The Shining City (72 page)

But she is a banrìgh, no‟ a witch. Her control over her powers is incomplete. When she is grieved or angry, she brings snow, and ice, and storm. Do no‟ be so hasty in judging her. She has lost her husband and all her bairns this night. Just be glad she has no‟ buried us in snow.”

“But o‟ all the Talents, weather working is the most dangerous, the most difficult to control,”

Gwilym argued. “Surely she—”

“She is the Banrìgh no longer,” Briant cut in eagerly. “Happen she will join the Coven now?”

There was a long silence. Everyone looked anxiously to Isabeau, who often found Briant‟s tactlessness exasperating and was sometimes quick to depress his pretensions. But either Isabeau was too tired, or too sick, or too grieved to take umbrage, for she merely shrugged and sighed and laid her head back on her pillows, turning her cheek away from them.

“So is the weather very bad then?” Wise Tully asked. Everyone turned to her with a little stir of surprise, for she had been so quiet, with her head sunk on her chest, that they had thought her sleeping.

“Horrendous,” Dide answered. “Hailstorms and snowstorms and freak strikes o‟ lightning all across southern Eileanan.”

“The summer harvest is ruined. Ruined!” Jock Crofter said.

“The city sorceress of Dùn Gorm says the seas are running so high and wild, no one wants to set out from the safety o‟ the port. Bronwen . . . Her Majesty . . . has ordered the navy on standby, though, for we must stop Laird Malvern afore he reaches the Fair Isles. . . .” Nina said, her voice cracking with the strain.

“Which is where ye come in, Briant,” Cailean said with an affectionate, mocking glance.

Briant did not see the mockery. “Sounds like fun,” he said eagerly and got up, wanting to go and battle the stormy seas at once.

“And what o‟ me?” Dide asked softly.

Isabeau turned her great dilated black eyes on him.

“Ye must choose what ye will,” she said. Her words came slowly, and she paused to fight for breath. “I thought Nina would want ye to go with her, to save Roden. He is your blood, your heir, the hope o‟ your house. I canna ask ye to come with me, as much as I want ye to, when I ken he has need o‟ ye.”

Dide did not reply. He was clearly torn.

Nina put her hand on his arm. “Go with Beau,” she said gently. “She needs ye more than I do.

Her Majesty has pledged us a battalion o‟ soldiers to pursue the laird o‟ Fettercairn, and a fleet o‟

ships if we want them. Finn and Jay are already hot on his heels, and we leave in the morning with the best boatmen the river can offer. The laird will never make it to sea, and even if he does I‟ll have Iven there, and Finn and Jay too. . . .”

“And me!” Briant said gaily.

“And Stormy Briant as well. I would dearly love your support, but . . .”

“I will go with Beau,” Dide said, clearly grateful. “Thank ye.”

“We will go tomorrow, at dawn,” Isabeau said. “It is best to open the doors at the change in the tide o‟ powers. Cailean, Ghislaine, will ye be ready? Try to get some sleep. The Auld Ways are perilous indeed. Ye will need all your wits about ye. Gwilym, will ye seek audience with Her Majesty and tell her what we plan? She will want to ken.”

They nodded and rose, Cailean helping Wise Tully to her feet with his usual grave courtesy.

Isabeau was too overwrought to do more than murmur her thanks, but Gwilym drew them aside, issuing a series of directives and commands that the two sorcerers did their best to absorb.

Gradually the room emptied. Dide stayed where he was until the very end, but at last rose, his dark eyes concerned. “Ye look worn out,
leannan
,” he said. “I‟ll go. Try to get some sleep.”

Isabeau groaned and moved her hands fretfully. “I‟ll never sleep, Dide. Canna ye see? This spell

. . . this compulsion . . . It‟s taking all my strength, all my concentration to fight it! Please . . .”

“What can I do?” Dide said at once, seizing one of her restless hands.

“Stay with me,” she said. “Distract me! Oh, Dide. I feel my own mortality keenly. Help me . . . I want . . . I wish . . .”

“It‟ll be my pleasure,” Dide said and bent to kiss the pulse beating so frantically in her throat.

