The Pool of Two Moons (59 page)

"Well, answer me!" the stranger with Iseult's face cried. "Has the cat got your tongue, lassie? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm sorry, I made a mistake," Finn babbled, staring at her with astonished eyes. Apart from the bandaged hand and the clothes, she was identical to Iseult, down to the red-gold curl that dangled into her eyes and was pushed away with an impatient hand.

The girl cast Finn a shrewd look from her vivid blue eyes. "What do ye mean, ye made a mistake? Ye wake me from the best sleep I've had in weeks to tell me ye've made a mistake? Who are ye? I have no'

seen ye before. What are ye doing in the royal suite?"

Finn felt her jaw drop, her eyes widen. The royal suite? She cast a wild look around the gilded and painted room, noting the luxurious furnishings and the grand dimensions. She decided she had to get out of here, fast! Her eyes fell on the donbeag, now sitting up and watching with bright eyes.
Gitd?
she thought incredulously, and the little donbeag chittered in welcome. "Ye know Gita?" the girl said. "Who are ye?" "I'm Finn," she said limply. "Who are ye?" "Isabeau the Red," she answered and suddenly Finn knew she was a fool. She had heard of Iseult's twin sister Isabeau; indeed, she had known Isabeau was in the palace for she had heard Lachlan and Iseult worrying about some key she was meant to have. She sat down and said, "I'm an idiot!"

Isabeau laughed. "Are ye? Why?" Finn thought there were more differences between the twins than she had thought. Isabeau's face was much more expressive, and she was quick to both laughter and words. Iseult had a quality of coiled stillness about her, like a spring about to be released. She rarely laughed, and when she did, it was involuntary and quickly smothered.

"I should have known who ye were as soon as I saw ye," she answered. "Ye look exactly like Iseult!" "I do?" Isabeau replied swiftly. "Who is Iseult?" Again Finn was staggered. "Your sister—I thought." "Ah, the sabre-leopard girl." She chittered at Gita, who chittered back excitedly. She smiled at Finn. "Do no'

look so startled. I only found out I had a sister twenty minutes ago. Is she here too? What are ye doing here?"

Finn explained to Isabeau how she came to be sneaking through the palace. Isabeau's interest quickened as Finn told her how she and her companions were hiding out in the ruined witches' tower. Isabeau gave a little laugh. "Half o' Rionnagan is being turned upside for this mysterious rebel leader and ye say he's in the very midst o' the Awl's headquarters!"

She hammered Finn with questions, but the little girl was growing restive. Even with her cloak of invisibility, Finn was dreading the return to the tower and worried about what her companions might do. How dreadful if they tried to rescue her and were caught themselves!

Jay's words cut through the impassioned speech like a knife. There was no need to articulate the danger. Apart from their fears for Finn's safety, they all knew the possibility of their hiding place being tricked or tortured from her. Lachlan seized the bow and bent it. "Iseult, I need to string it!" Iseult's face was impassive. "I will get ye one o' Cloudshadow's hairs." The Celestine had pulled out a handful of her coarse mane for them, and they were coiled in one of the many compartments of Iseult's satchel.

It was a tall bow, and strongly made. Few men could have bent it and strung it, but Lachlan managed it. All the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulged, and a sheen of perspiration sprung up on his brow, but it was done in moments. Iseult gritted her jaw. It seemed her pupil was outstripping her.

"We must hurry. How are we to get to the palace safely? It is almost midnight, and the rain is blowing over."

"Call back the rain. And mist, a thick mist." Iseult spoke quickly. "We have watched Meghan do it, and she says we are both strong in the Element o' Air. And ye have a Talent with water, Lachlan, ye ken ye do. All ye have to do is use it!"

He nodded, his jaw determined. Iseult held out
The Book of Shadows.
"It will help us, I know it will." Their eyes locked and he smiled. "Ye must all stay here," he said to the others. "Nay, no arguments. Iseult and I can do this better alone." Lachlan caught up Finn's hunting horn, which lay on the table with Jay's viola. "I will blow on the horn if I am in trouble. One blast, I want ye to come to me. Two blasts, and ye must get out as fast as ye can. Either way, someone must ring the tower bell to alert our friends in the city. Understand?'

Jorge said urgently, "Be careful, my dears. It is Sam-hain, night o' the dead. I feel death is very near. I am afraid ..."

