The Shining City

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Ye think it may have bearing upon the case?’ Lachlan demanded.

  She hesitated. ‘If it is what I think it is, well, perhaps it explains some behaviour that has puzzled me.’

  ‘Like what?’ Iseult asked.

  ‘Like why Rhiannon confessed to Lewen in the first place. Her every instinct is for survival. Every time she was questioned about Connor’s death she lied. So why did she no’ lie again, when Lewen asked her about the necklace o’ teeth?’

  ‘She saw the game was up?’

  ‘But it wasna, no’ at all. Lewen was in love with her, he would’ve believed her if she had made up some story, some excuse. There was no need for her to confess the way she did. It just does no’ seem to ring true to me.’

  ‘So ye think this goblet o’ Connor’s is some kind o’ confessing cup? A cup that compels truth-telling?’ Iseult asked, turning the idea over in her mind. ‘I can see how that would be useful.’

  ‘Me too,’ Isabeau replied.

  ‘Ye seem to be putting two and two together and getting forty to me,’ Lachlan said dismissively. ‘So what if the lass confessed? She was in love with Lewen too, remember. Love makes ye do very stupid things sometimes.’ His voice was dour, and it was clear he was thinking of his daughter.

  ‘True, but then remember what we all called Connor. Connor the Just, for his ability to find the truth o’ a matter and sort out a solution. How much easier would his job be if he had a cup o’ truth? And then think o’ Lewen. He too was driven to confess the next day, telling first Nina what Rhiannon had said, and then ye, Lachlan. Lewen is loyal to a fault. He would never have betrayed her confidence so lightly.’

  ‘I always thought so too, but Lewen has surprised me a great deal in recent months,’ Lachlan said grimly. ‘Seducing my daughter, for one! He’s lucky I do no’ have him hung, drawn and quartered!’

  ‘Well, I have my theories about that too,’ Isabeau said.

  Iseult bristled up at once in defence of her daughter, but Isabeau said, in a flat, hard voice, ‘There is something wrong there, Iseult, and do no’ try and tell me ye canna see it. Why else are ye so upset?’

  ‘It was just so sudden, so unexpected,’ Iseult said.

  ‘Exactly. It stinks o’ compulsion, this sudden mad passion o’ Lewen’s. Olwynne is too strong and subtle a witch to reveal much o’ her hand, but I’ll lay ye three gold royals that she has worked a dark spell or two.’

  ‘Why would Olwynne do such a thing?’ Lachlan cried angrily. ‘She is a royal banprionnsa, second in line to the throne. She could have anyone she wanted …’

  ‘No’ if the one she wanted was in love with someone else.’

  ‘If Lewen is too blind and stupid to see what she had to offer, she’d be better off without him.’

  ‘I agree, but tell that to a lass in love.’

  ‘I will no’ believe my daughter has been casting love spells, like some half-witted village skeelie …’

  ‘Why no’, when ye did it yourself?’ Iseult said suddenly. ‘Och, there was no need for ye to do so, for I loved ye already and ye were just too blind and stupid to see it. But ye must admit ye tried … ye sang me the song o’ love, remember, and seduced me in the wood.’

  Colour rose under Lachlan’s olive skin. ‘Aye, happen so, but that was different …’

  ‘Why?’ Iseult asked.

  Lachlan floundered, unable to explain.

  ‘I am very angry with her,’ Isabeau said. ‘Olwynne has the potential to be a great sorceress. She shouldna be wasting her time on romance now!’

  ‘No’ everyone thinks romance is a waste o’ time,’ Dide said, and she flashed him a quick look of apology.

  ‘No,’ Lachlan agreed, ‘and besides, it is done now. They are handfasted and, if Olwynne is to have her way, will be married in a year and a day. I canna say I am altogether sorry. Lewen needed to be taken into hand, after all that folly with this satyricorn girl. Personally, I feel she is the far more likely candidate for spinning love spells!’

  It was very late when Isabeau finally got back to the Tower of Two Moons, having wasted a fair amount of time with her own romance in Dide’s clothes-strewn suite of rooms. Isabeau was used to managing without much sleep, however, and she was invigorated by her walk through the sleeping gardens, the two moons little more than frail slivers of light in the star-laden sky. The tower was quiet, and she climbed the stairs to her room with a little witch-light bobbing above her head to illuminate the way.

