The Pool of Two Moons (33 page)

Reluctantly he undid the ties of his cloak and let it drop to the ground. Freed from its concealing folds, he was revealed as a strongly built man, dressed in the MacCuinn tartan. His muscular legs ended in talons like a bird of prey. From his shoulders sprang two glossy black wings. Slowly he stretched them out and flexed them. Anghus's breath caught.

"He is Lachlan Owein MacCuinn, youngest son o' Parteta the Brave. Maya transformed him into a blackbird when he was just a bairn. As ye can see, we have no' found the magic to repel her evil enchantments." Meghan's voice was hard and cold as the first crust of ice on a pond.

"I am sworn to bring him in," Anghus said bleakly.

"Nay, ye are no'," Meghan replied firmly. "Ye said yourself ye were told to capture the Cripple, leader o'

the rebellion. Lachlan is no' the Cripple."

"But . . ." Lachlan exclaimed.

"He is a mere lad," Meghan said contemptuously. "True, he has spent the last few years tickling the nose o' the Ensorcellor, but ye think he has the cunning, the cleverness, to plan and command all those spectacular escapes, all over the country? He was only seven when Maya ensorcelled the Righ and brought the Towers down. Do ye seriously think he was auld enough or clear-sighted enough to begin organizing an underground resistance then? For that was when the rebellion began, in the aftermath o' the Day o' Betrayal. Many o' the Cripple's most daring exploits occurred when Lach-lan was still trapped in the body o' a blackbird. I freed him when he was just fifteen, and he is now only twenty-three years auld, and no' very wise. Ye canna seriously think he is the Cripple, do ye?" Lachlan made a strangled noise in his throat and started forward, but the girl held him back with a hand on his arm.

"I am sworn to hunt down the Cripple. If this is no' he, who is?"

"A traveling jongleur named Enit Silverthroat," Meghan said promptly.

"Meghan, no! How can ye?" Shock broke Lachlan's expressive voice.

"Enit is now is Blessem," Meghan continued. "She is the real leader o' the rebels, the one they call the Cripple. It is true many think Lachlan is the Cripple, and we have no' ever let anyone know the truth. But it is Enit who planned and commanded each and every movement o' the rebels in the past sixteen years. She is the one ye seek."

"Meghan, stop! How can ye betray her so?" Lachlan was sobbing with anger and frustration.

"Trust me, my lad," she said, very low.

Anghus nodded his head. "Very well. I shall deliver ye to the Grand-Seeker as sworn, and then I go in search o' Enit Silverthroat."

The High-Prestess of Jor

Sani looked up and down the corridor before softly closing the door and locking it. Only when she was satisfied no one was listening did she cross the room to the tallboy where the Mirror of Leyla was hidden. Reverently she drew the silver hand-mirror out of the drawer and laid it on the table. It was a very old looking-glass, a sacred relic of the Fairgean royal family, and a powerful aid to far-seeing. With it, Sani could keep an eye on her spies and her enemies, communicate with her king and those seekers trained in the skill of scrying, and eavesdrop on private conversations.

Sani was strictly forbidden to touch the mirror without direct orders from Maya. The king of the Fairgean was far too jealous of his own power to give such a powerful icon into the hands of a high-priestess of Jor. Even after sixteen years, Sani still resented his decision. She was an initiate into the deeper mysteries, able to call upon the powers of Jor as her own—the mirror should have been hers, not trusted to the hands of a halfbreed.

His interdiction had never stopped her from using the mirror as she pleased, of course. The old priestess knew, even if the king did not, that Maya was not to be trusted.

Sani firmly believed in keeping the reins of power in her own hands, even if that meant using the magical minor in stealth.

In recent months it had grown increasingly difficult to find the privacy. Maya spent most of her days lolling in the pool in her suite of rooms. She dreaded having to go into the great hall where she was mobbed by impatient merchants wanting news of the trade flotilla. Her stomach was in constant disquiet, so she could not face the wild boar the lairds hunted down in her honor. All in all, she was as vague and distracted as Sani had ever known her.

It was only by the sea that the Banrigh found release. Normally Sani disapproved of Maya spending time by the water, for the Banrigh could afford no suspicions attached to her. This morning, though, the wily old priestess had opened the casement window so the salt-scented breeze blew through the whole room.

