The Witches of Eileanan (44 page)

The cliff-face was almost three hundred feet high, and where it was not perfectly perpendicular it leaned out over the valley, so that Lilanthe's descent was fraught with danger. Several times her questing rootlet could find no crack to insinuate itself into, and once she found herself clinging in terror to the wall, unable to find any way to continue. She had to slowly shape-shift until she was more tree than girl; then slowly, slowly stretch out all her branches and roots until at last she found a handhold and could swing her flesh-wood body over, an exercise in control rare for the tree-shifter. At last, though, she reached the ground, and stood thigh-deep in the pool beneath the waterfall, washing away the sweat and terror of her descent and cooling her overheated sap.

Aslinn was as beautiful as Isabeau had promised. Great mountain ash trees towered above the floor of the valleys, with crystal waterfalls splashing down from the mountains to form meandering streams and pools below. Songbirds darted through the clear air, trilling madly, and once Lilanthe saw a bhanais bird flying through the canopy, trailing its crimson and gold tail, which was more than three feet long. She traveled more slowly, but could not find her perfect clearing. Small lochan abounded, and on a clear day the backdrop of snow-tipped mountains and green hills was as beautiful as any daydream. The soil was rich with leaf mold and tasted wonderful. The problem lay with Lilanthe. Her fits of loneliness and self-pity came more often now, and she had fallen into the habit of brooding, ignoring the beauty around her as the old Lilanthe would never have done.

One morning when she woke and began to twitch her roots in preparation for rising, she cast out her mind as she always did and was surprised to find that she was no longer alone. Only a few hours away she caught traces of consciousness—a group of people and animals, their mind-thoughts quite loud and brash. As always fascinated by any other intelligent life, Lilanthe found herself slipping through the forest toward the thoughts.

It was a camp of traveling jongleurs and minstrels, making their way east from Rionnagan. The camp was just stirring, small children scampering about naked, heedless of the cool mountain air, women lighting fires or washing their faces, men scattering seed for chickens in hutches or lighting up their pipes as they gossiped over the fire. Lilan-the crouched in the bushes at the edge of the clearing and watched in fascination. Soon the smell of cooking food wafted toward her, and her mouth watered. Even though Lilanthe drew much of her nourishment from the soil in which she dug her roots, she still had a stomach, much like humans, and she definitely had taste buds. Lilanthe had not eaten a hot meal since she and Isabeau had parted company, having a natural fear of fire and no inclination to try lighting one.

The jongleurs ate their meal in leisure, talking and laughing and smoking all at the same time. One of the small children turned somersaults all round the adults, finally tumbling to a heap just at the very edge of the hot coals. Cries of alarm rang out, and the child was rescued and dusted off, before being slapped hard across the legs and tossed overhead to its mother. The sun was climbing high before they had packed up and harnessed the stocky horses to the caravans again. They headed east, and Lilanthe followed them.

By the third day she had identified the relationships between most of them. There were six caravans, most filled to the bursting with at least three generations of family— one with four—ranging from a toothless old crone to the child whose mishap Lilanthe had witnessed the first day. The caravans were rarely entered, containing instead the few possessions of the jongleurs: their props and instruments, their bright, ragged clothes, battered cooking implements, and sacks and barrels of stores, including one of whisky, which had been called firewater in Lilanthe's home village. One night they tapped the barrel freely, and there was dancing around the fire, and much story-telling and laughter. Lilanthe crept right up to the group that night, hiding beneath one of the caravans, huddled into the sleeping blankets of the family who would later bed down beneath the scant protection of the caravan's wooden floor.

