Son of the Morning

If it were possible, she had to travel through time. Parrish had the sheet; perhaps that was preordained, and there was nothing she could have done about it. But now that he knew, she had to prevent him from getting the Treasure, and the only way to do that was to force Niall to hide it somewhere else. Or perhaps – silly thought, because she wasn’t made of heroic material, but still – just perhaps, she was meant to find the Treasure, and use the Power to destroy the Foundation.

She had to go to Creag Dhu – six hundred and seventy-five years ago.

Chapter 18

SPRING CAME SOFTLY TO THEHIGHLANDS . IT WAS MAY, AND THE mountains were carpeted with green. The cool, misty days could suddenly give way to bright sunshine and air so clear it hurt her eyes to see it. From somewhere would come a fragment of sound, the faint echo of a bagpipe, and the haunting sound made her soul weep.

It had taken her four months to get here. At first she had simply kept on driving, going south, angling toward the east. The seasons changed as she drove, winter loosening its grip more and more the farther south she went, and it was inTennessee , in mid-February, that she saw the first flower blooming. It seemed like such a miracle, in the form of a cheerful yellow jonquil, that she stopped driving then, and rested, and planned.

An early spring, the locals said, after a mild winter. The jonquils were blooming a couple of weeks earlier than usual. The winter hadn’t been mild inMinnesota , but eight hundred miles farther south put her in a different climate, a different world.

She had quickly realized she couldn’t do this alone, and there was only one person she could think of to call. Harmony had listened silently to Grace’s request to travel with her toScotland for an unspecified length of time.

"Scotland," she finally said. "They don’t still paint their faces blue, do they?"

"Only in movies."

"I don’t have no passport."

"That’s easy to get, if you have your birth certificate." "You said you need my help doin’ something. Reckon you can bring yourself to tell me exactly what it is I’d be doin’?" "If you go," Grace said.

"I’ll think about it. Call me in a couple of days."

Grace gave her three days, then called again. "Okay," Harmony said. "If I go, would I be doin’ anything illegal?"

"No. I don’t think." Given that she had to expect the unexpected, Grace couldn’t swear that she would stay on the side of the law.

"Dangerous?"

"Yes."

Harmony sighed. "Well, hell," she drawled. "You do make it hard to resist, don’t you? How long would I be gone? I got my house to look after, you know."

"I don’t know. A couple of days, a couple of weeks. I’ll pay all your expenses-"

"I’ll pay my own way, if I go. That way, if I get pissed, I won’t feel beholden to stay." She was silent for a moment, and Grace could hear her tapping her nails on the phone. "I got one more question."

"Okay."

"What’s your real name?"

Grace hesitated. It felt strange to say her own name. The only time she had heard it spoken in months was when Kris had said it. She had gone by so many names that sometimes she felt as if she had no identity. "Grace," she said softly. "Grace St. John. But I’ll be traveling under the name Louisa Croley; that’s the name on my passport and driver’s license."

"Grace." Harmony sighed. "Shit. If you’d lied to me, I coulda said no."

***

Finding where Creag Dhu had stood took some time, Grace and Harmony had been inEdinburgh more than a I week before Grace managed to track down the name, and then it was in such a remote section of the westernHighlands that it was almost inaccessible. While Grace researched, Harmony didEdinburgh . She toured the castle, she toured Holyrood House, she took day trips toSt. Andrews andPerth . It wasn’t until Grace actually found Creag Dhu that she told Harmony what she was going to do, Harmony laughed in her face, but when Grace quietly went about her preparations, Harmony sighed and pitched in. She didn’t laugh when she heard about Ford and Bryant.

When she had everything gathered, Grace rented a car and they drove to a smallHighland village five miles from where Creag Dhu had supposedly stood. The only accommodation in the village was a small bed-and-breakfast, which they took, but the local tavern was a hotbed of gossip. Harmony could stand elbow-to-elbow with hard-drinking Scotsmen and hold her own with them, whether it was beer or whisky, and as a reward they answered all her questions.

Aye, a fancy American had arrived some two months ago, bent on digging up a great pile of rock. A storm had delayed him a bit, turning the ground to mud and making getting to the site a bit difficult, but the weather had since turned fair and word was he was making a great deal of progress.

"It won’t take him long to find it," Grace said when Harmony reported back to her. "I can’t wait any longer; I have to go."

"You talk like this is a guaranteed trip," Harmony said j irritably. "Like as not all you’re gonna do is give your ass a major shock."

"Maybe," Grace replied. During her own more reasonable moments, she knew that was exactly what was likely to happen. But then she would think of the documents and the things she had read, and the dreams, the sense of compulsion, and she knew she had to try no matter how crazy it sounded.

She hadn’t had any dreams since arriving inScotland . Everything felt so strange, as if a veil were hanging between her and everyone else. Nothing quite touched her, not fear or anger or even the more mundane things such as hunger. An essential part of her was already gone, turned away from this time. She knew she was going, and she had prepared as thoroughly as she could.