"Look how the firth sparkles," she had said. Maya had drifted across to the window, the invigorating wind blowing her hair straight back from her brow. "Ye need some fresh air," Sani had cooed. "Look how pale ye grow."

"I need to swim," Maya said faintly.

"I can tell anyone who asks that ye are sleeping . .." the old servant said and watched Maya's face color with pleasure. So Maya had made her slow way down to the stables, ordered her horse to be saddled, and ridden down to the beach, where the sea breezes caressed her face and cooled her blood. It was dangerous, of course. Too many people could notice when she returned with damp hair and sandy clothes. It was a risk that had to be taken, though. Sani needed to use the mirror. She sat at the table, making a complicated gesture over its silvery surface and concentrating on Latifa the Cook's grand-niece, the red-haired scullery maid. Sani was not always able to focus in on the girl, but this time the mirror worked. She saw the girl sitting on a stool, feeding scraps of meat to the mangy dogs that turned the spit. Sani pursed up her lips in disappointment. Always she hoped to catch the lass out in some act of witchcraft or wrongdoing. But she always seemed innocent enough, working as hard as any of the other maids. She watched a while longer, then waved her hand over the mirror to banish the image. The priestess had first seen the redhead in-the week after May Day. The girl had been sick and weak, collapsing into a fever immediately after giving Latifa the Cook something concealed in a bag made of nyx hair. Sani knew well that such bags were designed to muffle the force of objects of magical power. Despite all her efforts, however, she had been unable to discover what it was the girl had carried. Sani did not like not knowing. It made her uneasy.

Sani was convinced the girl was the same redhead as the one who had caused so much trouble up in Rionna-gan. First she had helped the winged
uile-bheist
to escape. This was a major blow, for it seemed certain he was the mysterious Cripple who had captured the hearts and minds of the common folk. Even worse, the secret fear that he may be one of the Lost Prionnsachan was now a certainty. There could be no other explanation for a winged man with the voice of a blackbird and the white lock of hair that marked all the MacCuinn clan.

The red-haired witch had supposedly been tried and executed, but within a month came news that she was alive and in company with the Arch-Sorceress and the winged
uile-bheist.
It seemed she was a warrior-maid as well as a powerful witch, for she slaughtered an entire troop of Red Guards at Tuathan Loch. The trio had disappeared into the mysterious depths of the Veiled Forest, and all attempts to flush them out had failed. It was not long afterwards that Sani saw her in the mirror, in Latifa's chamber. Although it seemed incredible the girl could have crossed the entire length of the country in such a short time, Sani knew already that she was a very dangerous witch with powerful forces at her command. Perhaps it was true Meghan had charmed the dragons and they now served her. Or perhaps the girl could fly as they said Ishbel the Winged had done. Certainly she had somersaulted through the air as nimbly, by all accounts.

Sani's initial response had been to have the girl killed immediately. A pillow over her face in the night, some hemlock in her tea, a stumble on the stairs—such things were easy to arrange. Caution held her hand, however. Alive, she could be tricked or tortured into revealing the Arch-Sorceress's plans. Once dead, the girl could tell no secrets.

It was not Sani's way to take hasty action. Her plans had been decades in the making, and decades more in the doing. She worked in shadows and in silence, planting a seed here, a suggestion there, then waiting with long and cunning patience to reap the rewards. Why, she had been nurturing Maya's powers for thirty-five endless years; she could afford to let the red-haired witch live a little longer. So for two months Sani kept her own counsel, and in all that time she saw nothing to confirm her suspicions. It was true that she too was affected by the heat, even more than Maya. Priestesses of Jor were used to physical deprivation, however, and so Sani suffered in silence. She did not have the option of riding on the seashore or spending all day in a pool of cool salt water. She slept in the pool, of course, for without long immersion in seawater she grew sick and dehydrated. During the day, though, she must wear heavy clothes to hide the gills at her throat. She did not have Maya's ability to trick the eye, for the Fairgean could not spin illusions. That was a Talent Maya had inherited from her human mother and Sani relied on her spells of glamourie to hide her own Fairgean features. For this reason she could never leave Maya's side for long, since the glamourie soon wore off and needed to be renewed frequently. Sani had begun to wonder if she was mistaken about Latifa's grand-niece. Red-gold hair was uncommon, but not so rare that Sani could be sure this girl was Meghan's apprentice. She could be just what she appeared to be, a rather simple country lass that just happened to have hair the color of newly minted pennies. True, there was the mysterious bag of nyx hair, but could there not be a natural explanation for that? Many relics of the Towers turned up in odd places, and it was possible that the lass had had no idea the bag had magical properties. It could have contained a gift from Latifa's sister, tucked into the bag for ease of carrying . . .

