The Witches of Eileanan (43 page)

Sani took the tray and shut the door in her face. "Aye, just thought she'd take the chance to spy through our keyhole more like! I wonder how long she was standing there, listening."

Maya wrapped the gown around her more securely and lifted the lids on the tray. To her relief, there was fish, lightly cooked, and rice wrapped in seaweed, just the way she liked it. "Och, Latifa is harmless," she said lightly. "She's so auld now she probably could no' hear a thing anyway. Keep an eye on her, though, just in case." She sat at the table, careful not to bump the mirror, and began to eat. "Try to contact the Grand-Seeker Glynelda. Find out what is happening up there in the Sithiche Mountains that everything should go so wrong."

Sani obeyed, rocking back and forth before the mirror and muttering to herself. At last her sight seemed to clear, for she sat straight and leaned into the mirror, her face grim. "Greetings, Grand-Seeker. What is your report?"

"Things are going according to plan, my lady, although we have no' been able to capture the Cripple as ye instructed. We had him in our hands, though, and indeed ye were right, he is an
uile-bheist,
winged like a bird."

"If ye had him in your hands long enough to establish he has wings, why is he no' on his way to us?"

"He was rescued, my lady, by rebels and witches. We have many soldiers out hunting through the hills, and the region's best trackers, and are confident we will soon have him in our hands again."

"That is no' good enough!" Sani snarled. "Ye should never have let him escape!"

"We caught one o' the witches who freed him, my lady!" the Grand-Seeker Glynelda said eagerly. By leaning over as she ate, Maya could just see the watery reflection of Glynelda's face in the mirror. "She was given to the monster o' the loch, as is the custom up here."

"How did she ken ye had him? Ye were meant to move in quiet and stealth!"

"I do no' ken, my lady." Glynelda's consternation came through clearly.

"Why no'? Was she no' put to the Question?"

"Well, aye, she was, my lady, but she killed the Grand-Questioner, and anything he discovered before he died, died with him."

Maya and her wrinkled old servant looked at each other in absolute consternation. The Grand-Questioner, Baron Yutta, had been one of the most powerful sorcerers in the service of the Banrìgh, and as careful and canny a servant as anyone could hope for. His predilection for causing pain had been spotted by Sani early on, and he had served her the best of any of the Awl, ferreting out witches and revolutionaries as easily as a hound scented the trail of a deer.

"Ye should have brought her here!" Sani said angrily. "She was obviously a powerful sorceress to have freed the leader o' the rebels, then killed the Grand-Questioner. Ye are a fool! Why did ye no' have her shipped down to us? We would have been very interested in questioning her ourselves."

In the dim reflection, they saw the Grand-Seeker wetting her lips. "She was a slippery, tricky witch, my lady. We chased her all over the highlands, and she almost escaped us three times. It was only my personal attention to the case that resulted in her capture. I was afraid she would escape again if we allowed her to live. There was another reason too. The hunting down o' the magic monsters has made the people here very uneasy. They have lived with their misbegotten dragons and serpents for so long they fain no' see them destroyed. It was a public show o' power and discipline, my lady."

"Are ye sure the witch is dead?" Maya whispered, and in a louder voice Sani repeated her question.

"Och, aye, my lady. I watched over her execution myself. She was bound hand and foot and thrown in the loch, and the
uile-bheist
was already waiting, scenting his food." As she spoke of the loch's serpent, her mouth screwed up as if she had tasted something nasty. "She would have been devoured before she could even have drowned."

"Was the witch auld, very auld, and wee? With black eyes?" Maya asked, and again Sani repeated her question.

"No, my lady, she was young, only a lass still, and red. That was how I spied her out—I found one o' her hairs at the campsite after we discovered the prisoner was missing. I was able to follow her, using the hair, and then prove she was the one we sought. Red hair is no' as rare in the mountains as it is on the coast, my lady, but it is still rare enough."

