Page 47 of Darach

Darach drew on the speed boon as he ran, leaping over fallen trees and undergrowth that might have otherwise hampered him. He saw a cloaked figure just ahead of him, shorter and slender, and shouted for him to stop. The assassin ducked into an old oak grove and vanished just as Darach came within arm’s reach.

Suddenly the ground fell away from under his boots, and he lunged across a wide pit. He caught the other side with an arm and one hand, kept hold of the sword with the other, and glanced over his shoulder. The old hollow had been dug out and then filled with so many sharpened stakes it looked like a giant black mouth filled with jagged teeth.

“You canny bastart.” The bolt the assassin had fired had been only a lure to make him run after him and fall into this trap. Darach grunted as he pulled himself up and over the edge, and then rolled onto his feet and straightened, looking all around for any sign of the other man. “Come out and face me as a man, you facking coward.”

He scanned the ground for boot prints, but the duff of oak leaves, twigs and moss showed no sign of being disturbed. The utter silence also brought no sound of fleeing. That meant the man had hidden himself somewhere nearby. When leaves rustled behind him he turned and nearly flung his dagger at Taveon, who stood on the other side of the pit.

“I sent the lady with the guards back to the stronghold, and she wasnae happy,” the war master said, coming around the trap to join him. He scanned the forest in front of them before pointing to the base of the slopes beyond. “There, ’tis a cluster of niches in the rock.”

Chapter Twelve

The guards who brought Charlotte back to the stronghold sent other men out to the spring before they took her to the great hall. There she saw Duine having a hushed conversation with Cook and a villager. All three of them gave her bleak looks before the sage came to her and the other two hurried off.

“Mistress Walsh, mayhap ’twould be best if you retire to your bed chamber until we deal with some grievous matters,” Duine said, lifting a damp, wrinkled cloth to his ashen face. His hand shook so much he appeared to be dusting himself. “I shall escort you and stay with you until ’tis safe.”

“I think you need to sit down first.” She guided him over to a chair and waved at a fearful-looking maid. “Could you bring some water for him, please?”

The sage uttered a groan. “I should be looking after you, lass, no’ you me. ’Tis only that the Fire sword, ’tis vanished again.”

“That’s not true. Darach has the sword now.” She sat down in the chair beside him. “Someone shot at him while we were at the bathing spring. He and Taveon chased after the attacker, but the guards made me come back here with them.”

“Ah.” A look of relief matched Duine’s sigh. “Mayhap ’twas that fiend who killed the poor folk in the granary.” The maid returned with a mug of water, which he took and drank down all at once, and then grimaced. “Forgive me. I shouldnae say more, else I frighten the wits from you as savagely as they’ve been shocked from me.”

“I’m scared, too,” she admitted, touching his arm, “but I’d like to know what’s happened.”

The sage’s voice faltered more than once as he told her about the bodies the laird and his wife had discovered hidden in grain sacks.

“I fear ’twas the bone cobbler,” Duine said, blotting sweat from his brow, “for he cut off the poor lasses’s hands, and the toes from the man found with them.”

Everything around Charlotte went dim for a second, and she heard a strange rushing in her ears. “Did he carve something on their foreheads?”

“I cannae tell you for certain, but from what I saw he sheared away the lasses’s hair.” Duine awkwardly patted her hand. “Dinnae think on such horrible matters, Mistress. The chieftain and the war master, they shall capture the brute.”

No, they won’t, she thought. “Where did they take the bodies?”

“Lady Emery, she’s examining them in the infirmary,” the sage said, and then looked alarmed as she got up. “’Tisnae anything you should see, Mistress.”

“No one should, Master Duine.” Charlotte touched his shoulder before she hurried out of the hall.

Two guards stood outside the infirmary, both holding their swords in their hands. The strong smell of vinegar and something like wet cement enveloped Charlotte’s nose as she went to the open door and looked inside. Emery sat on a bench by two tables with three bodies on them, and was carefully removing chunks of what appeared to be plaster from the face of one corpse. Beside her Luthias stood with a dripping cloth in his hand.

Charlotte looked at the feet of the largest body, from which the toes had been cut off, and saw a deep red ligature mark around the man’s neck. A strange sense of fate came over her as she went inside, joining the laird and his wife.

“Charlotte, you really shouldn’t be in here,” Emery said quickly, reaching for the shrouding cloth.

“It’s all right,” she said, looking down at the dead woman’s face. “I have to tell you some details about the murders. Before the man was hung and the women drowned, the killer carved three symbols on the forehead. The bodies will be mutilated.” Her vision blurred as she related the specific details, and she dashed the tears from her eyes before she added, “You won’t find the missing body parts. He takes them with him.”

The laird’s wife got to her feet. “How do you know all that?”

“In seven hundred years the killer will do the same things to my friend Zoey, and six other women in Toronto, and hundreds more in other provinces. He meant to do that to me in the alley. It’s how he always tortures and kills his victims.”

Emery turned back to the body she had been working on, and wiped the woman’s brow until the symbols appeared. “Is this some kind of signature?”

“’Tis Fae letters,” her husband said. “Only they dinnae spell any word I ken.”

Charlotte’s stomach clenched. “For him to be able to kill in this time and the future, he must be a half-Fae immortal like you and your clan.”

The laird caught her arm, making her realize she was swaying on her feet. “Can you tell me anything of what he looks like, my lady?”