Dani accepted the spurtle and stirred circles in the watery oats, watching as her friend checked on the six small bags containing the silver they carried to Torquil.
Each of them carried one of the bags during the day to prevent too heavy a load on any one of their animals that might slow down their progress.
Not that there was that much silver to begin with. Certainly nowhere near the amount Torquil had demanded. The MacGahans had suffered through a hard year, and there was precious little coin in their coffers.
Dani and Elesyria had organized a small army of maids to search every room in the castle, stripping it of any treasures they might bring along with them. Candlesticks, cups, even a small bag of jewelry they’d found that Elesyria claimed had belonged to the old laird’s wife, all of it resided in those six bags.
Each evening when they’d stopped, Elesyria spoke some prayer over the pile. A blessing of protection, she claimed.
Dani was hoping that, when the time came, the Faerie would have a similar blessing handy for them.
When Elesyria returned to her side, Dani shooed her away to rest with the assurance that she could handle a pot of porridge. Cooking calmed her, like a little slice of normalcy in a world gone bizarre.
“That’s the end of the bread,” she announced as she served their meal, dividing it equally among the six of them.
“I’ve a loaf my Jeanne sent along, rolled in my bedding.” Eymer grinned as his two fellow guards began to chuckle. “Aye, well you should laugh. It’s Jeanne’s ma what baked it, but I freely offer to share, with a note of caution. She’s no as careful with her ingredients as Cook.”
“And you’ve proof of that, have you no, Eymer? Show ’em.”
The young guard laughed along with his friends, pointing to a missing front tooth as explanation.
“We’ve no need to risk ourselves on yer rock bread, lad. We’re less than a day’s ride from Tordenet Castle now. Tomorrow we reach our destination.”
The reminder of what lay ahead dampened everyone’s spirits, or at least it seemed that way to Dani. Chatter died off and there were no funny stories of family shared this night as they quietly finished their meal and made ready for bed.
As on prior nights, Hamund prodded and nudged at one of the larger stones ringing the fire pit, using a long stick to push it over to where Dani and Elesyria had laid out their bedding.
“It’s a cold one tonight,” he said, not bothering to tell them the story he had on each of the prior nights about how he made sure his daughter always slept with a heated stone for her feet in the winter.
Dani snuggled down into her covers, thankful for Hamund’s kindness as her toes touched the fur-covered stone.
As tired as she was, sleep eluded her.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,sang through her head, lilting like a top-twenty tune on the radio.
Tomorrow they would arrive at Tordenet Castle. Tomorrow she would see Malcolm. Tomorrow they would know whether or not their plan would be successful.
If only she had some way of getting word to Malcolm.
Maybe she did have a way.
Elesyria had told her there were examples of SoulMates out there who had been able to communicate with one another across vast distances in their dreams. If she could experience the Dream Mating as she had, there should be no reason she couldn’t pass along a message.
If she could focus her thoughts and if—and this was the big “if”—ifshe could get past the black door.
Twenty-nine
NO.”
Eric leaned against the doorframe, wearing a grin that appeared beyond his ability to wipe away.
“No?”
Patrick was not happy with that response.
On the day before Danielle and Elesyria had departed for Tordenet Castle, Dermid had retired to his chamber in a fit of pique on learning that he would not be allowed to accompany them.
At first Patrick had thought to ignore him, too busy with preparations for their journey. Once he had them on their way, and Dermid still refused to come out, he’d done little more than see to it that food was taken to the lad. But it had been five days now that his brother had refused to leave his bedchamber.
