Set In Stone
Prologue
A heavyset, warm-faced midwife efficiently swaddled a screaming newborn
baby boy in a simple, homespun blanket and transferred the tiny soul to his
mother’s eager hands.
“You’re lucky,” she said.
“He looks healthy despite
the difficult labor.”
The father, dressed in worn but clean worker’s clothing, leaned over
the birthing bed and wrapped his strong arms around both mother and child.
The midwife crossed the simple, whitewashed room to a long table set against
the far wall.
She opened a thick ledger that sat at the end of a row of
stone cradles and thumbed through it to an empty page.
“With the rush to save the baby, I don’t even have your names
registered.”
Nodding toward the stone cradles, she added, “We’ll want to
test the baby straight away.”
“Of course,” the father said a little nervously.
“You have the birth tax to maintain ownership?”
“Of course,” the father said again and reached for the worn leather
coin purse at his belt.
“Good.
You’re a good looking family.
I hate seeing firstborn taken.
Now, your formal names please.”
Before the father could respond, a door crashed loudly somewhere in the
building and urgent voices began shouting.
room, and the voices moved farther away.
Running feet passed the birthing
A door slammed.
The midwife frowned and put down the quill.
happening?”
“Whatever could be
She headed for the simple, paneled wood door that led into the
rest of the birthing center, but it was thrown open from the far side.
A young woman, barely more than a girl, with eyes wide and cheeks
flushed with excitement or fear, called from the door, “It’s High Lady
Elspet!
She’s here, and the baby’s coming early.”
She wrung her hands in
her simple white linen dress and said in a terrified voice, “The baby.
There’s problems.”
The midwife’s face paled and she rushed for the door.
entrance, she called back to the new parents, “Wait here.
soon.”
She waved one hand toward the stone cradles.
test your son.
Pausing in the
I’ll be back
“Pick one and we’ll
Soon.”
Then she pushed past the young woman who pulled the door closed behind
them.
The parents shared a surprised look.
“I hope the High Lady and her child are safe,” the mother said,
cradling her own newborn tighter to her and settling him in to nurse.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine.
Rest until she comes back.”
An hour later, they were still waiting.
From the urgent footsteps that
regularly passed their door, the situation with the High Lady’s birthing did
not seem to be improving.
Finally the father stood tall and said, “Enough.
with.”
Let’s get this over
He took the now-sleeping child and turned to face the row of stone
cradles.
After a deep breath, he marched across the room, his face set in a
mask of determination.
Six cradles sat in a line on the table.
Five of them were simple,
crude things made of solid granite blocks with the tops carved into sloped
depressions to hold a child.
their onerous task.
They were ugly and cold, perfectly suited to
The last cradle was different.
table, it was a work of art.
Situated alone at the far end of the
Made of six distinct stones, it was lovingly
carved, and the various stones fitted together perfectly, their polished
colors merging together so beautifully one could almost forget the purpose
for which it was created.
testing high-born children.
Unlike the others, this cradle was intended for
Children like High Lady Elspet’s imminent
newborn.
The father approached the crude granite cradles and frowned at the
slipshod workmanship.
His strong hands itched for his tools.
But he
grimaced and stepped up to the first cradle.
“Wait.”
He turned at his wife’s voice.
“It must be done, love.”
“I know,” she said, her face worried.
Then she squared her shoulders
and said, “Put him in that one.”
She pointed at the fancy cradle.
“We can’t, love.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not,” he said, glancing nervously at the door.
“If
anyone found out. . .”
She huffed out a dismissive breath.
“No one’s coming any time soon.
Just do it.”
Still frowning, he moved the length of the table to stand before the
beautifully crafted cradle.
He slipped the swaddling blanket off of the
child and placed the infant onto the uncaring, merciless stone.
shock of cold air, the baby began wailing his displeasure.
At the first
He shook his
little arms and legs angrily and bellowed at the chill touch of the stone.
Then he stopped.
An ominous silence descended over the room.
The father bent over the
cradle, and his wife sat up in the bed in an effort to see.
The baby lay silent, his little hands and feet pressed down against the
cold stone as if stuck there.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
His
little body began to shake and every tiny muscle tensed, standing out clearly
against his naked skin.
He began to swell.
His body grew, as if he’d taken an impossibly huge breath of air, and
the muscles of his limbs bulged to twice their size.
The cradle began to shake.
First it rattled and then started to bounce against the table.
