The Shining City (52 page)

“O‟ course,” he replied in surprise.

“Ye remember giving the League their choice o‟ gifts in the auld relic room? Finn took the MacRuraich horn and used it to call up the ghosts o‟ her clan.”

“And she took the cloak o‟ nyx-hair too, on the sly,” Lachlan said, nodding in remembrance. “O‟

course I remember.”

“What did ye give the others? Do ye remember?”

“Dillon took the sword, o‟ course. Joyeux. Who could forget that? Jay took the viola d‟amore, to replace his lost fiddle. Johanna took some bauble—a bangle, I think.”

“She wears it still,” Isabeau said. “It was the wedding bracelet o‟ Aedan‟s wife, Vernessa.”

“What!”

“Aye. I looked it up in
The Book o’ Shadows
. I was interested in those gifts, ye see. So many o‟

them proved to have power or history o‟ some kind.”

“Johanna wears the wedding bracelet Aedan Whitelock gave his wife?” It was clear Lachlan felt such an heirloom should have stayed in the clan, and Isabeau had to remind him gently that he had offered the members of the League of the Healing Hand a gift of their own choice as a reward for their assistance in gaining the throne. Giving Johanna the bracelet was not the first action of generosity he had lived to regret.

“What were the other gifts, do ye remember?” she urged him.

“The other boys took swords too, I think.”

“No‟ Connor. He took a music box, didna he?”

“Aye, that‟s right. It was a pretty trinket. It was like carrying an orchestra around in one‟s pocket. It played a hundred different tunes and needed no more than a turn of its key to wind it. I remember he loved it as a boy.”

“I wonder who it belonged to, to end up in the relic room,” Isabeau mused. “I have found no mention o‟ it in
The Book o’ Shadows
.”

“Why so interested, Beau?” Dide asked.

“I‟m always interested in things o‟ power,” she replied, smiling at him. “Just think on Dillon‟s sword. What a gift to give a small boy! A sword that will fight to the very death once it is unsheathed, even if the bearer o‟ the sword must die himself o‟ exhaustion. A cursed sword, that longs always for blood.”

“I didna ken what it was when I let him have it,” Lachlan interjected angrily.

“O‟ course no‟. My point is ye kent what none o‟ it was. Yet they must all have been things o‟

power, for Meghan to seal them up like that on the Day o‟ Betrayal, hiding them from the Red Guards.”

“Why ask me about them now, though?”

Isabeau hesitated. “Rhiannon had the music box among her things. I saw it in the courtroom today. Plus a very fine dagger, that Aidan made much o‟.”

“Aye, well, that showed she took all Connor‟s things,” Iseult said impatiently. “What is your point?”

“There was a silver goblet there too,” Isabeau said. “It strikes a dim chord in my mind. . . .”

“Parlan chose a goblet,” Lachlan said. “I remember thinking it was an odd choice for a lad. I would‟ve thought he would take a sword, like the others.”

“What happened to the gifts ye gave the other Leaguers?” Isabeau asked. “After they died, I mean?”

Lachlan did not know. “Meghan had them, I think,” he said vaguely. “She was angry with me for giving them away. I think she locked them up in her chest. Certainly she took Joyeux away from Dillon, but he went and took it back, afore he kent what it was.”

Isabeau nodded. “That‟s what I thought. I wondered . . . I thought perhaps Connor may have been given their things once they died . . . or taken them.”

“Highly possible,” Lachlan agreed. “But what does it matter, Isabeau?”

“I just wondered,” she said. “That goblet . . . it fairly shrieked magic at me when I saw it. I‟d like to know what it is. I think I‟ll consult
The Book o’ Shadows
about it.”

“Ye think it may have bearing upon the case?” Lachlan demanded.

She hesitated. “If it is what I think it is, well, perhaps it explains some behavior that has puzzled me.”

“Like what?” Iseult asked.

“Like why Rhiannon confessed to Lewen in the first place. Her every instinct is for survival.

Every time she was questioned about Connor‟s death, she lied. So why did she no‟ lie again, when Lewen asked her about the necklace o‟ teeth?”

