Page 54 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

He gestured for her to take it.

She lifted the pendant from the box and hung it about her neck. The moment it settled against her breastbone, the stone began to glow. A soft light, the color of shallow water.

Njal sucked in a breath. Leif sat forward.

"My mother's kin have guarded this stone for generations," Samira said. "It passed from mother to daughter. My mother hid it before she died, and my father told me where to find it only this year, where she left it for me."

"And ye brought it away," Thorfinn said.

"It was no longer safe where it was. There is a prophecy among my mother's people. That when the men of the cross came hunting it, the guardian must carry it north across the sea to those who would keep it safe." She glanced at Torstein.

"Then what is it?" Thorfinn asked. "What does it do?"

"It reveals what is hidden. And it can find other relics. Those with the same power in them, cut from the same stone or marked by the same hand." She rested her fingers on it. "But only in the hands of a guardian. Only in the hands of my blood."

As she spoke, a second light woke in the room.

Every head turned toward the shelf. Among the objects there sat a rough gray stone no bigger than a fist, and deep within it the same blue-green light had begun to pulse.

Thorfinn went very still.

Samira rose and crossed to the shelf. She did not touch the stone. She only looked at it, her hand resting on the pendant.

"This is a protection stone," she said. "It was cut from the same stone as the pendant."

"Truly?" The jarl came to stand beside her. "It was dug up from beneath the foundations of this fort. A seer told me it was a ward against evil, and I kept it for that. I never knew what it was."

"She was right. It guards this hold. It has always guarded it." She looked back at him. "But it is not the only one. There are others, spread across many holds."

"What else do ye see?"

Samira closed her fingers around the pendant and shut her eyes.

Torstein moved without thinking and set his hand over hers where it held the stone. She did not open her eyes. But some of the tautness went out of her shoulders, and her breathing settled.

The room was silent. Torstein watched her face and saw the frown gather between her brows.

"There is another," she said slowly. "An amulet. A truth seeker. It sits in a castle." She tilted her head, as if listening. "The castle of a king. A great hall of stone, with a river below it."

Thorfinn and Torstein exchanged a look.

"Macbeth's Castle," Thorfinn said quietly.

"Like this pendant," Samira went on, "it needs a chosen woman to unlock it. It will not wake for anyone else."

She touched the pendant again. Her frown deepened.

"There is also a rune. Not far from here. Carved on stone inside a mound of earth. It bears the same design as this." She pressed her palm flat against the pendant. "Its power is dormant. Waiting. But not for now. It is not time."

"Orkahaugr," Thorfinn said, and his voice had gone rough. "I told the Abbess the design was familiar the day she showed me her sketch. I did not want it to be true."

"Anything more?" Torstein asked.

Samira was quiet a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, and there was something wary in it.

"Yes. Another. It is a rune, but it is also a dagger. A relic." Her fingers tightened on the pendant. "There is a curse bound to it. I can feel it." She hesitated, and a name seemed to come to her from somewhere outside herself. "Kilmarnock. In the south. Near Ayr."

She opened her eyes and let go of the pendant. The glow in it softened, and on the shelf the gray stone dimmed to nothing.