Veil of Time Read Online Free

crackling of a fire on the level above us. My captors pull me off the path to let pass a group of men and women bent under great loads of logs and sticks, presumably fuel for the fire. Another man, moving unsteadily with great stone flagons in either hand, steps in behind them. All the action is clearly above us, and I am getting so nervous about what that action might be that I stop walking and try to shake the men off. They watch me flailing and seem to be in some disagreement as to where I should go. For a moment, their fingers loosen their grip, and Iwould be free to run now, if it weren’t for the guard at the gate. I begin to move in the direction of a spit that is giving off the smell of roasted meat, but the men seem to have reached agreement and pull me back.
    The smaller man on my left points up the hill. “Ban-druidhe.”
    I don’t know if I am being taken to a Dark Age witch or whether, contrary to Jim’s opinion, one is being burned up there. When I consider that the witch in question might be me, I start to struggle. This dream really ought to come to an end now.
    But we keep moving up towards the top of Dunadd along a path that doesn’t ascend this way in my day. We skirt a wall around the hill and then up higher and back along to a small half-sunk house near the summit thatched with heather and located exactly over a small lip of wall I sometimes sit on during my jaunts up here. The fire is so close now, I can feel the heat, but extras from some medieval film crowd around, obscuring the sight of it.
    Because the small round house is partially built into the hill, the guard has to go down a few steps to get to the door. But instead of knocking, he calls out. Before long the door opens, and I am handed into the dark, where only an orange candle burning smokily on the wall sheds any light. The door shuts heavily behind me. Inside, the air is thick and pungent. I turn back to the door to make my escape, but something draws my eye:a shadow moves, and I see an old woman leaning over a small fire.
    I press my back against the rough wood of the door, gauging the distance between my hand and the torch to see if I could use it in defense, but the woman takes little notice of me. In the light of the fire, I see several brightly colored blankets draped about her shoulders, over which her grey hair falls in soft ringlets. She is busy with her fire, chanting in a language I don’t recognize. My eyes wander from the pots of different sizes around the base of the wall to the drying leaves hanging from the rafters. If this is a witch, she wears no black hat; her nose is not warty and pointed, but she does have long fingernails, and her language is more guttural than Gaelic. She is tall and agile as she moves in a circle about her fire, from time to time throwing in flakes of something that fill the chamber with the smell of scented wood.
    I move towards the only thing familiar to me, the little ledge jutting from the wall, and walk my head straight into the trailing leaves. For the first time, she looks at me, reaches out and touches my arm. She touches, then pats, curious about the fabric of my sweatshirt. Her fingers pull on the stretch of it, and then work down to my jeans; she stoops to run her hands over my sneakers. She stands up, turns my face to the light of the fire, then takes hold of my hands, turns them over and studies my nails, the gold ring on my finger. Her fingersare dirty and tattooed with Celtic designs. There are lines of tattoo about her cheeks and a circle of Celtic knots around her wrist.
    “Ban-druidhe?” she asks. She turns her face to me, and I see that her expression is kindly.
    I shake my head, smiling at the irony of her taking me for a witch.
    She lays her hand on her chest. “Is mise Sula. ‘S mise ban-druidhe. Sula.”
    Sula. Her name lingers in my head, as does the smoke. Sula’s smoky fingers on my cheeks make my eyes sting until I am forced to look away to the chinks of light around