Then on the night before Midsummer's Eve, after the Banhgh had sung for the court, Sani had heard such a cacophony of emotion from the girl that her suspicions had again been aroused. Such an agony of terror, and all at the sight of crimson-colored velvet. She searched out the girl and, seeing her crippled hand, at once knew two things that she had not known before. Firstly, she was now certain this redhead was the same as the one who had killed the Grand-Questioner. She remembered what she had forgotten before—the witch at Caeryla had suffered the pilliwinkes, a cruel torture which crushed the hand. The second realization was that she could not be the girl traveling in Meghan's company. This thin, pallid lass with the crippled hand had certainly not killed an entire troop of Red Guards. Therefore there must be two redheads. The trick was knowing whether Latifa's grand-niece had been captured and tortured by mistake, or whether both red-headed girls were connected with Meghan.

Sani ground her teeth in frustration and tried without success to make the mirror focus in on her enemy. That old witch was a sea-urchin spike in her foot that should have been drawn years ago. Everything had gone wrong since that first sighting of Meghan in the spring, and Sani dreaded the anger of her king. She had only one hope left. It was several months since they had sent a seeker to Rurach with orders for its prionnsa, Anghus MacRuraich. He must be on the hunt by now, and if anyone could track down the slippery Arch-Sorceress, he could. Her fingers twitched at the idea of having Meghan in her hands. Meghan and that disgusting freak, the winged
uile-bheist.
More than anything Sani wanted to know how Meghan had managed to transform him back from a blackbird. He should have been trapped in the body of a bird forever.

Sani knew all too well how damaging the young Mac-Cuinn's testimony could be. No one knew of Maya's powers. No one knew the shape-changing ability she had inherited from her Fairgean father had been transmuted into the capacity to transform anyone into any shape she chose. Only Sani knew, and a few of the priestesses of Jor, and the king himself, Maya's terrible father. If the winged
uile-bheist's
story became common knowledge, it could destroy all that Sani had worked for.

It was more than thirty years since the high-priestess had recognized the latent powers in the young halfbreed daughter of the king. Maya's mother had been a Yedda, a sea witch trained to use her voice to ensorcel the Fairgean. A beautiful woman, black haired and blue eyed, she had been stolen from the Tower of Sea-Singers in one of the Fairgean's fierce raids. The king had seen her and wanted her. The blow aimed to kill had instead only knocked her unconscious. When she woke, he tore out her tongue so she could not sing, and used her for his pleasure. Maya had been conceived almost immediately, and so the king had let the Yedda live. A male Fairge was admired for his potency, and many of the king's offspring had been killed in the wars against the humans. He would not kill the human woman while she carried his child.

Nine months later Maya was born. Disgusted that she was a girl, the king lost all interest in her or her mother. In Fairgean politics, daughters were worth much less than a well-trained sea-serpent or a cave that offered shelter from the icy winds. It was not uncommon for a female Fairge to be given to another male at the toss of a stirk-knuckle. The priestesses were the only females the men would listen to, and few would dare raise a hand against them. Most Fairgean women therefore longed to be chosen for Jor, but few had the abilities required.

Sani had not realized Maya had the power to change people's shape until much later. It was her ability to make people do what she wanted that had first attracted the high-priestess's attention. The witches called it compulsion—to override someone's will with the strength of your own. The priestesses of Jor called it
leda,
which meant simply "mind-force."

At that time the Fairgean were living on a few bare rocks in the northern sea. Only the most powerful of the men were allowed on the rocks; everyone else lived on rafts made from driftwood and dried seaweed. Many Fairgean children drowned before they had learnt how to use their fins, for competition for food and raft space was fierce. Many were not adverse to pushing some other woman's babe into the sea to make more room for her own. The Yedda had no voice and no status. Both she and the babe should have died fairly soon. Yet somehow the babe never went hungry and never had to fight for somewhere to sleep. As she grew, her powers became more obvious. She even ensorcelled food out of the men, and that was peculiar enough to capture Sani's interest.