Текст книги "Loving The Highlander"
Автор книги: Джанет Чапмен
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
“Nay!” Daar yelped, quickly tucking the cane behind his back. “He’s liable to set this entire valley on fire. The magic’s too powerful for mere mortals.”
“Well, he needs something.”
“I have you, wife,” Morgan said, turning her to face him. “Nothing can stop me from coming back to you, Mercedes.”
“You’ll have your clan’s help,” Daar interjected. “Callum and Charlotte stopped by my cabin yesterday on their way to Gu Bràth. Callum said he’d return with Greylen and Ian.” He waved in the direction of the valley. “They’re probably already out there, hunting for whoever broke into Mercedes’ cabin.”
Morgan gave Sadie a reassuring smile. “See? You have nothing to worry about.”
“Does your brother or Callum or this Ian fellow have guns?”
“Aye. We all do.”
“Then where’s yours?”
“Home in my gun cabinet. I’ll be okay,gràineag. Now, make our priest some supper,” he said, kissing her quickly on her still protesting mouth. “And try not to kill the man with your cooking,” he said as a parting shot, turning and loping into the darkness at the end of the pool. He disappeared before Sadie could tell him at least to take Faol.
She turned back to Father Daar.
“Did you know that burned trout is an acquired taste?” she asked the man of the cloth who was still eyeing her suspiciously, still guarding his cane behind his back.
“I do know what that word is now, that you asked me about the other day,” the old priest said instead, his clear blue eyes suddenly sparkling with mischief.
“Gray-agch?” Sadie whispered, stepping closer. “What? What does it mean?”
The old man rubbed his beard with the end of his cane and sent her a satisfied smirk.
“Well, girl.Gràineag is Gaelic for ‘hedgehog.’”
Chapter Twenty-one
Morgan stepped through the towering treesthat protected the pool and out into the cold night, letting his eyes adjust from the bright glow of the grotto to the darkness of the forest. Faol whined beside him and stood up, his tail wagging and his eyes glowing green with their own inner light. The wolf was licking his lips, finishing off the trout Morgan had given him earlier.
“You be ready, my friend,” he told the wolf in Gaelic. “I give Mercedes only an hour before she comes sneaking out here. Guard her, and keep her from wandering off the side of this mountain and getting herself killed.”
He hunched down and ruffled the wolf’s fur. “It seems we’ve gotten ourselves agràineag, wolf, who has more heart than common sense sometimes. Nothing else can explain her acceptance of us.”
Morgan smiled into the night as he thought about the afternoon he’d just spent with Mercedes. She’d been so playful and passionate when they’d made love. And so open with her now perfect body. Not an ounce of shyness did she possess, now that she felt beautiful. He would give his sword arm to have possessed her that way before she’d been healed. He’d never have that chance now, thanks to the magic. He would never be able to prove to Mercedes that love did not come with conditions.
Morgan stood up and let his gaze scan the quiet forest. “I’m going to find Greylen and the others,” he told Faol. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of gold nuggets he’d taken from the pool. “I won’t go after Mercedes’ sniper. Grey and Callum and Ian can do that. I’ll set out bait and wait for them to push our prey into my trap.”
He gave Faol one final pat and a warning. “Be alert,” he told the wolf. “And keep our woman away from the river.”
And then Morgan walked into the night, towards the dark force that roamed his valley.
Though Sadie didn’t know it,her husband’s prediction was off by a good two hours.
Sadie paced to the edge of the pool and stared down at the shimmering water which continued to glow with magical intensity. It appeared to be daylight within the confines of the granite cliffs, but when she looked skyward, the mist rose into blackness. It was the deep of night outside her own little heaven, and Sadie couldn’t stop thinking about her shooter and the danger Morgan was walking into.
Sadie wished she had bought a handgun. But even if she had, it most likely would be back at the old logging camp, with the rest of her stuff.
And that was another thing that was bothering her. The logging camp and her backpack.
Jean Lavoie’s diary was there as well, with the section pertaining to this cliff, and its approximate location, circled in red ink. If whoever shot her stumbled onto it, he would know where to look for the gold.
And he would find this mystical gorge.
Sadie skirted the edge of the pool, walking beneath the waterfall and scooping up a handful of gold. She turned and looked out over her small piece of heaven.
If this place were discovered, it surely would be destroyed.
In order to keep this magic a secret, she would have to build the wilderness park farther down in the valley and find another way to access it instead of through MacKeage land.
