Hidden Jewel (Heartfire Series) (9 page)

Gently, Tiernan pulled Ailill down to his lap, kissing her tenderly, then more forcefully as he tried to forget the increasing pain in his head, the secrets he kept from her. She was as ready as he was, if her actions, if the fine tremor running through her small, strong body, were any sign, and he lay her down slowly in the blooming heather, raising up above to look at her fiery mane against the green and violet flora, the vibrant colors of what would be, in essence, their marriage bed.

“
Ah, lass, you are so lovely.
Aislinn
. I have loved you throughout the ages... Everafter, it has always been you,” he breathed hoarsely, lowering his lips to hers once, twice, watching her eyes close in ecstasy. His vision blurred and he blinked away a pink haze, wondering idly why it seemed that his tears were pink, for he was sure he wept a wee bit over taking her innocence, sharing his own. Forgetting about such a foolish notion as pink tears, he closed his eyes and went to work, slowly insinuating his knee up, between her thighs with gentle force as his kiss deepened, thumbs drawing circles around the taut points of her nipples through the crisp linen of her blouse as he moved to lie between her legs, close enough to feel her heat beneath his own. Her back arched in agreement with his intimate caress, her tongue slick, warm; sweet as honey against his own. Tasting the salt of blood, Tiernan broke off the kiss and pulled back to look at her again, wondering uneasily if he were being too forceful, a need long awaited so close that he could feel his control slipping away, his head muzzy with it, the ache in his brain a match with the rapid hammering of his heart, in his loins.

“
I’m sorry. Have I hurt ye, luv?” His throat felt tight, the words forced out on a breath, and yet, he did not feel as if he were caught up in a fit of nerves over what he was about to share with the love of all of his lifetimes. “It seems I have forgotten myself... your lip is bleeding.”

“
Nay, ye havena hurt me. Not-” Ailill opened her eyes and blinked, wondering if there was something wrong with her own vision. Her eyes widened in fearful surprise, knowing in an instant that something was terribly wrong. “’Tis your own blood,” she whispered, sitting up quick enough to make her head spin. “Oh no... sweet Brigit, Tiernan, you have got the sickness!” Her husky voice was full of angst, fingers moving to wipe his blood from around her mouth.

His attempt to laugh at such a horrible joke came out sounding strangled. The pressure inside his skull increased until it felt as if his head were on the brink of exploding; moaning softly, he placed a hand over his mouth and then, quite suddenly, it seemed as if it had. On the tail of searing, white hot pain, his palm filled with blood, the front of his crisp white sark awash with deep crimson as his nose gushed a sudden torrent, his eyes teared liquid fire, mouth dripping a continual scarlet stream that spattered across Ailill's stomach, her bare legs, dripped down the tanned flesh like freshly spilled paint.
Och, Sweet Brigit, Goddess of auld, I wish ye would ha’ spared me frae this horror, all I ever wanted was her love
.

Ailill hovered just inches from his hideously bloodied face, obviously frightened out of her head, and he screamed at the fear he saw in her eyes, commanding her away from the merciless contagion; away, to the twin brothers on the other side of a vast and empty sea, to safety, the sound garbled as he choked on his own lifeblood and slumped forward in the aromatic heather of his marriage bed, his vision darkening from red to purple to complete and utter blackness, the fathomless color of his father’s eyes.

Out of the Mist

North Carolina, U.S.A.

He had been out in the oak wood long before dawn, checking the traps he'd set two days earlier for small game. It was a tedious job, following the same route up and then down the mountain, gathering up the stiff, furry bodies of rabbits and squirrels in a pack, carefully resetting each line, but Micah enjoyed the solitude, the quiet noise of the living forest around him. The smell of loamy earth under his feet, the crisp, clean scent of Spring air were an aphrodisiac to his senses; caused a stirring in his loins, an intoxicating feeling of freedom inside his head. After the tragedies of the past few years, after almost twenty years of a life he would rather not have lived, he took great pleasure in just being alone, away from the ofttimes tyrannical rule of a man whom he frequently doubted could be his true sire. The other men about the tiny village of Willow Wisp did not feel a need to beat on their own sons over nothing; over everything; at least, not that he'd seen. Idly rubbing the latest bruise made by the foul-tempered man, a sizable purple smudge directly in the center of his broad chest, the bones beneath were sore enough to make breathing a bit of a bother, he made his way through the trees, toward the narrow trail that ribboned down the mountain into the village below, a lightness in his young heart that he had not felt for a long time. Today was the day. It had to be. A change was coming to his life, something... no,
someone
, that  would have a great impact on his life would come about at long last; he sensed it on the breeze, had anticipated it all week; he'd spent time up the enchanting mount each day, to be certain he did not miss it. He had dreamt of her again, his dream lover. She had felt more real last night than at any other time; pulse racing, sheets soaked with sweat, slick with seed, he swore he'd smelled her when he awoke in the small hours, too full of her to sleep again.

He sighed at the memory of that scent, pausing momentarily to refill his canteen in a clear stream that meandered over the hillside, so caught up in his own thoughts that he nearly dismissed it when his ears picked up the whispery sound of movement along the mossy, muddy trail. The sun had been up barely an hour, the sky above still a deep amethyst far to the west. Eyes narrowed in concentration, Micah couldn’t think of any women close to giving birth, the main visitors to the massive log home halfway up the mount being women seeking the expertise of Annie Mackintosh, midwife and physician to the whole of Willow Wisp, a kind, beautiful woman who seemed to have an unusual knack for bringing healthy babies into the world despite her own apparent unfruitfulness. It was the slow time for her; most babies were born in the fall, nine months after the long cold winter nights were but a memory, though spring had seen its own bounty of tiny faces and flailing limbs in the village, following the midsummer gathering of the year before where, it was said, most found at least one person to couple with beneath the starlight and moonbeams of the summer sky.

