The Witches of Eileanan (38 page)

Iseult dragged back the cloak to show the great wings, now strapped tightly at Bacaiche's side, and the taloned feet. Bacaiche took a swipe at the seanalair with one claw, and shrieked through his gag. The leader of the legion leaped back, surprise all over his face. "What is he? I never seen the like!"

"Nor have any o' us!" Meghan responded. "Now, I must be on my way. The Grand-Seeker was very anxious indeed to examine him!"

"I can imagine," the seanalair said, and waved them through. As they galloped down the path that led between the great cliffs and so to Rionnagan, Iseult could hear him shouting as he ordered the camp to be struck and the soldiers to march north. None of them looked very happy about it.

"If we're lucky we may cause a rebellion as well," Meghan said, and she was laughing. "Well done, Iseult, that plan worked like a dream!"

Resting a few miles on, sheltered behind a great clump of graygorse, Meghan and Bacaiche argued long and hard about what to do with the uniforms. The horses had been let go on the other side of the Pass, as Meghan had promised the stallion of the herd.
They would make their way
back that night, under the cover of darkness. The saddles and bridles were thrown into the ravine, disappearing under the foaming waters of the Rhyllster. Bacaiche thought they should stay in disguise, arguing that the local peasants would be in much greater awe of them, and so more likely to replenish their supplies and not give them trouble. Meghan disagreed. She thought it would not take long before the Grand-Seeker heard of their trick, and so would know Meghan and Bacaiche were within reach of her. Both were considered such great enemies of the Banrìgh that she would be itching to bring them in. There was also the danger of running into another legion of Red Guards, and their seanalair may not be as easily tricked as MacGrannd. She thought they should try to keep quiet as possible, staying under cover and slowly heading toward Tulachna Celeste.

While they argued Iseult said nothing, just polished her weapons and strapped them lovingly to her belt again. Meghan turned to her. "What do ye think, Iseult?"

The girl shrugged. "Never use the same trick twice."

Meghan stared at her wonderingly, then nodded. "True," she said. "What do ye suggest?"

"Dispose o' the uniforms. If we are caught with them, it will be proof o' wrong-doing. I can always find more if we need them. Travel at night. If we need supplies and canna find our own, only one o' us should go into a village at a time, for they will be looking for a group o' three now. Stay on high ground, and keep an escape route in mind. Without knowing the lay o' the land, I canna suggest any more."

"What are ye, some kind o' Berhtilde?" Bacaiche sneered. Iseult did not understand what he meant, but stared back at him expressionlessly till he looked away.

"She certainly seems to ken warfare," Meghan said, and her voice was both admiring and concerned.

"I am a Scarred Warrior," Iseult said proudly.

In comparison to the mountains, the highlands of Rionnagan were easy to traverse, with their wide, empty moors that stretched away under gray skies. Their supplies were down to nothing after the hard journeying through the mountains, and so Meghan decided to find a village where she could trade for oats, flour, curds, fresh vegetables and other essentials. Wanting to avoid the larger villages she followed the high crest of the hill away from the river, so they were heading as much east as south, toward the rising sun.

The air was filled with the fresh scent of the green-gray grasses and the trill of bird song. Bacaiche lifted up his voice and sang with the birds, and Iseult listened entranced. On the Spine of the World, birds were rare and those that survived the snow blizzards and the bitter cold had only rough cawing voices, which sounded desolate and cruel. The melodious lilting of Bacaiche's voice brought a most unaccustomed lump into her throat.

Soon they saw the dark smear of smoke against the sky and their pace unconsciously quickened. Iseult looked at Meghan and saw the donbeag now rode on her shoulder, clinging to the witch's long plait with one paw, and patting her cheek with the other. "Ye and Bacaiche had better find a holt, my dear, and I'll go down and see what I can find," the witch said, and tension was evident in her voice.

"I shall go with ye," Iseult said. "It may be dangerous."

"All the more reason for ye to stay."

"I am the Scarred Warrior. I shall guard ye."

"I would rather ye stayed and guarded Bacaiche."

