Storm at the Edge of Time Read online

  Contents

  Waiting

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  For Cousin Grace,

  to recall her early years in Scotland.

  Waiting

  He was waiting, but not patiently. He had never been a patient man. Not when he was alive. And not now.

  Yet here he was, waiting. Eternally waiting while the stones circled in dark silence around him.

  At long last, though, the waiting was coming to an end. The storm was about to break, the storm he had been wrenched from the world to guard against. Yet now he was powerless to stop it—almost powerless. The tools he needed were out there, but it would take perfect timing and a long search to find them. A long, patient search.

  Angrily the blue eyes glinted from the shadow of the stones. He was not a patient man.

  Chapter One

  Under the steady urging of the wind, the sea crashed in billowing surges on the rocks below. The water was gray, a dark slaty gray laced with ridges of wind-whipped foam and churned to spray where the waves met the island’s dark rocks. There would be no fishing boats Out today, nor any longboats setting out on Viking raids. They would wait until spring, as they did every year in these northern isles.

  Above him, the cold sky was a pale cloud-blanketed gray, stitched through by the occasional diving, crying seabird. But the boy had eyes only for the sea. Its crashing boom filled his ears and shook his body as he tried to weave into it a sound of his own, a harsh musical sound. It trembled about him, part song, part cry, part mystery, as he tried to weave it into the waves, to sink it into their depths.

  “Arni Arnorson!” a voice jeered from behind him. “Might as well drop that last name of yours. Not only will a runt like you never make a warrior, you’ll never even become a skald like your father—not with a voice like that.”

  Nervously shoving red hair from his eyes, Arni turned to face his familiar tormentor. A few feet away, Sven Havardson stood on a grassy hilltop with his usual companions just behind him.

  “I don’t want to be a skald!” Arni said, sounding more bold than he felt. “Singing the histories and sagas is all very fine, and my father’s the best skald there is, but I am practicing to be something more.”

  “It sounded like you were practicing to be sick,” Sven said, and the others broke into snickering laughter.

  An angiy flush spread over Arni’s pale face. “I’m practicing to be a power-worker, a sorcerer. I was trying out a call for seals. My great-grandmother, Eithne the Sorceress, could call seals to her and talk with them.”

  “Not even a seal would want to talk with you,” Sven said with a sneer, “but this is hardly the right season to look for seals.”

  Arni shrugged. “I know that, but I was just practicing. I want to get it right before any seals come and maybe misunderstand me.”

  The others laughed as the older boy stepped forward and scowled down at Arni. “Nobody misunderstands you, runt. We all know you’re a weakling who’s no good at anything and thinks he doesn’t have to be because his father is the Earl’s cousin and his skald. But suppose the priests hear about this new game of yours and decide you’re one of those heretics who want to throw out the new church and return to the old ways?”

  “You can’t scare me,” Arni lied. “Earl Thorfinn says Christianity shouldn’t make us forget who we are.”

  Sven laughed and turned away. “You’ll wish you could forget, if Brother Paul gives you a sermon on hell-fire and damnation. Not even the Earl and his skald can save you from that.” The boy swaggered off, gesturing to his companions. “Come on. Let’s leave this failure to the seals.”

  Angrily, Arni turned back to the sea. The cold salt wind beat like needles against his flushed face. No, as proud as he was of his father, Arni wouldn’t want his protection here. And he shouldn’t need it! He shouldn’t need protection from boring sermons or taunting bullies—or anything else either!

  True, compared to the other boys he was as small and weak as a puppy. He’d never been much good at games or fishing or even swordplay, although he loved the feel of the sword and practiced with it every day. But he was sure he was good at something: magic. His great-grandmother had been a sorceress, after all, and his grandmother a healer. And his father was a sk aid. a famous one, who worked magic with words. So he was sure the power must be in him. He just had to get at it.

  Arni sighed, staring down at the surf crashing against jaggedly layered rocks. Sven was right. Since the Earl’s father had turned out the old Viking gods, Odin and Thor and all, in favor of this new Christian god, nobody would talk much about magic or help him find how to use the power he was so sure he had.

  A sharp cry startled him. Arni looked toward it and saw a sleek black shape on a rock below. It turned its head. The day’s pale light glinted in two large blue eyes. A seal!

  For a moment, the two stared at each other; then, echoing the boy’s earlier song, the seal dove into the gray water. Its dark form appeared and disappeared as it swam toward the main island.

  Arni jumped up, excitedly watching, until the creature vanished from sight. Of course, probably he hadn’t really called the thing. But still, he might have! And he wasn’t going to let any priests or bullies tell him he couldn’t.

  He would find that power! And suddenly, watching the seal’s course, he knew where to look—the stone circle over on the main island. It was old, older even than the Vikings and their gods. It had been on the island since the time when the people of Orkney had worshiped far different powers, powers of earth and air and deep magic. But the circle must have power still, or these new priests wouldn’t warn people to stay away from it and from the other ancient stones. They were evil, the priests said.

  But maybe, Arni thought, the stones were not evil. They might just have powers that the priests could not understand. But he would! Excitedly, Arni hurried off. When he decided to do something, he didn’t like to wait a moment to get started.