Odd
, he thought to himself,
most people just use the mountain road
. Listening closely to the sounds of approach, curiosity got the better of the striking young man. His heart thumped a warning at getting his hopes up, the very reason which had led the cruel Kiah to strike him again last night. His father had told him to butcher a doe that the idiot had killed months out of season; he'd stubbornly refused, insisted that he was going to camp out in Wilderdeep, that he would be there to meet Ailill, the long-gone daughter of James and Annie Mackintosh; his dream-goddess, he was sure of it; a stranger of whom the very idea filled him with want, with needs he could not have begun to describe. Micah’s refusal to bloody his own hands with his father’s mistake had infuriated the drunken bastard; the force of the blow knocked him to his knees, the air stricken from his young lungs. The pain had been tremendous, for a few breathless moments he had feared that his heart might explode.

Micah gutted the scrawny deer.

He spent most of the night trying to think of a way to get himself and his twin brother, Jacob, out from under Kiah’s roof without getting either of them killed for it. A near impossibility, proven the very first day they'd arrived at Hidden Jewel, when the Mackintoshes had been made witness to the inconceivable strictness with which Kiah Black ruled over his twin boys; exhaustion, only, had pulled Micah down, away from the troubled life he'd led for nineteen long years; an entire lifetime. He slipped into dreams at once familiar, a young woman who did not look like any normal woman, tiny, vibrant, whom he had begun to see in his dreams at the tender age of twelve; she came clearly into his mind though he had not dreamt of the beautiful enchantress in well over a year. The dream last night was why he was so sure that today would be the day, why he had slipped out of the small cabin, into the blue-black of predawn; a risk to the health, the very lives of both he and Jacob. A risk he was willing to take.

Stepping silently away from the muddied trail, moving stealthily under the thick canopy of dew covered leaves, Micah stopped behind a large, sturdy oak for a peek at the rider coming at a slow but steady pace up the winding mountain path. He wanted to see her first, to get a good hard look at this woman who just might be able to help him get away from his maniacal father once and for all, as the dreams had led him to believe despite the utter queerness of those subconscious flights of fancy, the odd sensation of soaring high above an enchanted land, perching, occasionally, upon the cool stone turrets of various castles; a dream, surely, for it could not have been more, no matter that he'd saved a few small bits of the very stone he'd sat on the last time he met the unknown woman in his dream.

It had rained the night before, the combination of moisture and unseasonal warmth covered the valley below with a thick blanket of mist; curling tendrils wound about the ancient trees like smoky fingers. His keen ears picked up on the sound of more than one mounted rider; disappointment rolled slowly through his mind, his heart; Annie had not said her daughter would be alone when she came but, like a fool, he'd assumed.
Idiot! No woman in her right mind would travel alone through such a dangerous land. Especially the daughter of The Mackintosh.
even the surreal woman he'd seen in his dreams for so long would move about so carelessly- if he could hear their approach, so could anyone else with ears. Unhappily, the fog kept the advancing horses cloaked, invisible to his sight; squinting rather absurdly for a man with perfect eyesight, he kept his gaze trained on the darkened ribbon of mud and last years leaves, just at the edge of the vaporous cloud, and suddenly, almost as if by magic, they appeared from out of the mist.

There were two of them, as he had suspected, both riding twin sorrel mares laden minimally with thin bedrolls and heavy leather saddlebags. The first rider was... not the man he'd been expecting! His heart leapt with relief at sight of the old woman in the lead; the hair pulled back from her forehead was pure, snowy white, a marked contrast to the smooth, lightly tanned skin of her arms and face. Spine straight as a rod, her bearing was regal, her head cocked in a well-honed manner of aloof reserve; her clothes were fresh and clean, as if even a speck of dirt would not dare to settle upon the pale green folds of dress and cloak. Not moving, hardly breathing, Micah watched curiously as the ancient gently nudged her wandering mount away from the water-filled ditch that coursed mere feet from the trail. There was something odd about her, some inkling in the back of his mind that a part of her was not right. He noticed that, though clear, the rims not the least bit red, the strange woman’s eyes were abnormally light; seemingly colorless. With a sudden jolt, he thought the woman must be blind. Yet, if she truly were without sight, why did he feel as if she were looking directly at him? He shuddered involuntarily at the thought but the white head had moved, her strange eyes already turned away, giving him the eeriest sense that despite the paleness of the orbs, the complete lack of color, she could clearly see where she was going as she passed by. Unless the horse was simply trustworthy enough that she counted on it to carry her safely? An odd notion, but still... With the slightest shake of his head, Micah pushed his wandering thoughts away. His eye was drawn to the second horse and rider, now lagging quite some distance behind the old woman, the pace halting occasionally as an obvious lack of direction from the rider allowed the equine to graze the sparse, succulent grasses a bite at a time along the way; as if the rider dreaded going home and purposely delayed her arrival.

Home? No, it couldn’t be
, Micah reasoned with cautious practicality even as his heart and mind confirmed the fact. As if by some supernatural force, he was drawn closer, his eyes wide in the shadows. His throat ran dry when he beheld the tiny young woman before him.
It could not be her... could it?
blinked, uncertain
. She looks a ragamuffin, no dream goddess.
She was absolutely filthy, so different from the impeccable older woman; her skin was strangely pallid, the blueish color of a corpse, smudged in many places with what looked very much like dried blood; some sort of drawn design, unrecognizable now, had been smeared along her cheeks, down her arms. Her hair looked to be plastered with mud, so much so that, even at the ends near the mare's flanks,  it was impossible to see the true color. He was strangely drawn to her.