But she would have to worry about solving that problem later. Instead, Sadie set her mind to the bigger problem at hand now. She had to go to the logging camp and retrieve that diary before it was found.
Sadie tucked the handful of gold into her pocket and walked over to the slumbering old priest. She eyed the cane in his hand. She needed some sort of weapon that could protect her if she ran into trouble. It was only two miles to the logging camp and back. With luck, she’d be gone less than an hour. She’d have Father Daar’s cane safely tucked back beside him before he woke up, and she’d be sitting here like a dutiful wife long before Morgan returned.
Being as careful as she could, Sadie slowly slipped the cane from the sleeping priest’s hand. She quickly straightened, clasped the warm wood to her chest, and turned and set off at a jog through the magically giant trees.
She nearly ran over Faol when she stepped into the darkness of the forest. The wolf jumped to his feet, whined, and started wagging his tail.
“Shh. You’re going to wake Father Daar,” she said, giving him a pat on the head. “Feel like a hike, big boy?” she asked, blinking her eyes at the darkness.
It took her a few minutes to locate the North Star and get her bearings and another few minutes for her eyes to adjust completely to the night forest. And then Sadie started south along the edge of Fraser Mountain, toward logging camp number three. Faol trotted ahead of her, his bushy tail wagging like a flag leading the way.
In less than half an hour they reached the camp, and Sadie ran toward the tent her mother and Callum had left standing in wait for her and Morgan’s return.
She heard Faol’s warning growl at the exact moment a gunshot cracked through the air, the muzzle blast flashing from a tree beside the tent.
Faol’s yelp of pain was drowned out by her own scream of surprise. There were several shots in rapid succession, and all Sadie could see was the scurry of moving shadows where Faol had been standing. Another yelp, then the growl of an enraged beast, followed by another crack of gunfire.
Sadie screamed and threw herself toward the tent. She unzipped it and dove inside to find her pack and the knife she usually carried. She pushed around her sleeping bag and dry packs but couldn’t find her backpack.
“Looking for this?”
Sadie whirled at the sound of the familiar voice. The beam of a flashlight sliced over her face. She held up her hand to see beyond the glare and gasped.
“Eric!”
He dropped her pack and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her out of the tent. With a yelp of her own, Sadie scrambled on her knees until she could stand up. She watched as Eric quickly scanned the forest with his flashlight, looking for Faol.
“Where’s the MacKeage guy that dog belongs to?” Eric asked, turning the flashlight back on her.
“H-he’s dead.”
“He’s not. I saw him carrying you from the water. You were the one I shot.” He sent the beam of light over her body.
Sadie gasped, trying to step back, but was pulled up short by his grip on her hair. “You were the one shooting? But why?” she cried, struggling to get free.
He held her tightly. “I was aiming for MacKeage. I wanted him out of the way.”
“Out of the way for what?” she whispered, holding herself perfectly still.
“He was distracting you from your hunt for the gold. I’m sure I shot you by mistake,” he said, giving her hair a vicious tug.
“You just grazed me. Th-that’s why I have this cane,” she said, pointing at the cane on the ground by the tent. “But the bullet went into Morgan, and he used up the last of his strength getting me to safety.”
“You wouldn’t be here if MacKeage were dead. You’d be in town.” He tugged her hair again. “Where is he?”
“O-okay, he’s not dead. But he’s wounded. I have him tucked down by the stream. I’m here to get my phone so I can call for help.”
“The phone’s not in your pack, Quill. I checked.”
“It’s got to be.” She pulled from his grasp and bent down to her pack, pretending to look for the phone. “I know it’s in here.”
“No, it’s not. And neither is your knife,” he said, jerking her upright again. “I have it now. And I also have the diary, including the page you circled.”
He released her and pulled his gun out of his belt. “You found the gold, didn’t you?
That’s where MacKeage is now.”
“No. No, we didn’t find anything. He really is hurt.”
Eric shoved her in the direction she’d come from. “The diary says the gold is north of here. So let’s just go see.”
Sadie bent, picked up Daar’s cane, and pretended to use it as a crutch. With a final look over her shoulder at where Faol had disappeared and a prayer that the wolf wasn’t too badly hurt, Sadie started limping back toward the stream.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked as she set a course slightly northwest of where Father Daar was. “I want this park as much as you do. I would have told you the moment I found Jedediah’s gold.”
Eric laughed. “The park’s not important to me, Quill. Granted, I’ll make a good chunk of money off my land once the park’s in operation, but I’d much rather find the gold. Why in hell do you think I talked the consortium into hiring you?”
