The Pool of Two Moons (29 page)

As the night wore on, their grabs at her grew more uncoordinated as the wine clouded their senses. She grew more adept at ducking and weaving through them and began to think she would get through the night with only a few boxes to the ear from her superiors. Then a plump squire with food stains all down the front of his jerkin succeeded in capturing her and pulling her down onto his lap. Before she could struggle free, he had ground his hot, sour-breathed mouth against hers. Isabeau, finally losing her temper, bit him. He yelped and threw her away from him. She fell onto the floor, her cap tumbling off, her skirts billowing around her.

All the squires howled with laughter. The plump one lurched to his feet, trying to straighten his crushed and stained doublet as he peered around for Isabeau. "Cheeky lass!" he muttered, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. "Think she can bite me, eh? I'll show her!" Isabeau scrambled to her feet, caught up her muslin cap and tried to slip away without being seen. The squire lifted the tablecloth and peered underneath, calling, "C'mon, lassie, where ye be hiding?" She hid behind the back of one of the tall menservants and let him shield her as she tiptoed toward the door. She had just made it when, to her horror, she saw Sani standing outside. Although everyone but the serving maids and footmen were dressed in their gaudiest clothes, the old woman was still clothed in black from head to foot. She looked like a black beetle amongst a flock of butterflies. Behind Isabeau the drunken squire was weaving his way toward her, his arms held out. She glanced from him to Sani, feeling trapped. At that very moment the old woman turned and saw Isabeau, her cap in her hand, her red curls dishevelled. The pale, fierce eyes focused instantly, and Isabeau was transfixed. She could not move or speak, whether from fear or some arcane power of the old woman, she did not know.

"So, ye are Latifa's grand-niece," Sani said.

Isabeau nodded slowly.

"Recently come from Rionnagan."

She nodded again.

"Ye have cut your hair?"

Isabeau wanted to explain that she had been ill and feverish, and that her hair had been cut to bring down her high temperature. She could say nothing, however, her tongue a plank of wood in her mouth. So she merely nodded again.

The old woman grinned. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Nay, ma'am," Isabeau managed to say, though her voice sounded high and squeaky. She was conscious of the old woman's eyes—so pale a blue as to be almost colorless—raking over her, and she trembled a little as she stood. Sani's gaze sharpened as she saw the hand bound up in bandages, half hidden by Isabeau's apron. "Injured yourself?" she asked in a silky smooth voice, and Isabeau saw her gaze flick up to the little scar between her brows again.

"Aye, ma'am," she answered politely.

"And how did ye do that? Show me."

Isabeau dug her crippled hand deeper into her skirts. She could think of nothing to say. The story Latifa had told came back to her, and she said breathlessly, "Caught my hand in a coney trap."

"No' very canny o' ye, was it?"

"Nay, ma'am."

In a voice as unctuous as precious oils, the old woman whispered, "Show me your hand, kin o' Latifa the Cook," but before Isabeau had time to react, she felt the plump squire lurch against her back, trapping her arms in his so he could slobber into her neck.

"Gie me a kiss, my bonny lass," he said. "It's Midsummer, time for some loving ..." Normally Isabeau would have pushed him away, but with Sani barring her exit and asking her awkward questions, she sagged into his arms so he staggered backward. They lurched against the table, and then to the floor, the squire falling on top of her. She managed to free herself as he lay laughing and wheezing. She crept under the table as a dozen hands hauled the drunk upward. "She's gone again!" he cried. "The tease! Find her, laddies!"

A breathless game of chase-and-hide around the table followed, with Isabeau finally being rescued by one of the serving-men, who reprimanded her severely for flirting with the lairds' attendants. By now thoroughly agitated, Isabeau burst into tears. "It was no' my fault," she cried. "He was too strong for me! I've been trying to get away; I even bit him when he tried to kiss me!"

The serving-man relented. "Obh obh! No need to greet, lassie. Get ye back to the kitchen, and I'll no' tell Latifa this time."

Dabbing at her eyes with her apron, Isabeau crammed her muslin cap back over her curls and ran out of the dining room, going the long way around so she could avoid Sani still lurking outside the door. She ran down the wide steps to the entrance hall and into the gardens, filled with crowds of revellers. Dodging and weaving through the long lines of dancers, she found at last a dark corner where she could regain her composure. Her pulse was galloping and she had to slide down to sit on the grass, swallowing great gulps of cool night air, before her blood calmed.
Somehow Sani suspects,
she thought.
How could she ken?

