“Aye,” said Kelpie. And here was her opening. “Ian!” she blurted, quite forgetting to give him a respectful title. “You must not be trusting Alex MacDonald.”
“Not trust Alex?” Ian turned a dumfounded face to hers. And then he laughed. “Och, Kelpie, there is no one in the world I trust better! We are sworn brothers, and if my life were to rest in the two hands of him, there is no place I would sooner have it.”
“And you would lose it, then,” said Kelpie flatly. “For I had a Seeing, and his sword fell upon you from behind, and you fell. And there was anger on his face and blood upon his sword.”
Ian’s face was a pale blob in the dusk, and she could not see it turn white—and yet she knew, somehow, that it did. For the Second Sight never lied.
And in spite of that, Ian shook his head. “I cannot believe it, Kelpie,” he said quietly. “It is a mistake, for the sun would fall from the sky before Alex could be untrue.”
Kelpie thrust an angry face, long eyes glittering, close to his. “You think I am lying, but I am not. I would have been warning you, even though it is of no profit to me, whatever. But it is a spell he has cast upon you! And,” she added bitterly, “you will be discovering it too late.”
7. The Return of Mina and Bogle
Summer was upon the Highlands. The serene curves of the hills glowed with a hundred shades of green and tawny and rose, all with a faintly unreal, spirit-of-opal quality, so that the distances looked no more solid than a rainbow.