Page 9 of The Warrior
Duncan did not trust what he could not see. His mother had had strange visions on occasion—or thought she did—and the whole business made him uneasy. And he sure as hell did not like that his sister was learning the Old Ways from the seer.
“I saw a great storm at sea.” Teàrlag swayed in her seat and waved her gnarled hands in the air. “Thunder came rolling over the water, and lightning cracked.”
It didn’t takeThe Sightto see the storm outside. Duncan glanced toward the stairs, wishing he could leave the hall unnoticed, though with his size that was never possible. Ach, he was leaving anyway.
Before Duncan had taken two steps, Teàrlag’s next words stopped him in place.
“Just before the storm, I heard Moira’s voice.”
“My sister?” Connor asked. “Is she safe?”
“Would I leave my cottage for the first time in a dozen years to tell ye all was well?” Teàrlag snapped.
Duncan crossed the room and pushed the others aside to stand in front of Teàrlag. “What do ye see?” he asked.
Teàrlag closed her eyes and made a humming sound before she spoke again. “I can’t see Moira, but I hear her voice…and then I see a pool of blood.”
Duncan felt as if he had taken a blow to the chest.
“So much blood!” Teàrlag wailed.
“But is it Moira’s blood?” Connor asked.
“I’ve no notion whose blood it is,” Teàrlag said, coming out of her “trance” with alarming speed. She got to her feet, but she was so hunched over that she looked no taller standing than sitting. “Now I’ll have a wee nap before I return to my cottage.”
“Stay here tonight,” Ilysa said, resting her hand on the old woman’s shoulder.
“No. My cow will need milking.” Teàrlag fixed her good eye on Duncan. “You, lad, help me upstairs to a bed.”
Duncan walked her across the hall to the stairs at an excruciatingly slow pace and wondered if it would hurt the old seer’s pride to pick her up and carry her.
“Do ye remember,” Teàrlag said between wheezing breaths as they climbed the circular stone staircase, “when I predicted ye would suffer great sorrow?”
“Aye.” That wasn’t something a lad of eleven was likely to forget.
Teàrlag had seemed older than the mist even back then, so he, Connor, Alex, and Ian had gone to her cottage hoping she would predict their future before she died. Being lads, all they had wanted to hear was what great warriors they would become. Instead, her predictions had been about love and women. The old seer had always been contrary.
“I told ye then that sometimes a man can change his fate,” she said when she stopped to catch her breath. “’Tis time ye changed yours, Duncan Ruadh MacDonald.”
He had changed it—he was no longer just the nursemaid’s fatherless son. Whoever sired him had violated the Highland tradition that required a man to claim his child, regardless of whether he was wed to the mother. Duncan had risen from that shame to become captain of his chieftain’s guard, a respected warrior with a fearsome reputation.
“Ye try an old woman’s patience. Ye were fated from the start to be a great warrior.” Teàrlag stretched her arm above her head to tap her knobby finger on his chest. “But are ye brave enough to trust in a woman’s love? Because that is your only hope of truly changing your fate.”
That would change his fate, all right. For the worse.
“Do ye still carry that old bone whistle?” she asked.
Ach, the old woman’s mind was growing weak with the way it wandered.
“Aye,” he said, touching the eight-inch whistle that was tied to a leather thong around his neck. It was a gift from his mother, and he always carried it with him.
“Good,” Teàrlag said. “Ye will need it before your trip is done.”
His whistle?
“And in our clan’s time of need, your music will provide the answer.”
* * *
