Spell of the Highlander

Page 112

Jessi went very still. “Why?” Was he finally going to tell her what happened to him so long ago?
“Lucan and I were once friends, or so I thought. I later learned he was naught but subterfuge and deceit from the beginning.”
“Didn’t you do that deep-listening thing to him?”
Cian nodded. “Aye, I did, for my mother cared naught for the man. But when a surface probe yielded nothing, I didn’t push. I arrogantly thought myself so superior in power and lore that I didn’t deem Lucan a significant threat. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I didn’t know that he’d sought me out deliberately to get the Dark Glass. Or that he was born a bastard, sired by an unknown Druid father on a village whore, and had been shunned all his life by other Druids. They refused to teach him, refused him entrance to their inner circle.
“What lore Lucan had managed to acquire before we met had been gained through violence and bloodshed. For years he’d been systematically capturing and torturing lesser Druids for their teachings. Even more powerful ones had begun to cede him wide berth. But he couldn’t overwhelm and take captive a Druid who knew the art of Voice, and he needed that art desperately.
“He learned of me somehow and came to Scotland, to my mountains where, isolated from so much of the world, I’d not heard of him. I learned later all of Wales, Ireland, and much of Scotland had heard tales of this Lucan ‘Merlin’ Trevayne. But not I. He befriended me. We began to exchange knowledge and lore, to push each other, to see what we could do. He told me of the Scrying Glass and, before long, he offered to help me get it if I would teach him the art of Voice first.”
“The Scrying Glass?” Jessi repeated.
“Aye.” He smiled bitterly. “Lucan lied about what it was. He said ’twas used to foretell the future in fine detail. That with it one could alter certain events before they ever happened. ’Twas an enticing power to me. Especially since I’d begun to wonder what my own life held. I’d begun to doubt there was a Keltar mate for me. After all, I was nigh a score and ten, quite old for a man to have never been wed in my century.”
“A Keltar mate?”
“‘Tis legend that there is one true mate for each Keltar Druid, his perfect match, his other half, the one who completes him with her love. If he finds her, they can exchange the Druid binding vows and bind their souls together for all time, through whatever is to come, beyond death, unto eternity.” He paused briefly, his gaze turning inward. “If, however,” he murmured, “only one of them takes the vow, only that one will be forever bound. The other remains free to love another, if he or she so chooses.”
Jessi’s breath caught in her throat. How does a Keltar Druid recognize his mate? Am I yours? she wanted desperately to ask. But there was no way she was asking, because if he said no, it might just kill her. Then his last comment penetrated. “Wait a minute—do you mean that if only one of them takes the vow, that person’s heart is forever bound to another person who might never love them back, not just in this life but through all eternity?”
“Aye,” he said softly.
“But that would be awful,” she exclaimed.
He shrugged. “‘Twould depend on the circumstances. Mayhap, one might think it a gift.” He resumed his tale briskly. “I agreed to the bargain. I taught him Voice, and we rode out one morning for a village in Ireland where the Dark Glass was being guarded in the center of a veritable fortress by a dozen holy men and a band of warriors a thousand strong.
“Trevayne had given me an ancient sleep spell to employ upon our approach. Our plan was to render the guards unconscious, ride in and take the mirror, then ride out again. I saw no reason to distrust him. He’d demonstrated the spell several times himself, and it had merely made the subject slip into a deep slumber. He’d deferred the task to me because he wasn’t strong enough to affect the entire village, and I was. I’d done my best to teach him, but he simply wasn’t good enough at Voice to compel more than a handful of people in the same room with him. Though the art of it can be taught, the power that infuses it is something a man is either born with—or not. His power lay in other areas.”
“Oh, God,” Jessi breathed. “Tell me this isn’t going where I think it is.”
He nodded, his gaze distant, far away and long ago, in ninth-century Ireland. “It caused only slumber when Lucan used it, only because he lacked the power to invoke the Spell of Death. I didn’t. Though I didn’t know it, along with all the other ‘talents’ with which I’d been born was a horrific one that appeared so rarely in our bloodline that I’d never given it any thought. I believed ’twas a sleep spell I’d worked right up until that final moment I knelt in the inner chamber beside the Dark Glass and touched the holy man who lay sprawled on the floor. I think he’d tried to break the glass rather than let it be taken, but my spell had been too potent, too quick.