She tried to think but her terror bewildered her, so that all she could do was grip her fingers together and try and be calm.
Sukey said Sani was the real leader o' the Awl. Happen she heard about me from
the witch-sniffer. It must have been big news in the highlands, a red-haired witch caught and
tried. But everyone thought I died. I was fed to the loch-serpent. No one knew I was still alive until
I got here. No one here knows who I really am except for Latifa . . .

The thoughts reassured her, and she repeated them to herself. She remembered then how the sight of the Banrigh's red skirt had shocked her, and how Sani had looked up at the gallery afterward. Somehow she must have betrayed herself. Latifa had said her thoughts were clear as shouts. So perhaps Sani did not really know anything, had just been alerted by some stray thought that Isabeau had let slip. So reassuring was this hypothesis that Isabeau got to her feet and straightened her skirt. Mid-movement she froze.

"So ye've cut your hair," the old woman had said. And she had first asked Sukey and Doreen about a new red-haired scullery maid a month or more ago. Isabeau's limbs began to shake again, and she slid down into a gray heap on the grass.
It was true. Somehow Sani knew . . .
The prisoner was dragged from his cell close on midnight and paraded around Dun Gorm's great square in a fool's cap before being tied shrieking to the great pile of timber in the square's center. All the while he begged and pleaded with his captors, shouting that he was no witch but a seeker of the Awl. His guards only laughed. Jongleurs danced all around the square, spinning wheels of fire and spitting out long plumes of flame. Drums pounded, the fifes trilled, and the crowd was filled with excited anticipation. The people of Dun Gorm had grown used to the death fires of the Awl, and few in the throng felt pity for the screaming man. At last a burning brand was plunged into the kindling and flames roared up the bonfire. As the flames licked up the prisoner's legs, the glamourie dissolved and the agonized features of the burning man were revealed as the Seeker Aidan the Cruel. The seekers lined up before the bonfire recognized their comrade at once, but it was too late to save him. As they shouted for water, his screams were swallowed by bright curtains of flames.

The Veiled Forest

Anghus shifted his pack wearily, and said, "No' much further, Donald. I can see the lights o' Dunceleste twinkling yonder. A soft, warm bed would be grand, aye?"

"Aye, m'laird," the gillie replied. "It's sick to death I am o' sleeping on stones. I think I am growing too auld for all this racketing around the country."

Anghus could only agree. They stumbled up the slick cobblestones of the road, the Rhyllster thundering past in swift moving rapids. Ahead rose the walls of the ferry town, and they could hear the clacking of the mill's great waterwheel.

They came through the gates into a courtyard lined with guards' quarters, which led into a wide square, surrounded on all sides by tall, cramped houses with high-pitched roofs. A rowdy crowd, mainly soldiers and merchants, spilled out into the square from an inn, its sign freshly painted with a red dragon breathing flames. Anghus headed that way.

He knew the Arch-Sorceress was only a few days' journey away. She had not moved in all the months that he had been trekking through the mountains. He guessed that she must have some tricky hideaway, for he knew soldiers had been hunting her without respite since word of her first came through in the spring. He knew there was no better way of picking up news than to drink at the same place as the people who had the knowledge you wanted. Besides, Anghus's whiskey flask had been empty for a week, and he was in desperate need of a drink.

The inn was crowded, the two Rurachians having to edge their way past close-packed bodies, many brilliant in scarlet uniforms. Anghus found a seat while Donald shoved his way through to the bar, where four buxom and very pretty girls went a long way toward explaining the inn's popularity. Perched on the edge of a bench, Anghus listened to the conversation around him. He was to have no trouble in gaining the information he wanted. The talk in the inn was of nothing else but the foul sorceress Meghan and her blaygird companions. At the center of attention was a young piper, no more than seventeen, the only one to have marched into the Veiled Forest and survived. Anghus's eyes widened at his descriptions of the forest. He spoke of shadow-hounds tearing out the throats of soldiers; quicksands that opened under their feet; stones that moved and talked; trees that tangled their feet with roots; paths that shifted, leading the soldiers in circles until they died of hunger and thirst. Wondering what had become of his whiskey, Anghus turned and saw a band of Red Guards had decided to ease their frustration on his bow-legged gillie. One had snatched his tam o'shanter and was holding it above his head, as another polished the bald crown of his head with a cleaning rag. The gillie's shiny pate was pink with indignation.