"That is why I must go, Jorge. It is Jaspar's death ye feel, and he is the last o' my brothers. Ye do understand?'

The blind seer nodded, though his cheeks were wet with tears.

Mirrors

Iseult and Lachlan ran up the stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. Out on the balcony they knelt between the delicately fluted columns and set
The Book of Shadows
on the ground before them. They were both afraid.

They did not know how to ask the book for help and so they just stared at it. The cover flung itself open, the pages riffling in a rising wind. They clasped hands. "Come rain, come mist, come darkness, come concealment," they chanted, drawing in their will and focusing their desire as much as they were able.

"Come rain, come mist, come darkness, come concealment," Lachlan sang, finding a melody in the chant,

"Come rain, come mist, come darkness, come concealment."

The pages fell open, and a small tornado rose out of the book. It spun, gaining height and force, and they gripped hands, rain spitting over their faces. Leaves began to twist into its heart; lightning speared out, needle-thin but quick and deadly. Thunder shook the pillars, and the tornado veered out and into the night, gathering momentum. Their hair blew away from their faces, and in another flash of lightning much greater than the first, they saw each other's terrified faces.

"How did we do that?"

"It was no' us, it was the book," Iseult cried. She closed it, goodwishing it fervently, and thrust it back into the pouch at her belt. They scrambled to their feet and ran to the stairs. An eerie sound was rising. Suddenly ghosts were all about them, frail, white, shredded into cobwebs.

"It is midnight," Lachlan cried, and cowered down. He knew ghosts were only psychic emanations of what had gone before, but the grief and horror of their passing quivered the air like the aftermath of lightning. Iseult caught his hand. She was used to ghosts, for the Towers of Roses and Thorns was thick with them and they did not wait till Samhain to cry. She dragged him forward, and the ghosts passed over them like a shiver. Down the stairs they raced, flinging open the door and running across the garth, not looking to see if anyone was watching. There would be no patrol on the ramparts now. Snow swirled about them. A wolf howled, close behind them. They could feel coldness at their necks and they quickened their pace. Never before had Lachlan been so nimble and quick on his claws, the beat of his wings propelling them forward over the flagstones. The wind battered them with leaves and twigs, swept away, then returned with a spurt of sleet. The lanterns along the palace were blurred globes of yellow. Lights burnt in only one wing, and Lachlan panted, "There."

"How do we get up?"

"We fly,
leannan.
What else? If we can conjure a storm, can we no' fly?" He spread his wings and leapt toward the lights, and she leapt with him, not thinking, just following where he led. In one graceful arc, they reached the windows and caught at the shutters, which banged once again the wall. They hung there, shaking, triumphant and amazed.

Curtains inside were dragged back, and they flinched back against the wall. Iseult transferred her grip to the stone fretwork, and took her dagger from her belt. The window was flung open. "Just the shutter banging in the wind, Your Highness," a man's voice said. Lach-lan nimbly swung over Iseult so he was hanging from the fretwork beside her. The shutter was banged closed, and they heard the window slammed down again.

They hung there in the snow-whirling darkness. It was bitterly cold. Lachlan smiled with stiff lips and whispered, "Let's find a way in,
leannan."

Step by slow step they made their way along the wall. They passed two sets of shutters, but they-were both locked tightly. They inched their way along to the next set of windows. The shutter was ajar, and they hung outside, arms aching, and looked inside.

They saw a fire burning low, its light shining copper and gold on the heads of two girls, close together, talking. Just as they recognized the faces, the red-haired girl looked up and saw them. Her pupils flared in instant recognition. She rose and walked toward them, her intense blue gaze never faltering. She raised her hand, and outside in the snow Iseult raised hers. Their fingers touched through the frosty glass.

Jorge sat still for a time, the children staring at him. The raven hopped restlessly from foot to foot and gave a caw that sounded like mocking laughter. He lifted his blind face and said huskily, "Dillon, call in the soldiers. They canna guard us against banshees. Anntoin, my lad. Extinguish the fire."

"But, master ..."

"Do it, lad. Johanna, do no' weep. Come close, all o' ye."

