PROLOGUE

                

Scotland
May 29, 1672

     Oh, please, Father, let me come home!
     It was the afternoon of Caryn Maclachlan's fifteenth birthday, but instead of being pampered as was her due, she found herself racing down the hall, up the stairs, running higher, ever higher, running as fast as she could to escape the seething humiliation of her husband's latest scolding.
     Life was too cruel. Shipped off to a far corner of Scotland! Married to a man twice her age! Cut off from father, her brothers, the people of Invergair who adored her!
     Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she refused to give into them. Gregory didn't love her, nor did she love him, although she'd tried, for a wife was commanded to love her husband. But how could she love a man who chastised her so frequently, so publically, so harshly?
     Abruptly, her path ended. She was on the roof, as high as she could go, with nowhere else to run. Walking heavily to the battlement, she leaned against the cool stone and let her gasping breath subside. The Earl of Lochlorraine would not break her, she vowed to herself. Never. She was of the Clan Campbell, the daughter of a marquess, and she would not bow to one who treated her as chattel.
     Somehow the vow eased her heartache, and her heaving breath subsided. Tendrils of her hair flew out from beneath her cap, and she tucked them back as she gazed out on her new land. Thatched cottage roofs reflected prisms of dancing sunlight, the straw falling and lifting in the high winds. Lines of mud and wattle chimneys stood guardian above them, their smoke whipped to a frenzy and spitting sparks.
     Farther out, she saw Ian and his fellows working on the trench Gregory called "his brother's folly." In her five months in Lochlorraine, she'd managed to alienate almost all the residents, yet Ian remained her friend. He, too, was brash and impulsive. Ever curious, ever exploring. Ever stretching his laird brother's goodwill. They even shared the same birthday, which the realm would celebrate that evening. He looked up, noticed her presence and waved his hand. He was shouting something she couldn't make out. Ignoring the obvious danger, she leaned out over the battlement.
     "What?" she called.
     "We did it, Caryn!" Ian hollered back. "We did it!"
     She cupped her hands around her mouth. "Did what?"
     He pointed to Wizard's Spire, a towering rock protuberance not far from the castle. A windmill sat atop it, and from it stretched a cable. When she followed its path, she saw it reached all the way to the tower behind her.
     The wind now steadily pulled at Caryn's cap, and she held onto it as she turned to gaze up at the metal hoop Ian had mounted on the central tower some weeks earlier. Now a long black rod whirled straight above her head, to meet another rod that hung down at a right angle some twenty meters from the castle wall, where it sped out of sight, only to return as quickly as it vanished. Leaning out even farther, she saw that it descended into the trench.
     She felt a surge of joy. Even before she'd known him, Ian had been working on the device as a method of creating the philosopher's stone that would turn base metal into gold. He'd finally made it work. Now they'd have something more to celebrate tonight than their birthday, giving her hope that she might endure her newly imposed gentility. She looked up at the rod again, though it whirred by so fast she couldn't actually fix upon it.
     Ian was nodding excitedly, shouting, trying to be heard. But the spinning cable emitted a high hum that drowned him out. He gave up, and she could see him laughing. Around him, the other men laughed and danced. Caryn started to laugh too, from nothing but sheer joy of watching their celebration.
     Abruptly, she realized she was having difficulty staying afoot. The very floor quaked beneath her. Below, Ian and his fellows jerked about like marionettes. Suddenly the sky cracked, pounding at her eardrums. Her world tilted and she grabbed for stone to keep from being thrown over the battlement. Sliding back, sliding down, holding the stone so tightly it scraped the skin from her hands, she fell to the floor.
     There came a flash of blue-white light that turned the sky as flat as slate. Than came the tremors, which pasted her against the wall. A hideous screech followed, next total blackness. Though it seemed a lifetime, the blackness lasted mere seconds. When it eased the sun had all but disappeared, leaving a lifeless sky in the grips of dusk though the chapel chimes had not yet struck three.
     Climbing to her feet, Caryn raced down the castle stairs, through the great hall and out the door. Others were running too. Somewhere she saw Gregory, heard him call for her. But she ignored him and raced toward Ian and his men, who were at the heart of the terrible explosion. Surely they were injured, even dead. As she ran, she saw the aged village healer stumbling away from the trench toward the dwellings.
     "Hurry, Bessy" she urged. "Get your medicines. Sir Ian, his men, they need us."
     "Nay." The woman stopped Caryn and gripped her hands. "My medicine will not help. They are all gone quite mad."
     Caryn quite agreed. In the midst of all the destruction, Ian laughed and danced, and held an object high in the air. Some of his fellows slapped him on the back. Others roared in delight. When Ian saw her, he let out a raucous cheer. "The Philosopher's Stone!" he declared.
     "The Philo–"
     Her response was cut off by an enormous shadow that completely blackened the slate grey sky. Caryn looked up, then looked away, not believing her eyes. Bessy let out a horrified gasp.
     By the time Caryn looked back, small explosions were erupting in the village. Fires scurried across the cottage roofs. Men and women screamed and ran, carrying buckets of water, shouting directions, calling for children. Someone was weeping.
     "Ormeskirk," Bessy intoned dully, squeezing Caryn's hand ever tighter. "Ormeskirk has returned to plague us once more."

by Constance K. Flynn 2000 All Rights Reserved