Iain of Arran stood in his wife‟s bedchamber, staring at himself in the dressing table mirror. He looked thin and old and ineffectual. His hair, never thick, was now receding so that his face seemed all bony temples and pointy nose. His shoulders were stooped, and his neck was

scrawny. His hands, protruding from the cuffs of his shirt, trembled slightly. He clenched them together, and then, reaching a decision, bent and put his finger to the lock of the dressing table drawer.

There was a faint click inside as the lock sprang open. Iain‟s mouth relaxed a little. He was, though few people realized it, a powerful sorcerer. Gently he drew the drawer open. His mother‟s fan lay inside, neatly folded.

Iain took the fan out and turned it over in his hands. His mother had carried it often, for the marshes of Arran were steamy hot most of the year round, and there was rarely any breeze to relieve the weight of humidity. He had not seen it since her death, though. He had no idea where it had been. Most of his mother‟s things had been packed away, for they were far too opulent for his wife‟s austere taste and besides, they carried unhappy memories for Iain, who had been deathly afraid of his mother.

Margrit of Arran had been a malevolent swarthyweb spider of a woman. She had plotted and conspired to help bring down the Coven of Witches, merely so that she would be the most powerful sorceress in the land. She had helped cast a curse on Lachlan that had struck him down into a living death, and she had kidnapped children with magical talent from all over the country to incarcerate them in her witch-school so that she, and only she, would control all the magic in the land. It was Margrit who had arranged Iain‟s marriage to Elfrida NicHilde of Tìrsoilleir.

Elfrida had spent all of her life as a prisoner of the Fealde, taught to abhor all of the natural pleasures of the world as frivolous vanities that led inexorably to hell. She had not been allowed to sing, or dance, or hear music, or laugh, or talk idly, or play games, or eat sweets, or wear any color other than black or grey. She had to pray as many as six times a day and was taught to mortify the flesh to exalt the spirit. Many, many times she was forced to renounce her dead parents as devil worshippers and heretics, and spit upon their portraits.

Elfrida‟s childhood had been so bleak and cruel that Iain had been overwhelmed with sympathy for her. They had shared bitter tales of their upbringing and, in sharing them, drawn much of the sting out of them. Together they had found the strength to reject those who sought to use them as pawns in their games of power, and together had fled Arran and pledged their support to the newly crowned Rìgh, Lachlan.

That had been many years ago. Their twenty-four years of marriage had been years of

contentment and tranquillity. Iain loved his wife and son wholeheartedly and had felt himself blessed indeed.

Yet slowly a shadow had darkened the small, quiet rhythm of their days. He had found his sleep haunted by memories of his mother and more than once had woken from sleep with a cry of fear in his throat, and tears scorching his eyes. He knew his restlessness disturbed Elfrida, for she too slept badly and woke most mornings heavy-eyed and listless. Iain had sought to spare his wife his hag-ridden nights and so had taken to sleeping in a separate room. Elfrida did not seem to sleep any better, though, and sometimes he was awoken by her crying out in the night. She complained of headaches and began to spend part of each day locked away in her room with the curtains drawn.

Once or twice a year, Iain and his wife went on a procession through Tìrsoilleir, so that Elfrida could keep in touch with her people and visit Bride, the city where she had been born. The people of Bride had always been glad to welcome her, and Iain and Elfrida would spend a few weeks being entertained by the great lords and merchants, and looking over guild agreements and new laws and the accounts of the Lord Treasurer.

The last time they had visited, there had been a noticeable difference in the way they were entertained. The people of Tìrsoilleir had always been suspicious of any kind of merrymaking, and so the feast and masques put on for them were always dour in comparison to those staged in Lucescere. This time, though, there was precious little entertaining at all. Grizelda, the new Fealde, disapproved of any sign of merriment, they were told, and sought to bring the people of Tìrsoilleir back to a godly way of life.

When Iain and Elfrida came home again to Arran, Father Maurice came with them, an

appointment urged on them by Grizelda. He had been a cold, unpleasant presence ever since, as constantly behind Elfrida as her shadow. She had given up even such small pleasures that she had ever allowed herself and taken to wearing grey and black again. Iain had been sorry for it, but he loved his wife and knew that a childhood as filled with terrors as hers had been was hard to shake off.

