The Shining City (3 page)

“Can ye remember anything else?”

“
Dai-dein
falling into a dark pit . . . just falling . . . though sometimes it is me falling . . . or Bronwen. I dream o‟ Bronwen too.” Olwynne‟s voice quickened. “I dreamed o‟ her diving off a high cliff and falling too, falling hundreds o‟ feet. And she was crying, I‟m sure o‟ it. A waterfall o‟ tears. And I dream o‟ her and Donncan drowning in a great pool o‟ blackness, like ink spreading in water.”

Isabeau‟s frown deepened. “I have dreamed o‟ ravens also,” she said at last. “Though I ken o‟

disturbing news from Ravenshaw, which could well have fed into my dreams, while ye have no‟.

I think your dreams may be prophetic, though I fear what they foretell.”

“What news from Ravenshaw?” Olwynne asked. Her voice rose. “News o‟ Lewen? Is all well?”

Isabeau smoothed the snowy folds of her gown over her knee. “Lewen is well. He is on his way back to Lucescere. I expect him any day now.”

“But he is connected to your dreams o‟ ravens somehow, is he no‟?” Olwynne demanded. “What is wrong?”

Isabeau smiled ruefully. “Ye have guessed it. Lewen is very much involved in these happenings in Ravenshaw, and he has been much on my mind as a consequence. I may as well tell ye. The tattlemongers will have the news soon enough anyway.”

“Tell me what?”

“Lewen was to travel back to Lucescere with Nina and her caravan, as ye ken. On their journey they somehow stumbled on a plot to raise the ghost o‟ the dead laird o‟ Fettercairn, which you may remember is the castle that guards the way to the Tower o‟ Ravens. Some necromancers were using the Heart o‟ Stars at the tower to open a gate between this world and the world o‟

spirits, and it seems they have raised a stronger spirit than they meant to. Nina scryed to me a few days ago, to tell me when they would be arriving, but although she was able to tell me most of the story, I am naturally eager to question Lewen and this lass who actually saw the necromancers—”

“Lass?”

Isabeau glanced at Olwynne. “Aye, some lass from the Broken Ring o‟ Dubhslain. She is named Rhiannon, I believe, and she rides a black winged horse.”

“More black wings,” Olwynne said hollowly. “Is it her coming that I foretell?” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

“I do no‟ ken,” Isabeau said, sounding troubled. “Olwynne, how long have these nightmares been haunting ye?”

She shrugged irritably. “I dinna ken. It feels like forever.”

“Ye first spoke to me about a dark dream on the night o‟ the spring equinox. Was that the first such dream?”

Olwynne moved jerkily. “I dinna remember. Happen so.”

“Your floor mistress tells me ye have woken several times screaming in your sleep since then.

How often do the dreams come, Olwynne?”

“Every night,” Olwynne answered wearily. “I have tried no‟ to sleep, but I‟m always too tired and fall asleep anyway. I‟ve tried taking powdered valerian roots and drinking chamomile tea to help me sleep more deeply, but it doesna work. It just makes things worse, for I canna wake myself when the dream gets too bad, and when I finally do wake, I‟m groggy and sick.”

“I can close your third eye for ye,” Isabeau said gently. “At least for a night or two, to help ye rest. Ye look exhausted, Olwynne, and they tell me your schoolwork is suffering.”

Olwynne gazed at her aunt in dumb wonder. She could not believe her aunt knew so much about her when Isabeau was so busy with the work of the Coven. Olwynne‟s own mother did not know about the nightmares. She thought about what the Keybearer had offered and, after a moment, reluctantly shook her head. “Ye say such dreams are sent as warnings, or messages. Should I no‟

listen and try to understand?”

Isabeau nodded. “Aye, under normal circumstances. But ye are still only an apprentice-witch, Olwynne, and ye have had a month o‟ it now. I worry about your health and your schooling. Ye have been doing so well, I do no‟ want ye to fall behind.”

“It comes soon,” Olwynne said. “Whatever it is will happen soon.”

There was a long silence. Then Isabeau stood up, her hand going up to grip the Key that hung on a ribbon around her neck. “Then happen we should try to find out more while we can,” she said forcefully. “When Ghislaine Dream-Walker returns from Aslinn, I will ask her to see if she can travel the dream-road with ye. I‟m sorry, I should have thought to check on you weeks ago. It is just we have been so very busy.”

