The Old Woman of the Stones

By D.M. Andrews

Sir Callan Clanmor of Glenarchy has lost himself in war to leave behind the memory of a wife he does not love and to douse the pain of his love for another who can never be his. But as events unfold around him he is forced to confront both his pain and memories...

 

The Old Woman of the Stones is a romantic fantasy (romantasy) novelette set in a fictional world comparable to fifteenth-century Rhodes and Scotland. It contains mythic elements based in Scottish folklore.

AUDIENCE: Adult
RATING: No explicit scenes or language.
WORD COUNT: approx. 9000
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.M. Andrews
• Release date: Jun 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227301659

D.M. Andrews

D.M. Andrews is an English author. Check out the website to discover other books by this author.

Book preview

EPIGRAPH

She is the land beneath our feet,

She is the mountain under the sky,

She is the shaper of rock and hill,

The dark earth to which we all must go;

The mother of the bones of the world,

The Old Woman of the Stones.

PROLOGUE

Icaught a glimpse of him through the trees and my curiosity piqued. A handsome young nobleman. A face filled with the youthfulness of spring and the warmth of summer. I sensed his approach a heartbeat after his quarry, a deer, reached the river by which I stood. I should not have tarried. But fascination is no small thing — even for my kind.

When he saw me he froze for a moment before lowering his bow. A smile touched his face, his large brown eyes filling with wonder, and as he spoke I realised too late my great folly.

PART ONE

The Knight of Rodos

Callan nursed the temples beneath his dark red mane of hair. The bad dreams that had broken his sleep every night for the past three weeks had only grown more harrowing. His home in flames. His banner trodden underfoot. His wife and son cowering beneath a large ominous shadow. And all the time, in the background, the hag with a face the colour of death.

He reached for the pewter mug on the small table and took another gulp of the sweet wine. As a captain in the Order he had been granted his own room in the fortress barracks. A very small room. A confining space to sleep, drink, and wallow in his memories and pain. Callan preferred the clamour of battling his enemies to the silence in which he battled his own thoughts, the stale smell of sweat in the windowless barracks to the fresh salt-laden taste of the warm sea that wafted in through the window of his quarters, reminding him of the harbour below and the world beyond.

He rested back in the chair and felt a weight upon his chest. He slipped his hand into his tunic and pulled out the white crystal mounted in silver that hung from the chain about his neck. His charmstone. It was his only reminder of the woman he first loved. The woman he still loved. Brìd. He gazed into the pear-shaped stone as its cloudy depths conjured to life a memory from his adolescence...

He had been following the hart for some time. It had come out of nowhere and had moved slowly enough to pursue by stealth. It stopped