Chapter 7
The Englishman was once more already awake and about the cabin when Maisie exited her berth the next morning, although he barely acknowledged her presence, and she extended him the same courtesy. His only comment was that, in seeking to break his fast, he had been unable to access her provisions trunk, and Maisie was glad she’d had the forethought to seal it the day before. Citing the stickiness of wood at sea, she made a show of struggling with the lid before she opened it and produced suitable rations for both of them.
He spent the day studying the drawings again, and although Maisie doubted anyone could be so academically single-minded, the task seemed to keep him sufficiently distracted from the fact that he was still confined within the crawler. He paced a bit at times, true, but it appeared to her as if he was working through imagined scenarios in his mind rather than trying to escape invisible demons. His brow furrowed beneath the fall of his dark hair and he seemed oblivious to her presence, even when she gave up trying to occupy herself and surrendered to the urge to observe him openly from her chair while she waited for the unpleasantness she knew was to come.
Maisie heard the song before Adrian. She had felt Wyldonna in her bones hours before the watery moans penetrated the hull of the ship, and so she expected them, but a shiver raced up her spine all the same. She couldn’t help but think of her fate should the thickness of the crawler’s wood not stand between her and what sang in the icy water beyond.
Adrian heard the mourning wails then, his face raising from the parchment on the tabletop. He turned toward her, and his ever-present frown deepened, increasing his look of solemn handsomeness.
“Do you hear that?”
Maisie nodded.
He seemed to concentrate on the sound, turning his head slightly away from her for a moment before muttering, “Change in water temperature, perhaps. Or depth.” His eyes flicked to her again, demanding an answer before his mouth could form the question. “Are we near the coast?”
“We are,” she said, content for the moment to continue watching him in peace. Likely the last peace she would know for some time.
He nodded and returned his attention to the drawings.
The howls grew incrementally louder as the minutes passed, and although to Maisie’s ears they were piercing, vicious screams, she knew they would sound much differently to Adrian.
As if on prompt, he looked up again, his expression now more puzzled than annoyed.
“What is that?” he insisted quietly and stood, the motion shoving the chair back and away from him. Maisie watched the way his body became attuned to the sound filtering through the cabin, the way his head cocked. He turned to her suddenly. “I want to go above.” And before she could answer him yes or no, he was striding across the floor and had gained the ladder.
“You canna,” she called out mildly, unconcerned for his safety. He would never be able to open the hatch until she bade it open.
He tried anyway, jerking at the latch with frustrated grunts. “It’s stuck again,” he growled, backing down the ladder swiftly. “Where is the knife?”
“The knife didna open it last time and it willna open it now,” Maisie said, watching him as he strode toward the provisions trunk and dropped to one knee. He struggled similarly with that piece for several moments while the squeals grew louder in the close space, before shoving the heavy trunk away with a vicious curse. His growing distress was clear.
“Sit down, Adrian. We’ll land soon, and any discomfort you feel will be over.”
But rather than heed her advice, his now wild eyes landed on the wooden chair he had so recently vacated. He seized the back of it and carried it toward the ladder, springing into a jog halfway across the floor. He drew the chair sideways over his head and flung it at the hatch with a shout.
Maisie didn’t flinch as the chair broke into scores of pieces, but Adrian cried out in fury when he saw that the door was unscathed. As the screeches grew even louder, he clapped his palms over his ears and swung toward her, his face twisted in agonized ecstasy.
“What is it?” he demanded again. “I must know!”
“Sirens,” Maisie replied, careful to meet his eyes directly.
He winced, as if the answer confused him and the confusion brought him pain. “No.”
She didn’t argue with him; it would do no good. The only way he would believe was to see the heartless creatures with his own eyes, and should that occur, his satisfaction would be short-lived before he met a grisly death.
Then, suddenly, the song was gone, as if the cries were threads snipped off by a sharp blade. Adrian lowered his hands and blinked, his eyes dazed as they seemed to search the air above his head.
“What happened?” he asked. “Where did it go?”
Maisie closed her eyes. Please . . .
A loud, hollow thump shook the crawler, the sound echoing as if a mighty drum had been struck. And then Maisie did flinch.
They knew she was aboard.
Another thump, then a pair, and then it was as if all the sounds of hell were unleashed on Maisie Lindsey’s vessel—the wails of the sirens returned with a blast as a thousand hammers seemed to pound the wood with the intention of destroying it.
Maisie could imagine the cloudy-white hands beyond with their toothlike claws, beating on the hull of the crawler, seeking her.
Adrian shouted something, but Maisie could not decipher his words through the thunder and piercing squeals. When two strong hands gripped her upper arms and shook her, she opened her eyes to see his panicked face.
“We’ve run upon rocks!” he yelled. “We must go above before the ship breaks apart!”
She only shook her head at him, pressing her mouth into a line.
“Maisie!” he demanded, shaking her again. “If we stay here, we’ll die!”
“Nay!” she shouted back into his face. “Here, we are safe! But if I open that door, we are both dead in an instant!”
His expression was pained, although she could not tell if it was from the irresistible lure of the song he heard or the thought that the crawler would burst apart at any moment, flooding the interior with seawater and drowning them both.