Olwynne knew everyone was preoccupied with her older brother Donncan‟s upcoming wedding to their cousin Bronwen, daughter of Maya the Ensorcellor. Olwynne had not thought she had minded their distraction, but at Isabeau‟s words she felt the knot of tension behind her breastbone loosen. She muttered thanks, hoping Isabeau‟s witch-senses would understand just how grateful she was.

“Now I think ye should go back to bed for a while. I‟ll write a pass for ye, excusing ye from the morning‟s classes. Then a walk in the fresh air and a proper lunch will do ye the most good, I think. Come, I‟ll walk ye back to your room.”

“Och, there‟s no need. I‟m fine, really,” Olwynne gabbled, ashamed that she was trespassing on her aunt‟s good nature.

“It‟s no trouble. I wish to walk through the library anyway, and it‟s on the way. I‟ll be glad o‟

your company.”

Olwynne smiled shyly and stood up, putting her cup down on the little table. Isabeau went to her desk and shut
The Book of Shadows
reverently, then called to her familiar, the elf-owl Buba, who slept on the back of the chair with her head sunk down into her wings.
Comehooh with me-hooh?

Isabeau said in owl language. Buba opened her eyes sleepily, stared at Isabeau a moment, then flew to perch on her shoulder. She was tiny, no bigger than a sparrow, and white as snow.

Why-hooh you-hooh frown-hooh?
Buba said, rotating her head around so she could stare unnervingly at Olwynne.

I fear-hooh, but what-hooh, I know not-hooh,
Isabeau answered.

She did look troubled, Olwynne thought, as she followed Isabeau out of her room and down the stairs. The Keybearer‟s face was pale and strained, and the frown between her brows had not smoothed away. She kept her right hand cupped around the talisman she wore at her neck, almost as if drawing strength from it. As they approached the library, which took up all of the great building between the northern and eastern towers, her pace quickened noticeably.

They went into the long, dark room together. The lanterns sprang into life at once, and the kindling laid ready in the fireplaces at either end blazed up into dancing warmth. Olwynne glanced at her aunt enviously, wishing she had such a ready facility with flame. Her strengths were in the elements of water and earth, not fire, and she had to concentrate hard to light a candle or bring witch-light. Isabeau had not even flickered an eyelid, let alone waved a finger, all her attention focused on the glass cabinets lined up against the walls in little alcoves surrounded by towering bookshelves.

These cabinets were used to display old relics and artifacts that might interest the students or help them in their lessons. There were ancient scrolls, fragile as skin, old maps of other lands and other worlds, suits of armour, famous weapons and jewels, a clàrsach that was said to have belonged to Seinneadair the Singer, even the cast-off skin of a harlequin hydra, its scaly coils glittering in the light, its hundreds of heads pinned up against the wall.

Isabeau strode straight to a glass cabinet on the far side of the room. She stood there in silence for a long time. Olwynne stood beside her. As far as she could see, the cabinet contained nothing but an old stick. It had not been cleaned for a long time, for the floor of the cabinet was thick with dust.

“What is it? What‟s wrong?” Olwynne asked at last, conscious of the tension in her aunt‟s slim body.

“This cabinet had your father‟s cloak o‟ illusions hanging in it,” Isabeau said tersely. “That is his crutch. When I first met him, he had naught but the cloak and an auld stick to lean on. no‟ a stitch o‟ clothing, nor a knife or bowl—nothing. I gave him my spare pair o‟ breeches to wear, and much too tight they were for him too.”

Olwynne was puzzled. “So where‟s the cloak now?”

“Gone,” Isabeau said. She waved one hand before the cabinet‟s lock, and a symbol of blue fire flared up for a moment. Olwynne recognized a ward of protection. “No one could have stolen it, for the lock has not been tampered with.”

“Where‟s it gone then?” Olwynne simply could not understand her aunt‟s tension. Although she knew it had some historical interest, as a relic from the days when her father had been a rebel fighting to overthrow the Ensorcellor, it was nothing but a hairy old cloak that probably smelled horrible. Her father had worn it day in, day out, for years to conceal the wings and claws he had been left with after being transformed from a blackbird back into a man. He had not been able to discard it until he had at last won the throne back from the Ensorcellor, and by that time, Olwynne guessed, he had probably never wanted to see it again.

Isabeau pointed to the pile of black dust on the cabinet floor. “I imagine that‟s the remains o‟ the cloak there.”

“All that dust? Why, what happened to it?”

