by Kate Forsyth
As Nina and the girls went up the stairs, Iven turned to the gillie and said, ‘Now, let’s have a look at that tree, shall we?’
Durward bowed his head and led them down the hall.
It was very quiet up on their floor of the castle. Maisie and Rhiannon were both asleep, the first peacefully, the other tossing and turning and muttering incoherently. Landon had been doing his best to soothe and comfort her, but was very glad to leave Rhiannon alone for a moment and come and join them in the main suite.
Nina moved restlessly about the room, standing at the window for a while, and then coming across to pet her sunbird, who sat on the top rung of the chair-back, head cocked.
‘I just wish we could get out o’ here,’ the journeywitch said unhappily. ‘I hate being confined within four walls all the time.’
‘Personally I’m enjoying being back in civilisation,’ Edithe said, smoothing the velvet of her skirt over her knees. ‘I canna understand why ye wish to spend all day riding through the rain in preference to being here, in the lap o’ luxury.’
‘I canna help feeling we’re caught in a trap,’ Nina said. ‘I canna even call a bird to my hand to take a message to the Rìgh! I’ve been trying since we arrived, but the ravens just chase any bird that comes away. I’d feel happier if someone kent where we are!’
The sunbird gave a long, melodious trill.
Landon looked up. ‘She’s a brave bird, volunteering to fly to the Rìgh for ye. It’s a long way for such a wee bird.’
‘Is that what she said?’ Fèlice exclaimed. ‘Ye’re good, understanding her. I just canna get my head around the language o’ birds. It sounds awfully pretty but working out what it means!’ She shook her head ruefully.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ Nina said. ‘I couldna bear to lose her. She kens the way, o’ course, she has been to Lucescere hundreds o’ times, but never alone and never across the mountains.’
The sunbird trilled again, derisively.
‘Could ye really give her a message to take?’ Edithe was incredulous. ‘She’s naught but a silly little parrot. How would she ken where to go?’
Nina said angrily, ‘She may be small but she’s smart as anything, and she kens the Rìgh well. He speaks the language o’ birds, and has always taken the time to converse with her.’
‘Then should ye no’ send her?’ Landon asked. ‘I mean, if that’s our only chance o’ getting a message to the Rìgh?’
Nina stroked the bird’s iridescent cheek. ‘She’s no’ strong enough to fly across the mountains.’
The sunbird squawked indignantly.
Nina smiled faintly. ‘I ken ye are a mountain bird, my pretty, but ye canna tell me a sunbird is strong enough to cross the ranges here, they’re very high.’
The sunbird shook out her brilliant tail-feathers and puffed up her wings, looking cross.
‘Are ye sure?’ Nina said. ‘For indeed I am anxious to tell the Rìgh o’ our suspicions. Though we will be able to tell him ourselves, o’ course, once we get to Lucescere. But just in case …’ Her voice died away.
There was a long silence. Fèlice looked rather scared. ‘We’re no’ in any danger, are we, Nina?’ she asked at last. ‘Ye do no’ suspect …’
Nina got up, shaking out her skirts determinedly. ‘I’m sorry, my bairns,’ she said with a return of her usual manner. ‘I’m all on edge from being kept cooped up in here. A jongleur to the bone, I am, I’m afraid. We like the rolling road and the open air. Do no’ mind me. I’ll send the Rìgh a message, just to put my mind at peace, and then I’m going to go out and get some fresh air!’
She sat down at the desk and tore a thin scroll of parchment from the writing paper stacked there. She quickly wrote a brief message on it, and then rolled it up, inserting it into a message-tube that Lulu brought her from her bag.
‘Is it safe, to just send a message like that?’ Fèlice asked, wide-eyed.
‘I wrote in code,’ Nina said. ‘Believe me, Lachlan and Dide and I have been sending each other messages by bird since we were bairns. He will understand.’
She held out her hand to the sunbird, who flew across to her with a flash of its brightly coloured wings. Nina crooned to it lovingly as she attached the little steel tube to the sunbird’s leg. ‘Fly swift and safe, my pretty,’ she said, opening the casements wide and throwing the sunbird out. Higher and higher the little bird flew, up towards the sun, carolling joyfully to be out riding the winds again.