"I do no' need some slip o' a lass to guard me!" Bacaiche retorted angrily.

Iseult looked at Meghan and said, "I shall come with ye."

Meghan hesitated for a moment, then nodded reluctantly. "Very well, but ye must keep quiet and do exactly what I tell ye."

"Aye, auld mother," Iseult replied meekly.

Together they walked down the long green slope and toward the village, Iseult keeping several paces behind the sorceress. It did not take them long to realize the plume of black smoke came from the burned-out remains of a cottage nestled in a copse of trees some distance away from the village. A crowd of villagers was gathered outside the cottage, looking mournfully at the smoking ruins. A pedlar in a rickety old cart had drawn up at the fringe of the crowd, and the locals were explaining the situation to him vociferously.

"She did be the best skeelie in these here parts," said one thin, old woman with gray braids wrapped around her head. "Eà damn those red-coated soldiers! Why could they no' hang some other village's skeelie!" When the other villagers shushed her rather nervously, she shook her round gray head and muttered bitterly, "Wha' is the island coming to?"

Taller than most of the crowd, Iseult was able to see over their heads to the dangling body of an old woman who had been hanged from the lintel of her own gate. As small as she was, it took some careful maneuvering on Meghan's part before she found a good vantage position. As soon as she saw the dead woman, an expression of sorrow crossed her face, puzzling Iseult yet again.

"So wha' brought the Red Guards to this Truth-forsaken corner o' the world?" the pedlar asked, and a chorus of voices answered him.

"They were after a horse thief as stole the Grand-Seeker's own horse!"

"Some red-haired lassie . . ."

"They said she be a witch," a worn-faced woman said, her hand to her swollen belly.

"Och, aye, I heard aboot that!" the pedlar exclaimed.

"The Grand-Seeker were in a true
fiadhaich!
Swore she'd track the witch down hersel'!"

"She had no' need to murder our skeelie," the woman with the gray braids said.

"They said Skeelie Manissia helped the witch escape the soldiers," one man said with uneasy authority, fingering the chain of office around his neck. "That is why they hanged her."

"They had no call to hang our skeelie who has bided in these parts for all o' her life, and her ma and granddam too. Wha' shall we do without a skeelie? Manissia was one o' the best, and now we have no one to serve us."

The village mayor looked uneasy. "The Grand-Seeker said Manissia had employed witchcraft to help the red-haired witch escape. The penalty for witchcraft is death, as ye all ken."

"And wha' if Manissia had a few witch tricks up her sleeve!" the woman retorted, her cheeks red with fury. "She served us and our village faithfully all her life. Why, she even brought ye into the world, Jock MacCharles, for all the good tha' did her!"

The exchange had been so heated no one had notice Meghan and Iseult at the fringe of the crowd. However, at the woman's scathing words the mayor looked about uneasily, and his gaze fell upon Iseult's head of short, red-gold curls, just beginning to peek out from beneath her tam-o'-shanter.

"There she is!" he cried. "It's the red-haired witch, returned to the scene o' her crimes! Catch her!"

Everyone turned and stared, and Iseult dropped automatically into her fighting crouch, her hand flying to her weapons' belt. Meghan was quicker, however. In a cracked, querulous voice she cried out, "Och, no, guid sir, that do be my granddaughter. There mun be some mistake."

"It do be the same lass," one of the middle-aged women cried. "Though she has cut off all her hair."

"No, indeed, it canna be the same lassie," the pedlar interrupted. "For as I drove oot this morning I heard the red-haired witch had been caught riding into Caeryla. Can ye believe it? Rides the Grand-Seeker's own horse into Caeryla, bold as brass. I did hear she was to be put to trial by Lady Glynelda hersel'."

"They mun have caught the wrong lass!" the mayor exclaimed. "For this is the lassie that stayed with Manissia. I saw her ride through Quotil myself."

"It mun be an uncanny likeness," Meghan frowned. "For Mari has been by my side for the past six weeks and we have never been in Quotil afore."

