Legend of the Mist Read Free Page A

truly burned that low so quickly? It had been strong and crisp when she’d reached the top of the stairs only moments ago.
    It had seemed only moments ago ... h ow long had she been staring out the window?
    “I dinna want ye to be sorry, girl. I want ye to stop speaking in that strange tongue of yers. It’s not natural, to be blubbering such nonsense.”
    “I canna help it,” Norah answered, her cheeks flaming pink. “I dinna ken when I’m doing it.”
    “I want to believe ye, Norah. But the older ye get, the harder I find it.”
    There was nothing Norah could say, so she returned to her contemplation of the night sky. The waves continued to beckon her, continued to assert their power upon her soul. Angry with them and with herself, she pressed her lips shut.
    She had not lied : she could not help that she spoke a language she didn’t know. How could she when she wasn’t aware she was doing it?
    These lapses of consciousness, in which large chunks of times seemed to disappear, had plagued Norah the whole of her life. She would sit on the beach for no more than a minute or two, and in that time the sun would race across the sky. She would slip away to the broch in the morning, for only an hour, just to escape the children, and minutes later she would return, in the dark, to find that she’d missed the evening meal.
    Norah was not like the others; she was a strange girl. Everywhere she went she was followed by covert, sideways glances and whispers hidden behind hands. The islanders thought that her episodes were a sign of madness. They would never say so to their chief, but they said it to each other. And word got around, found its way back to her through the loose tongues of the children she so loved.
    She could not tell them, but s he wished her clansmen were right, that she was indeed mad.
    I t frightened her to think that she might not be.

Two
    The birlinn slipped gracefully over the water; its smooth oak hull, more steeply pitched than those of the Norse longships, sliced the gently rolling surface in its passage. But for the rhythmic plishing sound of the oars there was no noise to disturb the still night air. The sky, washed a brilliant silver hue by the moonlight as it reflected off the gossamer veil of mist, made the ten men below look like corpses, hollow-cheeked and pale-skinned.
    Perhaps that was what they were: corpses—or soon would be, at least.
    Rysa Beag lay a short distance to the north of Fara, and was always visible from its shores. Even when the mists were at their thickest, the shape of the island rising in the distance could still be traced from edge to edge, a dark mass shimmering behind milky fog.
    As the vessel slid ever closer to the harbour on the other side of the channel, the strange lilt of the Norse tongue wafted across the water. It was a harsh tongue, the cadence halting and precise. But within its strong inflections there was a melody if one took the time to listen. Unique and beautiful.
    Of course , the melody of the Viking language was the last thing on the minds of the men en route that night.
    “ Vestu heil ok sael !” called a deep male voice in a mocking tone. A hulking black mass, looming at the edge of the wooden dock, raised its arm to accompany the traditional Norse greeting.
    The birlinn d rifted into the false harbour, carved into the pebbled shore and fortified by shallow walls of stone and timber. When it was close enough to the floating wooden planks of the dock, several large Vikings, their forms partially obscured by the strange, silver darkness, stepped from the shadows and tossed thick ropes at the craft. Behind them, another row of men stood with their weapons drawn and aimed to protect their comrades.
    “ Do any of ye speak the Gaelic tongue?” said Fearchar to the men on the dock as he stood from his bench in the hull. He held his hands in the air, palms open, to show that he was not armed.
    A round of taunting laughter met his query.
    “ Of course,”