Sadie stopped and whirled on him. “You shot Morgan over some gold that might not even exist? Are you nuts?”
He aimed the beam of his flashlight down the trail behind them, then poked her with it to get her moving again. “My great-granddaddy wasn’t nuts,” he said, walking behind her, keeping his beam scanning the woods. “Old Levi Hellman financed the store I now run with what gold Plum was carrying on him when he died.”
“Your great-grandfather? Did he… was he the one who murdered Jedediah?”
Eric shrugged. “Who the hell knows? Or even cares now? I just know that the Hellmans came into a good chunk of money eighty years ago, and there were stories passed down in our family that speculated about where it came from. And I’m guessing your daddy had heard the rumors, too. That’s why he never would discuss his search for the gold with me. And I know he was close to succeeding when the fire destroyed all his research.”
“How do you know that?”
“I knew he had Jean Lavoie’s diary. I saw his copy.”
“When?”
“The night of the fire,” he said, his voice low and angry. “And if your sister hadn’t caught me, I would have gotten it then.”
Sadie whirled on him again, stumbling back when he bumped into her. “What are you saying?”
She could just make out Eric’s sneer in the glow of his flashlight. “I’m saying that your sister didn’t burn in the fire, Quill. She was already dead.”
She lunged at him with a shriek of anger, one hand coiled into a claw, the cane raised to strike in the other. They went tumbling to the ground, and Sadie tried to reach for his gun as they fought. He hit her on the side of her head with the flashlight, momentarily stunning her with the blow.
Eric rolled to his feet, his gun back in his hand, and kicked her. “After the fire, I spent the next five years trying to talk Frank into resuming his research,” he continued as if nothing had happened. “But he’d lost his passion for the hunt. He wouldn’t even tell me where he’d found the diary when I alluded to it. I couldn’t come right out and mention the diary, because I wasn’t supposed to know he had it.”
“Then how did you?” Sadie asked, rising onto her hands and knees, clutching the cane in her fist.
“I only knew Frank had found something important. He couldn’t wait for you to get home from school. He was like a kid with the key to the candy store.”
Sadie glared at him past the flashlight beam. “So you broke into our house and tried to steal what he’d found.”
Eric nodded. “But then Caroline came into the study. You really had left a candle burning, Quill,” he continued derisively. “Your sister was covering your ass. But we struggled, and that’s how the fire started. We knocked over the candle, and Lavoie’s diary burned before I could get to it.”
Sadie stood up, and Eric took a guarded step back, raising his gun.
“You’re a murderer,” she said in a low voice. “You killed my sister eight years ago, and you tried to kill me yesterday.”
She could just make out that he was shaking his head. “No. It was Morgan MacKeage I was aiming at. Why in hell would I want to kill you?” he asked incredulously. “You’re the only one who knows this valley.”
“And now I know you’re a murderer.”
He nodded. “That doesn’t matter now. Where’s the gold?”
Sadie realized then that he intended to kill her. And that she needed a way to stall for time until Morgan could get here. Surely he’d heard the gunshots. “So where did you really find the diary you gave me?”
He laughed again, somewhat insanely. “I searched every museum in this state for eight years. But those bumbling Dolans managed to find it first. They came into the store last winter bragging their fool heads off that they had the next best thing to a map. And that’s when I started making plans to get you back here.”
“Why didn’t you just work out a deal with Dwayne and Harry?”
He scoffed, waving the gun in the air. “With those two? Between them they don’t even have a full brain.”
“They found the diary.”
“And I found a way to get it from them. Now, where’s the gold, Quill?”
“It doesn’t exist,” she said. “I’ve already searched this entire side of the mountain. I found the cliff mentioned in the diary, but there was nothing there.”
“You’re lying.” He took a threatening step toward her, his face twisted in anger in the beam of his flashlight.
“But I did find placer gold in a stream near here,” she quickly amended, taking a step back.
He stopped and was silent for several seconds, apparently trying to decide if he believed her or not. Sadie held the cane up in supplication and reached into her pocket with her other hand. She slowly drew out one gold nugget and held it up for Eric to see.
“This is what I found,” she said in a voice that belied the anger she felt, handing him the nugget. “It’s large, Eric. It must have been close to the source. You could probably be rich just panning that stream. I don’t think there’s an actual mine, Eric. I think Jedediah found only this heavy placer gold.”
He put the nugget into his shirt pocket, then took his flashlight and waved it at the trail.
“Then let’s go, Quill. Show me.”
