The Shining City (60 page)

Keeping her eyes fixed on the Prionnsa, the knife held ready in her hand, she slowly drank down the wine and a shudder ran over her. For a moment her eyes closed in ecstasy, and Donncan lunged to his feet, hoping to take her by surprise. Whatever it was she drank, it did not dull her senses, though, for her eyes snapped open and the dagger swung up, so that he halted, hands up, and slowly retreated back to his chair.

“Smart lad,” she said approvingly. “I would hate to have to kill ye ahead o‟ time.”

She drank the last few drops of the liquid slowly, savoring every golden drop, then hammered the cork back into the bottle with the hilt of her knife, lovingly wrapped it in a wad of cloth, and tucked it away in a small backpack on the table. The backpack was hung with a lantern, a tin kettle, and a coil of rope, and it bulged with various packages that Donncan eyed in increasing anxiety. Johanna slung it over her shoulder, then pulled a tam-o‟-shanter on over her neatly coiled brown hair.

“It could be cold; always best to be prepared,” she said in a conversational tone and wrapped a woolly plaid about her shoulders. She looked Donncan up and down and smiled in amusement.

He glanced down at himself, remembering he was still dressed in his wedding finery, a green velvet coat with sleeves slashed with scarlet and white and a scarlet sash with a gold fringe over the MacCuinn kilt. He wished he had a dagger at his belt or in his long black boot, but one did not wear such things to one‟s wedding.

“Where are ye taking us?” he demanded.

She did not answer, just took a small jar from her pocket and unstoppered it, waving it under Thunderlily‟s nose. The Celestine jerked awake, a shrill buzz of terror rising from her throat.

Johanna held the knife where she could see it, and at once the drone stopped, the Celestine‟s eyes wide with fear.

While Johanna carefully cut through Thunderlily‟s bonds, Donncan surreptitiously undid the brooch that held his plaid together and dropped it under the table. It was not much of a clue, but it was all he could manage under the circumstances. As the rope fell away, the Celestine sobbed aloud in relief and rubbed at her wrists. Donncan felt a slow burn of anger. Celestines were the most gentle of faeries. They would never raise a hand to strike an enemy. They were gardeners, healers, and astronomers, not warriors. They felt a loving kinship with all creatures. It hurt him to see Thunderlily used so roughly.

Johanna dragged Thunderlily to her feet and jerked her head at Donncan, indicating he should rise also. The healer had her knife held to the Celestine‟s bare throat. Donncan, staring at Johanna in amazement and horror, saw how the pupils of her eyes had shrunk to pinpoints. It made her seem somehow inhuman.

Donncan could do nothing but obey.

“Walk now,” she commanded. “I will keep my dagger to the Celestine‟s back. If either o‟ ye make a single move or noise I have no‟ commanded, I will kill ye both. Do ye understand?”

Thunderlily sent Donncan an agonized look. He tried to reassure her, muttering, “Aye,” and keeping as close to her as he dared.

Johanna forced them down the stairs and through the building. The healers‟ wing was dark and deathly quiet, as if they all slept, but the Prionnsa could hear drunken singing and partying coming from the Theurgia as the students celebrated the end of the midsummer revelries. The garth was full of people dancing and talking, and someone had set off fireworks in the garden before the students‟ wing. Quite a few turned to stare at the little party hurrying past, but Donncan did not dare give any sign that something was wrong. He kept his eyes down and his hands still, and hoped that no one would accost him.

“Good even, Your Highness!” someone called. “Congratulations!”

Donncan smiled and nodded in response, but hurried on and felt the student‟s eyes follow him curiously.

“The maze,” Johanna muttered. “Do ye ken the way through the maze?”

“What? Why would ye want—”

She flicked the knife his way, scoring him across his back. He stifled a yelp of pain. “Do ye ken the way through the maze?” she demanded.

“Aye, o‟ course I do,” he replied.

“Excellent,” she answered, and he exchanged a baffled look with Thunderlily.

