This year's Valentine's Day special may be a little different from last year's, but I think we've been waiting for it for longer. Hope you enjoy.

Thank you to my guest reviewer. That means a lot. :)


Episode 6: Loneliness and Adventure, Chapter 2

Galeas awoke the next morning with an ache in his bones and a weight in his heart. The time was drawing nigh where he would have to explain his presence both to Flora and to the MacLeod. One might understand the news. Neither would be overjoyed by it. He rose, the quilted linen of his gambeson providing a bastion against the morning chill. His armour lay near at hand, the first time he had removed it since setting out on this latest quest. He looked at it thoughtfully, weighing up the protection it afforded him against its possibly threatening presence in so politic a meeting. Reaching into the deep canvas bag he always carried with him, he removed a long surcoat of deep green and dressed in that instead. Fully dressed, his armour carefully stowed, he secured his sword belt about his hips. Armour may be seen as a threat by the head of the clan, but no man would part him from his sword, friend or foe.

He made his way from the dormitory to the refectory, where he was met with a peat fuelled fire over which hung a cauldron of porridge. A clanswoman dutifully, but silently, handed him a wooden bowl of the oatmeal, complete with whittled wooden spoon. There was a spiral twist to the spoon's handle, and he thought to himself that someone in the dun's walls had a talent to share. The wooden trestle table in the refectory was quiet. Men came and went, eating their share, then disappearing to attend to their duties. None seemed anxious to make conversation with the stranger in their midst.

He left the empty bowl and spoon with the clanswoman and made his way outside, walking over land he knew well, through buildings he had never seen. Wooden steps led up to the walls overlooking the loch and he climbed up to look out at the narrow inlet. Directly below him was a gated doorway, leading out to the landing point he had first sailed in to a century before. To his right, the round, grey, featureless tower of the dun rose up from the walls. Behind him the smaller, lower, longer stone buildings of the refectory, dormitory, storehouses and other necessities thrived, people bustling from one to the other as they carried out their daily business. From the dun, however, there came no noise or movement. He looked out at the loch again, soaking in the unique beauty of his surroundings. A rustle behind him made him turn, hand on hilt.

"You have been a warrior too long, Galeas," commented Flora, watching him.

"I have been many things for many years," he replied, releasing his hold on the sword and descending the steps. "But then you know that, Flora. Or should I call you crone, as the rest of your clan does?"

"Flora will do," she said, her eyes narrowing. "I do not give out my name lightly, so when it is given, please use it."

Galeas fell into step beside her as she led him across the greensward to the bleak prospect of the dun. "How many here know?"

"My name?" Flora frowned.

"You're history," replied the wanderer. "Who you truly are."

"I was gone from this place long enough that it has been forgotten," she shrugged. "I returned when time had already turned my hair white. I have remained much the same ever since. Is it I or the place that has the doing o' that? Would you know?"

"I suspect it is partly both," Galeas nodded, pulling a face. "You are the granddaughter of a faerie princess. The first female child of her bloodline. Your father had many gifts from his mother's family, but you, it seems, bear the greatest, and the most terrible. The life of the fae is long. Far longer than the span of mortal life. Longer even than mine. You are but half fae, however. Your life will be extended beyond those of your kin, but not by as much as those of your grandmother's. I dare say there is more that comes with it than simply extra years on this earth?"

"There is," nodded the crone. "There is a deal of power in my veins too. Power that grew slowly and took time to learn the use of. And the hiding of. And of course, I cannot die."

"Cannot?" Galeas looked sharply at his companion.

"Where all around me fall sick and die of the consumption," she pointed out, "I alone survive. When the first stone buildings on this spot are toppled and crumble, I alone am taken alive from the ruins. When the knife-edge bite of winter brings death to young and old alike, and when good men starve in their beds and women weep for their lifeless children, I alone stand untouched by the ice. Is it such as this for you, strange ageless wanderer?"

Galeas looked down at his feet. "I suppose it must be," he replied, his voice pensive. "I have never been ill. Though I have been wounded, sometimes even unto death, my wounds have healed. I have been lucky, though."

"In what way?" Flora asked coldly.

"I have never had to stand by and watch those I love, my family, pass on before me," he answered gently. "My family, at least those I was close to, passed into the mists of time many centuries ago, and my work has led me on a solitary path since long before even then."

"That must be a lonesome life," sighed Flora.

"It is," nodded Galeas. "But a life filled with adventure is often such. And it is a life I would not trade."

"Why? Do your adventures fill it so completely?"

"No," he shook his head. "But I have a duty. An obligation to protect the world around me. It is a task I undertook alone at first, and for many years, with only one elder for guidance. Then others came. Some warriors, some not. They did not often last long. Especially the scholars among them. It was decided that they may last longer if each scholar was paired with a warrior. A guardian to keep them safe. They sometimes did. The last few centuries, I have been able to work independently of them, searching the lands of my birth for ancient talismans and relics, and settling arguments between the hidden folk."