  She laid her hand upon her door-knob and at once hesitated, sensing a fleeting trace of human contact there that was not her own. It was too insubstantial for her to identify the hand that had touched there, but her ward was still intact and so Isabeau, relieved, unlocked her door and entered her room, lit only by the faint moonlight filtering through the arched windows.

  She stood silent, her witch-senses alert. It seemed some other presence had disturbed the atoms of her space, leaving behind a faint, disturbingly familiar suggestion of their presence, like a trail of scent notes. She could not identify the intruder, though she felt that she should know it.

  Isabeau lit every candle in the room with a thought, the kindling in her hearth blazing up. She looked about her. All was as she had left it. Nothing seemed disturbed. Isabeau walked slowly over to her desk, feeling a chill on her skin that made it rise up in goose-pimples, smelling a faint metallic tang to the air like a storm rising over the sea. Magic had been done here, and not so long ago.

  The Book of Shadows rested where it always did. An enormously thick old book bound in red leather and locked with an iron clasp, it held within it all the collected lore and history of the Coven of Witches. Each Keybearer recorded within its pages all that he or she had learnt or discovered, so that their knowledge would not be lost to later generations. It was one of the great treasures of the Coven.

  Isabeau rested her hands upon its worn red leather. She felt edgy, uneasy. Her hands tingled. She took a deep breath, drew upon the One Power, and opened her third eye.

  An image came to her. A woman leaning over the book, unlocking its clasp, turning the pages, searching. Her lantern rested on the table, casting a ray of light upon her green robe, but leaving her face in shadow. The hair that hung in a long plait was brown, with faint gleams of grey. Her search grew more desperate, and she spoke aloud, a curse, a command. The pages of the Book began to riffle over by themselves, far faster than any hand could turn them. Then suddenly they stopped. The book rested wide open. The woman bent and read the page displayed.

  All this Isabeau saw in a few scant moments. Then the vision faded, and she saw once again only her candle-lit room, the white curtains swaying in the soft breeze, the red book under her hands as solid and unyielding as ever.

  ‘Who?’ Isabeau whispered to herself. ‘And why?’

  She knew that it could only be someone who knew her well, for the key to The Book of Shadows was hidden in a secret compartment of a little box Lewen had carved for her some years before. Isabeau had been raised by Meghan of the Beasts to guard secrets carefully and so few knew where to find it.

  She bit her thumb, then went softly across to the mantelpiece and took down a little wooden box that rested there. A rose set among thorns was carved upon its lid. If one pressed the rose firmly on its ruffled heart, it rose up out of the lid, revealing a hidden hollow. Within was a heavy iron key, as long as Isabeau’s little finger.

  Isabeau held the key between her hands, feeling and listening with her witch-sense for any subtle and elusive trace of personality anyone touching the key would have left behind. This time she recognised it at once. ‘Johanna,’ she whispered, and felt a sharp stab of betrayal.

  She turned and looked at The Book of Shadows, wondering again why, why, why?

  Isabeau took the key to the desk and unlocked The Book of Shadows, laying her hands firmly upon it and saying, ‘Show me the last page read.’

  As soon as she lifted her hands away, the book opened with a great thud, lying
open at a page very early on in its history. Isabeau was at once aware of the temperature dropping fast, as if she had opened a door into a snowstorm. She shivered and hesitated, feeling an unaccountable dread. She could discover nothing until she read the page, however, and so, after only a pause of a few heartbeats, Isabeau bent and looked at the first line of writing.

  By the time Isabeau had read the first four words, she wished to stop but she could not wrench her gaze away. The spell held her fast, searing through Isabeau’s eyes and into her brain.

