The Pool of Two Moons (17 page)

In the flickering firelight, the goldensloe wine warming her blood, Iseult found her eyes continually drawn back to Lachlan's dark, beautiful face. Although there was tension between them, it was not the cold silence of before; rather, an awareness and a questioning. They found it hard to meet each other's eyes, yet were always finding their eyes glancing together. Iseult had to fight a desire to lean toward him, for it seemed he had an aura as intoxicating to her as the wine.

Meghan clapped her hands and bade them all take their places around the maypole. For once Lachlan was the first to obey her, holding out his hand to Iseult. Not without shyness she took it, feeling again how small her fingers felt in his. The cluricauns played their wooden flutes, the hobgoblins pounded little drums, and Lachlan sang a merry country tune that had been danced in Eilea-nan for centuries. In the flickering light of the fire, scented smoke swirling up to the stars, Iseult's blood buzzed and sang. Once she would have felt ridiculous dancing around a maypole with a wreath of flowers on her head, but after almost three months in Meghan's company, it felt as natural as breathing. Once the maypole was wrapped in the green and white and pale gold ribbons, they danced on under the canopy of leaves. Meghan held the hands of a hobgoblin and swung him off his feet, to his great delight. Sann danced with another, then took Lachlan's hands provocatively, dancing as close to him as she could get, her figure blurring into the most beautiful of human shapes. Iseult had no time to be jealous, for Lachlan swung the corrigan away with a smile and grasped Iseult's hands, drawing her into the curve of his arm. He sang as they danced, a wistful, lilting love song, the sound of his voice as always stirring profound emotions in Iseult. She knew he was weaving magic into his song, his black eyes fixed intently on hers. It was a call, a command, a plea, a melancholy longing. She devoured his dark, aquiline features with her eyes, feeling her head swim with fire, aware of no one else. They could have been dancing alone. At last the dance whirled apart. Lachlan seized her hand, tugging it slightly so that she ducked her head and followed him. As they ran from the clearing, Meghan collapsed by the fire, humming happily with the Celes-tines and the corrigans, Gita curling up on her lap.

As soon as the light of the fire was hidden behind the great bulk of the moss-oaks, Lachlan pulled Iseult to him and kissed her. The warm, breathing darkness of the forest was all around them. His mouth was at her throat, her hands amongst the feathers of his wings. Iseult sank into sensation, amazed at how soft his skin was, how warm and sweet his mouth, tasting of sunshine like goldensloe wine. They slid to the ground, his wings wrapping her around with silken strokes. Muttering broken words of love, his hand caressed the curve of her knee. His weight pressed her into the ground, his hand sliding up her thigh. Suddenly he leant back, trying to see her face in the shadowy moonlight. Iseult gripped his hand, and he pressed his mouth to her throat. She raised his face and kissed him. His breath caught, and he pressed against her again, mouth hungry.

She woke in the gray dawn, shivering slightly in her nakedness, and saw Lachlan was awake, watching her. He cupped his wing around her, and she shifted closer to his side. At the brush of her naked skin, he bent his head and kissed her, and they made love again, tenderly this time. Hand in hand they made their way back to the clearing, dressed by now, their bare feet leaving a dark trail in the dew. Meghan was sitting by the fire, wilting flowers scattered everywhere about her. Their footsteps faltered a little, and they smiled self-consciously, unable to meet her eyes.

"So, my bairns," Meghan said, rather sternly. "They say Beltane is a night for loving. I hope it were true passion and no' just my goldensloe wine."

They looked at each other and smiled. Iseult's bare legs were badly scratched from Lachlan's claws, and she examined them ruefully. "I mean it," Meghan said, with both trouble and gladness in her tone. "Ye have changed your destinies this night, do ye understand? Indeed the whole land's destiny. Ye have made a choice that shall transform all our lives."

They glanced at each other, troubled. "And ye wove enchantments through your song, Lachlan. It was wrong o' ye. Ye should never spin such a compulsion."

"I knew too, Meghan," Iseult said softly. "Ye think I could no' have resisted him if I wanted? It was no' a compulsion, more o' a way to ... communicate. I knew what it was that I was doing." At that Lachlan gripped her fingers tight. "I did no' mean to ensorcel her," he said abruptly. "I just wanted to . . ." He paused, growing red.

