Shadow of the Wolf

Chapter One

Chapter OneOctober 1388

Glooming over the long ridge of the city below, the castle of Edinburgh shivered in the cold blast of autumn. The wind screamed through the embrasures of the grey battlements, rattled the flag against its pole and lifted dust and rubbish in every corner of the clustered fortress. I huddled deeper into my hooded woollen cloak, aware that this chill was only a prelude to the long winter ahead but more concerned with the message that had brought me here.

After returning safely from the Otterburn campaign, I settled into my quiet tower in the shadow of the Eildon Hills and tended my small share of the spoils. I had done my bit, helped my lord win his battle and now wanted nothing more than a life at peace, but then came a hard riding messenger.

“Fergus Scott?” The man did not even pause for breath as he reined up. I looked down from the parapet and nodded.

““I am he.”

“Then Albany desires your presence.”

The name chilled me, as well it might, for Robert Stewart; Duke of Albany was kin to the king and one of the most important men in the country.

““Do you have the right man?” I asked. “I have neither wealth nor family sufficient to interest my Lord of Albany.”

“You are Fergus Scott of Eildon Tower?”

I admitted the fact.

“Then don your spurs, Sir Fergus, and ride to Edinburgh. Albany desires your presence, and he is not a man to keep waiting. And come alone; Albany does not want you encumbered with squire or servant.”

“I am nor Sir Fergus,” I said. “I am no knight…” but the rider was already indicating that I hurry, and I complied. Nobody who valued their head wished to keep Albany waiting, and I preferred mine on my shoulders to decorating a pike.

So it was that I rode the fifteen leagues north to Edinburgh, arriving in the dark of an October evening, and made my way up the narrow ridge of the town to the great castle on its rock. I had been to Edinburgh before, with its tall tenements and raucous population, but I had never visited the castle, so I felt something like awe when I rode over the drawbridge and through the grim doorway. The fortress rose before me in its royal splendour, tower after tower, wall after battlemented wall and all of grey Edinburgh stone.

“Your business, Sir Knight?” The guard was businesslike but as respectful as he should have been to one who wore the livery of Douglas.

“My business is with my Lord of Albany,” I told him, somewhat pompously.

“Then follow me, Sir Knight,” the guard said. He did not seem awed by my statement. No doubt he was used to the presence of a duke.

I was familiar with the castles and towers of the Borders, but this was new. Eildon Tower, like many others, was four stories high, with a single room on each storey, and was defended by a curtain wall. The entire tower building would have fitted inside the outer courtyard of Edinburgh, while layers of defensive fortification lay within, each one build on living volcanic rock. I had never seen the like before, and quailed as my escort led me through a further gate to the inner sanctum of this great citadel.

Buildings surrounded this interior courtyard, with a further tower ahead and wide windows peering down. To have such large windows in a castle spoke of great confidence in the outer fortifications. A bevy of guards watched me, with the cold autumn light reflecting on Leith axes and steel breastplates.

“This way,” my escort commanded, and I was inside the most impressive of these buildings, with bright tapestries rustling on the walls, torches flaring in ornate brackets and an iron studded door opening before me.

The room was like nothing I had seen before, a huge hallway with a hammer beam roof, walls hung with silk and satin but still displaying a splendid array of weapons. There was a welcoming fire crackling and roaring in a fireplace large enough to roast a whole herd of oxen.

Despite the watchful guards, there were only two men who counted in that intimidating room. Both sat on heavily carved wooden chairs, but while one was middle sized, bearded and dressed in long robes of ermine and red, the second wore the same dark cloak he sported when I had last encountered him on the field of Otterburn. It was he who rose and stepped toward me.

“Ah, Fergus Scott of Eildon,” his voice was deeper than I remembered, with a strange timbre that combined power with a sense of bitter humour, as if he were simultaneously laughing and pitying everyone he encountered. “We have been waiting for you.”

““Indeed, sir?” I bowed to both, for while I guessed the robed man to be Albany, I sensed that his dark-cloaked companion also wielded great power.

“Indeed, sir.” The dark cloaked man responded to my bow. “Join us.”

Scurrying servants pulled a third armed chair close to the fire, for even inside this royal castle it was chill. Albany occupied the largest chair and the dark cloaked man the next, leaving me in the centre, with the flames reflecting from my face and the great chamber sucking at my back. The skin of a white bear covered the floor at our feet.

“You will be wondering why I summoned you here, Fergus of Eildon.” Albany said quietly, and I nodded.

“Perhaps you already know,” the dark cloaked man said. He looked at me. “Perhaps you should tell us, Fergus Scott.”

