The Serpent in the Stone

CHAPTER Thirteen

By the time she arrived back at the dig, Sara felt feverish with chills and exhaustion. She’d run most of the way as a wolf, but even its heavy double pelt could not withstand this much rain. Her stomach twisted with dread that Ian might be right, and that there was no longer anyone whom she and Faith could trust.

The lantern in Faith’s tent threw a dim glow. Sara approached with caution and opened the flap.

Her sister looked up from a pile of books and released a long, weary sigh. “Becky?”

“Hospital. She’ll be all right.” Sara went to Faith’s cot and sank down, holding her roiling belly. She lowered her head until wet locks of hair swung, dripping, into her face.

Before she could add anything more, Faith stood up. “I was able to find out a little more about this druid serpent ceremony.” She came to the cot with a worn leather book, and sat beside Sara. “A sect of druids created the serpent ceremony to allow them to travel the ley lines in a kind of half-life, drawing knowledge from the ghosts already walking the lines, and bringing it back with them when the lines closed again.”

Faith ran a hand through her hair. “It made them powerful, but the ceremony got more and more unstable as time went on. To balance it, they had to sacrifice people in increasing numbers. Eventually, even the sacrifices weren’t enough, and the ley lines shut down for all but twice a year, on the days of the spring and fall equinox.”

Sara looked up as the weight of her sister’s words sank in. Faith’s expression sent a new chill dancing down her spine. “Where did you get all this?”

Hands shaking, Faith slid the book into Sara’s lap.

With a concerned glance at her sister, Sara opened the book’s tattered cover. Drops of water from her sodden hair fell onto the dog-eared flyleaf, smudging the ink of the inscription: Robert Markham, 14th April -

No end date.

Sara slammed the book shut and hugged it to her chest, feeling the blood drain from her face. “W-What is this?” she gasped, even though she knew the answer.

“Dad’s last journal. He started it the month before our tenth birthday. It was in with the stuff I threw together from his research before we left for Shetland.” Faith’s voice shook.

Sara reeled. Her churning stomach threatened to bring up what little food she had eaten that day. “Do you think he knew about us, about what we would be able to do? Do you think that’s why he gave us the lockets?”

“If he did, he never mentions it in there. He wrote all that in the context of a legend. I don’t even know if he believed in it himself. I was afraid to use my power to read it.” She reached anxiously for the book again.

Sara released it. Faith cradled it in her hands, and added, “He must have found the amulet and tracked down its history, or the other way around. I’ve looked everywhere for information on this serpent ceremony and the amulet, and found nothing until now.”

Distracted, Sara rubbed at her forehead. “The druids didn’t keep written records. They passed their culture on through spoken word. We’d be lucky to get anything in scattered pieces, like the fairy tale books. Which don’t mention anything about druids, anyway.”

“I know that.” Faith stood up. “Dad knew something about all this, but where are his sources? He doesn’t reference any in his journal.” She paced the length of the room, holding the book close. “He doesn’t say how the ceremony goes, either. I’ll have to try to reach Hakon again.”

The mention of the Viking’s name brought the sword back into Sara’s thoughts, and then Becky’s recent confession. Her stomach turned over again. “Faith, Becky’s a conduit.”

“She’s what?”

“A conduit, she’s a conduit. She amplified me when I was trying to use telekinesis to steady the boat. She saw what I was doing, and wham!”

“Conduits don’t exist. They’re just a theory!”

“So are we,” Sara reminded her acerbically. She sobered, grasping at the last threads of her focus and self-control. “I told her to go to Holly as soon as she’s out of that hospital. She needs to be somewhere safe.”

Faith began to look frantic, pacing faster around her tent, scanning the interior as if looking for an emotional anchor.

“There’s more. Faith, sit down. I’m still tapped, and you’re making it hard to think.”

Her sister dropped onto the cot’s edge, but her eagerness for action screamed from every muscle.

Sara drew a long breath. “Tom Callander is a telekinetic. He used Becky to push that scaffold down and kill Cameron. Ian thinks Lamb is behind it.”

Faith froze. “How are we going to prove any of this? What do we do?”

Sara fought a surge of anger. Could Faith believe so readily that Lamb might be involved in Cameron’s death? There had to be an explanation—any explanation—to absolve the man who’d been a second father to them all these years.