They gathered around him, and he showed them the Samhain cakes he had baked that afternoon and the Samhain cider he had concocted with apples, honey, whisky and spices. "Do no' be afraid, my bairns. Most o' the spirits that fly at Samhain are no' evil. We will light a bonfire and have a feast, and leave the night for the ghosts."

The Blue Guards came in, followed by a restless and worried Duncan. Jorge tore a page from the end of a book, grimacing a little as he did so, and gave them all scraps of paper. "Tonight is the time we cast away our weaknesses and seek to make ourselves strong and vital. Write down all your failings and we shall cast them into the festival bonfire."

"But we canna write," Johanna cried. "None o' us know how. Only Finn knew." She burst into tears again.

"I can write a few words," Duncan volunteered. With a quill plucked from the raven, he wrote down their failings one by one, in their own blood. That macabre suggestion was Dillon's, and only done because they had no other ink. By the time they had argued over each other's weaknesses—which ranged from Johanna being a scaredy-cat to Dillon liking to get his own way too much—it was midnight. Jorge had cleared the gate of ashes and laid a bonfire there with the sacred woods—ash, hazel, oak, blackthorn, fir, hawthorn and yew. He drew the ceremonial circle with ashes, water and salt, making it large enough to contain all of them. The children sat cross-legged around the fireplace, with the soldiers pressing close behind them. Most of the soldiers were very superstitious and would rather have been spending Samhain Eve at any other place but the ruined witches' tower.

"Midnight on the eve o' Samhain is the time when the veil between worlds is thinnest," Jorge said. "I shall do a sighting, and so ye must all have a care for me."

Carefully he added herbs and powders to the kindling, lighting the fire with a thought. As flames began to flicker up, he swayed back and forth, chanting, "In the name o' Ea, thee who is Spinner and Weaver and Cutter o' the Thread, thee who sows the seed, nurtures the life, and reaps the harvest, feel in me the tides o' seas and blood ..."

He was whirled away in a vortex of visions. A rainbow-striped viper writhed out of the sea—Lachlan struck it again and again with his claymore but each time the snake gave birth to smaller, more vicious serpents that twisted and squirmed all over the land. He saw Lachlan raise a bow of fire and shoot arrows like comets. One of the fiery stars turned into a child, winged and haloed with light. The child fell, and Jorge saw he had a shadow of ice.

Dreams he had had many times came to him, more vivid and sinister than ever. He saw a white hind being hunted through a dark forest, blood on its breast. He saw a black wolf leaping. He saw a girl-child with one foot on the land and one on the oceans, the Lodestar blazing white in her hand. He saw mirrors, some breaking in tinkles of silvery glass, some dissolving into water. He saw the moons embrace and devour each other, and heard a strange song swell and deepen into an orchestra of sound. The dreams changed. He dreamt of snow whirling and fire leaping; he saw an owl flying over a snowy, shadowed landscape, a white lion racing beneath, a star falling overhead. The land was torn apart by war, blood soaking into the cornfields. A tidal wave rose, taller than any tower and seething with glinting scales and fins. It broke upon the land and swept away town and village, faces sucked down despairingly. The visions swirled faster—he saw Tomas with incandescent hands in a whirlwind, he saw him dead on a field of war. He saw Dillon with a bloodied sword in his fist, howling with grief; he saw Finn wrapped in darkness, wandering lost, he saw her flying with wings of night, stars on her brow; he saw Jay playing a blind viola as the hand of a storm clenched around him. Then Jorge saw his own death and understood both the time and place of its coming.

Isabeau and Iseult sat and stared at each other. Neither had said a word since Isabeau had hauled Iseult in through the window, their hands gripping each other's wrist. Finn had filled their silence with words, dancing about excitedly as she told Lachlan all about her adventures. The winged prionnsa was drying the string of his bow by the fire, melting snow dripping from his cloak.

It had been a strange, uncanny feeling, that first sight of her twin. As Isabeau had walked toward the night-black window, her reflected image had merged with Iseult's, so that she had stared into her own eyes and touched her own fingers as well as those of Iseult. It had been like looking into a mirror and seeing your counterpart move with its own vivid, independent life.

Now her sister sat opposite, staring at her with the same troubled fascination. She had a thin scar on either cheek, but otherwise she looked exactly how Isabeau had looked a year earlier—a faded tarn o'shanter crammed over bright curls, a torn shirt and shabby breeches, two long-fingered, capable-looking hands.