by Kate Forsyth
‘Your Highness, I am sorry to disturb ye but there is a young lady who requested me to bring a message to ye,’ the servant said in a discreetly lowered voice.
‘A young lady?’
‘Aye, Your Highness. Lady Fèlice de Valonis. She says she wishes the honour o’ a word with ye, sir. In private.’ The lackey’s face was impassive.
‘Really?’ Owein’s heart gave a little jump.
‘Aye, Your Highness. She is in the rose arbour.’
Owein grinned. ‘I’ll go at once,’ he said, straightening up. ‘I do so hate to keep a lady waiting.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Owein strode down the steps and on to the wide expanse of lawn, lit by long oblongs of light from the banquet-hall’s windows. Thunder rumbled far away, and there was a flicker of lightning across the dark soft under-belly of cloud hanging so close over the trees. Rain splattered briefly on the leaves.
Bad omen, he thought, having a storm on Midsummer …
‘Would ye bring me a bottle o’ the sparkling honey rose wine?’ Owein turned suddenly to the lackey, who was bowing low as the Prionnsa went past. ‘Very cold, please. Oh, and two glasses, properly chilled.’
‘Aye, sir. At once, sir.’
Feeling much more cheerful, Owein strode out across the lawn, the wind whipping his unruly curls out of his neat, ribbon-bound tail, the cypress trees bending and creaking so their long shadows on the candle-lit grass looked like fingers shaken in reproof. He spread his wings, just to feel the hot air ruffling his feathers, and gave a little bound. How like Fèlice, he thought. Clandestine assignations in the rose arbour at midnight …
Behind him, he heard a sudden cry of alarm, and the music jangled to a halt.
Oh, no, Owein thought. No’ again.
He knew his brother was holding his temper on a very short leash. Donncan had been hurt, shocked and humiliated by the whole terrible affair with Mathias Bright-Eyed. He had found it hard to forgive Bronwen, for flirting with Mathias in the first place, for exposing him to such a sordid scandal on the very eve of their wedding, and for her refusal to admit she was in the wrong and apologise to him. All evening, watching Donncan’s stiff face as Bronwen danced and flirted as much as ever, Owein had had a very bad feeling. He had not thought it would take much to push Donncan into losing his temper, and by the sounds of distress rising from the banquet-hall, he had done so explosively.
It did not occur to Owein to turn and see what had happened. All his thoughts were focused on Fèlice waiting for him in the rose arbour. Let Donncan sort out his own mess, he thought.
The tall golden windows fell out of sight behind stiff dark hedges. Owein conjured a little ball of witch-light so he could see his way. It bobbed and swayed in the breeze, and almost flickered out, Owein too busy wondering what to say to Fèlice to concentrate on holding it steady. He came through an archway into the rose arbour, and looked about for her. The scent of the roses was heavy in the breeze, and crimson petals flew past him, torn free by the wind. All was dark. Owein walked slowly, feeling his silken sleeve snagged by thorns he could not see.
He saw a cloaked shape in the stone-flagged circle at the heart of the garden, and smiled. ‘Fèlice?’ he called.
The figure turned towards him. Owein intensified his witch-light, stepping forward eagerly. Then he recoiled in disappointment. It was not Fèlice who stood there, but a tall, thin, stooped man with a sensitive, apologetic face. He had the familiar hunched shape of a piper, his bagpipes slung over one shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ Owein said, stepping back and turning to go.
‘Nay, Your Highness, it is I who am sorry,’ the man said contritely.
Only then did Owein become aware of other men closing in from behind, one of them the grey-clad lackey who had directed him here. Owein felt instinctively for his sword, but of course he had not worn it to his brother’s wedding. He glanced round wildly, spread his wings and sprang into the air, only to be caught in a tight-meshed net that was thrown over him by the three men.
Owein thrashed and fought, but they held him down.
‘I really am so sorry,’ the lord of Fettercairn’s piper said as he knelt beside him. He held a strong-smelling cloth over Owein’s mouth and nose until at last the Prionnsa’s frantic movements faltered and grew still. Then the piper stood up and gestured to the other men, who wrapped Owein in the net and heaved him up, carrying the limp bundle out of the rose arbour and into the darkness of the wind-ruffled gardens.
Iseult cradled Lachlan in her arms. The Rìgh thrashed in agony, his face a mottled purple, his mouth frothing.