As bitter a task as it was, she forced herself to consider the possibility. “We need to keep this quiet. Until we’re off this island, everyone is suspect.” She swayed, and propped herself up where she sat.

Faith laid a hand on her arm. “God, you’re like ice. Get out of those wet clothes. You’re going to get sick.” She reached for the blanket at the end of the cot and shook it out over Sara’s lap, then rummaged through her trunk for a clean, dry sweatshirt.

Sara took it and peeled off her soaked shirt. “You can stay here,” she heard her sister say. She gave a groggy nod, only half hearing, and lay down. Faith pulled the Viking sword out from under her cot, and Sara fell fast asleep.

****

Faith turned her lantern down as low as possible. She sat at the table and laid the oilcloth bundle across her lap, then unwrapped it ever so gingerly. When she drew back the last layer of cloth, the sword blade shone in the dim light.

She stared at it, holding her breath, sensing the anger flowing from the weapon without having to touch it. She lifted her hand and let it hover over the blade with a frown, dreading what she’d see.

No help for it...and no choice. She let her hand fall on the sword hilt, and released her power.

Fury like an ice storm swept all around her. Shuddering, Faith clutched at her power with single-minded determination. I am here, and you will not push me out, she ordered the maelstrom.

As if just now sensing her, the anger subsided. The presence inside the sword darted around her, questing, wondering who she was and what she was doing there.

Then it swallowed her.

Longing gripped her, so fierce that it forced the breath from her body. Tears stung her eyes.

Love. Aching, desperate, passionate. Any emotion she’d ever had felt hollow and soulless by comparison. The sword hilt sizzled under her fingertips. She warred with the need to let go of it. There was bitterness, too, that a sword—an artifact of action—had been made useless by becoming its own wielder’s prison. “H-Hakon?”

The tempest of emotion lifted. She stood at the edge of the dig. The night sky draped its velvet cloak overhead. Light from the moon and stars enabled her to see a man approaching. For the first time, she looked on the face of the Viking warrior.

He was tall, broad-shouldered and clean-limbed, with a catlike surety in the way he carried himself, even in a worn tunic. His long, blondish mane was tied back, drawing her attention to the strong edges of cheekbone, jaw, and nose.

As she approached, she saw him more clearly, more brightly, as if he glowed, himself. His eyes broke her heart. Clear blue-green, like the warm southern seas. In them swam an ages-old pain that echoed in her bones. Tears burned down her cheeks, and she wasn’t even sure why she cried.

His gaze landed on her, and he made a strangled sound. The bronze of his skin went ashen white. She heard him speak a name, something soft and lilting. He came forward—one swift step, two—and then crushed her against him.

Frightened, she pushed at him, gasping for air. “Let go! Let go of me!”

He jerked away as if she’d slapped him across the face. He flung a stream of words at her that she didn’t understand, and wouldn’t have remembered if she had taken Norse only yesterday. His eyes hurled all other thoughts from her mind.

Something in her clicked. “I’ve dreamed you before,” she told him.

The realization that he didn’t comprehend her words came when he gripped her arm with terrifying strength. He shook her, demanding, the pitch of his voice rising in furious questions. He took her chin and stared hard at her.

She flung his hands away. “Back off!”

More angry Norse words. She caught the knife edges of them, and raced to follow his meaning.

Sorcery. Trickery.

“Wait!” she snapped. “Just hold on a minute. Let me think, damn it!” She turned in a circle. The air, still and hot, seethed with Hakon’s anger and distrust. Her skin stung in empathy.

She had held the time-weathered skull of this man in her hands, and here he stood before her, whole. Vertigo settled in at the thought. She wanted out of this vision, even as she knew there were questions to be asked.

A word from Hakon, calmer now, sounding like an inquiry. She looked back at him. He seemed to be coming to some sort of understanding, and his expression relaxed.

“That makes one of us, buddy,” she muttered. Drawing a breath, she placed a hand over her heart. “Faith.”

He hesitated, giving her a doubtful look, but nodded and said “Faith” in a perfect imitation of her American accent.

She bit her lip. A thousand questions sprang forth, only to be bottlenecked by her hazy recollection of the language. After a panicked moment of wondering where to start, she fumbled for the threads of long-unused Norse. “I am a friend. I am the one who has been speaking to you through...” Through what, exactly? Would he even grasp the concept of psychic power? “...through the veil of dreams.”

