Night Visitor Read Online Free PDF Page A

ready to leave them.
    “Welcome, piper! You’ve the highest of gifts,”
    MacColla praised him as he joined the two men seated by the fire. The Irishman nodded over his tankard but did not rise to his feet.
    Malcolm looked calmly into his watchful gaze, appraising what he saw by the flickering firelight. The Irishman’s young face was stern, even when the lips tried to smile, and the eyes were cold and wary enough to disconcert even a man already marked by the spirits for some unearthly fate. If their illustrious guest was drinking whiskey from his cup, he was not plunging deep into it.
    “I thank ye for yer praise. I had a good master in Black Anndra,” Malcolm replied formally, but made no effort to curb his accent as many of the lairds did in august company.
    “That is so. I had the pleasure of hearing him play that very song some years past. He taught you well. Most men cannot manage so flawless a passage. Perhaps it is because their poor hands are too small and cannot be used interchangeably.”
    “Mayhap.”
    “Or perhaps it is because they are not of the MacLeods gifted with special talents. I have heard some astonishing tales of one particular line of MacLeods.”
    Malcolm did not answer.
    The MacIntyre cleared his throat and joined the conversation for the first time. The chief looked rather ill at ease. It could have been becauseMacColla mentioned Malcolm’s mixed blood, but he suspected that there was some other, more sinister cause.
    “Malcolm, a great honor has come tae ye. Ye’ve been asked tae go wi’ the MacDonnell and his men. They’ve need of a piper tae play them intae battle when they go tae take Duntrune.”
    “We need some music to drown out the arrows whistling past our heads,” MacColla added with an unpleasant smile. “I’ve had a sudden vision of you playing upon the castle walls. With your presence, we shall be victorious, I have no doubt. And I always make every effort to ensure victory.”
    So, too, did Malcolm have this very same vision every night when he dreamt, and it left him mightily uneased that Colkitto had chosen those particular words to express his expectations of victory. It suggested that there was some deeper purpose at work in this meeting. Deeper purposes could not be ignored.
    “Malcolm, lad. Ye’ve been asked tae play the king’s men tae glory.”
    “Aye. I heard.”
    Asked, the MacIntyre had said, not ordered. Still, he knew his chief well, knew what was required of him in this time of war. Such obedience was the backbone of a chief’s power and the safety of the clan.
    Still, Malcolm hesitated to volunteer. What ifhis fate was to overtake him on this journey to Duntrune and endangered the other men? What if he left the glen and Fate couldn’t find him?
    “Malcolm,” the chief prompted again, likely fearing that his increasingly fey piper would seem to MacColla to have lost his nerve and turned coward.
    That wasn’t the difficulty, Malcolm knew, but how to explain about the new portents he’d seen—the silvered reed left beside his pipes, and the wraith? He was nominally a Catholic, as was his chief. He knew the way such religions minds as Colkitto’s worked. They would not understand that he still kept some of the old ways and knew the customs. They would not discern what the reed signified. And if they did, they would likely seek his death for being bewitched.
    But he knew. After all, he was partly a MacLeod, and though he had tried to reject that part of his nature and live as his father did, he had always been aware that there were other, older beings that lived among them in this world of men. Most people never saw the old ones—his father never had! But Malcolm did see them. They were in the sly shadows that crept about in the darkened corners of certain glades, and behind the careless shiver of leaves when there was no wind to stir them. These things also influenced men’s lives and had to be carefully considered and sometimes appeased.
    If