“She saw the game was up?”

“But it wasna, no‟ at all. Lewen was in love with her; he would‟ve believed her if she had made up some story, some excuse. There was no need for her to confess the way she did. It just does no‟ seem to ring true to me.”

“So ye think this goblet o‟ Connor‟s is some kind o‟ confessing cup? A cup that compels truth telling?” Iseult asked, turning the idea over in her mind. “I can see how that would be useful.”

“Me too,” Isabeau replied.

“Ye seem to be putting two and two together and getting forty to me,” Lachlan said dismissively.

“So what if the lass confessed? She was in love with Lewen too, remember. Love makes ye do very stupid things sometimes.” His voice was dour, and it was clear he was thinking of his daughter.

“True, but then remember what we all called Connor. Connor the Just, for his ability to find the truth o‟ a matter and sort out a solution. How much easier would his job be if he had a cup o‟

truth? And then think o‟ Lewen. He too was driven to confess the next day, telling first Nina what Rhiannon had said, and then ye, Lachlan. Lewen is loyal to a fault. He would never have betrayed her confidence so lightly.”

“I always thought so too, but Lewen has surprised me a great deal in recent months,” Lachlan said grimly. “Seducing my daughter, for one! He‟s lucky I do no‟ have
him
hanged, drawn, and quartered!”

“Well, I have my theories about that too,” Isabeau said.

Iseult bristled up at once in defense of her daughter, but Isabeau said, in a flat, hard voice, “There is something wrong there, Iseult, and do no‟ try and tell me ye canna see it. Why else are ye so upset?”

“It was just so sudden, so unexpected,” Iseult said.

“Exactly. It stinks o‟ compulsion, this sudden mad passion o‟ Lewen‟s. Olwynne is too strong and subtle a witch to reveal much o‟ her hand, but I‟ll lay ye three gold royals that she has worked a dark spell or two.”

“Why would Olwynne do such a thing?” Lachlan cried angrily. “She is a royal banprionnsa, second in line to the throne. She could have anyone she wanted—”

“No‟ if the one she wanted was in love with someone else.”

“If Lewen is too blind and stupid to see what she had to offer, she‟d be better off without him.”

“I agree, but tell that to a lass in love.”

“I will no‟ believe my daughter has been casting love spells, like some half-witted village skeelie. . . .”

“Why no‟, when ye did it yourself?” Iseult said suddenly. “Och, there was no need for ye to do so, for I loved ye already and
ye
were just too blind and stupid to see it. But ye must admit ye tried. . . . Ye sang me the song o‟ love, remember, and seduced me in the wood.”

Color rose under Lachlan‟s olive skin. “Aye, happen so, but that was different. . . .”

“Why?” Iseult asked.

Lachlan floundered, unable to explain.

“I am very angry with her,” Isabeau said. “Olwynne has the potential to be a great sorceress. She shouldna be wasting her time on romance now!”

“No‟ everyone thinks romance is a waste o‟ time,” Dide said, and she flashed him a quick look of apology.

“No,” Lachlan agreed, “and besides, it is done now. They are handfasted and, if Olwynne is to have her way, will be married in a year and a day. I canna say I am altogether sorry. Lewen needed to be taken into hand, after all that folly with this satyricorn girl. Personally, I feel she is the far more likely candidate for spinning love spells!”

It was very late when Isabeau finally got back to the Tower of Two Moons, having wasted a fair amount of time with her own romance in Dide‟s clothes-strewn suite of rooms. Isabeau was used to managing without much sleep, however, and she was invigorated by her walk through the sleeping gardens, the two moons little more than frail slivers of light in the star-laden sky. The tower was quiet, and she climbed the stairs to her room with a little witch-light bobbing above her head to illuminate the way.

She laid her hand upon her doorknob and at once hesitated, sensing a fleeting trace of human contact there that was not her own. It was too insubstantial for her to identify the hand that had touched there, but her ward was still intact and so Isabeau, relieved, unlocked her door and entered her room, lit only by the faint moonlight filtering through the arched windows.