"So have ye found any signs o' the Arch-Sorceress Meghan, she who talks with animals and commands the earth?" Sani asked, at Maya's prompting. "My Banrìgh is still very anxious that the Rìgh's renegade cousin be found. If she is alive, the Rìgh still has hopes o' bringing her to the Truth; and if she is dead, well, then we shall bury her with all due pomp."

Glynelda hesitated, then said softly, "My lady, the Seeker Thoth did send me a message some weeks ago. He said that he had stumbled across a conclave o' witches, performing their foul rites at the height o' the comet's passing, and did storm their stronghold with the help o' the Gray One. One witch at least was killed, maybe two, although the second body was no' found. By use o' their perilous talents the other witches escaped, but he has promised me they will be found. He said then that one o' the witches caused the earth to open beneath their feet, and all the beasts o' the field and forest came to her call and fought at her direction."

"Meghan!" Maya breathed. "It must be her!"

"Why, Grand-Seeker, did ye no' contact us with this news? Ye ken how anxious the Rìgh is for news o' his cousin."

"My apologies, my lady, it is just I hoped to contact ye with better and more concrete news. Always we hear o' sightings o' the auld witch but always they are just stories. I wanted to be sure afore I reported."

"And why has several weeks gone past without any o' these witches being captured? How many did escape?"

"I suspect the witch we captured last night was one o' those witches, for we did track her down through the lower range o' the Sithiche Mountains and through the Pass to Rionnagan, and that was the way some o' the witches did seem to escape. Thoth followed the one we feared was the Arch-Sorceress, both because he knew she was important and because she was heading toward the Dragon Stair, and he feared her intentions."

"So, Meghan, your fine fingers were meddling in my affairs again!" Maya hissed.

"And what news o' the dragons, my dear?" Sani asked sweetly.

"My messengers have no' yet returned, but I will soon have news, and am confident that we will hear all the cursed dragons have been wiped out," the Grand-Seeker said complacently.

Sani leaned forward so her mouth was only inches away from the enchanted mirror. "Ye are wrong, Glynelda. And ye will suffer for your mistakes! Ye said the dragons would no' attack our forces, that they would respect the ancient pact made with Aedan Whitelock and we could destroy them all. Ye were mistaken, and the Banrìgh does no' like mistakes!"

Even in the dim, rippling surface of the mirror, they could see the Grand Seeker's face become ashen, her eyes black with fear. "What. .. why? What has happened?"

"The dragons struck at the legions and wiped them out. As we speak they lick their bluidied chops as our troops lie in pools o' their own blood. The dragons have the taste o' human flesh now. Can ye tell me they will no' like it?"

"How could this have happened? That fool Thoth! He must have grown overconfident—"

"And who gave us all reason for confidence?" Sani asked softly. "Who assured us that all the dragons would wait afore retaliating, that their
honor
would mean they would no' break the Pact o' Aedan Whitelock until it was too late?"

The Grand-Seeker had shown her fear for only a moment. Though still pale, she said confidently, "Ye asked me to tell ye all I ken o' dragons, my lady, and that is what I did. But I am no' a dragon-laird. I canna tell the minds o' so awful and alien a creature. All the books on dragons were burned with the ill-fated Towers and the cursed witches. When ye did ask me I told ye what I ken—that the dragons do be slow to move but terrible in their movement; that they do honor the Rìgh's mighty ancestor and, unlike humans, will honor its spirit and no' just its word; that females are rare and breeding difficult. How am I blame?"

"Ye should have overseen the slaying o' the dragons yourself!"

"But ye did instruct me to find the winged
uile-bheist
and bring him to ye," the Grand-Seeker said. "I did but follow your orders."

Sani was growing tired of the Grand-Seeker and she allowed it to show on her face. "Beware, Glynelda, that ye do no' displease me," she whispered. "Ye are Grand-Seeker. I elevated ye above all others because I believed ye capable. I fain no' be proved wrong."

"No, my lady." The Grand-Seeker licked her lips.

Sani waved her hand across the surface of the mirror and they both watched as the surface grew bright and clear again. Afterward they sat in silence, until at last Maya said, "Meghan is a sea-urchin spike in my side. We must hunt her down."

