The Tangle of Blood

Prologue

Scotland 830 A.D.

The night was bitterly cold. Draioch sat alone around a dying fire, watching the embers flicker from red to black, the dancing lights floating overhead in streams of emerald and violet.

He felt their presence on the icy breeze like a charged current rippling through the air. It had only been a matter of time before they found him after that fateful morning on the rocky cliff. He'd known that. Even so, dread coursed through his veins, chilling him to his very marrow.

They were not yet close enough to be heard, and the night remained quiet aside from the crackling embers. The clan, his clan, slept peacefully unaware in their small stone homes scattered around the little village.

On a deep breath, Draioch rose quickly to wake Edrom. He entered the warm home and crossed the dirt floor to the small cot he and his wife slept on. Rousing him from a deep slumber, Draioch told him to sound the alarm.

The bell tolled, and everyone, from the youngest child to the clan's elder, knew to evacuate south to the small patch of woods at the base of a rugged hillside. Though nearly thirty years had passed, the horrors of what had transpired on the northern Scottish isle remained embedded in their memories, making them hasten out of fear.

Draioch waited, hidden from view as the last family made the cover of the treeline. They huddled together under the thick canopy of branches, looking to him for instruction and assurance. Somewhere in the small sea of people, a young babe began to whimper, and the mother frantically comforted it. He glanced back to the village as the first home went up in flames. Billows of smoke rose into the sky, appearing to touch the lights that still danced happily overhead..

He closed his eyes, and his mind went back to the gray, overcast day on the cliff overlooking the sea. He remembered their straw-colored hair that hung in thick unkempt braids. He remembered their sheer size, but most of all, he remembered the way the man standing on the back of the boat looked at him as they sailed back through the harbor and out to sea. It was a look of promise.

They'd never quit searching for him and his people. As the realization washed over him, so did a sense of calm and clarity, and only then did he know what should and would be done.

His eyes snapped open and glowed crimson in the darkness. Raising his hands slowly, he began pulling the energy from the earth and sky around him. The lights that had twinkled and whirled overhead now cascaded into his waiting hands. The flames from the village shot across the wide field in a fiery blaze to where they stood and surrounded him.

The power pulsated through him with such might, he thought it would tear him apart from the inside, but he continued. When he knew he could pull no more, he threw his arms forward, and a bright bolt of green light shot from his hands and into the hillside above them.

Draioch held the bolt there even as he dropped to his knees. He tasted metal on his lips as blood trickled from his nose. His heart pounded, and his arms grew weak, but he still held the crackling light in place.

From behind him, he heard the roar as the men started the charge toward them. Then, all at once, he felt the earth quake and open, and he knew it was finished.

He demanded them to run in a soft whisper before he collapsed to the ground. The ring of fire receded, and Edrom pulled Draioch to his feet and up the hillside.

And there, in what was once a blank hillside, was an opening in the earth. Edrom looked at his fading friend, who nodded in assurance, and the two followed the others across the threshold of the rocky gate, leaving the world and its cruelty behind.