  And he wouldn’t have to. It was morning still, and the tide was out so he could cross from their defensible tidal island to the main island on its east. The wind buffeted his hair and his yellow woolen cape as he trotted along the sheep path skirting the cliff’s edge, his mind already fixed on his goal.

  From the waves below, eyes watched him. Impatient blue eyes.

  Tyaak sat on a rock, staring glumly over the bleak island landscape. Supposedly it was now summer on the northern part of this planet, but still a cold wind blew steadily from the surrounding blue-gray sea. On his home world, a rare wind that strong would shiver through the cycla trees, setting their leaves tinkling and flashing pink and gold in the warm sun. But here there weren’t any trees, not even the green-leaved ones that grew on the rest of this planet. The only color here came from the blue sky, the pale green grass, and the low purple plants that splotched the empty hillsides.

  Standing up, Tyaak ran a hand through his blue-black hair, trying to get it to stand up properly. But it was no use. None of this was any use. Sullenly he tromped down the hillside, crushing the spongy plants as he went. He had given up looking for paths. The few wild animals that lived here didn’t make them, and most of the ancient roads had long since grown over. The natives that still
lived on this island stayed mainly in the remains of the town, either as eccentric hermits or tending to the needs of the few tourists who came this way.

  Well, he was no tourist, Tyaak thought bitterly. He didn’t even want to be on this planet, let alone this island. But this was his Nri Irll initiation. The choice of place had not been his. And here he was, stuck with the bleak island his mother’s stock had left centuries ago.

  Still, his parents might have been less harsh. All that was required of a young Kreeth on the verge of adulthood was to go somewhere alone. Somewhere with no diversions, where a person could walk and think about life. Well, here he was, walking and thinking, but his thoughts were not uplifting ones.

  All his life he had tried so hard to be Kreeth—to make his parents proud of him, to let them and all his doubting peers see how much he was like his Kreeth father instead of his Human mother. He had tried to have nothing to do with anything Human, and even his mother hadn’t objected much. Why should she? After all, the Kreeth were so obviously superior to Humans. If that weren’t so, why was it that the Kreeth dominated this portion of the Galactic Union, while the Humans simply drifted around it as explorers, artists, or farmers?

  The Humans had even drifted away from their own planet—not that he could blame them. They had so polluted its waters, depleted its atmosphere, and wasted its resources that if the Kreeth had not found them some centuries back, they would probably be extinct by now. The history he’d been forced to read about this world had been a sorry one.

  No loss, he thought bitterly, except that without Human stock he wouldn’t have been born. But he needn’t let being half Human defeat him! He was training to be a navigator like his father, not a musician like his mother. Admittedly, his skin was far too muddy a green and his hair too dark a blue. But his dress and manners were perfectly Kreeth—and his hairstyle would be, too, if only this infernal wind would stop blowing it about!

  Angrily he raked fingers through his sagging hair, then gave up, letting the dark mane bob and flutter limply about his head. His age-mates at least accepted his odd appearance, though they never let him forget his mixed heritage. He had hoped that once he was considered an adult, they would ignore that, too. But doing his Nri Irll on Earth, of all places, certainly wouldn’t help.

  At the base of the hillside, Tyaak looked about. Coarse green grass and low purple plants stretched in all directions, broken here and there by the gray heaps of abandoned ruins. Ahead, two arms of the sea—or maybe one was a lake—pinched the land into a narrow thread.

  Really, there was no point in going farther in this direction, except that he had to go somewhere. Kreeth believed that the best time to think was while walking, and on his Nri Irll Tyaak wasn’t supposed to return to his ship until night. Not that anyone was here to tell on him, but he wanted to be fully Kreeth, to do everything exactly right.

  Scanning the landscape ahead, Tyaak looked for some goal. He always felt better when he had specific goals. A movement caught his attention. A Human? No, it had four feet. Some native animal, then. It was walking up a slight slope, just beyond where the waters nearly joined. The ground there was unmarked except for a few tall stones. Or were they some sort of branchless tree? More house ruins, maybe? No, these were different. He pulled out his distance scanner and raised it to his eyes. The image jumped into focus.

  The animal was brownish and slender, with bony branches rising from its head. As if it sensed being watched, it raised its head and looked Tyaak’s way. He could see its wide blue eyes, the same odd blue this planet’s skies and seas had when not troubled by the frequent clouds.

  Tyaak shifted his scanner to the objects beyond. Clearly they were stones, large irregular stones standing upright. Moving the scanner, he saw that others lay half hidden in the vegetation. They seemed to form some sort of pattern—a circle, perhaps. Obviously they were not a natural outcrop, and not a ruined house, either.

  Tyaak shrugged and replaced the scanner in his belt. Not that he cared what they were, but they were a goal, something to turn his bored footsteps toward. Meanwhile, his thoughts could stubbornly trudge over the same ground. Why had his parents chosen this has-been planet as a place to “learn about himself”? This barren rock represented all the things about himself he wanted to forget. A world reeking with Humans, with their barbaric ways, their primitive animal instincts. Tyaak shivered. He had nothing to do with that. Nothing! Doggedly he marched on.