A look of relief at understanding her speech passed across his face. The firm line of his mouth softened. “I am sorry I have hurt you.”

For a moment, she wondered if he meant the way he’d squashed the breath out of her. Even now, he seemed reluctant to touch her, let alone get close to her.

Her confusion must have been evident, because he laid a hand on her shoulder. A weak buzzing radiated from his fingers. She remembered her experience on Beltane when the ghost had touched her. She remembered the knifing sensation in her belly.

So she’d been right. It was him.

Hakon lifted his hand away. “It was not my desire to cause you pain. If I had known you would look—” He broke off and changed direction in a rush of words she almost didn’t catch. “You must help me avenge the murder of my wife.”

Her mouth fell open on several different replies, none of which she had sufficient command of his language to make. “Why?”

He met her gaze again. The pain in his own reached inside her and gripped her by the heart. “It must be you. You have her face.”

She felt the blood drain from cheeks. In its place came an unsettling prickle. She found her mind racing back to the half-remembered dreams she’d had as a young girl, when her power first made itself known. They came back to her now, vivid as ever.

Here. She had visited this place in her dreams, years ago. A house of wood, thatch, and stone. A man tilling the land. A woman carrying water, and laughing at a pair of kittens tumbling across the grass. She had never seen the woman’s face, but the man...

That was Hakon.

He stood beside her now, waiting for her reply. Everything jumbled together on her tongue, trying to get out all at once. She cleared her throat and fought to sort coherent words out of the mess in her head. “How must I do this thing?”

Seeming to sense her turmoil, he continued slowly, pausing to be sure she understood his words. “Finish your digging. Reveal the house I built when I reached this land. There, destroy the stone disk and close the serpent paths.”

She shook her head. “It cannot be ‘destroy’... destroyed.”

When he spoke again, his words came so fast she could hardly follow. She caught “moon” and “sword” among the flurry of sounds. Cursing her faulty memory, she held her hands up to get him to slow down. “When the moon shows all her face,” she repeated. Switching to English, she muttered, “That much I got. I have a damn deadline, and no instructions.” She changed back to Norse. “What of the sword?”

“I swore on it that I would not rest until I have vengeance for her death. The sword will break the stone disk when the first spring moon, riding at its highest point, looks upon them both. It must be done using sacred wine.”

Just what the hell does that mean? If I had a bottle of wine handy at the moment, I’d probably drink it, and to hell with this serpent thing. “Blessed wine?” she guessed aloud.

Hakon jerked a knife from his belt, then raked it across his palm. Faith flinched. Blood, bright as rubies, welled in the weathered creases of his hand. “Sacred wine,” he repeated.

“Blood?” she murmured in Norse. The words “blood” and “wine” were different enough in his language that there could be no mistaking the two. She wondered if it were a metaphor.

Then she wondered how a ghost could bleed.

“Not the blood of common men,” Hakon said. “It is no longer powerful enough.” He gripped her hand, spreading her fingers so that it lay palm-upward in his. “Sacred blood that carries the gift of the druids must also be their downfall.”

Reeling, Faith shook her head. “You’re crazy,” she spat in English. “I want out of this. Let go.” She struggled, trying to pull her hand from his. “Let go!”

She woke from the vision sweating.

Faith threw the folds of oilcloth back over the sword, dropped it into its box, slammed the lid shut, then shoved the whole works under her cot and out of sight.

Gifted blood. The blood of the descendants of druids. He wanted her to avenge a thousand-year-old murder because she carried gifted blood, and somehow just happened to look like his dead wife. In addition to which, she’d been dreaming of him her whole life.

Nausea gripped her. Could this get any better?

The storm raged on outside. Faith bent toward her cot and prodded at her sister. “Hey, wake up.”

Sara mumbled something and opened glassy, unfocused eyes.

“I talked to Hakon. Sara, come on. Wake up.” Faith nudged her again.

Sara’s gaze fixed somewhere over Faith’s head. “Dad?” she whispered, a brittle, hollow rasp of sound that gave Faith chills.

She clapped a hand over Sara’s forehead. Her sister’s skin felt icy and fiery hot by turns. “Sara, don’t do this, not now. I need you. I’ve gotta tell you this.”

No response.

Yep. It could get better.

Faith spun around to get her first-aid kit, and started praying.

