The Skull of the World (29 page)

"Go, go!" Isabeau cried. "I'll catch up." She had no time to say any more for all the pirates were bearing down upon her, waving wickedly curved cutlasses and snouting.

For a time Isabeau had no time to think, dodging, weaving, punching, kicking, feinting first one way and then the other. She saw a gap in the melee, somersaulted high into the air, and transformed herself into the shape of a swan.

Crimson-tipped wings beating strongly, Isabeau soared away from the battlements, her clothes falling down upon the pirates' heads. They fought free of the garments, letting loose a volley of foul expletives. Isabeau turned and swept north, following close behind the swan-sleigh which she could see clearly in the brilliant light of the morning.

Suddenly an agonizing pain seized her in the breast, paralyzing her wing. Isabeau began to tumble down, down, an arrow shaft protruding from the hollow below her left wing. Down, down, she plunged, her long black eyes closed against the pain and the dizzying fall of space, one wing hanging useless.

She hit something hard with a bang, and lay, half stunned. Then she heard Neil's voice in her ear and felt small hands cradling her head. "Oh, Aunty Beau, Aunty Beau, are ye dead?"

"I dirma think so," Isabeau replied faintly. She opened her eyes and saw Neil's grimy anxious face bent over hers. Donncan still clung to the reins, though his head was craned back so he could see her, his golden eyes shining with tears. "Ye caught me," she said.

He nodded. "I dinna think we would reach ye in time."

"I'm back in my own shape."

"Ye changed back when ye hit the sleigh."

"I must have blacked out for a couple o' seconds. Interesting to ken I change back to my own self when unconscious. I wonder if I change back when I'm asleep." Isabeau struggled to sit up and almost fainted again as the arrowhead bit more deeply into her flesh. "Ea curse and confound them! They would have an archer among them, the filthy maggots!" She managed to sit up and seized the arrow shaft with both hands, breathing harshly.

"Ye're bleeding badly," Neil whispered.

Isabeau looked down and saw crimson ribbons of blood winding down her bare skin. All around the wound the flesh was torn and black with blood. She nodded. "Aye, the arrow's gone deep. I can feel it grating against bone. We have to get it out. Ye'll have to help me, Cuckoo."

He looked sick. "I canna."

"Hold the reins, ye gowk!" Donncan commanded. "I'll help ye, Aunty Beau."

"That's my soldier!" Isabeau said, trying to smile, though she felt so sick and dizzy it was all she could do to retain consciousness. She reached up with her good arm and grasped the bag of nyx hair which was still hanging around her neck. "Undo this for me, and get out my medicine-satchel."

Donncan found the little bottle of poppy syrup which all healers carried with them, and gave it to her to drink. She gulped down a few mouthfuls, then went on unsteadily. "Now I need ye to tear your nightshirt up for me, dearling, and wad it all around the arrow shaft."

"My nightshirt is filthy," Donncan said.

"Find something clean in the bag then. Just hurry!" He dragged out her only other shirt and tore it up hastily, making a thick pad to press against the wound.

"Press as hard as ye can, we have to stop the bleeding." She winced as he obeyed, white-hot streaks of pain shooting through her. "That's good. Now break the shaft. Gently, Donncan, gently!" She screamed as the shaft snapped, jerking the arrowhead inside her. The world receded into fuzziness.

"Aunty Beau, Aunty Beau!"

"I'm fine," she answered, her voice sounding very odd and far away. She shifted her weight, drinking more of the poppy syrup, trying not to breathe too deeply. "Now, Donncan, I need ye to do something hard for me. I ken ye have moved things with your mind before, havena ye?"

He nodded, tears making new white tracks down his dirty face. "No' very well, though," he whispered. "I broke the window by mistake."

"I need ye to concentrate on the arrow. Breathe in very deeply, very slowly, breathe out, breathe in.

Concentrate on the arrow. Now imagine ye are holding it in your hand. Jerk it out through my back."

The young prionnsa hesitated and she snapped, "Jerk it out, Donncan!"

He obeyed with a catch of his breath. The arrow flew out through Isabeau's back and embedded itself in the high carved stern of the sleigh. Isabeau screamed in agony. Tears burned her eyes and she sobbed a little, gulping down another mouthful of the syrup. The pain receded to a hot throbbing, and she pressed the bloody wad in closer.

"Wash the wound for me with that lotion," she instructed, "then pad it well with some clean cloth. Then bandage me up as tightly as ye can, Donncan. It needs stitching but I canna do it myself and I do no' suppose sewing is something anyone ever taught ye."