“Ceit Anna wove that cloak for your father, Olwynne, from her own hair,” Isabeau said

impatiently. “It took her seven days and seven nights, and he wore it for seven long years. It was a weaving o‟ great power. All this time it has hung here, so people could remember the time when one o‟ the MacCuinn clan had to hide himself beneath a cloak o‟ illusions to avoid being hunted down and killed. All this time, and now it is dust. Why? Why now?”

Olwynne shrugged. “It‟s been a long time. It must be twenty-four years or more, for
Dai-dein
won the throne no‟ long before Donncan was born.”

Isabeau turned and pointed to a tiny pink silk dress and cap in another cabinet nearby. “That dress belonged to Meghan o‟ the Beasts as a child. It is much more than four hundred years auld.

Why has it no‟ dissolved too, then?”

Olwynne‟s cheeks heated. “I dinna ken.”

“Olwynne, have ye forgotten? Ceit Anna died last night. The cloak was hanging there yesterday, yet now it is gone.”

“What a shame,” Olwynne said. “I suppose ye‟ll have to find something else for the cabinet now.”

Isabeau clicked her tongue in exasperation, and Buba swiveled her head to stare at Olwynne out of her round golden eyes. “Ye have no‟ considered, lassie. Think! What else did Ceit Anna weave for us that we may regret dissolving?”

Olwynne‟s eyes widened in horror. “The Ensorcellor‟s ribbon that binds her throat!”

“Aye! If Maya‟s powers are returned to her just now, when Bronwen and Donncan are no‟ yet married, and there is still so much controversy over who truly has the right to rule . . .”

Olwynne felt a cold clutch of fear. Although she saw Maya the Ensorcellor nearly every day—a thin, scarred, middle-aged woman who could communicate only by sign language and the

writing of messages on a little slate—Olwynne did not underestimate the power of the onetime ruler of the land. She had been told many dreadful stories of the days of the Burning, when the Coven had been thrown down, its towers destroyed, and witches hunted mercilessly to death all over the country. She knew Maya‟s powers were so strong and so subtle she had ensorcelled many into doing her bidding and had been able to sway crowds of thousands to her will. Maya had only been controlled by the binding of her tongue to silence. Olwynne could not begin to imagine what might happen if she found that Ensorcellor‟s tongue again.

Olwynne‟s father, Lachlan the Winged, had won the throne from Maya after the death of his brother, Maya‟s husband, Jaspar. The land had been rent by civil war, and everyone had been relieved to have a strong leader occupying the throne. Those who had argued that Jaspar‟s baby daughter, Bronwen, was by birthright the true heir to the throne had been pacified by her betrothal a few years later to her cousin Donncan, Olwynne‟s elder brother. If Bronwen had been a meek and biddable girl, the matter might well have ended there.

However, the Ensorcellor‟s daughter had inherited her mother‟s imperious will and mysterious charm as well as her wild, fey beauty. In the six months since she had turned twenty-four, the age she would have assumed the throne in her own right, Bronwen had turned the court upside down with her antics. There had been much speculation that the betrothal between the two rival heirs to the throne might fail. Olwynne knew that her parents were angry and concerned, and Donncan furious and miserable, but the implications were far more serious than mere

unhappiness within the family. There were those who envied the MacCuinn clan‟s power, or hated the witches, or passionately believed that Bronwen was the true heir. If the cousins failed to marry, there was a strong chance that civil unrest might again trouble the land. Olwynne could only shudder at the thought of the turmoil that Maya, unbound and vindictive, could cause.

“We had best go and see Maya at once,” Isabeau said. “Happen she is still sleeping.”

Olwynne nodded. She hurried after Isabeau as the Keybearer strode through the library and across the garth to the servants‟ wing. Though the other wings remained shuttered and quiet, the clanging of pots and pans, the gurgling of water, and the sound of voices and laughter did not bode well. The witches‟ servants were used to waking early, for many rites took place at dawn and the witches were always keen for their breakfast afterwards.

Maya had a dark closet of a room on the second story, tucked in behind the stairwell. Olwynne felt no pity for her. Her own room in the southern wing was not much bigger, and she was the Rìgh‟s daughter. Many doors along the corridor stood open, as serving girls bustled in and out with jugs of hot water or stood in the doorways, gossiping, as they combed back their hair. They all fell silent as Isabeau came past, dropping curtsies and murmuring respectful greetings.

Isabeau nodded and smiled at them but hurried on, Olwynne trailing close behind. Behind them rose a hum of curiosity.

Maya‟s door was shut. Isabeau rapped on it smartly. There was a short silence, then the former Banrìgh opened the door a crack and looked out.