  In the distant heather, the deer stopped grazing. With keen blue eyes, it impatiently watched the boy’s grudging advance.

  The first child had been relatively easy, the watcher reflected. Belief is a simple thing to play upon. For the final one, the timing had been tricky, but ignorance is even easier to use than belief. But with the middle one, ignorance and belief were almost evenly mixed, raising stubborn walls of fear. That one would be a different story.

  Chapter Two

  Jamie was trying hard not to be disappointed. But this was very nearly the last straw.

  She stepped out of the car and looked grimly at the house. It looked back just as grimly. Hopeless! Gray stone, like everything else on this cold bleak island. Big and solid, but hardly the “Scottish mansion” she had envisioned. No turrets, no interesting angles, no likelihood of secret rooms or mysterious abandoned wings. Even a cheap dollhouse would have had a more imaginative layout. “A typical Orkney house,” her mother had gushed when they’d driven up. Two stories, central stairs, each floor with two rooms in front and two in back, a chimney at each windowless end. The whole boring box capped with a gray slate roof patched with lichen.

  No mystery, no glamour, and definitely no inkling of ghosts!

  “Jamie Halcro!” her father called. “Stop gawking and help me get the luggage out of the boot.” He smiled, relishing the quaint English term.

  “Trunk,” Jamie muttered as she yanked her suitcase from the tumble of luggage. She staggered with it through the open gate in the stone wall and into the yard. Some yard: scruffy pale grass, with a few wind-shivering daffodils lining the path. Not even one tree. In fact, they hadn’t seen any trees on Orkney since they’d left that little port town on the south coast. It was too windy and cold even for trees.

  The thought of that port reminded her of the four-hour ferry trip from the north coast of Scotland. Over the sea to her father’s generations-back ancestral home. Her stomach lurched. Seasick. She’d never known one little word could spell such misery. And definitely, this island had not been worth the suffering.

  She stepped through the front door. The house smelled dank, with a sharp overtone of coal smoke. The house-rental lady had started a fire for them in the sitting room and was still puttering around. Jamie hauled her suitcase upstairs. It would take more than one measly fire to drive the cold and damp out of this place.

  “Choose whichever room you want,” her mother called cheerily from below. Jamie plunked her bag on the landing and opened a door. The room was dark, its one window looking up a hillside of pale grass and purple brown leather. Not much of a view. The other room in the back was a bathroom, with one of those stupid showers on timers that she’d struggled with on their trip up from London.

  Both front rooms had a view over fields and a couple of lochs to a gray stretch of open sea beyond. One room had blue bedspreads and a painting of fishing boats. She took it. It wasn’t quite as blah as the pink-bedspread room with the painting of smug nesting ducks.

  Heaving her suitcase on one bed, she flopped onto the other and stared up at the white-plastered ceiling. Face it, Jamie, she told herself, you really lost out this time. As usual, her can-do-no-wrong brother had come out on top. He was spending his college spring break with friends in Florida. But of course, a mere middle school student like her couldn’t do that sort of thing. No, she had to be dragged along on another of her parents’ birding vacations. Why couldn’t they ever look at birds on warm tropical beaches with palm trees?

  After her initial outrage, Jamie had been con
soling herself with the thought of staying on a romantic island in a 300-year-old Scottish mansion. A place like that, she had figured, was sure to have ghosts. At long last, she would see ghosts.

  Not that she hadn’t tried before. She’d been trying since she’d first heard about ghosts, at age three on Halloween. But so far all of her Ouija boards, seances, and hanging out in graveyards hadn’t produced one wisp of a ghost.

  Still, she had psychic powers; she knew she did. Maybe she couldn’t draw like her father the commercial artist; maybe she couldn’t cope with numbers like her mother the accountant; and certainly she wasn’t clever with juggling words, like her debate-team captain and would-be lawyer brother. But surely she must have some talent. Being sensitive to the supernatural, Jamie had decided long ago, was it.

  She used to experiment with all kinds of things supernatural. But most of it had been creepy, stupid made-up stuff. Ghosts, though, were different. Throughout history responsible, grown-up people had believed in ghosts. And now she’d decided that this must be where her talent lay. Surely she could see ghosts.

  Up to now, the problem must have been the setting. There just weren’t any ghosts around when she’d tried to conjure them up. After all, America was a pretty new country, as history went, and Jamie lived in a very new house in a very new suburb. Not much time for lost souls to build up there. Even the local cemetery wasn’t much help. Instead of having spooky tilted tombstones, the graves were marked with neat little plaques lying flat on the ground so as not to trouble the riding lawn mowers. What unquiet spirit would hang around a place like that?

  But Scotland: That place was old. And Jamie’d read enough British kids’ books to know that Scotland was teeming with old mansions, ruined abbeys, castles, and dungeons—and ancient graveyards where tombstones jutted through the weeds like hags’ teeth.

  So now here she was, and the place looked anything but promising. Still, there had to be ghosts somewhere around here. And she would find them! There was no way she was going to admit she had no talent for anything.