****

Rainwater dripped sulkily from the edges of Flintrop’s tent as he opened the flap. The storm had spent the last of its energy by dawn, but the sky remained gray and moody. Today’s weather promised to be little better. Pulling on his jacket, he headed outside.

Michael emerged from his tent. “Morning. Such as it is.”

“Yeah. Start setting up. We’ll see how far we can get today with the ground being so soft.”

His assistant nodded and moved off in the direction of the dig.

Flintrop crossed the moor to Sara’s tent to find the door flap already open, and the tent unoccupied. He turned toward Faith’s tent instead. Hers was also open, but sounds of activity came from within. He ducked his head inside. “Looks like we— What’s going on?”

Faith sat in a camp chair beside the cot with slumped shoulders. She squeezed water from a rolled towel. Sara lay prone on the cot, murmuring in her sleep. Faith pressed the damp towel to her sister’s forehead. “She has a fever. She hasn’t been coherent all night.”

Flintrop gestured outside. “I’ll get a couple of the team and a stretcher. We can take her to Mainland.”

“No. I can take care of her.”

Flintrop watched the way Sara shifted restlessly on the pillow. Her damp hair stuck in tendrils to her forehead. “Faith, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to let you endanger her health because you think you can han—”

“I said I can take care of her. Please, Alan. Can you manage the dig today?”

His given name. That was a change. Reluctant, he nodded and left the tent.

Michael, Luis, and Thomas met him halfway to the dig. “Part of the wall must have broken down overnight,” Michael reported. “We’ll have to shore it up before we can continue working.”

Dustin jogged up to join them. “Becky’s gone. Has anyone seen her since last night?”

Flintrop rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “She has to have radioed for a ferry to Unst or something. Michael, I want you to go to the dock and see if the boat’s still there. The rest of us will do what we can with the dig site until you get back.”

“What about Faith and Sara?” Dustin asked.

“Sara’s not feeling well. Faith’s watching her. Luis, call my office and see if Becky’s checked in. Eurocon, too. Let’s get moving before the rain starts again.”

Michael nodded, then hurried away. Flintrop looked up to watch him go, and found Ian approaching. “Start work,” he barked. “I’ll catch up in a minute.”

He intercepted Ian at the edge of camp. “What in hell are you doing here, Waverly?”

“I didn’t come to see you, for starters.”

Flintrop blocked his progress. “You’ve been warned to stay away from this dig site. I didn’t think you needed reminding.”

Ian’s eyes flared. He stepped forward until he stood inches from Flintrop’s nose. “I’ll bet it just burns you that she might rather be up there with me than spend every waking minute with you, doesn’t it? Tough guy like yourself with loads of money could probably buy almost any woman he wants. Almost.” He veered around Flintrop. Before Flintrop could stop him, Ian headed, not for Sara’s tent, but Faith’s.

Faith looked up when Ian appeared in her doorway. “Hey.”

He stepped inside.

Flintrop barged in right behind, seething. “Get him out of here, Faith.”

She sighed. “Will you two stop bickering?”

“These are not my orders. They’re Lambertson’s,” Flintrop spat.

Faith surged out of her chair. “And Gemini is in charge until he comes back. Since Sara’s not functional, that leaves just me. He stays. Get over it. May I take care of my sister now?”

Flintrop shot Ian a look that should have knocked him over—and he wished it had done worse—and then stormed out.

****

“Arrogant bastard.” Faith turned back to her sister, and replaced the dry towel in her hands with a damp one.

“What’s the matter with Sara?”

She heard the urgency in Ian’s voice and looked up. “She has a fever. Nothing I can’t take care of.”

He started toward the cot, worry in his eyes, but stopped. “Faith, I need you to listen to this.”

She frowned at the way he balanced on his feet—light, edgy. Just his posture was enough to send pinpricks of unease skittering down her back. “What is it?”

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a rolled sheet of paper, then spread it out on her camp table. “Shut the door.” He took a pencil out and clamped it between his teeth long enough to grab a pair of binoculars, a bottle of water, and two glasses to weight the corners of the curling sheet. He took the pencil from his teeth and sketched furiously without bothering to sit.

The unease on her skin multiplied. Faith zipped her door shut and hurried back to the table.