  ‘To Raise the Dead,’ it said, ‘one needs a living soul, whether willing or unwilling, and a knife well-sharpened …’

  The paper was old and stained, and the letters were written in a faint brown ink that looked horribly like blood. The handwriting was large and formal, with many embellishments and flourishes that made it hard to read. Isabeau could no more prevent her brain from puzzling out the words than she could stop her eyes from moving along the lines. It was as if a giant hand had reached inside her skull and seized the ends of her nerve-strings, plucking them as it pleased, so that she danced and bowed at its will. Isabeau had never experienced such a strong compulsion before. Even worse, as she fought not to read the Spell of Resurrection, and failed, she felt another spell, laid down in every bloody curlicue of writing, lay its dark compulsion upon her.

  ‘I will live again,’ she whispered, in a deep, rasping voice, ‘and ye shall be the one to raise me.’

  Bronwen lay in her ocean-green, gauze-hung bed and tried to tell herself that this was the happiest day of her life.

  All brides feel anxious on their wedding day, she told herself. It’s only wedding jitters. Nerves. That’s all it is.

  But Bronwen knew the leaden lump of misery in the pit of her stomach was not normal. A bride should not lie in her lonely bed on the morning of her wedding fighting back tears.

  Bronwen tried to think of her husband-to-be objectively. He was heir to the throne of Eileanan, young, tall, strong, good-looking and intelligent. Certainly every girl Bronwen knew would think her lucky indeed.

  He would not dance, which was a major strike against him, and he was a weak swimmer, hampered as he was by his heavy golden wings. This made him a poor mate for one of Fairgean ancestry, she thought. Bronwen had to swim in salt water every day, for the health of both body and spirit.

  He loved music as much as she did, though, and there was no-one with whom she would rather play a duet, or go to the music-halls and theatre.

  He was far too serious, and would not dress up and act in masques or follies, and nor would he write poetry extolling her eyes or her lips. Bronwen had begun to find that one love poem was much like another love poem, however, and Donncan at least could make her laugh out loud, which was something few could do.

  She thought of him as one of her best and dearest friends. She had known him all her life. He was her cousin. They shared the white lock that bonding with the Lodestar had seared at their brow. It was the visible insignia of their lineage from Cuinn the Wise, the leader of the First Coven of Witches, who had commanded the amazing and perilous journey across time and space from the Other World, the true home of humans, to this world, a land of scattered islands floating in a boundless ocean.

  Cuinn the Wise had died in the Crossing, but his son had survived to found this ancient city of Lucescere, and the MacCuinn clan. In time one of his descendants, Aedan Whitelock, had been crowned Rìgh of all Eileanan. It was Aedan MacCuinn who had created the Lodestar, using its magic to quell the war-faring faeries of the sea and bring peace to the human inhabitants of the island, at least. All those born into the MacCuinn clan were given the Lodestar to hold as a babe, forging a bond that never corroded. Bronwen could hear the song of the Lodestar in her dreams. She always knew where it was, even when Lachlan was far away travelling the land. She remembered how it had responded to the touch of her hand, all those years ago when she had saved it from being lost in the waves at the Battle of Bonnyblair. She had never been permitted to touch it since, though Donncan and the twins had often been given it to play with as children. If it had been up to Lachlan to decide, she would never have been allowed to bond with it at all. It was her mother, Maya, who had brought Bronwen to the Lodestar, not her uncle, who had seized the magical sphere from her and, with it, the Crown.

  This was an old resentment, though, like having to endure her mother being named the Ensorcellor, or having to watch her scrub floors at the witches’ tower. It had not been easy being the Ensorcellor’s daughter. It had not been easy being of Fairgean descent, either, no matter how many peace treaties were signed. Hardest of all had been having one’s mother rendered mute during all the years of one’s growing up, unable to comfort or advise her in times of trouble. Bronwen’s mother could not sing her a lullaby, or share a joke, or tell her a story, or say that she loved her.

  It had been such a relief, such a joy, to find the spell broken with the death of the old nyx, Ceit Anna. The morning after the nyx’s death flight had been the happiest of Bronwen’s life. She had been woken by the eerie wailing of the nyx’s dirge but was slipping back towards sleep when she had heard, deep in her mind, her name called, and then a single exultant word. Come!

