Veil of Time Read Online Free Page A

the door. I can still hear the fire on the hilltop crackling, the intermittent cheer from the crowd. I hear the word Sula, and I hear fire. I hear them loud, and then they fall off into the distance and become a whisper. I fight to stay with Sula the witch, but the blue couch has forced itself back in; the weight of the small black cat is upon my shoulder.



3
    F ergus had been gone from Dunadd for months. After the long journey, his horse was tired, so he didn’t want to push her. But he was nearly home; from here at the top of the Valley of Stones he could see the fire on Dunadd hill. The men he had ridden out with on his rounds collecting fealty from the lords of the kingdom had returned a week ahead of him. Fergus had sent them back to Dunadd with the cattle and the silver, while he rode south some short distance to stay awhile among the Britons and meet a young woman, a good alliance for the future, his brother the king had said.
    The woman had been fine and gentle, bonny enough. There was no problem there. The problem was with Fergus, he knew it; he had heard it enough fromhis brother and his mother, the queen. What gain could there be, they said, in keeping his heart with the old wife, the dead wife? With Saraid.
    But he had a daughter by this woman. It was no small thing to cast her off as though the heart could turn on its heels and leave. It had been two years since the plague, two years since the druidess Sula had cast her stones and seen the cloak of death around his princess. She had tried with her fire and her chants, but even druids must bow before the goddess. Fergus knew it then, and knew it now, but he still couldn’t forgive either one of them, Saraid for rejoining her ancestors, Sula for failing to change the course.
    Two years without a woman. Murdoch, the king, had ordered him to find one before he himself secured some company for his brother’s bed. Sula said, No, wait . Murdoch said no more waiting. Sula said, Wait, something there in the way the stones fell from her hand to the ground, something in the pattern, she didn’t quite know what.
    Fergus ran his fingers between his black mare’s ears, keeping before him the warrior stars, the cluster of seven twinklers to his right almost too faint to see tonight because of the moon. The dark had brought with it a keen sense of sound that made his horse’s back twitch at every snap of branch or call of a late gull careening back to its rocky ledge.
    The great fire burning high on Dunadd hill was forSamhain, the Day of the Dead, and his horse did not care for the Valley of Stones on such a night. No more did he. His pony had thrown him here long ago when he was less than ten years in age and Murdoch had ridden up behind him with a stick draped with cobwebs and weed to scare him. On this Day of the Dead, Fergus kept to the hazels skirting the valley floor, measuring the distance between him and Dunadd in trees and shadows. Fergus leaned forward and soothed the mare with a shush—soothed himself, for she was not the only one to feel the small hairs rise on the skin.
    To his left he passed the first of the ancient circles of standing stones that gave the valley its name, put here not by his own people but by the Picts who had ruled before. In the distance, the cry and chatter of voices at Dunadd held its breath. In a moment, the cheer would go up as the torch took its ritual path from the high fire down to light those in the villagers’ houses for the start of winter. But for now in the dark, only the far-off song of the wolf could be heard, only small patters among the rusted leaves, perhaps the sound of the dead themselves, for this was the time in all of the year when the veil between the living and the dead grew thin enough to allow spirits through.
    The horse’s back twitched under Fergus’s thigh. He sat up straight and pushed his hair back over his shoulders, trying to shrug off the voices of those ancient Picts who might demand the return of