Outlander 03 - Voyager

knowledge of death.

Someone was speaking, but the words made no sense. The cleft in the rock buzzed loudly, filling my ears. The torch flickered, flaring sudden yellow in a draft; the beating of the dark angel’s wings, I thought.

The sound came again, behind me.

I turned and saw Jamie. He had risen to his knees, swaying. Blood was pouring from his scalp, dyeing one side of his face red-black. The other side was white as a harlequin’s mask.

Stop the bleeding, said some remnant of instinct in my brain, and I fumbled for a handkerchief. But by then he had crawled to where Ian lay, and was groping at the boy’s bonds, jerking loose the leather straps, drops of his blood pattering on the lad’s shirt. Ian squirmed to his feet, his face ghastly pale, and put out a hand to help his uncle.

Then Jamie’s hand was on my arm. I looked up, numbly offering the cloth. He took it and wiped it roughly over his face, then jerked at my arm, pulling me toward the tunnel mouth. I stumbled and nearly fell, caught myself, and came back to the present.

“Come!” he was saying. “Can ye not hear the wind? There is a storm coming, above.”

Wind? I thought. In a cave? But he was right; the draft had not been my imagination; the faint exhalation from the crack near the entrance had changed to a steady, whining wind, almost a keening that rang in the narrow passage.

I turned to look over my shoulder, but Jamie grasped my arm hard and pushed me forward. My last sight of the cave was a blurred impression of jet and rubies, with a still white shape in the middle of the floor. Then the draft came in with a roar, and the torch went out.

“Jesus!” It was Young Ian’s voice, filled with terror, somewhere close by. “Uncle Jamie!”

“Here.” Jamie’s voice came out of the darkness just in front of me, surprisingly calm, raised to be heard above the noise. “Here, lad. Come here to me, Ian. Dinna be afraid; it’s only the cave breathing.”

It was the wrong thing to say. When he said it, I could feel the cold breath of the rock touch my neck, and the hairs there rose up prickling. The image of the cave as a living thing, breathing all around us, blind and malevolent, struck me cold with horror.

Apparently the notion was as terrifying to Ian as it was to me, for I heard a faint gasp, and then his groping hand struck me and clung for dear life to my arm.

I clutched his hand with one of mine and probed the dark ahead with the other, finding Jamie’s reassuringly large shape almost at once.

“I’ve got Ian,” I said. “For God’s sake, let’s get out of here!”

He gripped my hand in answer, and linked together, we began to make our way back down the winding tunnel, stumbling through the pitch dark and stepping on each other’s heels. And all the time, that ghostly wind whined at our backs.

I could see nothing; no hint of Jamie’s shirt in front of my face, snowy white as I knew it to be, not even a flicker of the movement of my own light-colored skirts, though I heard them swish about my feet as I walked, the sound blending with that of the wind.

The thin rush of air rose and fell in pitch, whispering and wailing. I tried to force my mind away from the memory of what lay behind us, away from the morbid fancy that the wind held sighing voices, whispering secrets just past hearing.

“I can hear her,” Ian said suddenly behind me. His voice rose, cracking with panic. “I can hear her! God, oh God, she’s coming!”

I froze in my tracks, a scream wedged in my throat. The cool observer in my head knew quite well it was not so—only the wind and Ian’s fright—but that made no difference to the spurt of sheer terror that rose from the pit of my stomach and turned my bowels to water. I knew she was coming, too, and screamed out loud.

Then Jamie had me, and Ian too, gripped tight against him, one in each arm, our ears muffled against his chest. He smelled of pine smoke and sweat and brandy, and I nearly sobbed in relief at the closeness of him.

“Hush!” he said fiercely. “Hush, the both of ye! I willna let her touch ye. Never!” He pressed us to him, hard; I felt his heart beating fast beneath my cheek and Ian’s bony shoulder, squeezed against mine, and then the pressure relaxed.

“Come along now,” Jamie said, more quietly. “It’s but wind. Caves blow through their cracks when the weather changes aboveground. I’ve heard it before. There is a storm coming, outside. Come, now.”

The storm was a brief one. By the time we had stumbled to the surface, blinking against the shock of sunlight, the rain had passed, leaving the world reborn in its wake.

Lawrence was sheltering under a dripping palm near the cave’s entrance. When he saw us, he sprang to his feet, a look of relief relaxing the creases of his face.

“It is all right?” he said, looking from me to a blood-stained Jamie.

Jamie gave him half a smile, nodding.

“It is all right,” he said. He turned and motioned to Ian. “May I present my nephew, Ian Murray? Ian, this is Dr. Stern, who’s been of great assistance to us in looking for ye.”

“I’m much obliged to ye, Doctor,” Ian said, with a bob of his head. He wiped a sleeve across his streaked face, and glanced at Jamie.

“I knew ye’d come, Uncle Jamie,” he said, with a tremulous smile, “but ye left it a bit late, aye?” The smile widened, then broke, and he began to tremble. He blinked hard, fighting back tears.

“I did then, and I’m sorry, Ian. Come here, a bhalaich.” Jamie reached out and took him in a close embrace, patting his back and murmuring to him in Gaelic.

I watched for a moment, before I realized that Lawrence was speaking to me.

“Are you quite well, Mrs. Fraser?” he was asking. Without waiting for an answer, he took my arm.