Suddenly there was a loud, harsh cry. A raven dropped down from the castle’s northern tower, its wings so black and glossy in the sunshine they seemed to flash silver. Nina cried out in alarm. The sunbird ducked and dived, but the raven was too fast for it. It seized the little green bird in its claws and pecked it cruelly, once, twice, thrice. Then it let go, calmly circling back up to its tower. The sunbird fell in a welter of bright feathers.
Nina cried out, then she turned and ran from the room. They all hurried after her, distressed. It was a long way down to the courtyard below, and they brushed past countless surprised servants and a very displeased seneschal on the way, almost toppling him over. When they finally reached the courtyard, with its green oblong of garden set in the centre, it was to find Nina on her knees, cradling her dead bird, weeping. None of the apprentices had ever seen the sorceress break down before and, appalled, they crowded round her, trying to comfort her.
Nina got to her feet, wiping away her tears with an impatient hand. ‘I should have kent better,’ she said grimly. ‘O’ course the ravens would no’ let her pass.’
She kissed the dead bird’s limp head and then turned to Landon. ‘Will ye help me bury her?’
He nodded, looking white and shocked.
‘Edithe, I do no’ want Rhiannon and Maisie left alone. Can ye go and sit with them, please?’
Edithe was displeased, but she nodded reluctantly and went back into the castle, while Fèlice slid one arm about Nina’s waist. ‘I’m so very sorry.’
‘Me too,’ Nina answered. She turned her face up to the sky, where ravens wheeled ceaselessly around the two looming towers, cawing loudly as if in mockery. ‘I hate this place,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, when can we get away from here?’
The road down to the lowlands was enclosed on both sides by high stone walls so Lewen felt as if they walked along a tunnel. Although the sun shone and the wind blew briskly, it was cold as ice inside the walls and the stones wept water.
Gradually the wall on their right grew lower, until Lewen was able to see glimpses of the valley below if he stood on his toes. It looked impossibly benign in the sunshine, a rolling landscape of freshly tilled fields, green meadows and fluffy white sheep.
At last they came to the edge of the castle, and the high stone wall turned at a sharp right angle, continuing up a steep, rugged cliff. Only a few steps past the end of the wall, a massive tree lay right across the road. It had smashed the low wall on the right-hand side, its branches hanging out above the precipice. Its bulk completely filled the road.
‘It’ll take forever to saw through that,’ Cameron groaned.
Durward glanced at him and the heavy muscles beside his mouth moved infinitesimally. Lewen wondered if that was what passed for a smile on the gillie’s face, and wondered why the man should be pleased.
Iven raised an eyebrow at Lewen, who shrugged and stepped forward to lay his hand on the thick, mossy trunk. It was an oak tree and immensely old. In the innumerable rings of years the tree carried within its core, he could still sense the slow song of growing, of wind and rain and sunshine and birds singing, the deliberate groping down of root and groping out of branch and twig, the swelling of life in countless acorns then lost to the immutable laws of gravity. That solemn song, that could have been intoned for another century or more, had been broken in a shriek of metal, shuddering branches, and then the slow inevitable topple and crash of the living giant.
Lewen stepped away from the tree, glanced at Durward’s impassive countenance, and then at I
ven. Then he went to the smashed wall and swung himself up into the branches, making his way out past the wall and leaning perilously above the abyss. It was a fall of several hundred feet to the river below, the steep cliff broken only by the regular lines of the road switchbacking its way down the cliff-face.
‘Be careful!’ Iven called. Roden jumped up and down, saying, ‘Can I climb out there too, Dai, please? I want to see!’
Even hanging as he was so dangerously above that dreadful drop, Lewen did not climb back at once, transfixed by the sight of the Findhorn Falls roaring down the cliff so close by. It was truly a magnificent sight. The waterfall looked as wide as an ocean, all foaming white and bursting in cataracts around outcrops of rock that broke the seamless curtains of water. The spray was so thick he could barely see the towering shape of Ravenscraig, built high on its crag of rock, on the far side of the river.
‘Lewen!’ Iven cried imperatively.
‘Coming,’ he called back, and began to carefully make his way back to the road, clinging tightly to the massive branches. The tree rocked a little with his weight, causing Cameron and Rafferty to cry out in alarm. Lewen shifted his weight, leapt down lightly onto the trunk of the tree and ran up its length towards its roots.