He shook his head, unable to speak, and bandaged her up as instructed. Isabeau closed her eyes and almost succumbed to the temptation to drift away into blackness again. The poppy syrup was working its magic, however, numbing the pain to a strange hot glow that made her fingers and toes tingle.

"Help me up," she whispered. "Where are we?"

She looked over the gilded side of the sleigh and saw they were flying over the sea, the Fair Isles receding behind them. Far below, the water glimmered brightly. With white sails proudly spread, a great fleet of ships glided through the waves, all flying the red and black flags of the pirates.

"The pirate fleet!" Isabeau whispered. "Oh, we must stop them!"

For a moment it was all too hard. She wanted to curl up and sleep, to let the swans take them where they willed. She gritted her teeth, however, and said, "Neil, take the swans down. Donncan, get me my staff. We canna let the pirates reach your parents."

The winged prionnsa passed Isabeau her staff of power and she cupped the crystal within her palms, breathed deeply in through her nose and out through her mouth, calming her frantic pulse, drawing upon the coh, drawing upon the One Power. She felt her heart and her lungs and her veins fill with power until she was brimming over with it. Then she let the boys raise her up so she could see the ships racing along below her, their sails billowing out with the breeze.

Isabeau raised her staff, her hands clenched so tight upon it the knuckles were white, and then let the power go in a great whizzing fireball that smashed down upon the lead ship. They were so close now they could hear the screams of pain and terror, smell the stench of burning wood and canvas, see the panic in the sun-browned faces turned up toward them. The swan-sleigh wheeled and passed over the fleet again, and Isabeau once more flung down a great ball of flame. Seven more times she bombarded the fleet and then suddenly she had no strength left and the spinning darkness reared up and overwhelmed her once again.

A long time passed. Occasionally Isabeau was aware of her voice babbling, of laughing hysterically or sobbing. Most of the time she drifted in a hot sort of darkness, unable even to think.

The blessed quietness of sleep claimed her, and for a long time she passed in and out of dreams.

Occasionally she was conscious of a cool hand on her brow, a beaker of water at her lips, a spoonful of food on her tongue. She swallowed as instructed, though all she could see were dark shapes and bright streaks of light. Sleep came again, longer and darker this time, healing her fevered mind.

At last Isabeau opened her eyes and was able to make some sort of sense of what she saw. Sunlight was striking down through the plaited weave of some narrow-leafed plant. It was very warm and Isa-beau's throat was dry and swollen. She moved cautiously, her skin feeling hot and tight. Below her sand slithered away and she put out one hand and felt it between her fingers. She wondered where she was.

Children's laughter rang out and she glanced that way, her head aching too badly for her to lift it. There was the glare of blue water and the dazzle of sun, and she shut her eyes against the pain. Someone lifted her head and once more Isabeau tasted cool water against her lips. She drank gratefully, opening her eyes again.

Leaning over her was a woman with a straight fall of silky dark hair and eyes of a most unusual color, so pale a blue as to be almost silver. Her face was strong and square, with high cheekbones. One side of her face was marred by a fine cobweb of scars. She was dressed in the tattered remains of what had once been a long gown of red velvet.

"Maya," Isabeau said blankly.

"Red," she answered with a wry lift of her thin lip.

"What do ye do here?"

"I live here," Maya answered.

Isabeau looked about her. All she could see was blue water and sand. "Where are we?"

"On an island in the Muir Finn," Maya answered. "I do no' think it has a name. If it does, I do no' ken it. Ye could call it the last refuge o' the dispossessed."

"How do I come to be here?"

"The Thistle's swans brought ye here. Apparently the MacCuinn lad told them to bring ye to the nearest person who could help. I must have been the nearest."

Isabeau lay back, puzzled. "How long have I been unconscious?"

Maya shrugged. "Close on two weeks. I thought ye would die."

Isabeau put up one hand and felt her shoulder, which was still tender to the touch. "I'm glad I did no'," she answered awkwardly. "Thank ye."

Maya shrugged. "Ye tended me once and saved me from dying. I had to return the favor."

The two women regarded each other, many unspoken tensions in the silence that stretched between them. "I thought at first, when I saw the swans pulling along the sleigh, that ye were Margrit," Maya said rather diffidently. "I thought she had discovered where Bronwen and I were hidden. It was a bad moment, I promise ye. I was glad indeed to find it was only ye, and gladder still when the boys told me Margrit was dead."

Isabeau gave a little wince, and tried to smile, though the memory of Margrit's purple, engorged face flashed before her. Then she heard the shriek of children's laughter again.