Johanna took them into the long garden where the healers grew many of their medicinal herbs and trees. There was a whole grove of willows, their long leafy tendrils tossing wildly in the thundery wind as if they were dancing a bacchanal. Donncan felt the wind shivering against the skin of his face, like hot eager hands. He realized he was terribly afraid. He tripped over a tree root and almost fell, and Johanna dragged him up, warning him in a hiss that she would cut Thunderlily‟s throat if he tried anything stupid.

They stumbled on through the garden and out through a tall iron gate that swung back and forth in the wind. Beyond was the witches‟ wood, where narrow paths ran through groves and gardens, and where the maze was hidden within its walls of yew trees.

Suddenly the bells began to toll. The sound was very low and somber, for the bells‟ clappers had been fully muffled, something that was only done at the death of a monarch.

Donncan started, the blood draining away from his face.
“Dai-dein!”
he cried.

“The Rìgh is dead. Long live the Rìgh!” Johanna cried, then poked Donncan with her knife. “But no‟ for long!”

She sounded quite mad.

On and on the bells tolled.

“Why?” Donncan demanded, tears roughening his voice. “Why have ye killed my father!”

“I didna kill him,” she said. “I‟ve done naught.” She smiled. “I mean, I may have drugged the house wine so there‟d no‟ be a healer or a Celestine awake when they were needed.” She smiled more widely. “And I may have given Princess Thunderlily a cup o‟ it to drink when I tricked her to coming to my room. But otherwise I‟ve done naught at all.”

“Ye knew someone was going to kill my father!” Donncan screamed, blood pounding in his head. “Why? Why?”

“He deserved it,” Johanna replied bitterly. “After all the years I have served him faithfully . . .

and my brother too . . . and it means naught to him. Naught.”

“Who?” he demanded. “Who killed him?”

Johanna laughed. “Ye‟ll never guess,” she answered.

She had been forcing them on through the wild tangle of the witches‟ forest, Donncan and Thunderlily stumbling over root and stone, clinging together, the Celestine humming high in warning or distress. Then Donncan saw the ornate iron gate of the maze emerge out of the whispering yew.

“Where are ye taking us?” he demanded.

“Back,” Johanna whispered. “Back to the beginning. He has been dead a very long time. He wants to live again, and I shall be the one to raise him. But we must go back. Naught left o‟ him

but grave dust.”

“Back where?” Donncan demanded, feeling terror mount up to strangle him.

“Why, to the Tomb o‟ Ravens, o‟ course,” she answered. “A thousand years ago.”

R
hiannon lay on her prison bed, her hands clasped on her breast, feeling the rise and fall of her breath, the subtle pulse of her heartbeat. Each breath, each heartbeat, was one more moment of life. At the moment that was all she had to hold on to.

She had fought every step of the way from the courtroom back to her cell. It had taken six men to subdue her, and she still ached all over from their rough handling. Rhiannon‟s shock and grief had been profound. They had promised her, over and over again—they had promised her she would be freed—yet the judges had found her guilty and condemned her to hang. Rhiannon did not know how old she was, but she knew she was young and greedy for life. There was so much yet to see and learn, so much loving and adventuring to do. When at last she realized she could not fight her way free, when the door had been slammed on her and locked and she found herself once again in the vile little cell she knew so well, Rhiannon had fallen to her knees and wept. It was too late for shouting and arguing, too late for screaming and fighting, too late for begging.

She could only weep, her face bent down into her hands, her whole body racked with pain.

Rhiannon could not cry forever. A time had come when she had no more tears, and she had to get up, and mop her face, and blow her nose, and drag herself to her bed. She felt oddly calm, now the force of her grief had spent itself, scoured clean as a shell by the sea.

She did not know how much time had passed. It must be at least three hours, for her candle was guttering in its cage of iron. Any moment it would sputter out, and she would be alone in the darkness again.

There was a grating sound as the key was turned in the lock. The door squealed open, and Corey put his head in the door.

“Game o‟ dice?” he said, rattling his leather cup. Although he did his best to sound normal, his lugubrious face showed that he knew this was Rhiannon‟s last night alive.