  Bronwen had not heard her mother’s voice since she was seven years old but she knew it at once. She had leapt out of her bed, scrambled into the first dress she could find, and then crept through the dark sleeping palace, avoiding the guards. It had been the night of the full moon. Bronwen had made her way through the silver and black garden with a thumping heart. She had not dared conjure a witch-light so close to the witches’ tower, knowing they would sense magic being used, and so she had had to find her way like a blind girl, hands stretched out before her, feet feeling their way. It had been exhilarating.

  At last she had come to the servants’ quarters at the Tower of Two Moons, heart pounding so hard she thought it would choke her. Maya had been waiting for her, her door held open just a crack to show a thin sliver of warm light. She had drawn Bronwen in without a word, so that her heart had sunk with disappointment. But, then, once the door was shut fast behind them, Maya had embraced her, whispering hoarsely, ‘Bronwen, my darling girl!’

  Her voice, once so rich and sweet and warm, had been harsh and cracked after so many years of disuse, but it was still the most beautiful sound Bronwen had ever heard. She had wept and hugged her mother hard, and then at once begun to think of ways of keeping her mother’s secret safe.

  For no-one must know that Maya was mute no longer. All of Maya’s considerable power was contained in her voice – the power to charm, to compel, to sing and seduce and enthrall. If the Rìgh had known the ribbon Ceit Anna had woven to bind Maya’s voice had dissolved upon her death, he would have ordered another made at once.

  There had not been much time. Bronwen had known she could not be the only one to wake at the sound of the nyx’s lament. Already it was growing light. Birds were beginning to sing. So Bronwen had stepped away from her mother’s embrace and seized her scissors from the work-basket on the table. She had grasped a hank of her own hair in her hand and chopped it off, then swiftly twisted and plaited it into a long black ribbon, whispering as many spells as she could remember as she wove – spells of binding and containment, dark spells of negativity and silence, and bright spells to deflect suspicion. Bronwen had barely had time to knot the ribbon about her mother’s throat before the Keybearer’s imperious knock had sounded on Maya’s door. While her mother had answered the door, Bronwen had thrust the scissors back in the basket and the basket under the table. She had then done her best to pretend all was as usual.

  So far the deception had not failed. No-one suspected Maya was no longer mute. She went about her work as silently and obediently as ever, speaking to Bronwen only when they were sure no-one was listening. Deep in the witches’ wood, at night or in the dawn when no-one was about, Maya sang and shouted and laughed and declaimed spells as loudly and exultantly as she liked, reacquainting herself
with the range and subtlety of her powers.

  She had disguised herself in a glamourie and walked out into the city as freely as any other woman, pausing to chat with the fish-wives and the flower-sellers, to buy herself a cup of wine at the market and laugh with the crowd at the antics of the jongleurs. Bronwen knew of these forays and approved, having resented the bitter silence and loneliness of her mother’s life, cut off forever from normal human communication.

  When she had heard of a new singer at one of the inns in the faery quarter who was causing a sensation with her treasonous songs, however, Bronwen had known at once that it was her mother and her heart had quailed. She would much have preferred her mother to keep herself safe. Although Bronwen felt a certain sour melancholy that she would only ever be Banrìgh in name, as the Rìgh’s consort, she had grown resigned to that many years earlier. She had no desire to start another civil war. Bronwen had lived through one, and that was more than enough. She knew Donncan to be a gentle, loving, courteous man who valued her wit as much as her beauty. She would have power and influence in plenty, without having to enforce it with the slash of a sword.

  Bronwen had begged Maya not to go the Nisse and Nixie anymore. ‘There are cluricauns in that crowd, and witches, Mama. Ye ken they can see through any glamourie! They will recognise ye.’

  ‘If I see a cluricaun I’ll slip away, I promise.’

  ‘What about a witch, or anyone else with the gift o’ clear-seeing?’

  ‘Very well, then, I’ll wear a mask. That’ll only add to the air o’ intrigue.’

  ‘But why, Mama? Why draw such attention to yourself? Ye canna really hope to throw Uncle Lachlan off the throne, can ye? I do no’ want ye to, truly!’

  Maya’s mouth had set into the adamantine line Bronwen knew so well. ‘Ye would no’ deny me the pleasure o’ a small revenge, would ye?’ she said. ‘I do no’ want to throw him off the throne, just to make him uneasy on it. Slip a burr under the saddle, as it were.’