Time Masters Book One; The Call (An Urban Fantasy, Time Travel Romance) (17 page)

The lass, on her knees, reached one arm out to him, trying to say something.
Help me…

“Oh, God!”
His man’s voice suddenly screeched. “No!” Dallan’s own boy’s mouth began to form the same word as he watched her fade slowly into white light,
the whole scene dissipating. Th
e last thing she did before
disappearing completely was to point at something behind him in warning, a look of unparalleled terror struck upon her face.

They were not alone.

She vanished. The dogs, the house, the gra
ss, everything was gone. Th
e
light and its comfort went with her, leaving in its wake the face of…

“Mary?”

“I’m here, boy. I’m here.” Mary said softly, still holding him.

 
Dallan looked at her, head up, most of his strength back, but something wa
s diff
erent. He looked to John, who gazed past him toward the main entrance of the cookhouse, one of his familiar smiles of compassion on his face.

Dallan swung his head around. No one there; the doorway lay empty.

“Dallan?” came Mary’s voice, pulling his face back to hers. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

He gave her the barest of nods, still not sure where his voice was. Had he even spoken her name?

“Praise be to the Creator you’re all right!” She crushed Dallan to her chest, squeezing a grunt from him. “I thought for a moment you were leaving us.”

Dallan could only give her a blank stare as she released him, his attention wandering elsewhere. He could still feel the lass, as if she had been in the room
with them. He looked at John fi
rst, then the
door
way
which still possessed the Councilor’s gaze. He rose from the bench despite Mary’s protests to stay seated, and began moving toward the main door.

John grabbed his arm and stopped him. “No,” he told him softly, shaking his head.

It was all the encouragement Dallan needed. He wrenched his arm from the Lord Councilor, knocking him back onto the bench and broke for the door, reminding himself over and over he still felt her. She must be near!

A wee voice in the back of his mind nagged at him as he ran, that he shouldn’t get his hopes up, that sometimes life wasn’t fair. He was about to dispute the voice when he ran right into Kwaku.

Dallan hit the heathen’s chest so hard he bounced back a few steps and nearly fell over. Kwaku, naturally, hadn’t been moved an inch; he stood solid as a tree.

“Out o’ my way ye
madadh
!!
” Calling Kwaku a dog was a sure sign Dallan was panicked at the thought of losing the
one chance he might have to fi
nd the wee lassie.

Kwaku merely laughed a deep, loud, trademark Azurti laugh. “Glad to see me, Boyeee?” He laughed again, and Dallan’s skin began to crawl with irritation.

“Move out o’ the way!” he spat
, fists poised and ready to fi
ght his way past, every muscle in his large frame tensed at the possibility.

The big Azurti brute
gave him a look of challenge and chuckled.

“If ye’ll no move out o’ the way, then ye force me to make ye move!”

Kwaku didn’t look intimidated in the slightest. He merely raised a wide brow at the threat, as if saying,
oh, really?

“Why ye wicked, good-for-nothing…” Dallan abruptly switched to his native Gaelic, cursing the Time Master with everything he had.

“So glad to see you fare well, Boyeee,” K
waku replied above his tantrum.
“One of de villagers, he tells me you were brought down.”

Dallan snapped his mouth shut a
s his eyes narrowed on Kwaku. Th
e
Time Master smiled a wide, knowing smile of amusement and began laughing again. Louder.

“Shut up and get out o’ my way, ye auld rattle-bag!”

The laughing stopped. “Why?” Kwaku asked with a lower version of the Azurti chuckle.

“Beca
use ye bloody… ye…” Dallan’s fi
sts dropped, his posture changed to that of searching. “No
..
.” he whispered.

She was gone.

Kwaku watched with a trained
eye as a brief moment of
all-
consuming pain passed through Dallan like a knife, causing him enough anguish to turn his face away. Kwaku smiled again, continuing to chuckle to himself. “Why?”

“Never ye mind. It doesna matter now.” Dallan, downhearted, turned from the door and sat down hard on a nearby bench.

Kwaku nodded and smiled at the Scot’s back, a knowing look that said it all. If Dallan had seen it, Kwaku’s face
said where to look for her, fi
nd out how he could go to the wee lassie haunting him and get the gift she still held.

But Dallan never turned around.

Th
e night is dark and your

Slumber is deep in the hush of

My being. Wake, O Pain of

Love, for I know not how to

Open the door, and I

Stand outside.

Rabindranath Tagore

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Time Master,” John whispered to Kwaku who stood behind Dallan’s slumped form. “A word with you if I may?”

Kwaku chuckled at John and nodded, his eyes focused on the back of Dallan’s head.

John moved toward t
he Azurti warrior, playing full
the part of a Lord Councilor of Sutter’s Province, a position not far below the Time Master and the Elders. “Outside please,” he requested none too politely. Kwaku obliged, still chuckling to himself as he headed out into the bright, happy sunshine.

“What happened in there?” John demanded of Kwaku, who idly smirked and studied his toes peeking out from under his bright yellow and purple robes.

Kwaku held out both hands and shrugged his shoulders, a bewildered look on his face, then began laughing again
.

“Tell me what Zara did to him,” John
spoke as seriously as he could.

Kwaku
turned toward
a nearby grove of trees, put a long arm around John and
,
practically pulling him off his feet, led him from the cookhouse toward the grove.

