The Skull of the World (20 page)

Aye, but all is gone now,
Arkening said with great melancholy.

Happen we shall build it anew one day,
Isabeau answered.

The old sorceress responded with a wistful thought image of hope and drifted off again into a dream. Isabeau became aware of another presence in her mind. It was Gwilym. He was thinking of a mysterious landscape all shrouded in mist, black-skinned creatures with huge, lustrous eyes peering shyly out from the tall swaying rushes. Water gleamed dully as the mist was blown apart, and then Isabeau saw a dreamlike palace rising out of the mist, its towers and domes painted in all the delicate colors of a sunrise. She could smell the mist and feel its cold fingers on her flesh, and wondered at the yearning she sensed in Gwilyn for this land of marshes and lakes.

Ye wish to return to Arran?
she asked.

The swamp has a way o' seeping into your soul,
he answered wryly.
Once I swore I would never set foot there again—or wooden stump for that matter—but all I need is a misty autumn morning and I find myself dreaming o' the swans flying in from the sea, their wings crimson as the dawn sky.

I have never been to Arran,
Isabeau thought. 7
always thought o' it as a scary place, but ye make it sound so bonny.

Aye, bonny, but frightening too. Happen that is why it draws ye, life is somehow more vivid there.

In her mind's eye Isabeau saw an enormous lily-shaped flower, yellow as sunshine with a pathway of crimson spots leading deep into its secret heart. She smelt its rich, intoxicating scent, felt a wave of delicious dizziness, and saw the flower head shift and sway toward her as if seeking to devour her.

Aye, the golden goddess,
Gwilym said,
always hungry for warm blood.
There was an odd note of wistfulness in his voice. For a moment Isabeau tasted a sweet heady wine and experienced an impression of close and sweaty intimacy. Then Gwilym, an intensely private man, withdrew his thought from her. She sent him a soft thought of thanks and sympathy and left herself wide open for the next contact.

It shocked her when it came, a nightmare of torture and taunting and agony that sent her mind reeling back, her own body tensing in remembered pain. She could not help crying aloud. Immediately the flash of memory was gone and she was caught in a close mental embrace of apology and remorse.

I be sorry, my bairn, I did. no' mean . . . It is just the memories are always so close, they come whenever I open my mind
... I
never meant to inflict them upon ye . . . but ye ken, ye understand . . .

Aye, I understand,
Isabeau replied softly, opening and closing her maimed left hand, the tightness of the scars a constant reminder of her own torture and nightmares. She had a moment of closeness with the old sorcerer, then Daillas the Lame withdrew his unhappy mind and she tried to gather back the rags of her concentration. It was hard. That moment of connection had brought that terrible hour with the Awl's Grand-Questioner screaming back into her mind. Like Daillas, she had trouble banishing the memory. It was forever beating against the barriers of her mind like a dark-winged bat, screeching and mocking and haunting her. Her impulse was to let her consciousness curl into a tight little ball, shivering and whimpering, but with ironclad determination she breathed in and out, in and out, until the walls were erected again and she was calm.

How are ye yourself, lassie?
Riordan Bowlegs asked with deep concern.

Aye, I be fine,
she answered coolly.

I did no' ken what it was like for ye, lassie. I be sorry . . .

What is done is done. Besides, Meghan always said only the maimed can mourn, only the lame can love. What are two fingers compared to the capacity to feel grief and joy?
Despite all her best efforts, Isabeau was unable to inject any warmth into her voice.

Still, it be a hard road ye've traveled, my bairn.
Rior-dan's voice was troubled.

Isabeau tried to communicate some kind of reassurance and he must have understood, for she felt the mental equivalent of a comforting pat on the shoulder.

In our different ways we are all hurt by life, Red,
he said.
I am glad ye think the rewards are greater than the costs.