"And the laddiekins?" Despite herself Isabeau's voice was anxious. She knew Maya, like Margrit, regarded the MacCuinn clan with absolute hatred. She could not help fearing the Fairge may have decided to do Donncan some harm.

Maya smiled rather sadly, guessing Isabeau's thoughts. "Apart from being a wee bit sunburned, they are fine. Bronwen has enjoyed having playmates her own age very much indeed."

"Och, it will be lovely to see Bronny again!" Isa-beau cried. "It is hard to believe she be six and a half already! I canna believe it is three years since I last saw her." She sensed rather than saw Maya stiffen and looked at her quickly. The Fairge's face was impassive, however. Isabeau said rather stilt-edly, "She probably does no' even remember me."

"Och, she remembers ye," Maya replied. "I will call the bairns and tell them ye are awake. They have all been anxious indeed about ye." She rose and went to the edge of the little hut, calling out the children's names.

Isabeau lifted herself up on one elbow so she could see them running across the sand. Leading the trio was a young girl with a long fall of silky-straight hair, blue-black as a raven's wing, with the distinctive white lock of the MacCuinns at her brow. Her eyes were as translucent blue as water over white sand, and her skin had the same iridescent shimmer as her mother's. Her beauty was striking, even more so than Maya's, for her mouth was beautifully curved and warm with color like any human's, and although her face was square with high cheekbones, it did not have the flatness of the Fairge's. She was naked, her skin tanned to a golden hue by the sun.

The two little boys running along behind her were also naked, their skin red with sunburn, their faces alight with laughter. All three were wet and sandy, and it was clear they had been playing at the water's edge.

"Your Aunty Isabeau has woken," Maya said neutrally.

Bronwen's headlong pace slowed so that the two boys were able to run past her, shouting with excitement. They threw themselves on Isabeau, babbling so fast she had trouble understanding them.

"How are ye yourself, Aunty Beau? Do ye feel better? Is this island no' just grand? Cuckoo and I have been fishing but we couldna catch anything, Bronny caught it all. How is your shoulder? Ea's ears, ye slept a long time. We were afraid ye were going to die!"

"That be enough, laddies, ye'll hurt her shoulder," Maya said and hauled them off, rather to Isabeau's gratitude.

The patient smiled at them wanly and said, "I be just grand, my lads. I'm glad to see ye looking so stout. Have ye been having fun then?"

"Aye, indeed," Donncan answered and cast a shy look of admiration at the little girl, who was hanging back, one leg hooked around the other. "Bronny has been teaching us to swim."

"Well, ye canna have a better teacher than a Fairge," Isabeau said. "Bronny swims like a fish." She smiled at the little girl and held out her hand. "Och, Bronny, it is lovely indeed to see ye! How are ye yourself? Gracious alive, ye've grown."

Bronwen muttered something in reply, twisting her leg about, her face downturned. She gave a little peek up at Isabeau, then dropped her eyes again.

"Och, she's gone all shy," Maya mocked. "And she's spent all week hanging over ye, wondering when ye'd wake, and muttering little spells to make ye better."

"Och, has she?" Isabeau cried. "Well, her spells have worked, I feel amazingly better."

Bronwen looked up, her face lighting up, then blushed again and dropped her gaze.

"Ye'll have to forgive her," Maya said. "She is no' used to other people. We've been here alone for three years now, wi' no other company but each other." Her voice was bitter.

"Ye must have been lonely," Isabeau said, more to the little girl than to Maya. Bronwen returned her gaze more fully, smiling shyly, but it was Maya who answered.

"Och, no! Why should I be lonely when I have been used to being the first lady o' the land, the toast o' all the minstrels and troubadours, wi' a horde o' servants to answer my every whim and a feast in my honor every night?"

Isabeau said nothing, troubled and a little embarrassed. Maya got to her feet, saying, "That's enough now, bairns, Red is looking very pale. Go and see if ye can find any ripe ruby-fruit and let her rest awhile. Ye can talk with her again tonight."

Reluctantly the boys got to their feet and followed Bronwen out into the sunshine again, the little girl staring back at Isabeau with a look of yearning. Isabeau closed her eyes and listened to the lapping of the waves, the rustle of the dry leaves overhead, the shrill sound of the children's voices.

The next day Isabeau felt strong enough to sit up in the shade of a tree and watch the children play. Under the warmth of her gentle approaches, Bronwen gradually thawed until she was as loving as she had ever been, curling up by Isabeau's side to listen to her stories and bringing her shells and curious stones and clusters of the little red fruit that grew all over the trees in the jungle.