He shook her again, as if it would convince her.
Maisie wrenched her arms up to mirror his hold on her. “Nay!”
They stayed frozen in their postures for what seemed to Maisie to be an hour, with the deafening roar of fish belly skin beating against the wood and the hellish, hungry screams buffeting them in their desperate embrace. Maisie didn’t know if Adrian clung to her out of fear or fury, but she didn’t care as long as he clung to her.
He was real. And he was holding on to her.
Then, like a ripple of water receding from the shore, the crashing blows against the hull began to fall away from the crawler, from the end of the cabin where the sleeping berths lay, all along the sides as if they were moving through a barrier. The cries began to fade away as well until only the sounds of Adrian’s labored breaths filled Maisie’s ears.
Save for one final scream, risked by the bravest or most vengeful of the creatures, which seemed to explode inside the cabin.
“Traitor!”
Maisie swallowed as the scream’s echo faded into unnatural silence, and she saw the look of recognition come across Adrian’s face. He’d heard.
Then the cabin gave a violent lurch, tossing most of the contents on its sides, and Maisie and Adrian tumbled to the floor still gripping each other.
The crawler had landed.
Adrian’s eardrums felt achy and swollen inside his head as he helped Maisie to stand, and then released her to kick his way through the pieces of broken chair and shove the overturned table aside. Only the cauldron, sitting within an iron frame that allowed it to sway, was left aright, and its flames continued to crackle.
The drawings had slid to the floor—which Adrian guessed to now be at a thirty-degree angle—and come to rest near the trunk where Maisie kept the food stores. He was disoriented, and so he squatted with his hip braced against the trunk to help maintain his balance as he quickly shuffled the pages together and then rolled them.
He dared a glance at Maisie. She had thrown back the curtain to her bunk and was looping the long strap of a satchel over her red curls to rest on one shoulder. Her arms reached out and her pale, delicate fingers began plucking items from around the narrow bunk like birds pecking at the ground, tucking this and that quickly inside the bag.
Adrian’s head throbbed. Sirens . . .
He stood just as Maisie turned from her berth. She looked at him expectantly.
“Well?” she said. “Are you coming or nae?”
He hesitated. “Won’t there be someone to meet us?”
Her delicate features hardened. “I hope nae. Although if you doona hurry, we may indeed have to contend with some rather unpleasant individuals. It willna be long before word of my return spreads.”
Adrian’s mind fairly tripped over itself with the questions he wanted to ask, but he had doubts that he would believe any answer Maisie Lindsey gave him, so he only nodded his understanding and stepped to his own compartment to retrieve his few belongings.
They crossed to the ladder, and Adrian let the lady precede him. She laid a hand to the latch and the door slid open, as if the track it sat in had been greased. She looked over her shoulder and blew a quick breath through her lips before completing the climb.
Adrian looked over his own shoulder and saw that the flames in the cauldron were gone. No smoke curled from the vessel, no smell of spent fuel wafted on the air. The fire had simply vanished as if it had never been lit.
Sirens . . .
Adrian shook the mad ideas from his head and followed the woman through the doorway.
He wasn’t certain what he had expected upon his arrival at Wyldonna, but it was not what he saw as he stepped onto the deck of the listing crawler. For one, it was nighttime. But the sky was not the inky black pricked with stars he was accustomed to. Instead, it was a dull charcoal color, almost misty, and there was no starlight to cheer it.
The gloom was not so thick, though, that he could not make out the coast upon which they’d landed—steep and rocky, with the jagged black outlines of coniferous trees crowding down to the shore and blocking out his view of the horizon to either side. The crawler had come to rest on a sliver of rocky beach, and Adrian was surprised that the oars he expected to see protruding from the port side of the vessel were already gone. Likely pulled inside by weary crew, eager to disembark, he told himself. There was a long dock perhaps only ten feet from where they’d made land, but it was empty, standing in the gloom like a ruin.
Adrian turned to look over the roof of the cabin behind him at the sea beyond. Indeed, it was blanketed by a heavy fog, and he decided that the strange light of the place could be attributed to nothing more magical than low clouds. The water was flat, oddly still. No sound came from it save the common lapping at the shore.
Sirens . . .
“Adrian.”
His head turned back quickly at the sound of his name, spoken in a low but urgent tone. Maisie Lindsey wore an intense expression on her face, and in that moment, Adrian considered that the queen had made a wise choice in champions. All the lady would require to complete the picture of a mythical Gaelic woman warrior was a weapon.
“Listen to me verra carefully,” she said and took his hand. He looked down at it briefly; she was gripping him hard. “Once we step down from the crawler, you mustna release my hand. Until we are safely inside the castle, it is imperative that you keep hold of me.”
“It’s not that dark, Lady Maisie,” he said. “I’ve found my way along roads in deeper night than this.”
“It isna night,” she snipped. “It’s just before supper.”
Adrian looked up at the sky again. “That’s impossible.”
“Winter in Wyldonna means almost constant darkness,” Maisie said. “And it’s nae your losing your way I fear; the folk who live in the wood will sense that an outsider has come onto the island.”