Isabeau moved her shoulders uneasily, not sure that she truthfully did, at least not all the time. The old bow-legged groom was thinking of his own childhood, though, and Isabeau was drawn irresistibly into his chain of thought images. Isabeau saw a little dark room, smelling strongly of goat. The only light came from a fire glowing sullenly on the open hearth. A huge man with a mean face was beating a thin cowering woman. He smelled of whiskey and sweat. The shadow of his arm rose and fell over Isabeau's face. She was crouched beneath the table. He was a giant, towering over her. She could hear her own whimpers and feel her heart beating rapidly against her ribs. She was hungry, so hungry she was sick with it. The woman screamed and fell. China broke. Still that thick, burly giant's arm rose and fell. The woman scrabbled away and he bent and seized her hair, shouting. Suddenly Isabeau could bear it no longer. She dashed out, caught hold of that immense arm, tried to drag it away. She loved that thin, cowed, battered woman, loved her intensely. The tree trunk leg kicked her away. She was flung against the table, fell to the floor, crying. Then the giant loomed over her. His eyes were glaring. His face was purple with whiskey and rage. The huge hard fist lifted, then descended like a hammer, again and again. The woman was crying, begging, trying to hold him back. The floor was filthy. Isabeau tasted dirt and blood, heard pain rushing in her ears like a hurricane. Some sort of darkness descended.

Isabeau came back to herself only slowly. The scene in the tiny cottage had been so vivid that she had completely lost all sense of herself. She said, rather shakily,
Your father?

Aye,
Riordan answered shortly and she remembered her own glad childhood, free and content and smelling always of summer.

I am glad ye remember it thus,
Meghan said. For a moment they shared an image of a flower-strewn glade where thousands of butterflies dipped and soared, a small, red-haired child spinning among them, arms stretched wide.

Then Meghan took her back to her own childhood, showing Isabeau some happy scenes—playing chase and hide with her sister Mairead, cuddling up to her father while he told them stories of the First Coven, pulling a sleepy dormouse out of her pocket and feeding it nuts.

Then, with a surge of excitement and pride that quickened Isabeau's pulse, the old sorceress remembered the day she had been given the Key of the Coven. Even now, so many years later, the memory was sword sharp in Meghan's mind—the cold snap of the air, the smell of woodsmoke and dying leaves, the tingle in her palm as her fingers closed over the talisman, the pride in her father's rheumy eyes.

Meghan had been only thirty-six, the youngest sorceress ever to inherit the Key. Normally the Key-bearer carried the Key until death, but Meghan's father, Aedan Whitelock, had decided his work had been done with the creation of the Lodestar and the uniting of the land, and so had retired at the proud old age of sixty-nine. Giving the throne to one daughter and the Key to the other, Aedan Whitelock had gone to live with the Celestines until his death, thirty-three years later.

All this Isabeau knew in an instant as she shared the Keybearer's memory. She looked down through Meghan's eyes at the Key in her hand. Delicately wrought, it nestled within her palm, shaped in the sacred symbol of the Coven. The Key's flat surfaces were inscribed with magical runes and symbols, and it was warm, as if it were a living being. Tingles were running up Meghan's arm from where the metal touched her skin, and all her senses thrummed with its power, as if she held thunder and lightning captured within metal.

Slowly, in her memory, Meghan lifted the Key and hung it around her throat, so that the talisman hung between her breasts. The rhythm of her heart steadied until it seemed to thrum in tempo with the Key. Tears stung her eyes. Her breath caught. One hand came up and pressed the talisman hard against her body, at the place where her ribs sprang out, the center of her breathing. Gazing up at her beloved father, she made a silent vow to carry the Key with all the wisdom and strength and compassion she could find within her. She would prove worthy of following in the footsteps of all the great Keybearers who had preceded her, she swore it with all of her being. Aedan smiled at her, well pleased, but Meghan had been unable to smile back, overawed and humbled by the power thrumming beneath her hand.

The thought image faded and Isabeau slowly came back to a realization of herself, tired and stiff, her throat parched. She opened her eyes and stretched, hearing bones in her back crack. She could not help glancing at Meghan, and at the Key that hung between her withered breasts. The longing to hold it to her own heart almost overwhelmed her. Slowly she raised her eyes and met Meghan's, black as spilt ink and as inscrutable.