The island was very small and completely encircled by coral reefs which protected it from the raging sea. There was only one sandy beach which faced onto a wide shallow lagoon. It was here that Maya had built herself a small hut from driftwood and woven leaves. A flimsy structure, it provided shelter from the blazing sun but afforded little protection from the fierce tropical storms that often swept over the island. When the winds and rain came, Bronwen told Isabeau, they fled into the jungle and clung to the sturdiest trees they could find. When at last the storm blew over they would come back and rebuild the hut, dry their tattered clothes on the rocks and search the shoreline for anything the storm might have thrown up that they could use. So they had lived for three years, growing adept at catching fish with their hands, climbing the tall milknut trees to shake down their hairy hard-shelled nuts to crack open on the ground below, and prying open oyster shells on the rocks for the soft salty flesh inside.

Maya had clearly worked hard to make the island livable, digging out the one small spring so they had constant fresh water, collecting the debris of the sea to make their hut more secure and comfortable, planting a little garden of roots and wild herbs behind the hut to make their food gathering easier. Remembering Maya from the days when they had first met, Isabeau was barely able to connect this hard-faced, self-reliant woman with the sweet-voiced, softskinned, velvet-clad banrigh she had been. It was clear Maya had not accepted her exile easily, but she had not only survived but had made a fairly comfortable life for herself and her daughter on this lonely coral island. Isabeau could not help feeling admiration for her.

To Isabeau's dismay, she and the boys were as marooned on this island as Maya and Bronwen, for the swans had only stopped long enough to have their carriage unhitched before flying on. Isabeau could have kicked herself for not making the swans promise to fly them back to the mainland of Eileanan before seeking their freedom, but all she had asked was that they take them to safety. That the swans had done, she had to admit, though of all the islands in all the Muir Finn, why the one that Maya the Ensorcellor had hidden herself on?

"Ye must admit the threads o' our lives are somehow twisted together," Isabeau said to Maya one night as the children slept curled on their woven mats under the shelter. She and Maya were sitting out on the sand together, gazing at the stars which hung huge and brilliant in the sky. "For some reason the Spinners have a design for us, that I am sure o'."

"And what would that be, Red?" Maya asked cynically.

Isabeau shrugged. "I do no' ken. All I am sure o' is that the Spinners are spinning their wheel and weaving the cloth o' our lives, and one day the pattern will be clear to us. It surely can be no coincidence that the swans brought us to the very island that ye had taken refuge on, do ye no' agree? There are many other populated islands in the Muir Finn, yet the swans brought us here."

"Happen we were the closest," Maya said. "This island was too small and rocky for the pirates to pay much attention to. Many a time we've hidden in the jungle and watched their ships sail by. Any o' the bigger islands nearby have been ransacked time and time again by the pirates and are naught but ruins now."

"Happen that be true," Isabeau said, "but something tells me there is a deeper, more complex reason. The Coven believes that coincidences are often the workings o' the Spinners, and I feel by the twitching o' my thumbs that this is such a case."

"So why were ye brought here, then?" Maya's skepticism was unabated.

"I do no' ken," Isabeau said again. "Happen it is time for your thread to be brought back into the Spinners' tapestry."

Maya made an impatient gesture. "I do no' understand all your talk o' threads and tapestries. The Fair-gean do no' believe in your Spinners. Indeed, how could we? We do no' make cloth so it is a metaphor empty o' meaning for us."

Isabeau hesitated. "Ye could say the Spinners are a metaphor for the workings o' fate, the great motion o' events that work unseen upon our lives. Ye could think o' fate as being like a tide at the full, that sweeps ye onward. Ye were the one who taught me that it is the moons that cause the tides to rise and fall. It seemed incredible to me, that the swing of those two small moons through our skies should have the power to drag the seas to and fro; to make them rise so high and fall so low.

"So it is with our lives. There is a power that works upon us, carrying us forward to who kens where. We can fight against the tide and be dragged down by it, or we can allow ourselves to be carried along by it. Even better, we can use our own will as a rudder to steer a course upon it, navigating by what we have learned upon the journey and so avoiding rocks and sandbanks and sea-serpents. To believe in the tide o' destiny is no' to surrender belief in one's own will. We always have a choice. Even deciding to swim with the tide and no' against it is a decision."

Isabeau came to a halt, conscious that her voice had risen in pitch and intensity as she had sought to make Maya understand. She continued more softly: "Unfortunately most o' us do no' learn enough upon our journey to steer the best course for our lives. We run aground or are swamped by waves or are wrecked upon the rocks, sometimes many, many times before we learn to recognize the danger signs. And the choices we have made in the past determine the course we are sailing, for how we choose to act and react to the workings
o'
fate is what makes us who we are."