Page 54 of A Laird and a Gentleman

“I do not know for certain. Your mother might have assumed you would know where to look when the time was right.”

“How will I know if I have never been here before?” Mariam asked as she followed behind the two, watching Nessie’s steps grow lighter and less awkward as they made their way fully onto the fertile soil above.

“Trust your instincts, Mariam. I’m sure that is what your mother would advise if she were here with you,” Nessie replied as they started off toward ruin in the distance.

“Why are the ancestors’ ashes so important?” Mariam asked quietly. The very air around her seemed to still as though holding its breath, waiting for the answer.

“The ashes contain all the magic of those who came before.”

“No one has ever sought to gain that power in all the centuries that have passed?”

“The legend passed down from generation to generation claimed that only the daughter of a ninth daughter can manifest that power into herself on the nineteenth year of her birth.” Nessie’s gaze met and held Mariam’s. “Your mother was a ninth daughter, so you Mariam, are the one.”

Mariam’s stomach tightened and her steps faltered. The message in her shell had said in seven days’ time she would ‘come into her own.’ At midnight, she would enter her nineteenth year. Memories that were not her own stirred inside her mind, tantalizing her, tormenting her with snippets of crumbled rock, of a dark recess, of green and gold light. So close, and yet too far away to grab them and make any sort of sense of what she saw. Had these impressions come to her in her dreams? Was that why they seemed so familiar?

“What does the cauldron have to do with any of this?” Mariam asked.

“The cauldron, and its otherworldly metal, gave the ancestors the power over life and death when they brewed a potion inside it.”

Mariam frowned. “If that is so, then why did the ancestors not save themselves?”

“Because, although a person may be brought back to life, they would be mute. It is the sacrifice that must be paid. Instead of a kindness, over time, the ancestors came to realize the cruelty of such a gift and hid the cauldron away.”

“It sounds as though these things might be better off hidden from the world.”

“From the world, aye. But not from you. Your mother was insistent that you needed to find these things to become who you were meant to be.”

Still not quite understanding how all the pieces fit together, Mariam decided to trust what her mother had wanted her to do. She closed her eyes, trying to grab hold of a thread of memory when something solid came to her—a thousand flat, rectangular rocks stacked high. They looked like the burial cairns she had seen dotting the Scottish landscape from ages past. She sighed, opened her eyes, and looked at Nessie once more. “I think I saw a cairn. What does that mean?”

“It means you have identified where we must go. There is a cairn just north of the ruins. Can you see it there in the distance?”

Cameron frowned. “If we are to reach it before sundown, we will need to go a little faster. Are you capable of that?”

“I will keep up,” Nessie replied before Cameron set a faster pace across the grassy plains.

The moon slipped out from behind a stream of clouds and painted the landscape before them in shades of silver and blue. Shadows crouched behind boulders they passed and wind whispered through the grass. Hazy light filtered down from the heavens, guiding the way forward. Tranquil beauty temporarily touched the small world around her that was so at odds with the devastation and suffering they had left behind, or the ash cloud that was heading their way.

Half an hour later, they reached their destination and gathered at the base of a cairn. It was only a pile of rocks, and yet Mariam stared at them spellbound, scarcely breathing. Was what they sought inside?

*

Cameron’s gaze was on Mariam, and he knew that even if they did not find any answers about her past on the isle, he would still be grateful to have this moment with her. He would remember the expression of glowing radiance reflected on her face until the day he died. As she studied the cairn, Cameron looked about the area. From the rise they now stood upon, he could see the remnants of what had obviously been a formal garden at one time, but were now tangled and overgrown. Cutting through the garden was a series of three paths, like the arms of a tree, which joined each other to form a base that stopped at the edge of the cairn.

Cameron bent lower to study the collected silt and compost at his feet, suddenly noticing a splash of blue beneath the years of accumulated decay. His heart sped up. He reached for his dagger and slowly scraped at the ground to reveal a mosaic made entirely of shells.

It took all three of them clearing the debris before they revealed a decorative band that encircled the cairn. Against a blue background lay small white flowers in a pattern that was broken after every ninth flower with a shell identical to the one Mariam wore about her neck.

“This is obviously the place we were meant to find,” Cameron said. “Do you know what it is you should do now, Mariam?”

“The only clue we have is the shell my mother gave me. Perhaps it is a key of sorts.” Beside him Mariam removed her necklace, and going to her knees, placed the shell atop one of the others in the pattern.

Nothing happened, then all at once the grass shuddered and the earth beneath their feet rumbled. A bolt of blue-white lightning snaked from the sky above and struck the cairn. Rocks vibrated then rained from the pile, tumbling past them down the hill they had just scaled. Then as suddenly as it started, the motion stopped.

The three of them stood perfectly still, gaping at the giant opening in the chambered cairn before them. “Are we supposed to go in there?” Mariam asked, finding her voice before the others.

“I believe so,” Nessie replied, then shaking off her surprise, she stepped up to the opening and entered the darkness.

Mariam picked up her necklace and put it back on. “Wait,” Mariam called after the older woman. “I should go alone.”