‘Ye should get down, lad,’ Durward suddenly called. ‘That tree’s no’ safe.’
It was the first time they had heard the gillie-coise speak. He had an oddly light, shrill voice for such a large man. Lewen ignored him. He caught hold of the massive roots and pulled himself up so he could look down into the muddy pit where the tree had once clung to the cliff-side. Then he thoughtfully made his way back down the slippery trunk and jumped down to land with a heavy thump in the ditch of the road.
‘Well?’ Iven said.
‘Cameron’s right, it’s a big job to cut through the trunk,’ Lewen said. ‘That oak will be as hard as iron. I reckon we can lever it over the edge, though.’
The muscles in Durward’s forehead contracted slightly.
‘Will it no’ just crash down on the road below?’ Iven asked.
‘No’ if we get enough momentum up. We’ll use Sure and Steady to help us drag the tree forward, and weight the branches, and lever up the trunk. It should flip right over, with all that weight, and fall down into the river. We may need to help drag it out o’ the river once we get down there, in case it causes an obstruction, but that willna be too hard a job.’
‘Excellent,’ Iven said. ‘Let us go and get Sure and Steady, and some tools, and get to work. I’d like to be on our way by this afternoon, if we can.’
Durward’s brows inched closer together.
As the men began the walk back up to the castle, Lewen fell back behind the others with Iven and Roden. The little boy was engaged in jumping in all the puddles, splashing mud and water high into the air, and it was not hard to let the others hurry on ahead with exclamations of annoyance as their boots and breeches were wet through.
‘The tree was felled,’ he said to Iven in a low voice. ‘It dinna fall naturally.’
‘Ye mean it was cut down? On purpose?’
‘No’ cut down, as such. The ground beneath the tree was loosened, with picks and shovels, it looks like, and some of the tap-roots severed. Then the tree was hauled down with a rope. The scars o’ it are clear on the trunk.’
‘Are ye sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure. Working with wood is my Talent, remember. This tree did not fall down and block the road naturally, that I’m sure o’.’
‘So happen the laird did mean to keep us at Fettercairn,’ Iven said slowly. ‘But why?’
‘For his experiments in death, o’ course,’ Lewen said. ‘Ye heard what Rhiannon said.’
‘So ye really think Rhiannon is telling the truth?’ Iven said curiously. ‘It’s a lot to swallow, dinna ye think?’
Lewen dropped his voice even lower as he noticed Durward turn to stare at them. ‘She kens nothing about witches or the Coven. How could she ken necromancers use a circle o’ nine? Or sacrifice a cock? She dinna ken what a cat o’ nine tails was, remember?’
‘I suppose that’s true. Though it would be easy enough to pretend no’ to ken details like that.’
‘She kent the name o’ the laird’s dead brother,’ Lewen pointed out. ‘How could she possibly have kent that without overhearing it?’
‘True.’
‘And she said something about the tower being built on a Heart o’ Stars. How on earth could she ken what that was? A satyricorn lass that has never left the mountains afore?’
Iven quirked his eyebrow. ‘Lewen, we only have Rhiannon’s word for it that she is a wild satyricorn girl from the mountains.’
Lewen stared at him in surprise. ‘But …’
‘Och, I agree that it would be an elaborate deception and I can see little reason for it, but ye must no’ always be taking things at face value. One thing ye learn in the business I am in is that people very rarely tell the truth. That’s one reason Connor will be so sorely missed. He had an uncanny ability to convince people to tell true.’
Lewen was silent.
Iven grinned at him. ‘I’m no’ saying I think Rhiannon has been lying to ye every step o’ the way, my lad, I’m just saying no’ to believe everything ye hear, from anyone. No’ even me.’
Lewen took a deep breath. ‘Fine, happen that’s so, but still, what Rhiannon says she saw last night explains an awful lot, dinna ye think? About what’s been happening in the Fetterness Valley?’
Iven nodded. ‘Aye, it does. Enough to make me wary o’ shadows. But Lewen, why would the laird o’ Fettercairn try to keep us prisoner here? Do ye really think he plans to murder us? All o’ us?’
