Teresa Medeiros - [FairyTale 02] Read Free Page B

then he’ll go back to hell and leave us be.”
    “And I say we march upon the castle and burn it to the ground,” roared Ross. The blacksmith’s eldest son and Gwendolyn’s longtime tormentor banged thewooden handle of his hammer on the ground. “Or do none of ye have the ballocks?”
    His challenge met with nothing but awkward silence and averted eyes.
    Ailbert the Smith stepped into their midst. While Ross was known for his bluster and Lachlan for his skillful wooing of the fair sex, their father was a man of action. His lanky form and stern visage commanded everyone’s respect.
    He held aloft the sheaf of vellum, allowing it to ripple in the wind. It would have been found in the same place as all the other messages had been—pinned by a single feathered arrow to the trunk of the gnarled old oak that stood sentinel over the village.
    Ailbert’s voice rang like a bell tolling their doom. “How much more will we allow this monster to take from us? He demands the best of our crops, our flocks, our finest whisky and wool. What will we offer him next? Our sons? Our daughters? Our wives?”
    “Better me wife than me whisky,” one of the Sloan twins muttered, tipping an earthenware jug to his lips. The lady in question drove her elbow into his ribs, and he spat half the whisky down his shirtfront. Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd.
    “Oh, ye’ll give him yer whisky, lad.” As Auld Tavis shuffled forward, the merriment died. The stooped gnome had been an old man fifteen years ago; now he was ancient. He pointed a gnarled finger at Ailbert. “And if he wants to lay with yer wife, ye’ll hand her over, too, and thank him when he’s done.” Tavis cackled,baring his shriveled gums. “Ye’ll give him whatever he wants ‘cause ye know bloody well ye brought it on yer-selves and ‘tis no more than ye deserve.”
    Some of the villagers were shamefaced, some defiant, but they all knew exactly what he spoke of. Almost as one, they lifted their eyes to Castle Weyrcraig, the ancient fortress that had cast a shadow over their lives for as long as anyone could remember.
    As Kitty edged closer to her, Gwendolyn’s own gaze was drawn to the castle. The gutted ruin perched on the cliff overlooking Ballybliss like some madman’s folly—crumbling towers stretching toward heaven, winding staircases descending into hell, jagged holes blown through the heart of the ancient keep. Gwendolyn had striven to be practical in all things for a very long time, but even her imagination was stirred by its vision of doomed romance and dying dreams.
    The villagers might pretend to ignore its grim reproach, but no one had forgotten that terrible night fifteen years ago when the castle had fallen to the English. Not even the barricaded doors of their cottages had been able to muffle the roar of the cannons, the screams of the dying, and the damning silence that had followed when there had been no one left to scream.
    Although there were those who had always whispered that the castle was haunted, it was only in the past few months that its ghosts had begun to wreak their havoc on the village.
    Lachlan had been the first to hear the eerie skirl ofbagpipes drifting down from the castle, although bagpipes had not been heard in the glen since the rebellion of ‘45. Soon after, Glynnis had spotted spectral lights flickering past the darkened windows that gazed down upon the village like soulless eyes.
    Gwendolyn would have liked to claim that she had heard and seen nothing of the sort, but one bitterly cold February night when she was hurrying home from the apothecary’s with a poultice for her father’s eyes, an unearthly wail had frozen her in her tracks. She had slowly turned, transfixed by a melody that seemed to hearken back to another time. A time when Ballybliss and Clan MacCullough had thrived beneath the benevolent chieftainship of their laird. A time when the manor had rung with her father’s piping and her mother’s