Adrian felt his brows raise. “They would challenge my presence?”
“Nay,” she said levelly, meeting his eyes in the gloom. “Some would just eat you.”
“Eat me?”
“Shh.” She nodded. “As long as you remain joined with me until we are in the castle, you’ll be safe. But we must hurry nonetheless. I’m only slightly safer than you right now, especially since some already know I’ve returned.” She turned toward the low side of the crawler, pulling him along.
“The sirens,” Adrian said in a flat tone, following her to the edge. “And I thought it was me they sought. My ego is crushed.”
She shot him a look. “You step down first—you’re taller than me. But doona let go,” she hastened to add.
Adrian gave her a mocking bow. “As you wish, Your Highness.”
Maisie Lindsey frowned at him but came easily into his arms after his boots had crunched down on the rocky beach. She turned away from him immediately and began pulling him up the steep incline, toward a slender path Adrian could see amidst a tangle of winter-naked briars at the foot of the hill.
“The sirens have an endless craving for men’s blood, true, but they forgot about you quickly—it’s me they wanted.”
“Why, you’re nearly as popular as the queen,” he said, trying to make his voice light, although it was taking an enormous amount of concentration to navigate the path behind Maisie, who skipped up the shadowy and sliding track as if it were nothing more treacherous than a set of well-made stairs. Adrian’s leg began to ache as he tried to avoid weighing on her arm.
“Aye,” she muttered.
“Where are the sirens now?” he pressed, measuring his breaths so that the words didn’t come out as gasps.
“In the sea, of course,” she said with what sounded like forced patience. “They canna come ashore unless they are with a creature of warm blood, or upon a vessel to the dock, thank the gods. Ships that wander too close to Wyldonna are a danger and a nuisance to us. Heavy storms blow pirates and mercenary ships off course, and soon after our hall will stink of sirens, airing their petty complaints.”
He came to a stop, his chest heaving, but he kept a firm grip on Maisie’s hand, yanking her to a halt.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, tugging at him. “Come on!”
“You expect me to believe that sirens actually exist?”
“You asked. Now come on.” She tugged at him again, and because he’d had a moment to catch his breath and no further reason really to delay the trek, Adrian followed.
“What about the folk in the wood who would . . . eat me, was it?” Even he heard the snideness in his tone.
“Aye, eat you, they would,” she replied. “Pech; a pair of Tallmade-geons that we know of, but there could be more than that now. The worst of the lot—and the most dangerous to you—are the afternhangers. The most ancient of the Cat Sìth.”
“Oh, certainly. Felines are terribly frightening. But no minotaur?” he needled.
“Doona be ridiculous,” she said. “Nae one calls them that anymore.”
“My apologies.”
Adrian didn’t know why this beautiful young woman, who otherwise seemed to have a very sensible mind about her, insisted on feeding him such fables. Was it not enough that he’d come to this desolate Scots isle? Not enough that he was here to help her desperate queen, regardless of the insignificance of Wyldonna’s troubles to the rest of the world? Adrian had committed his aid regardless; his ultimate goal was to trap Glayer Felsteppe. Why must she try to make the island and its people something fantastic and dreadful and so obviously untrue?
Ahead of him, Maisie gave a little cry that sounded like dismay and then swayed to a halt. Adrian looked up to see the cause of the delay, and at first he thought he was witnessing the phenomenon of colored lights in the sky that were rumored to frequent the northernmost parts of the map.
Lazy, pulsing blue sheets seemed to billow above the dark spires of the treetops, flapping away the misty gray like a rug being aired and allowing piercing dots of starlight to briefly flash. But the blue glow was concentrated at a point, and as Adrian looked more closely, his chest heaving from the climb, he could make out what appeared to be a lone spire reaching higher than the tallest arrow tops of the pines. His guide began walking once more, but now her steps were measured, almost hesitant, and one by one the trees crowding the path moved aside until the blue glow cast their shadows long and black on the path behind them. Adrian’s mouth fell open despite himself.
It could only be Wyldonna Castle. And it was glowing.
He guessed the structure must be seven full stories to the uppermost turret, and the construction appeared to be chiseled stone, but there was no gray or brown or even red to the rock that comprised this place, only a soft, shimmering blue, like the horizon just after sunset. Adrian could see the apexes of the towers that had been in the drawing—six in all—with numerous flapping pennants. Tall dark shadows—the insets of windows—crawled over the castle like insects, and some of the openings were filled with brighter, welcoming light, beckoning to him to discover the secrets that lay inside.
The castle itself seemed to cling to the cliff, as if it had once been a living thing that had scaled the side of the rocky isle and then perched there on the edge. Adrian could not fathom how such a massive and ornately built palace had been built in such a treacherous location.
There was no drawbridge, no moat, and no need for one. Only a tall, arched wooden door at the end of the path, and no guards at that. He strained his ears; faint music wafted on the breeze. The blue glow caressed and retreated along the track like the waves on the beach below, almost keeping measure with the ghostly tune, and Adrian could hardly wait to see if the light had a feel. His skin crawled in anticipation of the blue glow.
But then Maisie suddenly pulled him from the path and into the woods, breaking into a run.