The memory broke.
Jack shivered as his mind and senses adjusted. But his eyes flew open when he heard Adaira speak.
“Kae?”
The spirit looked weakened from sharing the pieces of her past, and she slumped back in the chair. Adaira quickly rose to attend to her, gently dabbing the sweat from her brow.
“Here, sip this if you can.” She lifted the cup of gra to Kae’s lips.
Kae sighed, but she drank. Her color returned gradually, and she looked at Jack, curious to know what he thought about seeing the bard in her memories.
Jack was troubled. He frowned as he stood, anxiously rolling his neck until it cracked. He studied the skeleton on the wall, wondering if it was Iagan’s. Elspeth had said no one knew Iagan’s true ending, but given the Breccans’ animosity toward him that Jack had seen in Kae’s memory, there was a good chance that the bard had met a painful death.
He thought for a while about what else Elspeth had told him about Iagan.
Some legends claim that the mob cut off Iagan’s hands and sliced out his tongue, leaving him to die a slow, soundless death. Other legends say that Iagan surrendered to his fellow clansmen, swearing to never play another note again if they would let him live. Some legends boast that a body was never found, that Iagan must have been drowned with his harp in the loch that surrounded his home.
Jack began to sort through the music on the table. Glancing over the notes, he was stabbed with worry by what he read. This music was sinister, twisted by spite and hunger and fury. Jack leaned closer, reading more of the composition, even though it filled him with uneasiness.
This was a ballad about fire. About Ash.
Jack gathered up the pages. He needed to study this later, to pick apart the music. Going over to the wall of bones and broken harps, he found a shelf holding moldy books and scrolls. He began to sift through them, finding more music. Stray pages, bound journals, all covered in Iagan’s crooked writing.
Jack was skimming a half-composed ballad when a book fell from the shelf, landing by his boot. He paused to glance down at it, then was surprised to see that the handwriting was distinctly different from Iagan’s. He crouched to take up the book. Its first half was missing, and what remained of its spine was dangerously loose. Jack gently leafed through its delicate pages.
More stories I have gathered from the west are as follows . . .
He didn’t realize Adaira stood behind him until he felt her chin on his shoulder, her arms coming around his waist. She read as he did, and within moments she shivered.
“Spirits below,” she whispered.
“What is it, Adaira?”
Her hands fell away from him. Jack turned to look at her fully.
She was staring at the words on the speckled page, a thrilled gleam in her eyes.
“I have the other half of this book.”
Torin had recognized the broken book as soon as it fell from the shelf, landing like an offering at Jack’s feet. Graeme had originally given its counterpart to Torin, thinking the stories would help him solve the mystery of the missing girls. Torin, stubbornly thinking the spirit lore within was nothing more than children’s stories, had given the book to Sidra and Maisie, who eventually gifted it to Adaira just before she left the east.
It was humbling to think of all the hands that broken book had been passed through. Torin knew who had authored it, long ago. Joan Tamerlaine, a laird who had once dreamt of establishing peace between the clans.
He didn’t know why the book had been torn in two, or how its remains had been separated, but Jack and Adaira now had both pieces.
A clatter came from the table.
Kae still sat in the straw-backed chair, but she was watching him, more suspicious now that Adaira and Jack had departed.
Torin turned to face her. “You can see me, even though you are in the mortal realm?”
She gave him a curt nod.
He decided to trust her because Adaira did. Torin approached the table and took a seat. He half expected the chair to refuse to hold him, for his body to pass through it. But the wood was firm, giving him a place to rest.
“Thank you,” he murmured to it. Face flushed—had he truly just thanked a chair?—he laced his fingers together and looked at Kae. “I’m seeking to solve a riddle, and I think you might be able to help me.”
Kae tilted her head to the side, waiting.
Torin shared it with her, word for word. A riddle that had been etched in the heart of a tree by Bane’s ire. The convoluted answer to the blight.
Kae’s countenance fell as she listened. She knew, then, whose hand had written the words Torin spoke. She shook her head, her palms skyward. Torin had no trouble deciphering what she meant.
I’m sorry, but I don’t have the answer.
He wanted to feel crushed. He shouldn’t have let such a heady hope unspool within him. But then Torin decided that Kae’s knowledge was much deeper and wider than his, and there was still a chance that she could assist him.
“I think the sisters in the riddle are Whin and Orenna,” he began, watching Kae’s expression closely. She blinked, surprised, but beckoned for him to continue. “I imagine that when you were with your brethren, blowing from east to west and north to south, that you saw countless things on the isle. You must have seen that day when Orenna was banished to dry, heartsick ground, and then how the clan line’s creation kept Whin away from her sister.”
Kae seemed hesitant. But she extended her hand to him. A gracious invitation for him to take a glimpse into her mind and past.
Torin reached out to take her hand. The contact shocked him—she didn’t melt through his fingers—and he noticed that he felt far colder than her. He closed his eyes, waiting for images to fill his mind as they had done for Jack and Adaira. But when his thoughts remained his own, blank with expectation, he looked at Kae again.
She was shaking her head.
It wasn’t going to work for him. Even though she could see him and hold his hand, he was in one realm and she was in another.
Torin’s hand slipped from hers. He wanted to feel defeated, to pound his fist on the table. But he refused to let his anger and impatience get the best of him.
“Do you happen to know where Orenna resides now?” he asked. “If you could guide me to the graveyard where she blooms, I would be very grateful to you.”
Kae nodded, rising from the table.
She led Torin from the cottage, moving slowly. He thought that maybe her healing wounds were ailing her and he shouldn’t have asked her to guide him. But then he noticed she was being cautious, paying attention to which wind was blowing, and where, and which path she took across the hills. Sometimes she crouched behind a rock, motioning for Torin to do so. He obliged, full of questions he held between his teeth. He didn’t understand until he took note of the golden pathways above, betraying the routes the wind was taking.