She stood silent, her witch-senses alert. It seemed some other presence had ruffled the atoms of her space, leaving behind a faint, disturbingly familiar suggestion of their presence, like a trail of scent notes. She could not identify the intruder, though she felt that she should know it.

Isabeau lit every candle in the room with a thought, the kindling in her hearth blazing up. She looked about her. All was as she had left it. Nothing seemed to have been touched. Isabeau walked slowly over to her desk, feeling a chill on her skin that made it rise up in goose pimples, smelling a faint metallic tang to the air like a storm rising over the sea. Magic had been done here, and not so long ago.

The Book of Shadows
rested where it always did. An enormously thick old book bound in red leather and locked with an iron clasp, it held within it all the collected lore and history of the Coven of Witches. Each Keybearer recorded within its pages all that he or she had learned or discovered, so that their knowledge would not be lost to later generations. It was one of the great treasures of the Coven.

Isabeau rested her hands upon its worn red leather. She felt edgy, uneasy. Her hands tingled. She took a deep breath, drew upon the One Power, and opened her third eye.

An image came to her. A woman leaning over the book, unlocking its clasp, turning the pages, searching. Her lantern rested on the table, casting a ray of light upon her green robe but leaving her face in shadow. The hair that hung in a long plait was brown, with faint gleams of grey. Her search grew more desperate, and she spoke aloud, a curse, a command. The pages of the book began to riffle over by themselves, far faster than any hand could turn them. Then suddenly they stopped. The book rested wide open. The woman bent and read the page displayed.

All this Isabeau saw in a few scant moments. Then the vision faded, and she saw once again only her candlelit room, the white curtains swaying in the soft breeze, the red book under her hands as solid and unyielding as ever.

“Who?” Isabeau whispered to herself. “And why?”

She knew that it could only be someone who knew her well, for the key to
The Book of Shadows
was hidden in a secret compartment of a little box Lewen had carved for her some years before.

Isabeau had been raised by Meghan of the Beasts to guard secrets carefully and so few knew where to find it.

She bit her thumb, then went softly across to the mantel-piece and took down a little wooden box that rested there. A rose set among thorns was carved upon its lid. If one pressed the rose firmly on its ruffled heart, it rose up out of the lid, revealing a hidden hollow. Within was a heavy iron key, as long as Isabeau‟s little finger.

Isabeau held the key between her hands, feeling and listening with her witch-sense for any subtle and elusive trace of personality anyone touching the key would have left behind. This time she recognized it at once. “Johanna,” she whispered, and felt a sharp stab of betrayal.

She turned and looked at
The Book of Shadows
, wondering again
Why, why, why?

Isabeau took the key to the desk and unlocked
The Book of Shadows
, laying her hands firmly upon it and saying, “Show me the last page read.”

As soon as she lifted her hands away, the book opened with a great thud, lying open at a page very early on in its history. Isabeau was at once aware of the temperature dropping fast, as if she had opened a door into a snowstorm. She shivered and hesitated, feeling an unaccountable dread.

She could discover nothing until she read the page, however, and so, after only a pause of a few heartbeats, Isabeau bent and looked at the first line of writing.

By the time Isabeau had read the first four words, she wished to stop but she could not wrench her gaze away. The spell held her fast, searing through Isabeau‟s eyes and into her brain.

“To Raise the Dead,” it said, “one needs a living soul, whether willing or unwilling, and a knife

well-sharpened . . .”

The paper was old and stained, and the letters were written in a faint brown ink that looked horribly like blood. The handwriting was large and formal, with many embellishments and flourishes that made it hard to read. Isabeau could no more prevent her brain from puzzling out the words than she could stop her eyes from moving along the lines. It was as if a giant hand had reached inside her skull and seized the ends of her nerve strings, plucking them as it pleased, so that she danced and bowed at its will. Isabeau had never experienced such a strong compulsion before. Even worse, as she fought not to read the Spell of Resurrection and failed, she felt another spell, laid down in every bloody curlicue of writing, lay its dark compulsion upon her.