Only With A Highlander

And the power of knowledge? Most days she wasn’t bright enough to come in from the cold when her passion for her work kept her focused only on her canvas. She certainly wasn’t smart enough to find, much less defeat Cùram de Gairn.

Winter recalled the stories Robbie had told her about the young powerful wizard, when Robbie had given her the tiny black panther cub he’d brought back from medieval Scotland two and a half years ago. He’d returned from his eight-hundred-year journey not only with the tap root he’d stolen from Cùram’s tree of life, but with the hissing, squirming bundle of fluff she’d named Gesader.

Cùram was a tricky bastard, Robbie had told her, his description conveying a perverse sense of admiration as much as distrust. Diabolical, he’d called Cùram, powerful enough to move mountains and cu

One day when Robbie had come across Winter sketching in the woods and shared her lunch, he had told her he’d actually seen Cùram. And despite there being hundreds of yards separating the two men eight hundred years ago, Robbie told Winter how he’d still been able to feel the young drùidh’s anger. But he’d also sensed that the centuries-old war between Cùram and Pendaär was not over, but truly just begi

Untangling herself from Snowball’s mane to close her collar against the chill settling in her bones, Winter suddenly realized she was still clutching the pinewood staff in her hand. She immediately tossed it to the ground.

Gesader stopped, which caused Snowball to stop. The panther padded back beside her, picked up the staff in his mouth, looked up to give her a deep rumbling snarl, and once again headed up the trail.

“I don’t want it!” she shouted to his back, quickly grabbing the reins when Snowball started after Gesader. “Spit it out!”

Her pet ignored her, her words uselessly carried away on the wind. Winter hunched low in her saddle, burying her face in Snowball’s neck as tears overwhelmed her in another wrenching fit of self-pity.

She didn’t want to be a wizard. She didn’t want to live for centuries, to become old and cranky and barely tolerated by people who provided for her from a sense of obligation. She would watch her parents die, and her sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews, until she was left alone with only Daar.

She might love the old priest despite himself, but she didn’t want to emulate him. She sure as heck didn’t want to become him.

She wouldn’t do it, she decided. Providence had no right to saddle her with such an impossible duty. She was only a young, untried woman against a powerful drùidh, no matter that her parents and Robbie had promised to help her. She didn’t even know what she was supposed to do, much less how to do it.

Darn it, she had just started to get her life on track. She’d just found Matheson Gregor and fallen so deeply in love with the man, the mere thought of knowing he’d die a timely death while she went on living without him made her heart wrench in despair. There had to be a way around this mess, a way she could help Daar and Robbie defeat Cùram without completely binding herself to Providence.

Winter bolted upright in the saddle. That was it. She would find a way to lure Cùram into the open so her cousin could finish him off. Aye, Robbie was a guardian, and guardians had the power to protect mankind from drùidhs. He could defeat Cùram. He’d done so once before, he could do it again.

But cùram was Gaelic for guardian. Was it possible to be both a guardian and a wizard? Was that why even Robbie needed her help?

So many questions with only more questions for answers.

Snowball suddenly stopped, and Winter blinked at her surroundings. How long had she been riding? She was still on TarStone, but she couldn’t recognize where exactly.

And then she saw it, just off to her right, the broad trunk of a majestic white pine. She moved her gaze up the perfectly straight trunk, from the fluffy pile of leaves and pine needles at the bottom, up past several jutting branches as thick as her waist, all the way up to the piece of tin covering the bluntly cut top. Broad fingers of dried pitch oozed down several feet from under the cap, mingling with shiny wet slivers of fresh sap.

This was it. Gesader had brought her to Daar’s tree of life. He must have followed the priest or her papa or Robbie here at some time. But why had he brought her here now?

Gesader sat down in front of the pile of leaves at the base of the pine, the thin, puny staff still held in his mouth. It stuck out over two feet on each side of his head, a pale contrast to his solid-black fur.

“What?” she snapped, scrubbing tears off her face. “Leave it with the pine,” she told him. “I want nothing to do with the magic.”

Gesader emitted a rattling growl from deep in his chest as his long thick tail whipped angrily back and forth, stirring a flurry of leaves behind him.

“I don’t care. I want to go—” She snapped her mouth shut. Where did she want to go? Not home. Nor to her gallery; she couldn’t face Megan right now. She couldn’t face anyone, not even Robbie. Whenever she had been beside herself with grief or worry or excitement or joy, she had always gone to Robbie. But she couldn’t even seek comfort in her dearest cousin. Not yet. Not until she could sort out the mess she was in.

Tom, then. She would go stay with her good friend.

And say what? I’m sorry for crying all over ye, but I’m a wizard and I don’t want to be one. Nay, she couldn’t go to Tom; he saw too much with his sharp blue eyes, read her too well.

Matt’s camp. She could go to Bear Mountain and stay in the cozy little den Matt had made. He was in Utah for several more days, and surely she’d have her emotions under control by the time he got back. Aye, she just needed to be alone for a while, just long enough to figure out what she was going to do.

“Come, Gesader,” Winter said, taking up Snowball’s reins to head toward Bear Mountain. But the old horse didn’t budge, even when she clicked her tongue and dug her heels into his sides. “Get going, you accursed beast,” she growled.

She was answered by another growl coming from the direction of the pine. She looked over to see Gesader, standing now, the hackles on his back raised in anger. “What is it you want?” she shouted.

“Why have ye brought me here?”

Gesader turned with the puny staff still in his mouth, leapt over the pile of leaves, and dropped the stick against the trunk of the pine. A deep, resonating sound—like that of a tuning fork—started the tree humming in shuddering puffs, sounding as if it were gasping for breath.

Winter blinked in amazement. She slid off Snowball and walked toward the pine, unable to look away from the pulsing trunk. Stepping through the thick pile of leaves, she slowly reached out and touched it.

She gasped, pulling her hand away at the realization that it was alive, that she had felt its weak spark of life struggling to surface. Without questioning why, driven by some unfathomable yet urgent need, Winter stepped up to the tree, wrapped her arms around it, and lay her cheek against the cold, rough bark.

A rainbow of colors immediately swirled through the air. Her arms and fingers tingled and her ears roared at the sound of pitch moving along the trunk’s veins. With her chest pressed into the rough bark, Winter felt the pine’s energy slowly shifting…until it finally matched the steady rhythm of her own pounding heart.

A calmness settled over Winter, both the internal and external storms receding, the swirling colors slowly fading away until only the purity of white remained. A loud caw came from above, and Winter looked up to see a plump black crow perched on one of the pine’s remaining branches over her head.