Read Online Night Visitor by Melanie Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

out into the still air to guide her. She had heard it before, on the morning when she had taken her photographs to Duntrune. It was the same mournful tune.
    Malcolm.
    Taffy swallowed, pushing down a burgeoning case of nerves.
    After her flight through the magicked door, she found the solid ground beneath her feet very reassuring—its common, earthy reek of sheep and cattle dung, of peat smoke, and of green things growing in the rich soil. It upset her to think that she would have to face the awful void again when she returned home, so she pushed the thought from her mind.
    Taffy extinguished her lantern, setting it carefully at the base of the hidden door to mark her passageway back to Kilmartin. She hid her satchels and camera, nearby in a hollowed-out tree. She did not allow herself to dwell on what would happen should the door refuse to reopen upon her return. Such worry would only aggravate her nerves and ruin her aim. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with this rescue.
    Automatically, she began straightening her disheveled hair. There was no wind yet from the loch, but she knew from past experience that there would be one as the sun went down, and shooting straight was a difficult enough matter without her hair flapping around like a banner.
    All day he had played, from sunrise to sunset, never ceasing though his fingers were near lamed. He wanted them so, lifeless and numb when they were stricken off.
    He would die without his hands—thus had been the sentence of Lady Dunstaffnage. In another moment, he would go down the stairs and to the courtyard to the block, where the axe would strike and the blood would rush from his body. His eyes and ears would go dark and deaf and be pleased no more by earthly things.
    He thought then of all the wondrous beauties he would never see again. The moon shining down on fields at harvest time, the quietude of the meadows on a summer afternoon, the drifts of luckengowen growing wild in a late spring blanket, which would thicken and darken as summer wore on.
    But the most beautiful thing he had ever seen was his golden-haired apparition, and he clung to the thought—the hope—that his dreams were true and he read them aright. For if they were, she would very shortly appear and lead him onthe “low road” to Caislean na Nor, the golden castle of faerie Elysium. He would be happy there, even if shut off from the heaven of man, were she there with him.
    The area about the castle in this century was more thickly cloaked in woods, but the stones were the same and the stream had not diverted its course, so Taffy found her way to the tiny keep with ease.
    Grateful for the dull brown of her dress, which matched both deadwood and earth, she crept up to the castle until she came upon a barrack of rock flanked by a thicket. It was the perfect place for her to make a stand; it had a perfect view in through the gate of the keep, boasted lots of cover, and the setting sun would shine directly in their eyes when the enemy turned her way. If only she could lure Malcolm’s captors into the open courtyard, her plan would turn this into what the Americans called a “turkey shoot.”
    On that thought, the object of her interest obligingly stepped into plain view. Malcolm. She felt a sharp stab in her chest as he looked up and stared in her direction. His eyes were fey.
    “Are ye coming, lass?” his still lips seemed to ask.
    It was impossible that he could see her, of course, but perhaps, just as she thought she hadsometimes read his thoughts, he sensed that she was near.
    Taffy had already loaded her Winchester rifle, but she made a last check to see that she was truly prepared. The steel was cold beneath her hands.
    “Yes, Malcolm. I am coming.”
    Absorbed as she was in the task at hand and Malcolm’s steady stare, she was not aware of the rustling in the dry undergrowth behind her, as if the roots of the copsewood trees were being transhifted.
    They stood in the courtyard, he and the