The
shaking spread to the other cradles and then to the table itself until it
banged against the wall.
The mother stumbled up out of the bed, her face panic-stricken, and
shouted, “Get him out of there!”
The father, who had stood white-faced with fear before the shaking
table, reached for the baby, but flames burst to life out of thin air all
around the cradle.
He yelped and pulled back from the intense heat.
With a wordless cry of terror, the woman threw herself across the room
toward the cradle.
The flames disappeared as quickly as they started, replaced by a
fountain of water as thick around as the man’s waist that shot up out of the
cradle, only to be sprayed across the room by a sudden powerful gust of wind.
The mother pushed past her husband and pulled the baby out of the
cradle.
For three heartbeats silence reigned.
The baby hung limp in her
arms and the two of them stared at him, too afraid to speak.
Then he started to cry and shake his arms and legs angrily.
They swaddled him quickly and his mother clutched him to her with
shaking hands.
time.
The father hugged his family close and held them for a long
For several minutes he stood tense, breathing fast, eyes clenched
against tears that dripped down his cheeks.
His wife buried her face against his neck and whispered soft words.
He
slowly relaxed and she said, “It’s not your fault.”
With a voice thick with emotion, he said, “It’s my blood, love.
It’s
cursed.”
His wife shook her head and said, “Please no.
They can’t take our
son.”
He released her and savagely wiped his eyes.
son,” he said, his face set with determination.
said, “Get your things, love.
No one knows.
“No one will take our
He squeezed her shoulder and
We have to leave.
Now.”
#
Hours later, the heavyset midwife entered the birthing room with slow steps.
Her face was drawn and sad, her shoulders slumped with exhaustion.
Tears
shone in her eyes.
She stared at the empty room and it was a couple of seconds before she
realized it stood empty.
She frowned and returned to the register.
The page
was still blank, although several small coins lay on it.
She grunted and took up the coins.
fee.
At least they’d paid the birthing
She shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of names.
Most commoners
couldn’t write.
Out of habit she glanced in the crude, granite cradles but saw nothing
of interest.
A gasp turned her around.
enter behind her.
She hadn’t noticed the young apprentice
The slender young woman stood before the cradle intended
for highborn children, one hand at her mouth.
stepped over to see.
The midwife frowned and
The sight was like a blow to her stomach and she
gasped.
Indented in the very stones was a perfect outline of a baby boy.
“Impossible,” she said in a whisper.
“Where are they?” the young woman asked.
“Gone.”
“What are their names?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are they from?”
She only shook her head.
was crystal clear.
Fear made it hard to think, but one thought
She grabbed the young woman’s arm and said in a fierce
whisper, “For our lives, this must be our secret.”
From behind them, a deep voice asked, “What secret?”
High Lord Dougal stood in the doorway, his handsome face lined with
grief, his intense blue eyes focused on them.
Chapter 1
Something heavy crashed through a dense stand of pine trees.
Fifty
yards above the tree line, Connor paused and drew an arrow from the hunting
quiver at his hip.
It sounded like something had spooked the herd of large
mountain deer he’d tracked from the south side of the ridge since just after
dawn.
He hadn’t expected them to run back toward him.
Nothing but a few
large rocks offered any concealment so he’d have to take one down as soon as
they broke cover.
He half drew his hunting bow, but frowned.
Unless the entire herd was
bolting together in the same direction, there was no way a deer could make
all that noise.
Maybe it was a bear.
Connor had never taken a bear.
Few Saor-Linn had.
It would be a great
way to top off a week of successful hunting leading up to the Sogail.
A
victory like that would guarantee he’d get the first dance with Jean.
Connor
grinned and took a deep breath.
He felt strong, with no trace of sickness.
Yes, a bear would be perfect.
A huge form crashed through the last screen of underbrush into the
open.
It wasn’t a bear.
It was a torc.
Connor’s smile fell and took with it the expectant thrill of making a
kill, replaced by a trickle of fear.
The torc snorted and swung its head
from side to side, gouging furrows in the hard packed, rocky soil with its
wickedly curved tusks.
Its head and torso were heavily armored with hard,
bony plates, almost like slabs of stone under its gray hide.
angular, menacing appearance.
They gave it an
It pawed the ground with one thick leg capped
with a sharply cloven hoof and centered the single long horn in its forehead
on Connor.
Connor froze, fighting down the urge to flee.
run.
There was nowhere to
Besides, movement would only attract the beast’s attention.
