Page 95 of Queen of the Hollow Hills

Iwoke in the middle of the night two weeks later to hear the wind howling. It was a strange, lonely sound. It made the shutters rattle. Outside, I heard dogs baying. Fergus, who had stayed with me rather than traveling with Cormag, lifted his head and whined.

Rising, I pulled on a robe and made my way out of my chamber. Fergus whimpered once more then slid under the coverlets. Shaking my head, I left him behind.

“It’s wild wind tonight, my queen,” Mael Coluim, who was keeping watch outside my door, said.

“So it is,” I replied, then went downstairs, my guard following along. As we wound down the narrow steps, the wind blew so hard I heard someone in the fort exclaim loudly and the sound of things falling over. I hurried my steps, reached the main floor, then went to the front door.

“It’s too rough outside, my queen,” Brynaich, who manned the door, told me. “You should not go out. A tree has fallen in the courtyard.”

“I’ll be only a moment,” I said, gesturing for the man to open the door.

I slipped outside to discover what the guard said was true. A tree had fallen over the gate, crushing part of the wall. The wind whipped hard, pulling at my hair and cloak. An owl hooted angrily, and in the village, dogs howled. I was about to turn to go back inside when I heard something crash in the village below, and then the breeze carried an odd sound once more.

This time, the wind sounded like a wail. I turned all around, searching for the source of the sound, but couldn’t find it. It sounded like it was coming from within the mountain itself. The sound was so deep and dark, like a woman crying in anguish, that I shuddered.

Clutching my cape, I made my way back to the door.

There, the guards waited. It took both Mael Coluim and Brynaich to hold the door for me to enter once more.

“Did you hear that?” I asked them.

“It was the caoineag,” Mael Coluim said. “That’s what it was. That wail… I felt it in my bones.”

“The caoineag,” I repeated, looking behind me at the swaying trees. The caoineag was a wailing woman whose mournful voice signaled death for members of one’s tribe. She was rarely seen, and if she was, only as a woman in a green cloak. “No. It was just the wind,” I replied, then stepped inside. “Bar the door, and stay within.”

But just as he closed the door, a distinctly feminine voice wailed once more, her mournful voice one of deep pain.

“Queen Cartimandua,” Mael Coluim whispered.

“May Brigantia protect us. No harm will come to our people,” I said.

I stood a moment, listening to the wind. I was about to go back upstairs when I saw Nettle on the landing. The black cat had become like a ghost since Verbia’s death. No matter what I did, I could not keep track of her. She would come and go as itpleased her. But today, she paused on the stairs, an expectant expression on her face.

“Nettle?”

The cat mewed at me, then turned and made her way down the hall to a lesser-used part of the fort.

I gestured to Mael Coluim. “Wait for me here.”

“My queen,” he said with a bow.

Following Nettle, I wound along the hallways until we reached the stairs leading down, deeper into the mountain. When I paused to light a torch, the cat lingered a moment, pausing to clean her whiskers, and then we moved on once more.

We wound down the dark, dank stairwell that led to the dungeon in the belly of the fort. Here, deep within the mountain, the howl of the winds softened. But I could still feel that the air was disturbed. Something was not right.

And the howl of the caoineag…

I shuddered.

Nettle wound down the hall between the cells to the back of the dungeon, where the caves were narrow and dark. The wind blew through narrow cracks in the stone, making the wind whistle and my torch flicker.

As a reflection of the torchlight waved on the walls, making patches of orange and black, my skin rose in gooseflesh.

They were here.

They were watching.

A sharp breeze whistled through the space, and this time, it blew out my torch.

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