Sadie turned and started them back in the direction of the stream, frantically thinking of what she should do next. Where the hell was her husband?
And where should she lead Eric? To Prospect River? Or to the stream? She could buy a couple of hours waiting for Morgan to show up by taking Eric to the stream well below the pool and then pretend to search for the exact spot where she’d found the nugget.
Sadie clasped Daar’s cane protectively to her chest, then remembered it was supposed to be her crutch. She started using it like a cane and tried to think of a way to make the magic work for her without blowing them all to kingdom come.
What had the old priest mumbled to the cane when he started the fire? She needed to be able to speak to the cane. And the only word she knew in Gaelic washedgehog.
Morgan snapped his head up at the soundof gunfire echoing down the mountain. It was coming not from where Mercedes should have been waiting safely for him but from the old logging camp, where she’d probably gone.
He knew she wouldn’t stay put.
Morgan turned his gaze down the mountain to where Grey and Callum were trying to drive anyone lurking in the woods toward him. But they probably still were a couple of miles away. Ian had been posted at the river, protecting everyone’s back.
Sweat now covering his forehead, Morgan abandoned his post and started running upstream at an angle that sent him toward the logging camp, hoping to intercept whoever had fired those shots.
As they finally neared the stream,Sadie began speaking to Eric again, her voice loud enough that she hoped it would warn Morgan of her presence and that she was not alone.
She hoped Morgan had heard Eric’s gunshots. An hour was enough time for Morgan to run to her rescue, wasn’t it?
And Sadie worried about Faol. Was the wolf fatally wounded? Dead? Or was he quietly following them?
“How did you find the logging camp?” Sadie asked, still walking with a pretend limp, still trying to stall for time.
“That pack you picked up last Sunday,” Eric said. “I sewed a transmitter into the bottom of it.”
Sadie stopped and looked back. “A transmitter?”
“I sell them for hunting dogs,” he told her, nudging her shoulder to keep her moving.
“They’re good for more than two miles.”
“But why, Eric? Why leave me alone for ten weeks and then suddenly start interfering?”
“Because the Dolans arrived. And I heard about your date with MacKeage, and I didn’t like the distraction he was making for you. So I decided it was time I intervened.”
“Why ransack my cabin? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Because you always keep a journal, and I hoped you had made notes from Lavoie’s diary. That day I brought you the photos, I was going to look for it.”
They finally reached the stream, and the anger of knowing she’d been forced to walk and talk calmly with the man who had murdered her sister threatened to boil over. Sadie stopped beside the water and turned, forcing herself to be calm.
“This is it,” she said in an even tone, using Daar’s cane to point at the stream. “This is where I found the nugget.”
“Where?” he asked, scanning the rippling water with the beam of his flashlight.
“Just up there.” Sadie pointed at where she could hear the water churning over a sharp drop of ledge. “There’s a tiny bowl that forms an eddy just below that ledge. And the bottom of the pool is littered with nuggets.”
She led him to the small eddy. Sadie turned so that Eric wouldn’t see her reach into her pocket and palmed a handful of the nuggets, hiding them in her fist as she made her way to the edge of the small pool over the falls.
“There!” she yelled over the noise of the rippling cascade, throwing the nuggets into the churning water. “Shine your light there, at the eddy.”
As she had hoped, Eric took one last cautious look around and tucked his gun into his belt. He scrambled over the strewn boulders to the edge of the eddy and shone his flashlight into the pool of water.
Faint bits of gold sparkled back at him.
Sadie took a small step away from him, into the blackness of the forest, but stopped when Eric turned his flashlight on her.
“Get down here,” he said. “Hold the light for me.”
Taking a look around, Sadie sighed and climbed down to Eric. Where in hell was Morgan? She may have foolishly gotten herself into this mess, but he was supposed to get her out of it.
She crouched beside Eric. The moment he tried to hand her the flashlight, Sadie took Daar’s cane and smacked him over the back, putting all the force of her anger behind the blow. She heard Eric splashing in the pool as he tried to get back to his feet in the water.
He shouted for her to stop, but she continued to run until gunfire erupted and tree bark exploded beside her. Sadie stopped and slowly turned around. Eric was standing in the pool, water dripping from his hair and clothes, the beam of his flashlight glinting off the barrel of his gun. He cocked the hammer to fire again, and aimed the weapon at her chest.
“Wait,” she said, “I lied. This is nothing,” she added, waving at the nuggets in the water.
“There’s more gold upstream than you could carry in a lifetime. But it’s hidden. I can show you were it is.”