Just as the two men came upon a tree, Zara stepped out from behind it,
glanced at the cookhouse not fi
fty yards away, and then retreated behind the huge expanse of trunk and branches
. She knew the moment she spoke
Dallan might sense her. She had to be careful.

Kwaku went to his wife
and
kissed her tenderly. “My Beloved…” he whispered in English. Zara responded with a
passion barely restrained and clutched at his arms as
he pointed to th
e cookhouse, then John, and gently laughed
.

Amazing what a good woman could do to a man, John thought. He stood quietly off to one side and studied the exchange. Zara was indeed tall, taller than John, nearly Dallan’s height, and possessed a unique grace and sophistication about her. Kwaku had the ebony skin of the Azurti, Zara a rich mahogany.

Muirarans were born any color, parental genes having no bearing on individual pigmentation. Future mates, on the other hand, did. While bonding, each became the desire of the other as their hearts prep
ared for joining. Zara’s sister
as John recalled, was pale skinned and blonde.

Zara turned to John and extended her hands to him. He promptly took them into his own, bowed low and held them to his forehead in a formal greeting, then rose slowly placing her two hands upon his heart for a moment before letting them go.

It was the greeting to be given to the Time Master’s Muiraran. Hands to head, in honor of the many deeds the hands of she and her people had done to help his own. Hands to heart to keep alive the love she had for her husband, who held the power to wield it all. Everything she was, everything she had, he controlled. The Muiraran and her abilities
were
much like a weapon, the Time Master the wielder of it. One could not work without the other, and both
would die without the other. Th
ey were
irrevocably and irreversibly joined. One.

“Zara,” John began.
“While Dallan was receiving the Call, you did something to him. I wish to know how you interfered. Such is not allowed, I was told.”

Zara merely smiled as Kwaku chuckled under his breath. “My Lord Councilor, I am well aware of the danger in tampering with the Call. Let me assure you that what I was doing had nothing to do with the Weapons Master. I was not helping him or doing anything to sway his decision.” Her silken voice caressed John, and he had to straighten himself to stay steady on his feet.

A familiar nervousness began to slowly creep up his back. He was, after all, confronting an incredibly powerful creature. “But you sang.”

“Yes, a song of healing.”

“But such is not allowed. The Scot has to accept the Call on his own. It must work itself out. You k
now it is the only way to confi
rm the Call is really for him.
”

She smiled gently. “Of this, Lord Councilor, I am fully aware.”

Jo
hn took a deep breath to calm
himself
while Kwaku stoo
d and laughed quietly
, keeping
an eye on
the cookhouse
. “Then what was your action? What was the
singing about?”

“Lord Councilor, I did nothing to interfere.”

“Nothing? You sang.
The Scot was
in
pain and you sang.
You inter
fere
d!” He
began to pace. It was all he cou
ld do to keep control of his rising
frustration.
Or was it nervous fear from being in her presence?

“Lord Councilor,” Zara began softly, “it was not the Weapons Master’s pain I eased.”

John suddenly looked at her, shock on his face as the truth hit him.
Of course.
How stupid could he have been?

“It was the pain of the Maiden. She is of my people, trapped all her life in a hostile place and s
urrounded by savages. True, who
ever took the Maiden so long ago left her with people who appear to care for her, and I pray things stay that way until we are able to properly retrieve her. But until then she has no knowledge of what i
s happening to her
.” Zara’s words were full of regret and her own sorrow. “It was her pain I sought to ease. She stands a better chance of losing her life to the Call than he does.” She looked directly into John’s eyes. “Ignorance can kill, Lord Councilor.”

John lowered his gaze to the grass beneath his booted feet. “Of course. How could I have forgotten?”

“Easily enough, my friend!” laughe
d Kwaku, speaking up for the fi
rst time. “You have no experience a
s yet wid de Call and its ways.
Dere are no set guidelines dis time. De Maiden, she is not trained, her inner heart and instinct act on deir own. Dey
know
no rules.”

John began to pace back and forth, his hands behind his back,
then
turned to Zara. “
I apologize for my outburst. Th
e Muiraran Maiden, she
is well?”

Zara looked to her husband, who was no longer laughing. “Time, Lord Councilor, is running out.” She began to walk in the direction of t
he cookhouse,
then
turned
to John. “She is ready.”

“By the Creator, no!”

“Yes.”

John sagged slightly, suddenly weak in the knees as his stomach threatened to serve the stew he’d eaten
earlier an eviction notice
.
He had been sure they would have mor
e time, b
ut if Zara was saying what he thought she was… “How soon?”

Zara turned again, walking toward her
husband, her human features fl
uxing to Muiraran as he gave her a silent c
ommand. She turned to face John
who was immediately captured by her, an odd tingling sensation surrounding him. He swallowed hard. Once in a day to see a Muiraran in action was enough to shake anyone up. But
this
Muiraran, twice in one
day, was too much. He tr
embled out of both fear and awe
as she stepped toward him, and he found himself unable to move.

She was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her, her
Elvin
features jumped out at him, holding him. “I will show you,” she told him softly, so close now he could feel the delicate brush of her breath. He was vaguely aware that Kwaku had
left, but didn’t care.
He had more pressing
matters to worry about, like wondering what in the world Zara was going to do to him.