to find something.
She visualized the tendril, taut and straining, stretching far out into the distance ahead of her.
It was a new sensation to find something so far away.
She felt as if she floated over this world, outside her own body, carried forward on wings, always keeping one eye on the pulsating tendril far below her.
The deeper she allowed herself to fall into the vision, the more real her surroundings became.
Rather than the black mist that normally surrounded the energy she sent out, it was as if the mist coalesced into the countryside through which they traveled.
The tendril snaked forward, pulsating its fluorescent light along the very road over which their horses carried them.
Below her, trees formed a canopy over the road, so full and large she couldn’t tell where one set of limbs ended and the next began. So dense were the branches she even lost sight of the tendril at times, able to track it here only by the faint pulsing light flickering below the canopy.
There! Movement to the left of the road. That must be the tendril. But no, the light still shone in pulsing blips from the center of the canopy. Curiosity invaded the vision. If not the tendril, then what had she seen?
Abby stopped, hovering above the trees, straining to peer between the leaves, searching for any trace of the movement.
“What is it?”
Like being snatched from a speeding car, Abby’s thoughts slammed back into her body.
Colin’s hand gripped her arm, his face only inches from hers.
“What’s wrong with you? Abby! Answer me!”
She shook her head, struggling to form the sounds she needed to use. “Nothing,” she managed at last.
“Nothing?” He sat back, disbelief written across his face. “You can hardly expect me to believe that. You stop yer horse in the middle of the road and when I try to speak to you, it’s as if yer no even there.”
“I wasn’t there.” She took a deep breath, hoping to clear her foggy mind. “I was trying to follow the trail to the band. I told you, I’ve never done this over such a long distance before. I guess I just got a little carried away. I’m fine now. A little fuzzy, but fine.”
Fine if she didn’t count the booming headache her unexpected reentry to the real world had brought with it.
She reached up to rub her temple, thankful the sun had slipped behind a cloud, leaving only a dappled pattern of light on the road rather than the bright glare they’d ridden through for the better part of the day.
“Stay behind me and keep yer eyes open.”
She looked up at Colin’s urgent whisper. His attention was directed ahead of them, though he continued to speak to her with the same low urgency as before.
“If anything looks to be amiss, turn yer mount and ride hard. Do you ken what I’m saying? Dinna think about it. Dinna pause to look back. Just do what I’ve told you and ride.”
Abby studied her surroundings closely for the first time in a long while. It wasn’t clouds that shaded them but a heavy overhang of large trees on either side of the road on which they traveled, just like those she’d seen in her vision.