The torc took a single step toward him and grunted, a low rumbling
sound like thirty wolf hounds growling together.
do.
He’d never seen a torc before.
years.
Connor wasn’t sure what to
No one in Alasdair had seen one in
He’d heard they were big, scary beasts distantly related to the boars
that roamed the slopes near town.
Reality was far more spectacular, and terrifying.
The torc grunted again and took another step, driving its cloven hoof
into the hard soil with its powerful leg.
The beast was built low to the
ground but stood a full six feet tall at the shoulder and its torso ran
almost ten feet from its thick neck to its muscled haunches.
Connor tried to breathe slowly and reminded himself that in the
stories, torcs usually didn’t bother people.
They roamed mostly in
unpopulated parts of the Maclachlan Mountains and, unless angered, generally
ignored people.
The only problem was this one looked furious.
The beast grunted again, louder this time, and then bellowed a single
deep note that changed the trickle of fear into a torrent.
The sound
startled him into taking a single step back.
The torc charged.
The huge beast surged forward surprisingly fast.
ungainly, as if its legs couldn’t quite bend far enough.
low-slung body raced up the slope with terrifying speed.
Its gait was
But even so, its
Connor took another step back and looked vainly around for a place to
hide.
Running would only encourage it and he had no illusion that he could
outrun the beast.
terrified him.
The thought of that long horn plunging into his back
His bow seemed pitiful against such a monster, but he’d
trained hard for the past two years with it and had taken deer, mountain
goats, and even one of the huge, flightless eoin.
Trying to calm his panicked breathing, Connor drew the thick bow and
held the goose-feathered shaft close to his cheek.
The familiar strain of
holding the weapon steady as he aimed at the torc now only thirty yards away
helped calm him.
He held his breath for a single heartbeat that seemed to
thunder through his chest, and his world contracted to a pinpoint on the
torc’s head.
That’s where the arrow would strike.
In that second, he felt
connected with the beast across the distance.
Almost without conscious thought, he released the string and the bow
hurled the arrow at the target.
So deeply was he focused that the twang of
the bow string almost surprised him.
He held his breath as the arrow sped to
the target.
It struck, but snapped against the heavily armored head.
Connor’s calm vanished.
He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.
His tongue felt like a lead weight.
The beast shook the ground as it
charged, and it bellowed another deep-throated challenge.
Connor drew
another arrow, nocked it, and took aim.
Twenty yards.
He released.
The arrow slammed into the torc’s thick gray hide in the
center of its chest just as it leaped forward.
The steel head drove through
the skin, but sank only a few inches.
The torc bellowed in rage and came on faster.
There was no time to draw another arrow.
No time to run.
The beast filled Connor’s vision as it thundered down upon him.
There
was no way to escape, so Connor leaped forward to meet it, swinging his bow
like a club.
And released his curse.
The curse, a tiny ember of secret power that simmered in a dark corner
of his soul where he usually kept it tightly restrained, roared to life the
instant he set it free.
Instead of heat, the roaring power burned with icy
intensity that shivered through his entire body in a single heartbeat.
That
chill blast pumped strength into his limbs, swelled his muscles, and set his
skin tingling.
His body came alive as if he’d been sleeping until that very
second.
With muscles nearly bursting with strength, he drove the bow forward so
hard it whistled through the air and the string thrummed like a plucked lute.
It smashed into the torc’s head right across one heavily browed black eye.
It splintered.
The beast shook its head at the unexpected pain, and that movement
saved Connor’s life.
his torso.
Instead of impaling him, the long horn slipped along
The torc slammed into him like an avalanche and tossed its head,
throwing Connor high over its racing form.
landed hard on his back.
ability to yelp with pain.
over.
He tumbled through the air and
Breath exploded from his lungs, robbing him of the
Gravel scraped his neck and hands as he rolled
He tasted blood.
The torc bellowed again, and fear gave Connor the strength to push dirt
out of his face and look around for the monster.
Upslope of him, still
running full speed, the huge beast was gouging furrows in the packed earth as
it ran a tight circle to charge him again.
Connor wanted to scream with frustrated terror but it was all he could
do to gasp a tiny breath.
agile?
How could a beast weighing nearly a ton be so
He glanced at the distant trees fifty yards down slope, but any hope
of flight vanished with the torc’s next rumbling snort.
It would be upon him
in seconds.
Connor looked around for anything to use as a weapon.
nearby.
It probably weighed two hundred pounds.