Her favorite jongleur was young, with bright black eyes and a tangle of dark hair. His beard and mustache were just beginning to grow in straggles, giving him a rather raggedly look that went well with his patched sky-blue jerkin and dirty crimson trousers. He captured Lilanthe's interest primarily because of his juggling skills. The way the golden balls spun out of his hand in ever more complex patterns intrigued her, and she often followed him when he slipped away from the camp to practice in private. He juggled all the time—pots and pans when he was meant to be washing up, stones and pebbles that he carried around in his pocket, daggers and swords when he practiced routines with his sister. She was a slender child, with eyes as bright and black as his, though her hair was browner, with red glints. Both of them were trained acrobats as well, and watching their somersaults and tumbling runs sometimes astounded Lilanthe, who had never seen such agility in human creatures before. They were more like cluricauns than children, particularly when they played among the tree branches, swinging and somersaulting from limb to limb.

Their father, a heavy man with blood-shot eyes, frightened Lilanthe and she often slipped away when he was in sight. He was a fire-eater and watching someone swallowing a gust of flame was more than the tree-shifter could bear. It was he who told the loudest stories, and played the fiddle in the danciest tunes, and often squeezed the bottoms of the other women in the party, hitting their men on the shoulder in a comradely way. He had no wife of his own, and did not seem to notice his pinching ways irritated the other men. His mother traveled with them, though, and she was the only one that could control his bluster, especially when the firewater ran through his veins. Unlike everyone else in the party, his mother did not sleep on the ground under the caravans, but inside, only coming out when the fires were lit and the tea made.

Lilanthe did not know why the jongleurs exerted such fascination over her, except perhaps they eased her loneliness a little. She found their antics often made her laugh, so that she had to bury her face in her hands so no sound would escape and betray her. When she was in tree form, it was easier, for her laughter expressed itself in a little shiver of her dangling branches, which could easily have been the wind. Sometimes she thought she saw the young man looking in her direction, but each time his eyes seemed to drift past her and she would let out her breath, sure he had not noticed her.

One day he slipped out of the camp early, before anyone else was awake, and Lilanthe transformed herself into her human shape to follow him. He went some distance, leaving the green road the jongleurs were following, until he found a clearing with a still pool. He leaned above the water, and Lilanthe felt his mind cast out, searching. She brought her mind in very small and still, like a hunted coney frozen in the grasses. He was searching a very long way away, though, and she thought he may not have noticed her. She should have been shielding herself. It never occurred to her that one of these simple traveling entertainers could have such range or power. He must hide himself very well for her not to have recognized it straightaway. She remembered Isabeau and how completely she had been shielded, and thought she must remember humans could hide their minds as well.

She felt the young man bring his mind back into his body, and she let her bare feet press deeper into the earth. The delicious shiver that was shifting rippled over her skin and she opened her pores to the sun and the air. She was almost changed, her eyesight and hearing dimming, a mass of other perceptions taking over, more sensitive than any of her human senses, when she felt him sit back and look at her. Deep in her mind he said,
Shall we introduce ourselves ?

The shock alone slowed Lilanthe's shift, and only a few panicked thoughts tumbled over each other before she reversed the change. Her feet stirred and flexed, her arms thickened and swelled back into warm flesh, and then she was looking at him with her eyes wide open in fear.

"It's all right," he said out loud. "I shall no' hurt ye, or tell anyone. I ken they hunt creatures such as ye, and kill ye for being what ye are. Ye need no' be afraid. I am Dide."

She said nothing, wondering if she should run. Now he knew, shifting was no escape for he could damage her with fire or axe, and she would be helpless, her roots deep in the soil.

"I have seen and felt ye watching us," he said, and rose carefully to his feet. "I do no' think anyone else has, except probably my granddam and she o' all people would no' harm ye. Do no' be afraid. Wha' is your name?"

She would not answer, and so step by slow step he approached her, as she backed deeper into the underbrush and wondered again why she did not run. Soon he was close enough for her to smell his human, meat-eating stench, and to see how bright his eyes were, like the eyes of a donbeag, liquid and black. "Please trust me. I am very glad to find someone like ye, truly I am. I am Dide. I am your friend."

"I am Lilanthe."

He stood still. "Good morrow to ye, Lilanthe," he said. "Are ye hungry?"

