Page 55 of Rory

Chapter Fourteen

Harper staggered into the great hall, where Ava, Olivia and Grace were setting up trestle tables and benches across the archways like barricades. On the platform the laird and some of his senior men had gathered and were speaking intently. She saw Rory come in from another passage and stumbled over to him, hugging him and then drawing back to see his blood on her hands.

“Why are you bleeding?” she demanded.

“The same reason as you, my lady,” he murmured. “My wounds, they’ve begun to heal.” He eyed the broken arrow and guided her over to a chair, and took a pouch from his belt.

As soon as they saw her the other women from her time hurried over, and she filled them in on what she had seen. The laird sent his men out of the hall before he came and said something in a low voice to his wife.

“Be still now, love,” the armorer whispered as he cut a slit in her shirt and examined the wound.

“You just called me love,” Harper had to point out.

His mouth hitched. “I love you, so you’re my love.”

“Okay. I love you, too.” Just so they were clear, she thought, and then laughed at herself. “I thought that would be a lot harder to say.”

“With others, aye,” Rory murmured. “For us, never.”

“We’re evacuating everyone from the stronghold,” Ava said, trying to sound calm but with a strange panic in her eyes. “We’ll arm everyone with whatever they can use to defend themselves, and then make our last stand outside.”

“Wait, please,” Olivia said, and then turned to Harper. “Can you help us do something before the MacBren and these zombies kill us, or the spell trap collapses?”

“’Tis naught she may do,” Tasgall said. “We must face the end with courage, Olivia.”

“I understand why you think that, Laird,” Harper said, grimacing as Rory pried the remains of the arrow out of her shoulder. “Hang on a minute.” She took several deep breaths until the pain from the extraction subsided a little. “Look, this place is like an insanely difficult escape room—a kind of puzzle in three dimensions. You keep trying to break out and you can’t. I think it’s because you’ve never tried to solve the mystery first.”

“’Tisnae a solution to magic, my lady,” the laird said as he wiped some sweat from his brow. “The enchantment, ’tis eternal.”

A bloodied, battered Darro came in and joined them, eyeing Harper and then his brother, who shook his head at him.

“Hey, Chieftain,” Harper said before regarding the laird. “This entire place was created to imprison you and your people while it repeats a series of events that happened back in the twelfth century. The MacBren dude rides in here and tries to force you to marry his kid. You refuse and fight him. He kills your people, you kill his, and then he and his wife are murdered. His clan blames you and sieges your castle. A lot more people die. Then everything resets and happens again, and you have to relive the same events all over again, and that’s been the deal for the last nine centuries. Am I right?”

“Aye, ’tis as you’ve said.” Darro sounded angry. “’Twill do naught to aid us, or prevent the enchantment from collapsing. Dinnae torment my brother over such.”

“I just want you to see that the MacBren and the cycle of events pertaining to him are what drives this place,” Harper reminded him. “He’s the mystery. So you have to solve him. Defeat the MacBren. Eliminate the reason for the events. Ouch.”

Rory set aside the last fragment of the arrow he’d pried out of her wound.

“Forgive me.” He pressed a cloth covered in salve against the open wound. “’Twill stop the bleeding.”

“’Tis facked to do naught but speak on such matters,” the chieftain said. “We shall face death together.”

“We might not have to, is what she’s saying.” Ava put a hand on her brother-in-law’s arm to prevent him from leaving. “Do you know how we can solve the puzzle, Harper?”

You’ve ever straddled both worlds, Torra had told her. Open the doorway and lead these people to their destiny.

At the time Harper had assumed she’d meant the modern world and the melia pocket universe that imprisoned the McKeran and their people, but now she thought she might have meant the real world in the twelfth century and the spell trap. If she had been born a melia, she would have been able to construct a place like this which kept any mortal brought inside from leaving. Only by opening the door had the melia who had kept her and her mother as her pets/prisoners created a way for them to escape.

She knew what would work. It scared the daylights out of her that she did—the last thing she wanted to be was like the melia—but it was also the most logical answer to the puzzle.

“There’s something you have to do, Laird.” She regarded Tasgall. “Go out there and talk to the MacBren. Don’t argue with him, don’t tell him no, and don’t try to persuade him that you can’t do it.”

“What then must I say?” the laird asked.

“Tell him you agree to marry his daughter,” Harper said. “Then get on a horse and ride out of here with him.”

Darro made an impatient sound. “Ride out of the spell trap. Aye, right. ’Tis naught beyond the walls, Mistress. The enchantment, ’twill throw my brother and the nag back through the gates.”