"Isabeau has passed the Third Trial o' Spirit, the challenge o' clear hearing," Daillas said, smiling at her wearily. "Feel the blood pumping through your veins, my bairn, feel the forces o' life animate ye. Give thanks to Ea, mother and father o' us all, for the eternal spark, and guidwish the forces o' Spirit which guide and teach us, and give us life."

Isabeau made the sign of Ea's blessing, joy welling up through her, and all the witches smiled at her and repeated the gesture.

"Now ye must show us once again how ye use all o' the elemental powers," Daillas said. "At the end o' your Second Tests ye made yourself a witch dagger. Ye must do so again and pour into it all ye have learned in your years as an apprentice. With this dagger ye will cut your witch's staff, sign o' full admittance into the Coven as a fully fledged witch, and ye will use it to cast your circle o' power in the workings b' spells. Take the silver o' the earth's begetting, forge it with fire and air, and cool it with water. Fit your blade into a handle o' sacred hazel that ye have smoothed with your own hands. Speak over it the words of the Creed and pour your own energies into it, in the name o' Ea o' the green blood."

Isabeau knew that a witch should always make her own tools and instruments because something made or used by another always held a residue of their powers and purpose, and so may not be in harmony with hers. Even more important, to forge her own witch knife and whittle her own staff also meant that she would be fully engaged with the work, having poured much of herself into the making. So Isabeau had spent many hours with the palace blacksmith, watching him forge weapons for the soldiers and tools for the palace gardeners and carpenters. She had practiced with the bellows and smithy hammers until her ears had rung and her hands had been pockmarked with burns from the flying sparks. She had observed the carpenters shaping wood and spent many idle hours whittling discarded lumps of wood until her hands had grown sure and strong. The apprentice's knife she had forged at her Second Tests now looked childish and clumsy to her eyes and she was eager to put her newly honed skills to the task.

So Isabeau made her witch dagger with great care, taking her time to make sure the task was done as well as possible. She forged the silver blade with two sharp edges, and inscribed upon it many runes of power. While it cooled in the chalice of water, she drew out her battered apprentice's knife and cut the third finger of her right hand so that blood welled up, thick and dark. The witches believed a vein ran from this finger directly to the heart and so it was her own heart blood that darkened the little knife's blade. She smeared both sides of the blade with her blood, then carefully cut a branch from the hazel tree now growing vigorously in the pot of soil before her. As she lovingly stripped away its fresh new leaves, blood continued to pump from the cut in her finger, smearing the wood.

Carefully she whittled the branch into the stylized shape of a dragon, its wings folded along its sides. She set a tiny dragoneye jewel to shine in its crowned head, and polished it all over with starwood oil so the wood glowed.

Isabeau then picked up her little apprentice's knife, its hilt plain and stained with the marks of her fingers, its blade poorly made. She gave it a little caress, remembering the pride and excitement she had felt as she made it. She had lost it soon after, Lachlan stealing it from her the first time they had met. He had given it back to her many months later, when they had met again. It seemed to Isabeau the little knife still carried some of his life essence. After a moment she broke it in half and dropped the blade into the crucible where she had melted the silver for her witch knife. Ceremoniously she threw the hazel-wood hilt into the fire and used her powers to bring the flames leaping up around the crucible until it was white-hot. Slowly the metal within softened until it was like putty and she used her tools and her witch powers to spin it into a long silver thread.

Her fingers trembling a little with weariness and nerves, she fitted the narrow silver blade to the dragon hilt, binding it into place with the silver thread, and softly murmuring incantations of power over it. At last, many hours after she had started, Isabeau was finished. Her skill was not as great as her intention, but the dagger hilt could clearly be recognized as a resting dragon, the long tail curled around its curving hindquarters, the bright blade gripped between all four claws.

Isabeau felt a deep thrill of pride run through her. She looked up to see the witches all smiling at her wearily. They had sat in complete stillness for all that time and she saw by their faces that they were as stiff and tired as she was. The shadows of the trees were long over the grass, the sun sinking down toward the western horizon.