Eric was silent for several seconds, then suddenly he waved the gun. “Then let’s go. But if you run again, Quill,” he added in a snarl as he stepped out of the pool, “I won’t miss next time.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Sadie led the way toward the magical pool,where she hoped Father Daar and his Gaelic words would make the cane do something magical to save them.
Where was Morgan? And Callum and the others? Why wasn’t this mountain teeming with warriors, dammit?
Sadie saw the glow of the grotto ahead and breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’s that light?” Eric asked from behind her.
“It must be coming daybreak.”
“We’re on the west side of the mountain,” he countered, moving up beside her and peering through the tall trees. “The sun won’t reach here for hours.”
“It’s a very high waterfall. Hear it, Eric? It sends up a mist that the sun’s rays must be touching. It’s filtering the light down.”
Sadie led him through the trees until they reached the edge of the large, shimmering pool. She inconspicuously searched for Father Daar, but the priest was nowhere in sight.
Suddenly, she spotted him on the far side of the pool, just to the left of the waterfall. He was frantically tugging on the branch of a cherrywood tree. Sadie immediately led Eric to the right side of the pool and spoke loudly, trying to warn Father Daar of their presence.
“Wait until you see it, Eric. The entire floor of the cave is covered in gold nuggets.”
She saw Father Daar shoot upright and whirl to face them. And then the old priest ducked behind the tree he’d been tugging on. He quietly pulled on a back branch instead.
“Where is it, Quill?” Eric asked, stopping and staring up at the towering cliffs surrounding them. “Where’s the gold?”
“It’s there, hidden by the falls,” she said, using the cane to point to the far end of the pool. “Just walk behind it.”
He nudged her forward with his gun. “You go first.”
“I can’t,” she said, leaning heavily on the cane. “Just let me rest here for a minute.”
She started to sit down, but Eric grabbed her arm and pulled her along after him. There was a loud snap from Daar’s direction, and Sadie watched in horror as the branch he’d been tugging on broke free and fell on top of him.
“Who the hell is that?” Eric hissed, turning his gun toward the priest.
Sadie rapped Eric’s hand with her cane, but he didn’t drop the gun, instead whirling to pull her off balance. At the same time, an angry roar came from the lower end of the pool. Sadie saw Morgan standing with his sword in his hand at the entrance to the grotto.
And Faol was standing just in front of Morgan, his hackles raised and his teeth bared.
Blood slowly oozed from where Eric’s bullet had grazed his chest, but the wound didn’t keep Faol from growling at Eric.
With his arm now firmly around her neck, Eric started backing away, pulling her deeper into the pool. “I’ll kill her, MacKeage!” he shouted, touching the barrel of his gun to her head. “Slowly walk over to your right, to the cliff wall.”
“Tàs as,”Morgan hissed at Faol, using his knee to push him to the right. In unison, Morgan and the wolf moved toward the cliff.
“Remember the magic, girl!” Father Daar shouted.
Having forgotten about the priest, Eric whirled in his direction, spinning Sadie with him.
Father Daar pointed a finger at her. “Use it!”
Sadie was violently turned around again at the sound of a growl, and a gunshot rang out beside her head. Sadie screamed when she saw Morgan, running toward her with his sword raised, fold in half and fall to the ground. Faol lunged from the edge of the pool, and Eric stepped back and fired again.
Sadie slammed her cane into Eric’s ribs. “No!” she screamed, striking him again, struggling to get free and reach Morgan.
Faol knocked them both off balance enough that Sadie was able to push Eric away and scramble to the edge of the pool. She reached Morgan just as another gunshot sounded, the bullet ricocheting off the ground beside them. Morgan rolled in a blur of movement, pulling Sadie with him as he grabbed the cane out of her hand.
He rose to his knees with his back to her, one hand grasping the cane, the other hand covered in blood pressed against his side. He held the cane over his head, pointed it at Eric, and shouted something in Gaelic.
Lightning suddenly cracked with blinding brilliance through the air, charging the mist with a rainbow of colors. The ground beneath them began to tremble. The cliffs began to groan and rumble. Large chunks of granite broke from the towering walls and fell into the water with thunderous splashes.
Eric’s gun fired several more times. Light swirled through the grotto, and Sadie could no longer see Eric as he became surrounded by black whorls clawing at him through the mist.
Sadie screamed, not understanding what was happening.