"Aye, ye still do no' know what magic there is in your voice or how to use it," Meghan said. "I wish ye had managed to learn more from Enit. She knows full well the pitfalls o' the songs o' enchantment. Still, at least ye are coming into the use o' it, and cannily, it seems. Och, my bairns! I canna tell ye how glad I am, or how troubled. What a babe ye shall have! Conceived at Beltane, born at Hogmanay with the birth o'

the new year! Indeed, a new thread has been strung."

Iseult could only stare at her in dismay.

Spawn of Mbmerdean

The waters of the Murkmyre lay still, reflecting the cloudy sky, the angular fretwork of rushes and cattails, and the graceful shape of a floating swan. The only sound was the rustle of the wind through the rushes.

On the shallow edges of the loch, where a few tree skeletons lifted bare branches to the sky, a long necklace of translucent eggs floated amongst the rushes. As the swan spread its crimson-tipped wings and took to the sky, the glistening eggs began to bulge and shudder. Slowly the fragile gelatinous barrier broke, and small, black creatures slithered out into the mud. They had multijointed bodies encased in soft shells, six hooked legs, and their two small antenna were still pliant and slimy with the fluid of their egg cases. Although they paid no attention to each other, each shared a linked consciousness so that their bright clusters of eyes saw-not only what was before them, but what each and every one of its egg-brothers saw. Quivering with hunger they crept into the mire, searching for any small insect or fish that they could grasp in their claws and slowly and delicately devour. Deep in the marshes that stretched on either side of the loch, a brood of Mesmerdean knew the instant the egg cases broke. Clinging to the branches of massive water-oaks, their silvery wings held stiffly on either side of their body, they rubbed their claws together in satisfaction so a low multitonal humming filled the air. Most were young still, their bodies hard beneath the enveloping gray robes, their eyes iridescent green. Their humming swelled and was joined by a deeper, more resonant tone. From the tangle of trees to the south darted their elder, his long abdomen quivering as he flew in swift, abrupt movements which the eye would find hard to follow. All the Mesmerdean held in their mind's eye the face and shape and smell and emotional aura of Meghan of the Beasts, the witch who had caused their egg-brother's death. Each and every one of the newly hatched Mesmerdean nymphs absorbed into their communal minds that shape and pattern, and with it the desire for revenge. Soon the mourning would be over. Once the nymphets had grown and undertaken their first metamorphosis, the fully grown nymphs would leave the Murkmyre and go in search of she who had tricked and killed their egg-brother. If they should die, their egg-brothers would follow and finish the chase, each successive generation inheriting the hunger for retribution.

Mesmerdean never forgot.

Rubbing their claws together in anticipation, their song of hate caused a flock of snow geese to rise from the trees and circle, trumpeting in alarm. In her tower, built on an island in the center of the Murkmyre, Mar-grit NicFoghnan looked up from her study of an ancient spell book, and frowned with pleasure.
The Loom is Strung

Summer

Isabeau the Maimed

Isabeau lay listlessly against her pillows, staring out of her narrow window at the wall opposite. She cradled her left hand close to her breast in a protective gesture. She felt no pain there now, only a dull ache that came and went and a chill in the fingers that were no longer there. The room she lay in was hung with shabby tapestries, with a thick rug on the floor and a fire burning on the hearth. It seemed almost sinful to Isabeau, who had lived all her life in a house built in the trunk of a tree. At another time she would have revelled in it. Now, however, a deep blackness lay on her spirits, that she could not shrug off, not at all the command of Latifa the Cook, nor the teasing and laughter of the flock of maids she commanded.

All Isabeau could think about was how close she had come to delivering Meghan's precious talisman into the Awl's hands. Her guardian had trusted her to carry the talisman from their secret mountain hideaway to the Righ's palace, yet she had made blunder after blunder. First she had rescued the surly hunchback from imprisonment by the Awl, then she had stolen the Grand-Seeker's own stallion and ridden it into the largest town in the highlands—a town where the Grand-Seeker Glynelda ruled. There she had been tortured and condemned to death. Her dreams were haunted by the Grand-Questioner's gaunt face and by the dark, drowning waters of Tuathan Loch where she had been thrown to the loch-serpent. The maimed hand with its missing fingers reproached her, and so she cradled it close to her body and resisted all attempts to bring her into the life of the royal court at Rhyssmadill. The mysterious talisman, hidden in its muffling bag of nyx-hair, had been taken by Latifa, Meghan's contact in the palace, and Isabeau had not seen it or heard of it since, though she felt its absence as a constant ache and desire. There was a sharp knock on the door. Without waiting for an answer—which was just as well since Isabeau gave none—it opened and a middle-aged woman came bustling in, carrying a bowl wreathed in steam. She was very short and very fat and had a face like a toasted muffin, with two little raisin eyes and a little cherry mouth and a nose that was a mere bump. She came in talking and kept talking the entire time she was there.