"Which is it now?" Flora asked, opening the door to the dun. "Talisman or argument?"

Galeas sighed, drawing a hand across his brow as his eyes grew acclimatised to the dark, smoky atmosphere of the dun's interior. "This time," he replied, "it is both."

XXXX

The talisman had been a simple brooch, a not-quite-complete circle, gilded silver with Pictish knot work weaving around polished amber beads at the flared terminals. The craftsmanship of the brooch was the best that could be found in all the islands of Britain, either North, South, West or East of any border. It was just that craftsmanship that had brought it to the attention of a red cap in the border lands themselves. Unfortunately the brooch in question was one that had been promised to the queen of the faeries of the Black Isle, in hope of a marriage between a daughter of her tribe and a faerie prince of Northumberland.

The brooch had been retrieved. That was the easy part. Staying ahead of the now vengeful red cap, a murderous relative of the goblin, whose name was drawn from the dying of their caps in the blood of their victims, was more difficult. Galeas had described on that very first morning the many wards and charms he had used to hide and protect himself. He had also described, in detail, the reasons why these would no longer hold their power. The dun was protected by faerie magic, he had explained. He would have to call the fae of the Black Isle to him if he were to deliver the brooch and prevent a war between the faerie tribes.

All this had been told in secrecy to the MacLeod himself and to Flora. Had it not been for the presence of the latter, the former would have cast Galeas out as a madman. But Flora had been by, and had held in her hand a common, old, walking staff. She had reached out with the staff and touched it to the wooden goblet of ale on the chieftain's table. It had frozen solid. After that, he had been more willing to believe in magic.

The call had gone out weeks ago, but still they waited, for the fae are known to be a mercurial folk. The days shortened. The harvest drew nigh. Galeas became a known face within the dun's walls. At last, on the night of the harvest festival, while the young folks danced below the moon and stars, and Galeas and Flora watched the waves from the walls, the fae of the Black Isle arrived.

"Look there," whispered Flora, pointing out to sea. "Where the moon shines on the waves."

"I see it," Galeas replied. "Go, find William. I shall open the gates to meet them."

"And if the red cap is waiting for you?" Flora frowned. "You find William. I shall open the gates. I am the heir of the faerie blood in my line. I am the crone of the clan. If they are not to be met by our chief, then 'tis best they were met by me. What of the others?"

"This is not as uncommon as you may think," Galeas reassured her. "When the fae enter, all but those they have come to meet with shall fall into a deep slumber. They will see and remember nothing but the revelry."

He hurried off to find the clan chieftain and found him drinking with his wolfhounds in the place of honour at the feast. Whispering in the MacLeod's ear that the time awaited had arrived, Galeas brought the chief to his feet, a steadier man than one might have thought who had watching him drink that night. With a sign to his men and his dogs to remain behind, he follower the old wanderer across the greensward to the loch gate. They arrived at the gate just as Flora, leading a retinue of shining folk, stepped through it. The music, quiet though it had been from this distance, died away to nothing.

"Greetings, my Queen," said Galeas, humbly dropping to one knee. By his side the MacLeod did likewise. "Food and ale awaits you in the great dun."

"And my trinket?" The Queen's voice shimmered in the ears like the breeze through sunlit boughs on a summer's day.

"Safe, your highness," answered Galeas, his head bowed.

"Then we shall rest ourselves at your table while you tell us of your adventures Galeas," she announced. "Cousin, lead the way."

Flora, silent and obedient, had led the party to the dun, where a store of ale and of food had been kept in readiness for the intervening weeks. Galeas and the MacLeod, rising only once the last of the fae had passed, followed the company into the tower.

Morning broke, spilling bright golden light over the hills like ale from a barrel. The people of the dun stirred, rousing themselves from sleep and finding themselves lying out in the open, the fire at the centre of their revels dying low. Only three people rose from their beds that morn. The wanderer, the crone, and the MacLeod. They said nothing of the night's work to the people, but watched in careful silence as the clan began the work of the day once more.

That evening, Flora was walking with Galeas along the curtain wall. "What will you do," she asked, "now that your task is done?"

"I am still a target of the red cap," the wanderer shrugged, "but at least, thanks to our faerie friends, we now know that target has a time limit. A year and a day. I've eluded worse foes for longer."

"Perhaps, but there is another option," suggested the crone.

"Is there?" Galeas turned his head to look at her. "Other than trespassing on the hospitality of your great-nephew for the duration of the hunt, I can see no alternative."

"And you can think of no better reason to wish to remain here than that?" Flora asked, her gaze steadily out to sea.

Galeas smiled and turned to face the waves with her, laying his hand softly over her own. "I might."