Anghus rose to his feet, loosening his sword as one of the soldiers tweaked Donald's long beard. The gillie's face flushed scarlet. "How dare ye!" he roared and head-butted him in the stomach. Knives sprang out, but Anghus stepped into the fray, his sword gleaming. "I would no' make any trouble, lads," he said mildly. "I be the MacRuraich and this is my gillie. Lay one hand on him and I'll consider it an insult to me. An insult to me is an insult to my throne, and ye'll be paying for it with your heads. Do ye understand?" The leader, a thickset, red-faced man with a swagger, looked Anghus up and down, then said, "Ye do no' look much like a prionnsa to me."

"Appearances can be deceiving." Anghus threw back his faded black plaid so the soldiers could see the wolf device of his brooch. They were uneasy, he could feel it, though the one with a swagger was loath to have his fun taken away.

"Anyone can wear a wolf brooch," he said, twisting Donald's tarn o'shanter in his hands. "Does no' mean a thing."

"No one can wear the device o' the MacRuraich clan if they be no' descended from Ruraich the Searcher himself," Anghus said quietly, menace in his voice. "Such irreverence is punishable by death. Ye should be able to recognize my device. Ye are ignorant indeed for a man in the MacCuinn's service."

"I serve the Banrigh," the man responded.

"Ye serve the Banrigh?" Anghus repeated incredulously. "Does that mean ye do no' serve the Righ? Ye spurn to serve the MacCuinn, descendant o' Cuinn Lion-heart himself!" Suddenly seeing where the conversation was taking him, the soldier rubbed his mustache with his hand.

"Nay, nay, I just meant we be the Red Guards, sworn to serve and support the Banrigh. I never meant . .

." He stopped, laughed nervously, then tossed the crumpled tarn o'shanter to Donald, who crammed it over his bald head. "No disrespect intended, m'laird," he said, backing away quickly. Anghus's declaration of his identity secured them the best rooms in the inn, and he allowed them to bring him hot water to bathe with and take away his mud-stained clothes and boots to wash and brush. He woke in the morning greatly refreshed to find Donald tipping a dash of whiskey into his porridge. Donald was still incensed from the beard tweaking and muttered away as he served his laird, calling imprecations down on the heads of any who thought a man's beard funny. Only when the tray was empty did he tell Anghus that a seeker was waiting downstairs for him.

The prionnsa groaned. "That's what comes o' declaring myself before a room full o' Red Guards," he sighed. "Bring me my clothes and I'll make ready."

The young seeker waiting in the public room was so thin, the muscles in his cheeks shifted under the tight-drawn skin when he spoke. His long, velvet robe had only two buttons, indicating he was still a lowly servant, only recently recruited to the service. His dark eyes burned with religious fervor, however, and his medallion was brightly polished.

Frowning mightily, the seeker said that the Awl was not pleased Anghus MacRuraich, Prionnsa of Rurach and Siantan, had come to Dunceleste without declaring himself to the Grand-Seeker Humbert and asking his permission to stay in the town first. Anghus interrupted the seeker's grieved tones to purse up his lips and whistle. "Humbert's here, is he? That's cursed bad luck." All the muscles in the seeker's jaw clenched, so it looked as if he was chewing walnuts. "Is that so? And why would it be bad luck that the
Grand-Seeker
Humbert be in Dunceleste?" Anghus said, "Now, lad, no need to get haughty. Humbert and I have known each other for a long time. Tell him I'll be along later."

"The Grand-Seeker Humbert requests your presence immediately!"

"Aye, aye, I'm sure that he does. I have a few things to do first, though, so ye just run along and tell him I'll be there shortly."

Anghus did not really have anything to do that could not wait, but it went against his grain to jump at the command of Humbert of the Smithy, who had led the Awl in Rurach and Siantan over the past seven years, sending many poor old skeelies and cunning men to their death in the flames. Humbert and Anghus had had many confrontations in the past as the laird tried desperately to protect his people. It might, therefore, have been wise to have gone with the seeker, but Anghus just could not do it. He was still the MacRuraich, and he was on the Banrigh's business.
Let him stew for a while,
Anghus thought unkindly. The Awl were staying in the best inn in town, a large, steep-gabled establishment with a taste for red velvet and patriotic tapestries. Anghus could not help feeling uncomfortable as he followed the thin young seeker into the public bar. Seekers sat at every table, most poring over the little red volume called
The
Book of Truth,
published by the Awl to help disseminate their version of history. Some played chess or trictrac; there were no dice or card games, and very few goblets of wine as one might have expected in such a crowded inn. Many of them raked him over with that disconcerting stare that the Awl taught their seekers. Anghus kept his hand near his sword, and his thoughts closely guarded, as he had been taught as a child.