‘Eà’s blood!’ Iseult wept. ‘Someone help him!’
‘We need a healer!’ Donncan cried. He knelt beside his parents, white with shock and distress. ‘Look, Mam!’ He pointed at a black thorn protruding from his father’s throat.
‘Don’t touch it!’ Iseult commanded sharply. ‘It may make it worse. Isabeau! Where is Isabeau!’
‘I’m here.’ Isabeau pushed her way through the horrified crowd and knelt beside her brother-in-law. ‘What in Eà’s name happened?’
‘It’s a bogfaery dart,’ Donncan said.
‘Who did this?’ Captain Dillon demanded, his hand on his sword. ‘Did anyone see anything? Guards! Search the room! Find the man who did this!’
‘It’s a bogfaery dart,’ Donncan said again, more loudly. ‘Whoever shot it would have a blowpipe.’
Captain Dillon spun on his heel. ‘No Yeoman would do this,’ he said icily.
‘I ken,’ Donncan said, meeting his gaze steadily. ‘Bogfaeries and Yeomen are no’ the only ones to have blowpipes, though. Someone in this crowd has one!’
Captain Dillon nodded. ‘Search everyone here,’ he commanded. ‘No-one is permitted to leave this room until we have found that blowpipe!’
The Rìgh cried out and arched his back. His arms flailed. His protruding eyes stared into Iseult’s anguished face. He tried to speak, but his lips and throat were rigid. He could not frame the sound.
‘What, leannan, what?’ Iseult cried.
The Rìgh’s tortured gaze moved slowly from her face to that of his son’s. He jerked one hand at him, and they heard him stammer, ‘Donn … Donn …’
‘I’m here, Dai-dein,’ Donncan said, taking his father’s palsied hand. Lachlan’s lips were blue, and flecked with foam. He jerkily tried to draw Donncan closer and the winged Prionnsa bent his head and listened as his father whispered in his ear.
‘No, no, Dai-dein,’ Donncan cried. ‘No, we will make ye well. Aunty Beau! Help him!’
Isabeau had pulled the thorn out, and had her mouth pressed to the tiny scratch, trying to suck the poison out. Still Lachlan endeavoured to speak, and Donncan gripped his hand and listened, tears glistening in his eyes.
‘Aye, sir,’ he said. ‘O’ course.’
Lachlan’s head fell back into Iseult’s lap.
Isabeau lifted her head and spat out a mouthful of blood. ‘No good,’ she panted. ‘I need … a healer! Someone, get Johanna!’
‘I’ll fetch her!’ Donncan cried and scrambled to his feet. ‘I can fly faster than anyone could run. Where is she?’
‘In her rooms, I imagine … I ken she is angry and upset, but … surely she will come … tell her … need … antidote … does she ken …?’ Isabeau said, alternating thumping on Lachlan’s chest with both her hands to breathing into his mouth. ‘Quick … his heart failing … Cloudshadow! Find Cloudshadow … she could heal him!’
Isabeau stopped her rhythmic pounding to breathe into Lachlan’s mouth. Donncan spread his golden wings and soared high into the air, over everyone’s heads and out the door of the banquet-hall. Never had he flown so fast.
It was beginning to rain, huge heavy drops that splattered his skin. Donncan flew high over the gardens, his head down, his arms stretched long to make his passage as swift as possible. It was hard to breathe. He felt as if a vice had been clamped on his lungs. Tears burned his eyes, and he bent his arm t
o roughly wipe his nose.
Take the Lodestar, his father had whispered. Rule well …
Donncan saw the dark bulk of the Tower of Two Moons ahead of him. He came down, stumbling, before the light-strung building, and began to run, ignoring the groups of laughing, wine-flushed students gathered on the steps, who all turned to stare after him. Once he was inside the great doors of the Royal College of Healers, he spread his wings again and took flight, soaring up the grand spiral staircase.
It was dark in the healers’ tower, and quiet. Only the occasional lantern shed its lonely circle of light. He wondered momentarily where everyone was.
He reached the top of the stairs, and hammered on the head healer’s door. ‘Johanna! Johanna!’
The door opened. Johanna looked out. For once she was not dressed in her treasured green healer’s robe, but in a brown woollen travelling dress with sturdy boots and a waterproof cape. Donncan barely noticed.
