Prologue
Dubhtolargg 1130
The winds of war were stirring in the north.
Casting his eyes on Moray, the eighth son of Malcom Ceann Mor and the sixth of the Margaretsons made good his threat to conquer the north. Even now, David mac Mhaoil Chaluim was rallying his troops, men who would remain loyal to Scotia’s crown.
“I mean to leave,” the young man said, and hearing the familiar voice, the old woman halted abruptly before the entrance to the cave.
Turning to face the younger dún Scoti, Una leaned upon her staff for support. The patch over her one bad eye was worn and her skin was withered as a prune. Her coloring held a pallor that made Keane want to stay. “I know,” she said, and a smile hovered on her blue-cast lips.
Of course she always knew.
Una had been with their clan for all of Keane’s living memory. She was the mother of them all, their healer, their elder. She was the longest living guardian of the Stone from Scone. “Would ye come sit for a spell?”
“Not today,” Keane said.
Not tomorrow either, for by then he would be gone.
“Ah, well,” she lamented, and seemed to comprehend.
If he lingered now, he might never leave, and his sister Lael had summoned him to Keppenach to help keep her the peace whilst her husband rode to war with Scotia’s king.
The old woman eyed him steadily, her green eye shimmering. “I told your Da, your brother as well… a man will oft meet his destiny on the path he chose to avoid.”
All men must stand for what they believed in. Keane realized this as well as most. “I am not afraid, Una, no matter what my brother may believe.”
She nodded, and the stone in her staff’s hilt winked against the twilight. If some part of Keane had hoped she might stop him, the look in her eye only reaffirmed his need to leave. “Will you speak to Aidan for me? Will you tell him why?”
The old woman shrugged. “Your brother is not your keeper, nor is he your king, but if you would give him half a chance, he might surprise you.”
Even as he lingered, the sky grew darker still.
“Aidan would never understand,” Keane said.
The laird of the dún Scoti was not quick to embrace change, neither would he accept Keane’s decision to abandon the vale whilst the surrounding lands were so full of strife. Aidan feared the kingdom of Scotia would descend upon Dubhtolargg, when in truth, they were all but forgotten here in the Mounth. At least this way, Keane could make himself useful to his sister. Here, he withered in the role he’d been given.
Una sighed again, the sound as heavy as the Stone that lay hidden in the belly of their ben. “Ye must follow your own path, Keane dún Scoti. But ye look to your heart, not your head.”
Keane nodded soberly. Already, there had been too many words spoken for his taste. What he’d come to hear was simply that he had a right to go, and now that he knew it from her own two lips, he closed the distance between himself and the old woman, embracing her fiercely. Wobbling a bit, she tapped him gently on the back. “Whether ye choose to face him or nay, I ken ye’ll know what to do when the time arrives.”
“Never fear,” he reassured her. “Ye taught us well.”
Under the twilight, her one good eye twinkled with unshed tears. “Nay. Ye found your way well enough all on your own.” She sounded more stoical then he’d ever heard her sound before, like a mother whose children were abandoning her to the ravages of old age.
“With a bit o’ help,” he reassured, and reaching out, he shook Una gently by the shoulders to make his point. “None of us could have done aught without ye, Una. Come another day, I will return. Ye have my word.”
She looked at him sadly, as though she knew something Keane did not. “Go on wi’ ye now,” she shooed him. “Be on your way afore I rap ye good upon the head.”
She waved her staff to make the point, but the familiar gesture only made Keane smile—not because she wouldn’t do it, mind you, but because she had done it already a thousand times before and each time with a heart full of love.
But that was that. Goodbyes were said. Keane gave her a final hug and hurried down the hillside. Under cover of darkness, he packed his bags, and left his sister Cailin to share the news: another wolf of Pechtland had departed the vale.
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