"Ye think she had something to do with the unexpected attack o' the dragons?"

"Och, aye, Meghan's fingerprints are all over this one!"

"We have been hunting her for sixteen years, Maya, and she keeps slipping through our fingers."

"She went underground. That is why we have no' heard 0' her for so long. By Jor, I had hoped she had died!"

Sani said nothing about the curse, just stared into the mirror again. "Do ye wish me to see what I can scry out?"

Maya nodded. "Try for Meghan again. She may have let her shield slip in the excitement o' the moment."

"And then we must contact your father," Sani said maliciously.

Maya felt her cheeks whiten, but refused to give Sani the satisfaction of seeing her beg for more time. "Contact the other seekers first, and set them on the trail o' both the Cripple and the Arch-Sorceress. No! Better still! Call in the MacRuraich, it is time he worked for us again," she commanded. "And then let me speak to my father myself."

Ulanthe of the Forest

Lilanthe stood at the edge of a great escarpment, looking down at the plain undulating away three hundred feet below. She recognized the precipice from Isabeau's geography lessons as being the Great Divide, a narrow, steep wall of stone which formed an effective barrier between the forbidden land of Tirsoilleir and the western lands of Eileanan. Sadly she wondered what the blue-eyed witch was doing now. She hoped her quest was going well, and treasured her promise that when Isabeau returned she would seek Lilanthe out again. As Isabeau said, who knew what pattern the Weaver was designing? Perhaps their threads would cross again sooner than that.

Lilanthe had lost faith in the Spinners long ago. She could not lose faith in Eà, for it was in her flesh that Lilanthe dug her roots each night and from Eà that she drew her nourishment. But the Spinners, it was easy to disavow them when all their spinning and weaving had brought her only pain and heartbreak. Nonetheless, she hoped Isabeau was right and that their paths would cross again. In the meantime, however, Lilanthe was finding it difficult to recapture her mood of happy, aimless traveling. She was restless and lonely, and filled with admiration at what she saw as Isabeau's strength of purpose. She had followed the ridge of the escarpment out, wondering idly what Tirsoilleir looked like, but the pale hills and fields looked much like Rionnagan, only flatter. There was no sign of any warrior-maids, though she could see a few tall spires in the distance, marking the location of their kirks. Although the Alainn Falls were as spectacular as people said—wide sheets of white water crashing three hundred feet down into a loch of turbulent foam—she grew quickly tired of them, and began to wonder what she should do next.

The Sithiche Mountains curved in the shape of an upside-down smile around the gently falling hills of Rionnagan, with Dragonclaw a sharp tooth protruding from its upper lip. To the east, it crunched into the Great Divide, whose steep cliffs few could climb. If she followed the edge of the clifftop back round for some days, then turned back to the south, she should be able to find a way down into the forests of Aslinn, where Isabeau thought she might be safe. That way she could leave the Sithiche Mountains, now swarming with legions of soldiers, without having to negotiate the Pass. That way also, Lilanthe reasoned, she would be curving back round to the east, where Isabeau had gone.

She gave one more wondering glance at the dizzying drop before her, listening to the distant roar of the Alainn Falls across the curve of the horseshoe-shaped cliffs. Then she began her journey again, loping easily along the rocky edge of the plateau, the stones hard on her bare feet. For several days she followed the curve of the ridge, angling eastward and then south. Here the sharp pointed Sithiche Mountains eased down into softer hills, their feet shrouded by the thick forests of Aslinn. Lilanthe found herself looking forward to being surrounded by trees again, and began to dream of a clearing with a loch, a view of the mountains and thick, rich soil.

First, however, she had to find a way down the cliff-face, for there was no other way to reach the forest below. At last she found a spot that looked promising, where a narrow waterfall had once carved a path down the steep walls. A landslide had diverted its course, leaving behind mossy rocks and the occasional patch of herbs, for the water had brought with it soil that clung to cracks and crevices. Lilanthe knew she could send out tendrils of roots from her hands and feet to cling to the earth, and so slowly lowered herself over the side.