Morgan continued to shout, the cane in his hand sparking with blinding energy. The mountain groaned louder, violently shaking as if trying to shrug off the chaos. Huge blocks of granite fell around them. Uprooted trees came crashing down, vibrating the earth with deadly shivers.
Black fingers chilled with the stench of death swirled past her, the howl of their rage making Sadie’s ears hurt. She saw Eric clearly for one blinding moment, running to where she had told him the gold was, as the fingers reached him, clawing menacingly.
She could hear his screams.
And her own. She could hear the mountain growling as it crashed around them. Morgan turned and pushed her, telling her to run.
But Sadie couldn’t move.
Morgan slammed into her, throwing them both back against a large piece of the fallen granite wall. He used his body to cover hers as chunks of debris rained down around them with such relentless violence that she could no longer hear her own screams. The air detonated with the percussion of a sonic boom, and the cane in Morgan’s hand whispered a mournful sigh before it simply dissolved into ash.
And the chaos suddenly stopped.
Silence replaced it. The air was still. The earth no longer rumbled, and the sound of the waterfall had ceased.
Sadie blinked in the dim light of dawn breaking over the summit of Fraser Mountain and looked past Morgan’s shoulder. Destruction lay everywhere like a volcanic eruption. A gaping hole had opened several hundred yards deep into the mountain, and the sharp cliffs that had formed the grotto now lay crumbled into talus. The waterfall had been sealed off, the gold and most of the pool now deeply buried beneath boulders.
The giant trees, most of them uprooted, some of them still standing but with their tops snapped off, littered the ground like discarded toothpicks.
The destruction was complete.
“Morgan!” she screamed, grabbing his shoulders and wiggling out from under his limp body. “Morgan!” she repeated, shaking him. “Answer me!”
There was a cut on his head, but his side was bubbling red with blood from one tiny hole from Eric’s bullet. More blood spread at the ground beneath him, soaking his shirt all the way down to his pants. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow. His face was pale as death.
Sadie dug at the boulders pinning his legs, whimpering with frustration when she couldn’t budge them.
Father Daar stumbled over and knelt beside them.
“Do something!” Sadie shouted at him. “Use your magic!”
“I have none!” Daar snapped back, adding his own weight to hers. “It was used up in the destruction.”
Sadie spotted Morgan’s sword lying beside him. She grabbed it and started prying at the boulders.
The sword suddenly broke, sending both Sadie and Father Daar stumbling backward.
Sadie lifted the hilt that she was still holding, staring in horror at what she had done.
“Oh my God. I broke his sword.”
She scrambled back and knelt down to cup Morgan’s face. “Hold on, my love,” she whispered, touching her lips to his ear. “You hold on,” she ordered when he didn’t respond.
Sadie was suddenly grabbed by the shoulders and pushed away so violently that she swallowed her gasp. A tall, dark-haired giant with eyes the exact same color as Morgan’s replaced her at Morgan’s head, running a large hand over her husband’s face.
“We’ll have you out in a minute,” the stranger said, putting his shoulder into the larger of the two boulders.
Callum suddenly appeared and set his own shoulder to the rock, both men grunting and straining and cursing. Sadie sat on the ground and placed her feet just below their hands to add her own strength. Even Father Daar used smaller rocks to hold up the boulder each time it moved.
The stranger stopped, catching his breath, and looked at the situation. He walked to the back of the rock and started working, throwing debris out of the way. Callum found a stout branch and set it to pry against the boulder, only to stop suddenly and lift out the broken tip of Morgan’s sword.
“I hope ya can run fast,” Callum said. “Because just as soon as Morgan is well enough to stand, he’ll come after you.”
“Oh, please hurry,” Sadie whispered. “He’s bleeding to death.” She turned to the priest.
“Isn’t there something you can do?”
Both Callum and the stranger—Sadie realized he was Morgan’s brother, Greylen MacKeage—looked at the priest with Sadie. Father Daar slowly shook his head. “My staff was destroyed, and so was the waterfall. There’s nothing left.”
Faol suddenly appeared, limping over and washing Morgan’s face, whining and pawing at the boulder.
“Get that beast away from him,” Greylen said harshly, moving to kick the wolf.
“Nay,” Father Daar said. “He’s only worried about his son.”
“His son?” Greylen whispered, his face paling as he snapped his eyes back to the priest.
Daar turned red in the face. “I’m guessing, MacKeage. But I have a notion Duncan’s been visiting us this summer,” he said, waving at the wolf.
All four of them turned to stare at Faol, who was now looking at them with unblinking green eyes. He whined again and pushed at the boulder with his nose.