Gasping for breath, he cried, ‘Johanna! My father … the Rìgh … he needs ye …’
‘Good,’ Johanna said, smiling. ‘It is done then.’
Donncan fell back in dismayed confusion.
‘But … what do ye mean … ye canna mean …’
Johanna unsheathed a long, cruelly sharp dagger from a leather scabbard hanging from her belt. ‘I do, I’m afraid.’
He stumbled back. ‘Ye kent … ye kent my father …’
‘He pardoned that murdering satyricorn bitch,’ Johanna said unevenly. ‘After all the years that Connor and I have served him, risking our necks again and again, and yet when Connor is killed, he doesna care enough even to make sure justice is done. I would no’ have helped them if he had just let things be, no matter how they pleaded or argued … he is my Rìgh, after all. But once he told me she would no’ hang …’
Donncan stared at the dagger, which she held close to her body as she had been taught long ago by his own mother. He took a step back, and at once the knife darted forward like an adder, so that he stopped, hands raised.
‘What do ye plan to do?’
‘I must be the one to raise him,’ she whispered, looking past Donncan into the shadowy corridor so that he jerked round to see what she stared at, only to find nothing but air. ‘He swore he would live again, he swore he’d outwit Gearradh in the end …’
‘Who?’ Donncan whispered, his skin prickling with horror.
Johanna glanced back at him and for a moment did not seem to know who he was. Then she stepped forward and rammed the dagger tip against Donncan’s ribs so that he gasped in pain and surprise. ‘Inside,’ she said, and he had no choice but to step into her room, though his heart slammed in sick fear.
Surprise made him stop short on the threshold, and Johanna jabbed him viciously so that he stepped forward again, crying ‘Thunderlily!’
The young Celestine was lying on the couch, dressed in her silver bridesmaid’s dress, her head lolling down onto her chest. Her hands had been bound with heavy rope.
‘But why?’ Donncan asked, turning slowly to stare at Johanna.
‘The laird o’ Fettercairn wishes ye to die, as his little nephew died so long ago, and I need a living soul to sacrifice,’ she said, in the same tone of voice that she might have used to discuss the weather. ‘I kent someone would come to get me. I was hoping it’d be ye, or your good-for-naught little brother. Seeing as how ye can fly faster than any lackey could run. Dedrie will be so pleased with me.’
‘Who?’ Donncan asked again, edging away from the sharp tip of the dagger, and hoping to distract her.
She moved with him, keeping her body turned so he could find no opening to strike at her. ‘Dedrie, the laird o’ Fettercairn’s skeelie. She has become a great friend to me, loyal and true. I ken she shall no’ betray me, as Himself did with his royal pardon … She stayed here, at great risk to herself, just to make sure she could testify against that murdering bitch … and then Himself goes and pardons her! It’s true, he cares naught for those who love and serve him. Look at the way he used up all those poor laddies, Parlan and Artair and Anntoin and Tòmas, all dead in his service, and now Connor too.’
As she talked, she forced Donncan forward and bade him sit. He obeyed reluctantly, and she took up a little bottle from the table and poured herself a cup of some rich golden liquid, with brown dregs in it that she stirred with the tip of her knife, her hands trembling with eagerness. Keeping her eyes fixed on the Prionnsa, the knife held ready in her hand, she slowly drank down the wine and a shudder ran over her. For a moment her eyes closed in ecstasy, and Donncan lunged to his feet, hoping to take her by surprise. Whatever it was she drank, it did not dull her senses, though, for her eyes snapped open and the dagger swung up, so that he halted, hands up, and slowly retreated back to his chair.
‘Smart lad,’ she said approvingly. ‘I would hate to have to kill ye ahead o’ time.’
She drank the last few drops of the liquid slowly, savouring every golden drop, then hammered the cork back into the bottle with the hilt of her knife, lovingly wrapped it in a wad of cloth, and tucked it away in a small back-pack on the table. The back-pack was hung with a lantern, a tin kettle and a coil of rope, and bulged with various packages that Donncan eyed in increasing anxiety. Johanna slung it over her shoulder, then pulled a tam-o’-shanter on over her neatly coiled brown hair.
