Page 1 of A Constant Blaze

Prologue

Ross, spring 1153

The victory celebrationswere well underway, presided over by the lady, glowing with new hope. Barely reined in by her presence, the men were raucous, jubilant, and rightly so. Smiling, yet restless, his whole being buzzing with equal parts euphoria and doubt, the youth made his casual way out of the hall alone.

He took his horse and his blanket and, still alone, rode beyond the stockade to camp under the stars. To light a fire where no one could see.

He and his brother and his uncle had already lit the bigger fire of war. They had raided deep into the territory of the King of Scots, battled and defeated his men. For the youth, there was huge relief in having acquitted himself well, in making his family and his men proud of him. And yet for part of one fight, he had been blinded by dreams. There had been moments, mercifully brief, when he hadn’t even known which battle he fought, this one or the others playing out in terrible glimpses behind his eyes.

There had been no time for fear, but it had taught him that as a warrior, his life was likely to be short. And the price of war high for everyone.

The fire crackled into life and he lay down before it, wrapped in his blanket, and gazed into the spell-binding flames. He looked desperately for confirmation that the risk and the carnage were worth it, that the glorious blaze he and his brother had begun, could indeed bring his imprisoned father home. And win his family, finally, the kingdom of the Scots.

But the fire would not play. The dreams came so often when he really didn’t want them and could not deal with them. Yet now, when heneededto see, they eluded him, even in the fire.

His eyelids grew impossibly heavy. Days in the saddle, nights under the stars, hard fighting between organizing, ordering, and keeping watch—they had taken their toll. But the leaping flames would not grant him the relief he sought.

As his eyes flickered, he imagined the shape of a crown in the fire. At first, he thought he made it with his imagination, and then, without warning, he hurtled after it, into the flames, only to find it had jumped further away. He was riding again, the crown bouncing along the road before him, through burning halls and dying men. But he could not catch it.

The MacHeths could not catch it.

When he woke at dawn, cold and stiff, he didn’t know if he had dreamed in the fire or in sleep. But his face was wet and not with the dew.

Chapter One

Autumn 1156

Donald MacHeth wasnot convinced that the monastery at Whithorn was the best place for a discreet meeting, and certainly not with the wily Fergus, Lord of Galloway.

Monks wrote to each other all the time, and the king was bound to hear of it all the quicker. Which meant, Donald thought with some excitement as he rode through the town on borrowed horses with his two followers and Fergus’s messenger, that Fergus’s plan to obtain his father’s release was surely about to reach fruition.

Donald was glad, proud to be overseeing it. Since his return from the western isles in the spring, his brother Adam had been the one making all the plans. With maturity, Adam had learned to command as well as fight, using rather than hiding his strangeness, and Donald had to admit it sat well on him. Their mother and the men, his own and Adam’s, obviously thought so, too. Donald loved his brother and had grown up both protecting him and trusting him. It came hard to realize Adam no longer needed that protection. Perhaps he never had. Perhaps it had always been Adam protectinghimin his own, weird way.

Whatever, Donald didn’t like the twinges of jealousy that had crept into his thoughts of Adam. Perhaps it was even what had changed his mind in Kintyre. For when Adam had ridden north to Ross and his bride, Donald, instead of sending Fergus’s messenger south to Galloway as agreed, had sailed with him.

The messenger, who’d pointed the way, now fell back as they rode up the hill toward the monastery, giving Donald his place. So that when the men erupted from the buildings and the trees, they cut Donald and his two men off from the messenger.

Donald wasn’t worried. He’d taken much the same precautions when Fergus’s band had entered Ross earlier in the year. Fergus himself strolled across the road on foot, armed to the teeth as always but dressed as the great lord he was.

“Greetings, Donald mac Malcolm!” he called. “Welcome to Galloway, and to Whithorn.”

Since Fergus was on foot, Donald dismounted. Which was when the whine of arrows rent the air and both of Donald’s men fell to the ground without uttering a sound.

Blood sang in Donald’s ears, fury for the death of his friends tore at his heart, along with shame because he’d allowed himself to be betrayed by the man Adam had warned against. He drew his sword free, urging the horses forward with him to give him cover until they got as far as Fergus’s men, when Donald slapped the horses’ rumps and lunged, killing one man instantly with his sword through the heart and felling another with his dagger in the stomach.

He’d dealt with four more, dead or incapacitated, before Fergus’s men got close enough to disarm him and Fergus himself held a sword point to his throat.

“You’ll rot in hell for this, you treacherous bastard,” Donald panted.

“Treacherous?” Fergus said, gazing down upon him with curious sympathy. “My dear Donald, you are in my country for unknown reasons and wanted very badly by the King of Scots. What else could I do but my loyal duty to my royal ally?”

*

Halla, the Ladyof Ross, dreamed of her husband.

No other dreams affected her this way, causing her to wake with restless anger and grief and dark physical arousal. Stupid, because she had stopped being angry with Malcolm MacHeth decades ago. What really distressed her now was that the dreams no longer came very often, and when they did, his face was blurred.

For more than twenty years, what should have been the best part of her life, she had lived without him. While he lay in the King of Scots’ prison, she had brought up his children and ruled his earldom of Ross. And she’d fought every way she could to have him released. She needed to remember him to go on.

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