Lewen was troubled and unsure. ‘After twenty-five years, it must be hard finding people to kill and then try to raise again. The people o’ Fetterness Valley are frightened now, and do no’ go out alone anymore. He must’ve thought a caravan o’ wandering jongleurs a gift from Gearradh.’
‘Ye’re right. No-one would’ve kent what happened to us. We would’ve just disappeared. So why then has he no’ killed us?’
‘Happen he did no’ ken who ye were when he had the tree felled,’ Lewen answered. ‘It’s one thing to waylay any auld traveller, but the sister o’ the Earl o’ Caerlaverock, the Rìgh’s best friend? And a former Yeoman? Escorting a group o’ witch-apprentices, some o’ them nobly born? He would no’ dare. We would be missed and eventually tracked here to the castle. Nay, I reckon once he found out who we really were, he decided it would be too dangerous to just murder us out o’ hand.’
‘But still he does no’ want us to clear away the tree,’ Iven said, pretending to smile as the gillie once more turned to stare at them.
‘No. I wonder why?’
‘Ye’d think he’d want to get rid o’ us fast, once he decided it was too dangerous to kill us.’
‘Happen he realises that we have begun to suspect him,’ Lewen said. ‘Certainly they must ken Rhiannon saw something last night. They canna ken how much, surely.’
‘We will need to be very careful. If he realises how much we already ken …’
‘Dai! Dai! Look!’ Roden called, and jumped with both feet into such an enormous puddle that brown water flew up everywhere, splattering them from head to toe.
‘Roden!’ Iven said in exasperation. ‘Look at ye, ye’re soaked! Your mama will be furious. Come here!’
He bent and brushed off the worst of the mud, then took Roden’s wet hand. Lewen took the boy’s other hand and between them they swung Roden back and forth, moving up the last stretch of road to where Cameron, Rafferty and the gillie waited for them, the gillie’s face hard with suspicion. Roden squealed with excitement.
‘We must act as if we ken naught, suspect naught,’ Iven said rapidly over Roden’s head. ‘And we must get a message to the Rìgh, just in case something happens …’
‘But how?’
‘The Scrying Pool at the Tower o’ Ravens,’ Iven said decisively. ‘The MacBrann
used it during the Bright Wars. If the pool worked then, happen it still works now. Lewen, ye must go and see. We must think o’ some excuse. Take Roden, go tell Nina what we ken. Tell her to do whatever she must to soothe their suspicions. If the laird thinks we ken, we’ll never get out o’ here alive.’
‘Again! Again!’ Roden cried, and they swung him high into the air.
‘Ye are nothing but trouble,’ Iven said to him as they came up beside the others. ‘Look at ye! Your boots are wet through. Your mother will have my head.’
Roden looked down at his boots in surprise.
‘Lewen, will ye take this wicked laddie back to his mam? The last thing we need is Roden coming down with a chill.’
‘Sure,’ Lewen answered.
Roden was furious. ‘No! I dinna want to go back. I want to see the tree crash down.’
‘No, laddie. It’s too dangerous, and I do no’ want ye getting underfoot. Go on back to your mam.’
‘No! I won’t!’
‘Och, aye, ye will, my lad,’ Iven said sternly. ‘Ye’re soaked through and it’s cold. Now do as I say.’
Roden began to cry. ‘No! I dinna want to! Please, Dai, I want to stay, please, please?’
‘Nay, laddie. Go on back with Lewen now.’
‘Come on, Roden,’ Lewen said winningly, but Roden dragged his hand away and sat down obstinately in the middle of the road.
‘I’m no’ going!’
Iven jerked his head at Lewen, who bent and picked Roden up. ‘Never mind,’ he said consolingly. ‘Let’s go and see what we can find for morning tea. I bet I can rustle up some hot chocolate for ye. That’ll warm ye up again.’
Roden wept noisily, squirming like an eel. Lewen carried him swiftly through the gatehouse towards the castle. As he went he heard Iven say to the gillie, ‘Bairns! Have ye any yourself?’
By the time they reached the inner ward, Roden had insisted on being put down so he could walk. ‘I’m no’ a babe,’ he said furiously.
‘Then stop acting like one,’ Lewen said, and Roden thrust out his bottom lip and stalked ahead with a great air of injury.