‘It could be cold; always best to be prepared,’ she said in a conversational tone, and wrapped a woolly plaid about her shoulders. She looked Donncan up and down, and smiled in amusement. He glanced down at himself, remembering he was still dressed in his wedding finery, a green velvet coat with sleeves slashed with scarlet and white, and a scarlet sash with a gold fringe, over the MacCuinn kilt. He wished he had a dagger at his belt, or in his long black boot, but one did not wear such things to one’s wedding.
‘Where are ye taking us?’ he demanded.
She did not answer, just took a small jar from her pocket and unstoppered it, waving it under Thunderlily’s nose. The Celestine jerked awake, a shrill buzz of fear rising from her throat. Johanna held the knife where she could see it, and at once the drone stopped, the Celestine’s eyes wide with fear.
While Johanna carefully cut through Thunderlily’s bonds, Donncan surreptitiously undid the brooch that held his plaid together and dropped it under the table. It was not much of a clue, but it was all he could manage under the circumstances. As the rope fell away, the Celestine sobbed aloud in relief, and rubbed at her wrists. Donncan felt a slow burn of anger. Celestines were the most gentle of faeries. They would never raise a hand to strike an enemy. They were gardeners, healers and astronomers, not warriors. They felt a loving kinship with all creatures. It hurt him to see Thunderlily used so roughly.
Johanna dragged Thunderlily to her feet, and jerked her head at Donncan, indicating he should rise also. The healer had her knife held to the Celestine’s bare throat. Donncan, staring at Johanna in amazement and horror, saw how the pupils of her eyes had shrunk to pinpoints. It made her seem somehow inhuman.
Donncan could do nothing but obey.
‘Walk now,’ she commanded. ‘I will keep my dagger to the Celestine’s back. If either o’ ye make a single move or noise I have no’ commanded, I will kill ye both. Do ye understand?’
Thunderlily sent Donncan an agonised look. He tried to reassure her, muttering ‘Aye’ and keeping as close to her as he dared.
Johanna forced them down the stairs and through the building. The healers’ wing was dark and deathly quiet, as if they all slept, but the Prionnsa could hear drunken singing and partying coming from the Theurgia, as the students celebrated the end of the midsummer revelries. The garth was full of people dancing and talking, and someone had set off fireworks in the garden before the students’ wing. Quite a few turned to stare at the little party hurrying past, but Donncan did not dare give any sign that something was wrong. He kept his eyes down, and his hands still, and hoped that no-one would accost him.
‘Good even, Your Highness!’ som
eone called. ‘Congratulations!’
Donncan smiled and nodded in response, but hurried on, and felt the student’s eyes follow him curiously.
‘The maze,’ Johanna muttered. ‘Do ye ken the way through the maze?’
‘What? Why would ye want …’
She flicked the knife his way, scoring him across his back. He stifled a yelp of pain. ‘Do ye ken the way through the maze?’ she demanded.
‘Aye, o’ course I do,’ he replied.
‘Excellent,’ she answered and he exchanged a baffled look with Thunderlily.
Johanna took them into the long garden where the healers grew many of their medicinal herbs and trees. There was a whole grove of willows, their long leafy tendrils tossing wildly in the thundery wind as if they were dancing a bacchanal. Donncan felt the wind shivering against the skin of his face, like hot eager hands. He realised he was terribly afraid. He tripped over a tree root and almost fell, and Johanna dragged him up, warning him in a hiss that she would cut Thunderlily’s throat if he tried anything stupid.
They stumbled on through the garden, and out through a tall iron gate that swung back and forth in the wind. Beyond was the witches’ wood, where narrow paths ran through groves and gardens, and where the maze was hidden within its walls of yew trees.
Suddenly the bells began to toll. The sound was very low and sombre, for the bells’ clappers had been fully muffled, something that was only done at the death of a monarch.
Donncan started, the blood draining away from his face. ‘Dai-dein!’ he cried.
‘The Rìgh is dead, long live the Rìgh!’ Johanna cried, then poked Donncan with her knife. ‘But no’ for long!’
She sounded quite mad.
On and on the bells tolled.
‘Why?’ Donncan demanded, tears roughening his voice. ‘Why have ye killed my father!’
‘I dinna kill him,’ she said. ‘I’ve done naught.’ She smiled. ‘I mean, I may have drugged the house wine so there’d no’ be a healer or a Celestine awake when they were needed.’ She smiled more widely. ‘And I may have given Princess Thunderlily a cup o’ it to drink, when I tricked her to coming to my room. But otherwise I’ve done naught at all.’