Although I had fought alongside this man, and now sat beside him in that echoing hall, I could not have described him. I looked at him and saw nothing. I was aware that he was tall, with a long, lugubrious face, but that was all. Now I looked at him, and saw strange eyes that now reflected my own, a mouth that mocked my smile, a face that may have been a mirror of my father's, but still I could not see the man.

““Who are you, sir?” I asked.

“Who are you, Fergus Scott?” he retorted, with his mouth twisting into a query.

““I am just Fergus Scott of Eildon,” I told him, and he nodded.

“And I am just Thomas Learmonth of Ercildoun, but you may know me better as True Thomas.”

The name made me shudder; as well it might, for if my grandfather, Michael Scott, had been one of the wisest men in Scotland, then Thomas of Ercildoun had been his equal in every aspect of wisdom, white, dark and in between. Unfortunately, Thomas of Ercildoun, or Thomas the Rhymer, or True Thomas, was long gone.

“You cannot be True Thomas,” I said faintly, “for that man is dead.”

“If you say so,” Thomas replied, and relapsed into silence.

I was the first to break. “People say that you went back into the Otherworld.”

“So people say,” Thomas was smiling to me. “They also say that the People of Peace gave me the gift of truth and prophesy. What do you think, Fergus?”

I did not think anything. I kept silent, wondering how I came to be in the presence of Duke Albany and some obviously mad imposter.

“So, Fergus,” Albany spoke again, his voice quiet and somewhat strained. “You have been introduced to our companion, and you know who I am, so perhaps you could do as Thomas asked and tell us why I summoned you?”

I felt the tension increase in that chamber, even as the fire crackled and hissed. For some reason I realised that my future depended on my actions in the next few moments, yet I did not know what was expected of me. Taking a deep breath, I told the truth.

“I cannot tell”“I said, “for I do not know.”

Albany looked at Thomas, who slowly shook his head. “He knows,” Thomas said, “but he does not know that he knows.” He looked at me with those mirror-like eyes.

“He who knows, but knows not he knows,” he said softly. “He is asleep and must be wakened.”

““I am not asleep,” I responded.

““A part of you is,” Thomas said. “Can you recall how you knew Earl Douglas would win the battle at Otterburn?”

I nodded. “I just knew,” I said.

“And you just know this too. So look at my Lord of Albany, look at me and then tell us what you know.” He started suddenly and looked into my soul. “And what else is there, Fergus?”

“There is nothing else,” I told him, as the great fire crackled in the grate and a downdraught blew smoke into that royal chamber. There was a shape in the smoke, a dragon of evil portent, but it vanished as quickly as it had come and I shook the image from my mind. Dragons were the stuff of myths; stories for children. “I do not know anything else.”

“Perhaps not” Thomas said, but he eyed me askance, as if I was hiding something from him. “Perhaps not yet; say your piece, Fergus of Eildon.”

Sighing, I did as I was bid, looking from one to the other, but I saw nothing. I was only aware of a deep sadness, a dark sorrow that seemed to cover this place and extend to the northward. No, I was wrong; it did not extend to the northward, it originated there, beside a mass of grey mountains and amidst a bleak moor. I sighed as that sadness deepened, and shuddered as I realised that there was something at the centre, a vortex of horror that emanated from a central point, something of such unspeakable evil that I jerked back even as my mind touched it.

“What did you see?” I was lying on the bear rug on the floor and Thomas was kneeling at my side, his face troubled but no expression at all in his eyes.

I told him.

“I saw the same,” he said, and looked at Albany.

The Duke nodded. “Then it is confirmed,” he said sadly. “I fear that a great wickedness has descended on this realm, and it is an evil that needs more than just a warrior to cure.”

“And more than a seer,” Thomas added, “especially an old, done seer like me.”

He aged as I looked at him, with deep furrows gouged in his face and his hair crinkling, greying and falling out. True Thomas appeared as old as his legends, and he wanted me to be his heir.

“I can't,” I said, softly.

“You must,” Thomas said, and the lines eased away so he stood as he had appeared at Otterburn.

Albany's hand was hard as steel as he raised me to my feet. “We need a man with the fire of youth, the guile of a border reiver, the experience of a warrior and the knowledge of a seer.”

“There is one such,” True Thomas said, “and he stands on the rug in front of me.”

“Me?” I shied away from my destiny, for I wanted nothing more than to farm my few acres in the shadow of the Eildon Hills. I did not want to venture to the North Country to cure a great evil.

“Just follow your mind,” Thomas told me kindly, “and you will know what to do.” He gasped and staggered back. “There is one thing, Fergus. Ensure he does not get his hands on the Book of Black Earth.”

““Ensure who does not get the Book of Black Earth?” I stared at him, but Thomas had turned and walked across that huge chamber. “Thomas: what is the Book of Black Earth? You must tell me?”

Thomas closed the door and I was alone with Albany and my fears.