Highland Sword by May McGoldrick

Author:May McGoldrick
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 17

MORRIGAN

For the next three days, nightmares hung about Morrigan like spirits of the dead. Every dark corner of her bedchamber seemed to be inhabited by shapes that shifted and changed and disappeared when she mustered her courage to approach them.

It was the coming observance of Samhain. It had to be. The ongoing preparations in the castle and the village were affecting her.

She had no desire to sleep. Closing her eyes would surely bring these spirits and fairies creeping across the wood floor, their fangs and claws out and gleaming in the moonlight.

She wouldn’t give them the chance. With a blanket around her and a lit candle in her hand, she paced like a caged beast. Like a condemned prisoner waiting for the dawn. Waiting. Finally, she could walk no longer. She’d settle in her chair, fighting to stay conscious and alert. Then she’d doze, awaken with a start, and resume her nightlong watch into the dark places, praying for the rising of the sun. Praying for release from these night terrors.

As soon as the sky began to lighten, she’d descend to the kitchens, where the fires were lit and the smells of bread filled the air and bleary-eyed workers went about their daily tasks. She was safe here.

The Mackintoshes of Dalmigavie had a kirk in the center of the village, and a chapel in the castle. Both had seen changes in services performed within their walls. Several times. But the folk held to the auld ways for the most part, in their language, their traditions, and their beliefs. Christianity itself was still a newcomer in the Highlands, where the belief in fire and stone and oak and wind and rain and darkness was as old as the earth and the sky. There was the world that could be seen and the world that could not be seen.

Morrigan had come to learn that these Highlanders had a special reverence for the threshold places and threshold times. Borders, bridges, crossroads, doorways. Dawn and dusk. The spring and autumn equinoxes. Samhain marked the transition between summer, a time of growth and light and order—and winter, a time of death and darkness and chaos.

Morrigan had heard the Highland folk believed that time lost all meaning at Samhain. Past, present, and future became one. Now, living among these people, Morrigan knew it to be true.

She’d run from her past, ignored and hidden from it. But the past had caught up to her here, weighing on the present, and threatening all of her tomorrows.

For the three days since talking to Aidan on the tower roof, she’d walked past that door. Morning, midday, and evening. The words he’d spoken tormented her. If she rejected his plea and Edmund and George Chattan died because of her, Morrigan would not be able to live with herself.

Every time she approached, she broke out in a cold sweat. Bile rose up in her throat. And each time, an inner rage rose in response, fierce and hot. She couldn’t trust herself to go through that door.

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