Tears stung Rhiannon‟s eyes again. She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “Havena ye lost enough money yet?” she said. Her voice was rough and scratchy.

“Naught else to do,” he said. “I‟m on my own tonight. The rest o‟ the lads have got the night free, to go celebrate midsummer. I got the short straw, as always.”

“Well, I‟ve got naught else to do,” Rhiannon said, trying to achieve an insouciant tone and almost succeeding. “No‟ that I need the coins. Ye heard I willna be enjoying your kind hospitality anymore?”

“I was at the courthouse,” Corey said abruptly, not looking at her. She did not need to ask if he had been booing or cheering. Over the months Rhiannon had been locked up in Sorrowgate Tower, she had gotten to know her guards well. She had bribed them for extra candles, and for bags of seed for her little bluebird, and for the occasional jug of hot water to wash in; and, once they realized she was as much of an avid gambler as they all were, they had spent many hours playing cards and dice. Rhiannon was careful not to win too often, for she wanted to stay on the guards‟ good side and still entertained fantasies of being able to escape or bribe her way free.

Corey was the guard she gambled with most, for he was the closest to her in age and found the long hours cooped up inside stone walls as boring as she did.

The older night guard, Henry, disapproved mightily, but he quite liked to put his aching feet up on the stool and read the latest broadsheet without being bothered by his fellow guard‟s fidgets, so had learned to turn a blind eye. Though he would never have admitted it, the story of

“Rhiannon‟s Ride,” which had been distributed widely that summer, had predisposed him to turning a more lenient eye to his infamous prisoner, though never to the extent of relaxing his vigilance.

“Henry gone a-feasting tonight as well?” Rhiannon asked after she had let Corey win quite a few of her few remaining coins. “That doesna sound like our Henry.”

“His daughter‟s jumping the fire tonight, just like the Banprionnsa,” Corey said. “He was given leave to go. Funny. I never kent he had a daughter, and I‟ve been working with him for nigh on two years now.”

Rhiannon threw her dice, shrugged as once again she lost, and got up. At once Corey tensed, but Rhiannon waved at him irritably. “Relax, laddie! I just thought ye‟d like some goldensloe wine, for midsummer. Nina brought me some the other day. It‟s just here, under my bed. Throw! What have ye got?”

Corey threw the dice and groaned. “A three and a two! The Centaur‟s beard! My luck‟s out tonight.”

“It certainly is,” Rhiannon replied and brought the chamber pot crashing down on his head. It was unfortunately full, and Rhiannon felt a twinge of compassion for the hapless young guard. It did not stop her from wresting away his bunch of keys, her nose wrinkling at the smell, nor from locking him up in her cell with his own keys. Feeling she may as well be hanged for a thief as a murderer, she also relieved him of his purse and his winnings, spilled across the table. She wiped the coins on his jerkin first.

With her few belongings bundled into her pillowcase and the little bluebird riding on her shoulder, Rhiannon went searching through the dark, quiet halls of the prison. She found the guards‟ storeroom. A lantern stood on the table. By its light, Rhiannon unlocked the cupboard and found her saddlebags within, neatly packed with all her belongings. It gave Rhiannon a savage delight to strip off the ugly prison garb and dress herself once more in the soft white shirt and breeches that had belonged to Connor. She strapped his silver dagger at her waist, slung her bow and arrows over one shoulder, and hung the saddlebags over her arm. The bluebird gave a questioning trill, and she whispered, “It‟s back to the mountains for us, my pretty.”

No one challenged her as she made her way towards the stairs, and her heart began to beat a little more steadily. She did not dare make her way to the lower reaches, where she knew many guards would still be on duty, despite the midsummer celebrations. Instead she turned upwards, climbing up to the battlements. She had a fine view up there, of the bonfires in every city square and stringing their way across the countryside beyond the river. She could hear shouting and singing, and somewhere someone was setting off firecrackers, which scared her at first, as she had never heard anything so loud.