"So now, still lying there and staring at the wall and feeling sorry for ourself, are we? Feeling sorry never did anybody any guid, as far as I ken. It's time ye were up and about, for idleness is something I've never been able to bear, and I see no reason to be starting now. Idleness causes talk, especially idleness favored by me, and talk is something we canna be encouraging, for there's far too much o' it already. Seems ye've become a romantic figure to the lamb-brained lassies here, and that I canna be allowing. The only way to stop them wondering about ye is to have ye down there, living and working among them. Besides, I canna be teaching ye anything with ye lying up here like a little misery. So I want ye to eat your broth, then get up and put on the dress I found for ye and come on down to the kitchen. I'll send one of those silly lasses along to show ye the way, so be sure and be ready for her when she comes for I have no' got time to be wasting, like ye seem to."

Isabeau said nothing, turning her face to the wall and cradling her hand closer to her body. As Latifa spoke, she placed the bowl of soup on the side table, took a gray dress from the cupboard, shook it out and laid it over the chair. She cast Isabeau a shrewd glance from her tiny eyes, then continued, seemingly without breath, "Fretting is no' going to do ye any guid, my dear, and much longer in that bed and you'll lose the use o' your legs. No slug-a-beds allowed in my service! So if ye want any more supper, ye'll have to be coming down and getting it.
I
haven't time to be bringing ye trays and neither do any o' my lasses."

The door shut smartly behind her, and Isabeau pressed her cheek deeper into the pillow.
If only they
would leave me alone.
She was conscious again of a strange ringing in her head and thought she could hear faint cross-currents of talk. But that was impossible for the stone walls were so thick no sound could penetrate them.

Again the frightening feeling that she was going mad slid through Isabeau's mind. She clenched the fingers of her one good hand, shutting her mind resolutely. That fear had been with her often since she had arrived in Rhyssmadill. Waking from her fever in a state of strange clarity, she had thought she could hear the thoughts of all around her. Feeling as frail as a bellfruit seed, she had lain back on her pillows and stared straight into the deepest recesses of the minds of those who tended her— their secret longings and jealousies, their petty spites and preoccupations.

Later, the sense of clarity wore off and she had thought the feeling merely the effects of fever. It returned, though, in undulations of sound and meaning that washed over her, so that she had trouble concentrating on what others were saying. Sometimes it was like two layers of conversation at once—what the person was saying and what they were thinking.

These brief moments of clarity were usually followed by a crippling migraine in which words, images, ideas and memories, both hers and not hers, tumbled through her mind in whirls of dizzying pain. Then all Isabeau could do was lie and try to remember silence—the silence of the secret valley where she had grown up; the silence of the ruined Tower where she had met the Cel-estine. At these times she pressed her fingers to her forehead, trying to ease the ache and tumult that seemed centered between her brows. There was a tap on the door and one of the maids put her head around the edge, her eyes bright with curiosity. A pretty, apple-cheeked blonde called Sukey, she had tied the ribbons of her linen cap under one ear, giving her a jaunty look.

"Obh obh!" she cried. "Wha' do ye be doing still in bed! Is your head aching still? Mistress Latifa can give ye some o' her posset for it, but I wouldna make her come back up here again! Do ye need some help in dressing, with your puir, sore hand? The stable-lads say ye must be a right fool to lose your hand rescuing a silly coney, but me and the lassies think ye be very brave ..." Talking as constantly as Latifa and with as little apparent need for breath, the maid pulled back the bedclothes, swung Isabeau's legs out and pulled her into a sitting position. She washed Isabeau's face roughly with a damp cloth and undid the buttons of her nightgown. Isabeau seemed to be as powerless to obey. She looked down at her body as the maid washed her, realizing with a shock just how thin she had become. Her legs were little blue sticks and all her ribs stuck out over a sunken stomach. As clearly as if the maid had spoken, she heard her think,
Puir feeble thing, look at her, no more flesh on her than a
string o' auld bones . . .