The large sheet of graph paper hung off the edges of her table. In the right margin, Faith recognized a drawing of the outline of Hvitmar, criss-crossed with penciled lines that met, if the hand-sketched map was right, exactly at the dig site. One line, bolder than the others, made her cringe just looking at it. It ran from the dig straight down the island through Ian’s camp. “You had another dream, didn’t you? You saw the ley line.”

“I saw ley lines,” he corrected her, still drawing with reckless speed. “There used to be more. They faded and died out.”

Faith followed the sweeps of his hand in the center of the sheet. He’d drawn a large rectangle with interrupted lines at the top and bottom ends. Other lines had been sketched inside it, as well as a rough circle in its center. Outside the bottom end of the rectangle were four bold Xs. “What is this?”

“This is your ruin.”

“Come again?”

“Your Viking house. I saw it, the whole thing.” He tapped his finger on the circle. “This is where they killed her.”

“Killed who?”

“The Viking’s wife. The druids slit her throat when he wasn’t home, while she was cooking at the hearth.” Ian’s gaze traveled up and down her figure as if to ascertain who he was seeing. “She looked like you. I thought it was you.”

“I know, I know. Hakon told me about her,” Faith said, suppressing an empathic shudder as she recalled Hakon’s pain. “What else did you see?”

Ian turned back to the paper. “I saw them doing the snake ritual. I don’t know what they said, I couldn’t understand them. Four of them, they stood here.” He pointed to the Xs. “One of them dripped her blood into some stone bowl. They smeared her blood over the amulet, and the ley lines opened, and then... Then, I woke up.”

Agitation rolled off him in such sharp waves that Faith wondered what else he’d seen. She turned her attention to the Xs on the map he had drawn. North, South, East, and West. There had to be four. “You saw the ceremony? Ian, can you repeat anything they said, anything it sounded like?”

He shook his head. “I could hardly even hear them. There was this noise, this buzzing. It was so loud, it almost drowned everything out.” He spun away from the table to pace her tent like a trapped panther. “I can still feel it burning in my guts.”

She shuddered. “I know. I’ve felt it, too.”

He turned on his heel and flew to the cot, sitting on its edge to lay a hand on Sara’s cheek. “I can’t stand this waiting.”

She studied his hasty rendering of the ruin. “We need to dig it out. We need to end it where it started.”

He swept her with a suspicious look.

“I talked to Hakon last night,” she added. “He said we can destroy the amulet and close the ley lines for good, but it has to be done exactly at the height of the first full moon after Beltane...and it can’t be done without gifted blood.”

“No,” Ian said at once.

“You saw it yourself. Blood is what opens the ley lines, and it can close them down. Regular blood doesn’t work anymore. It has to be gifted blood.”

He rose to his feet and strode toward her, then snatched her by the arms. “Just whose blood are you planning to use? Yours?” He jerked his chin at the cot. “Hers?”

Trembling now, she murmured, “There is another one.”

He jerked her closer. “Callander? Are you crazy? What are you going to do, kill him?”

“You felt it!” she burst out, wrestling against his grasp. “Even in a dream, you felt the ley line. Do you know how much worse it will be in real life? How much worse it is? I felt it for real, Ian. I still feel it roaring around inside my head!”

“You are not doing this. We’ll find another way.”

She managed to throw his hands off. “What do you suggest? I’m out of ideas.”

“I don’t suggest murder!”

“It didn’t stop Callander!”

“Stop shouting,” interrupted Sara.

She and Ian turned as one. Her sister struggled to a sitting position on the cot. Faith seized the water bottle from the table and launched herself across the tent.

Sara took it with an exhausted, grateful look, and downed its contents.

“Are you feeling any better?” Faith asked, holding a hand to her sister’s forehead.

Sara dropped the now-empty bottle on a chair. “No.” She divided a glance between them. “Do you two want the whole camp to hear your conversation?”

Faith gripped at the woolen blanket. “We need to clear the dig, and we have three weeks to do it. How much can you pull out with telekinesis?”

“I haven’t got that kind of power. Even healthy, I haven’t.” Sara dropped her legs over the side of the bed. “We’ll have to find another way. I just need a little more rest.” When she struggled to get to her feet, Ian crossed the tent and put a bracing hand under her elbow. She swayed there. “Right now, we have to assume that whoever’s working against us wants the same thing. To clear out the dig. We’re going to help them. Then we’re going to stop them.”