A large rock lay
He was strong, as were all
boys who grew up in Alasdair working in the quarry, and on most days he’d be
able to do little more than lift a rock like that.
The torc trumpeted another challenge and came on fast.
Connor stumbled to his feet, lungs burning with the effort to regain
his breath, and crouched by the rock.
Even though he knew he was desperately
alone, he glanced around just to be sure.
No one.
No one to help.
No one to bring news of his death to his family.
No one to see what he did.
The torc was barely thirty feet away.
It began swinging its head side
to side as it charged, clearly intending to rip him to shreds with its wicked
tusks.
Connor again released his curse and fanned its dark power to life.
Today it burned strong in his soul, stronger than it had for days.
He
usually kept it tightly bottled up in that secret corner of his soul and
pretended it didn’t exist.
Now, for the first time in his life, Connor cast
aside all restraint and unleashed the full force of his secret power.
His
body swelled with strength and despite the terror pounding through his soul,
he wanted to shout with the cursed joy of it.
His muscles bulged out until
they strained the limits of his loose-fitting leather hunting garb to the
breaking point.
His skin tingled and the pain from his tumble over the torc
subsided.
He grabbed the heavy stone and lifted it high over head.
closed the distance between them, he threw it.
As the torc
The stone crashed down on the torc’s head, snapped its long horn, and
buried its snout in the earth.
Its tusks gouged deep furrows into the rocky
soil and its mouth filled with dirt as its snout half-buried into the ground.
Unable to halt its charge, the beast’s neck twisted and its huge body
continued up and over its head, sending the monster tumbling into the air.
Connor dove aside as a ton of armored torc slammed into the ground
beside him and slid ten feet down the slope on its back, digging a deep
trench in the earth.
down over him.
The animal’s heavy scent filled the air and dirt rained
The torc lay twitching nearby, grunting a little.
Connor rolled to his feet, stunned by what he’d just done and that he
was somehow still alive.
He’d used most of his cursed strength and he felt
weak and helpless now as he instinctively shackled it again.
The torc grunted again, louder, and started swinging its legs and
wiggling its huge torso as it tried to roll out of the trench it lay in and
stand up.
Connor panted for breath and wanted to curse.
critically wounded the beast.
side to side.
He’d hoped he’d
It grunted again and swung its head angrily
One tusk was broken and its face bloody.
The armored plates
that protected its head were cracked in several places.
It caught sight of Connor and paused for a single heartbeat, one black
eye fixed on him.
Then it bellowed another challenge and started struggling
harder to regain its footing.
It meant to kill him.
He had to finish it first.
Drawing his long hunting dagger, Connor
shouted a battle cry to drown out what would have been a scream of terror,
and threw himself on the beast, driving the dagger toward its heart with all
of his strength.
The blade punched through the softer skin of its underbelly
and sank to the hilt.
The torc screamed, a terrifyingly human-like sound, and its entire body
convulsed, flipping it over, right onto Connor.
It moved so fast he couldn’t
roll out of the way.
Blood poured down over him as the beast thrashed around
on its short legs, threatening to crush him with its bulk.
Connor screamed with fear and managed to draw his legs up to his
stomach.
Tapping the last reserves of his curse, he kicked.
The torc flew a full ten feet up into the air and landed on its head a
dozen feet downslope.
Its neck twisted a full ninety degrees and Connor
clearly heard the loud crack as it broke.
The torc lay twitching on the ground nearby for a minute, but Connor
ignored it.
He collapsed, exhausted and panting with fear and wonder.
hadn’t realized he could be that strong.
of his curse like that before.
He
He’d never unleashed the full force
When his control had slipped in the past,
he’d shackled the power again before it could flare to full life.
If anyone ever found out, he’d be Taken.
He shivered, sat up, and looked around again to be sure no one saw what
he’d done.
The slope was empty as far as he could see.
It was half a mile
back to the saddle where he’d crossed from the southern slope, and five miles
back to Alasdair from there.
No one else would be venturing this far out,
especially with the Sogail tomorrow.
The thought of the festival helped wash away the vestiges of fear.
looked over at the dead torc and laughed aloud.
He
What a huge victory for the
Sogail.
Maybe he’d finally get to kiss Jean on the lips.
His pulse began to race for an entirely different reason as he
considered the possibilities.
And riding the rush of victory, he didn’t shy
away from even more dangerous thoughts.
Maybe he’d get to kiss Moira.