Page 32 of Darro

“If we use the hidden passages, we can get inside and see what’s happening without the MacBren and his thugs seeing us,” Ava told her. “Come with me and I’ll show you.” To the maids she said, “Stay here out of sight.”

The scent of smoke from burning oil hung heavily in the air as Esme followed the laird’s wife across the inner bailey to an arch near the rear of the kitchens. Inside Ava turned right and hurried down a narrow passage to storage rooms without doors, and ducked into the third, which was filled with hanging bunches of herbs and shelves with baskets of dried fruit.

“’It’s here,” she told Esme as she shifted a wooden rack of dried lavender and chamomile flowers to one side, revealing a narrow wooden door recessed into the stone wall. After lighting a candle, she opened it and stepped inside.

The cramped space behind the door barely seemed wide enough for the two of them, and a thin layer of dust on the floor rose with every step they took. Esme didn’t look up for fear of seeing spider webs. Ava guided her through a labyrinth of corners and curves, halting now and then to listen before continuing on. The air inside the passage grew chillier, and a white mist wafted around them, causing the flame of the candle to flicker for a moment.

“That’s Torra MacBren’s spirit,” the laird’s wife said. “She must need to tell us something.” She extended her arm toward the mist as if to touch it.

Esme snatched her hand back. “No, let her use me. You’re the only one who knows where we are.” Before Ava could reply she walked into the mist.

At first a soft, cool breeze seemed to wrap around her, and then something completely beyond her experiences began speaking inside her head.

My sire, he’s been changed, and no’ just in the timing of his arrival, the young woman’s voice said. Never did he once wear any garment dyed red. ’Tis a color he considered unlucky.

“She says her papi never wore red in his life,” Esme told Ava. “The version that came here is in all red clothes.”

“It must be the enchantment altering his appearance.” The laird’s wife glanced to one side of the passage. “Will you allow Torra to stay with you until we can get to the viewing post? That way she can observe what’s happening with us.”

Esme disliked the sensation of having the other girl in her mind—it seemed creepy, and had already given her a headache—but to refuse seemed ungracious. “It’s fine, but not for hours, okay?”

Just permit me see my sire, my lady, Torra said behind her eyes. I shall ken any other changes made to him since last he and his men came to Dun Talamh.

Ava led her through another turn into a wider passage, and then climbed a short flight of stairs at the end to an elevated platform attached to a wall covered by a heavy canvas. The laird’s wife touched her finger to her lips before she pulled back the canvas to reveal a row of slits in the stone, one of which she peered through before she beckoned to Esme.

Looking through the slit beside Ava’s allowed her to get a birds-eye view of the laird’s chamber, which was filled with armed, angry-looking clansmen standing guard in front of Tasgall and Alec. As the MacBren and Darro walked in, all of the McKeran brandished their swords, drew daggers and otherwise prepared to fight.

“McKeran,” the enemy laird called out as he planted himself directly between his men and Tasgall’s. “I’ve found a spark of mercy in my heart that may save your hide and keep your clan alive. Oblige me as the mormaer of Scotland by agreeing to wed my Torra this very day and I shall spare you and your men. Refuse me, and ’twill serve as your final words, for I shall slit your throat myself thereafter.”

Since becoming the king’s second my sire never spilled blood by his own hand, Torra whispered inside her. He considered it beneath his dignity, and wouldnae threaten such, even as a jest.

Esme noticed while the MacBren was speaking several of his men seemed to go blurry, as if her eyes were filling with tears. She rubbed her eyes, leaned over and murmured what the girl had told her to Ava, and then nearly fell on her face as a white mist came out of her and poured through the slit to hover over the men in the laird’s chamber.

“What is she doing?” Ava demanded in a whisper.

Esme shook her head. “No idea.”

Tasgall waded through the guards until he stood before the MacBren. He had no weapons in his hands, which he held palm-up in a beseeching gesture. “I cannae oblige you, my lord. As I’ve said each time you’ve braced me on the matter, I shallnae wed your lady daughter.”

As the MacBren drew a dagger and held it against the laird’s throat, all the men around them looked prepared to lunge and kill the man. Darro strode toward him with his blade ready to skewer the enemy laird.

“Hold,” the laird said, making a quick staying gesture at the chieftain. To the other laird he said, “My answer, ’tis the same as ’twas each time you’ve asked such of me. However you threaten me, whatever you vow do to my clan, my answer, ’twill never change.”

“You stupit bastart,” the MacBren said, snarling the words through his gritted teeth. “Dinnae you see I’ve no choice? ’Tis her life or yours. I shallnae sacrifice my daughter on the altar of your dignity.”

The white mist suddenly descended and enveloped both men, making them stagger back in opposite directions. The MacBren’s red tunic and trousers turned white, gold and then black as the outlines of his body blurred. The men behind him vanished for a moment, and when they reappeared they were completely red and had no faces.

“With me, lads,” Darro said, stepping in front of Tasgall. “Alec?”

“Behind him,” the war master said, and then swore as the MacBren and his faceless entourage disappeared altogether. Distant shouts from the inner bailey suggested they had reappeared outside the castle. “Lads, stay with our lord, and if they return, keep him safe. Darro.”

The chieftain nodded and ran out of the chamber with Alec.

The white mist poured through the slit and curled around Esme like a long white snake. Instincts told her to hold still and not resist as a feeling of calm and shelter descended around her.

White lights began to drift down as well but, as they reached her, a flood of images came through her head. At first they seemed like individual snapshots, and then they rushed together and made a movie about a beautiful woman with brown hair and green eyes. She wandered through a forest with such huge, old trees it seemed primordial. She walked in and out of trees through doors of red light that sparkled like the scarlet gems she wore around her neck and wrists. Her life seemed to stretch on and on forever as mountains rose and then fell around her woods, and then primitive-looking humans began appearing. The people who came first gathered nuts and berries, and then hunted the animals of the forest with their spears and bows.

The green-eyed woman watched the humans from inside her trees, and sometimes lured them inside the doors of light. Whoever went into the trees with her never came out. Then a huge, angry group of humans came and started chopping down the trees. The green-eyed woman released a handful of odd-looking eggs that hatched into little stick dolls that started burrowing into and killing the humans.