She nodded her head, for indeed her human stomach did feel empty and she had had little time to forage the last few days. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a withered apple for her. When Lilanthe would not take it from his hand, he laid it on the ground and stepped back. Quickly Lilanthe snatched it up, and smelled it before tentatively nibbling on its sweet rubbery flesh.

"Let us talk," he said, and slowly crouched on the ground. "Quietly, though, for soon the camp will wake and then Nina shall come looking for me."

The morning talk was the first of many for, despite being discovered, Lilanthe continued to follow the caravans deeper into Aslinn. Twice a day, and sometimes more, Dide slipped away so they could meet. He talked more than her at first, for he was trying to win her trust. He told her about his childhood, traveling the lands of Eileanan in a caravan, performing tricks and acrobatics for thrown pennies or a free night in an inn. He tried to reassure her that her secret was safe with him.

"No' all humans agree with the Fairy Decree." Dide was perched on the end of a log, while Lilanthe sat a good seven steps away, her cheek resting on her knees, her arms wrapped close about her. "It's a travesty o' the Pact o' Aedan, killing fairy creatures, and the Rìgh should ken it. Syne the Lodestar was lost, nothing has gone good in this country. That's why we have to find the Lodestar again. The Rìgh is dying, everyone kens it. Some dreadful disease is sucking the life out o' him, and the mind and soul with it. Why, we saw him a few months ago when we played in Rhyssmadill, and he was gray as ashes, with a foolish grin on his face like a bairn. Enit said then he would die within the year, and she is never wrong." Enit was Dide's grandmother and she was never far from his conversation, being Dide's greatest friend, along with his sister Nina.

"If the Rìgh dies without an heir, there'll be civil war again, for sure. That is why the Fairgean are slowly building a position in the north and east, for once Rìgh Jaspar dies, there'll be no one to take the crown and, besides, without the Lodestar, we have no true defense against the Fairgean. All the Yedda are gone . . ." Seeing the incomprehension on Lilanthe's face, he regained the track of his conversation. "Wha' I'm trying to say is, there's no need for ye to be afraid o' me. I dinna agree with the Rìgh's decree, in fact, I hate it, I'm fighting to stop him . . ." He paused again, then said in a rush, "I'll tell ye all about it, for then you'll see I'm no enemy, but your friend, I love the fairy, I canna believe the Rìgh wants to exterminate them, or why. Ye were here long afore the Great Crossing, when we humans came to this land."

"Well, I do no' think I was," Lilanthe said cheekily. "I'm only eighteen years auld."

Dide was delighted at the flash of personality. "I mean the fairy .. ."

"I'm half human, ye ken. My father was like ye, it is only my mother who was a tree-changer."

"I think most o' us have a twist o' fairy in us somewhere." Dide sounded uncertain.

Lilanthe's face was sullen again. "Most wouldna admit it."

"Once they did. Why, they say the MacAislins were more than half nisse and tree-changer, for these forests were once thick with them, and the children o' Aislinna have lived here for more than a thousand years. The family is mostly gone now, o' course, but that was why they adopted the Summer Tree as their emblem. That's why I'm here actually—my master has sent me to make contact with someone at the MacAislins' Tower, for he has had word the tower is occupied again, and he hopes it'll be one o' the family, or maybe one o' the Dream-Walkers returned."

The warmth and life had returned to Lilanthe's face, and she leaned forward, her leafy hair streaming over her shoulders. "Who are the Dream-Walkers?"

"Aislinna's tower is the Tower o' Dreamers. It was ruined at the Time o' Betrayal, o' course, though rumor has had it for years that many o' the dreamers slipped away in the night and so escaped the massacre. Some can travel the dream road forward, ye see, and so may have had forewarning. Our hope is the story is true, and now that the Tower has been forgotten, one or even more have returned. My master saw someone, ye see. He went to the Tower o' Ravens and used the Scrying Pool there, trying to contact each Tower in turn. He surprised someone at the Tower o' Dreamers, but frightened them away. He was no' able to make contact again."