The crowd dissolved into argument, the mayor shouting at some of the crofters to grab Iseult, but Meghan standing her ground and swaying the crowd by pure force of character.

"She be my granddaughter," she said in her cracked voice.

"She be her granddaughter," someone in the crowd repeated obediently.

"She is no' the witch ye seek."

"She is no' the witch we seek."

"The witch ye seek has been captured."

"The witch we seek has been captured." By now the whole crowd, including the mayor with his fat red face, was repeating Meghan's words with glazed expressions on their faces.

"Ye shall let us pass now."

The crowd parted without a murmur and, vastly impressed, Iseult trotted along behind the sorceress's small figure. Casting a quick glance back at the crowd, she saw the eyes of the pedlar in his rickety cart lingered on them, and she hastened her step, anxious to be out of sight. As soon as they had rounded the curve of the hill, Meghan lost her querulous voice and bent figure, and strode along upright once more.

"That crowd is used to coercion," she mused. "I would say Skeelie Manissia, Eà guard her soul, has had that village wrapped around her finger for years. If she had tried that trick on the Grand-Seeker, though, I am no' surprised she was hanged. Such bonny tricks will no' deceive a seeker."

They reached the camp where Bacaiche lay hidden soon before sunset, but Meghan did not give them a chance to eat or sleep. "Isabeau has been here," she told Bacaiche curtly. "A skeelie helped her escape, but was hanged by the Awl for her trouble. That is her cottage burning. The villagers say nothing o' ye, which makes me think your capture was no' public knowledge. All they said was a red-haired witch had stolen the Grand-Seeker's horse. I canna believe Isabeau was so stupid!"

Bacaiche opened his mouth to say something but Meghan rounded on him. "Ye should be grateful to Isabeau! If she had no' rescued ye, it would be on the way to the Banrìgh that you'd be. Now she is captured and in trouble, and she has no' your experience. She's rarely been out o' the valley. I am so angry with ye, Bacaiche; ye ken she had put herself in danger for ye, and ye abandoned her to the Awl!"

"I dinna want to be saddled with a pesky lass! I dinna ken who she was!"

"What will they do to her if they catch her? Beat and torture her, rape her, most like, for she's a bonny lass! Then it'll be a hanging like that poor auld skeelie back there, or worse, the fire. Fine way to treat the lass who rescued ye!"

Bacaiche said nothing, just looked as stubborn and sullen as Iseult had ever seen him. Meghan was not finished, though. She pinned him with her eyes and said contemptuously, "Ye say ye want to win the Lodestar, Bacaiche. When the time comes ye must be ready and able to wield it. The Lodestar requires greatness o' heart and spirit. Do ye really think ye could wield it now?"

Bacaiche swallowed his words, turned on his heel and marched on.

They were eating as they walked, Meghan too ridden with anxiety to let them stop, when Iseult suddenly screamed and fell to the ground. She cried out again, as Meghan hurriedly dropped to her side. "What is it? Are you in pain?"

"My arms, my legs, I feel like I'm being torn apart!" Iseult cried and rubbed at her shoulders and hips.

"By the Centaur, what's wrong with the lass? She'll bring the soldiers down on us if she screams like that," Bacaiche said uneasily.

Meghan pulled a tub of ointment from her pack and began rubbing it vigorously into Iseult's joints. "I do no' ken. Rheumatism o' some kind? There does no' seem to be much inflammation ..."

Suddenly Iseult sat bolt upright, moaning with pain, clutching her left hand in her right. "Oh, gods!" she cried. "My hand!" She rocked back and forth in pain, then suddenly fell sideways into a faint.

White-cheeked, Meghan chafed her hands between her fingers, calling her name. "It must be Isabeau!" she cried. "Iseult must be linked with her somehow. I canna think what else could be wrong, and indeed I've been feeling most unsettled in my mind about her. Quickly, Bacaiche, we must be going. Can ye carry Iseult? Oh, Eà, please, let Isabeau be safe."

When Iseult finally came to her senses, Bacaiche was staggering along under her weight, swearing viciously. "Put me down," she said. "Please."