Which was why it had been so odd to see her carrying a sumptuous gold fan on the night of the wedding. Elfrida never wore gold, and she had never carried a fan in her life, not even in the very midst of an oppressive Arran summer. She did not care for the vagaries of fashion, thinking it all vanity and frivolity. To see his mother‟s fan in Elfrida‟s hand had given Iain‟s heart a very queer jolt, and he had been upset and troubled ever since.

He furled and unfurled the fan a few times, and then sat down on his wife‟s stool so he could examine it more closely. Many of his mother‟s things had a trick to them. Rings that twisted open so poison could be slipped into a guest‟s cup, or dresses made from material that had been soaked in some toxic liquid so that the wearer died horribly, and mysteriously, far away from the giver. One pair of Margrit‟s shoes had a hidden blade concealed in the heel that could cut a man‟s hamstrings with a backward flick, and the arms of her throne had daggers concealed within that could be thrown forward with a press of one‟s thumb on a secret button.

It took him only a few seconds to discover the trick of the fan. He twisted one of the embossed golden sticks that framed the fan, and the knob came off in his hand. He was able to draw out a slender golden tube. Very carefully, Iain tipped the tube up and out fell three of the black barbs the bogfaeries used to kill their enemies. Handling one with great caution, Iain lifted it to his nose and sniffed. He could smell the unmistakable odor of the poison the bogfaeries distilled from one of the marsh plants.

Iain‟s pulse beat rapidly in his throat. He had difficulty swallowing. He carefully put the barbs back inside the golden tube and slid it back in place within the fan‟s frame. He furled the fan closed and held it there on his lap, his mind a blank.

The door opened, and Elfrida and Neil came in together.

“I am so glad, darling!” Elfrida cried. “Well done!”

“It is a very great honor,” Neil said. “I just hope I do no‟ let Her Majesty down.”

“Iain!” Elfrida called, but then came to a halt just inside the door, her eyes on her husband, who sat on her stool, the golden fan in his hands. The color drained away from her cheeks, leaving her a pasty white.

Neil did not notice. He came on in a great burst of excitement, his cheeks glowing with color.

“
Dai-dein
! Ye‟ll never guess! Bronwen . . . Her Majesty has appointed me Master o‟ Horse. Me!

I‟m to ride behind her everywhere she goes, and have quarters in her wing, and everything.”

“That is a very great honor,” Iain said. His voice came out oddly.

Neil noticed some of his father‟s strain. “I ken it means I will be away from Arran for some time,” he said and came to stoop over his father and kiss the bald top of his head. “But I have lived half my life in Lucescere, anyway, and I‟ll still come home to visit . . . though no‟ until wintertime!”

Iain tried to smile.

Neil rambled on. “I am to wear the Banrìgh‟s livery—she has designed it herself. It is to have the MacCuinn stag quartered with the sea serpent o‟ the Fairgean royalty and be all in blue and white. She says I must find her a white palfrey to ride on. And Mama says she will stay a while, here in Lucescere, just until all is settled, to help me and advise me on how to go on, for indeed, it is a great leap from being a mere squire to one of the three greatest officers o‟ the household.

Will ye stay too,
Dai-dein
?”

Iain looked at his wife, then down at the fan in his hand. He carefully laid it back in the half-open drawer and closed the drawer.

“No,” he said. “I shall go home to Arran.”

R
hiannon came quietly in to Lewen‟s room, closing the door behind her. It was late afternoon, but the room was dim for the shutters had been drawn over the windows. Lewen slept, but the healer had told Rhiannon that he had woken and eaten some soup at noon and drunk some of the strengthening tea she had brewed him, and she was satisfied that he would soon recover.

The healer had spoken with great warmth and kindness to Rhiannon, for the story of how Lewen had saved her from hanging had already raced all around the Tower of Two Moons. It was considered a great romance, and Landon was already hard at work writing another ballad which he hoped would be as enormously popular as “Rhiannon‟s Ride.”