The corridor was dimly lit, lanterns casting an occasional pool of light. She had wrapped herself well in the cloak, keeping the hood pulled forward. The cloak protected her against the cold, and she felt safer with her face hidden. Conscious of time running away, she began to hurry, turning a corner without first checking to see if the hall beyond was empty. She came to an abrupt halt, terror beating through her. Four soldiers stood only a few feet away, talking in low voices. One was facing her, and as she stared helplessly, he raised his eyes and stared straight at her.
Terror held her motionless. She waited for the inevitable shout. Nothing happened. The soldier’s eyes passed over her as if she was not there, even though the light from the nearest lantern must have fallen upon her.
He made a gruff comment and touched his fingers to his helmet. Then he and his companion wheeled away and came down the hall towards her. Finn stood still, unable to believe they did not see her when she could see them so clearly. They passed within a foot of her, saying something about the Rìgh, and disappeared round the corner. Finn did not move. The other two soldiers talked a while longer, then marched off, somehow not noticing the cloak-shrouded little girl pressed against the wall in full view. Trembling with reaction, she waited a full minute before slowly and carefully continuing.
She reached the end of the wide corridor and carefully peered round the corner. Her heart hammering, she whipped her head back. Two guards stood outside a grand door, spears at the ready. Another two were standing at the top of the marble staircase opposite.
Her only thought now was to get back to the tower but she could hear voices behind her, and the beat of marching feet. She picked up the elven cat, tucked her into the cloak’s capacious pocket, pulled the hood further over her head and tiptoed across the corridor to the door opposite.
Within was a bedroom, thankfully empty. She put back the hood so she could look about her. It was a lofty room, its ceiling painted with clouds and suns and the delicate shape of dancing nisses. In the centre of the room was a wide bed with carved and gilded posts. The satin brocade curtains were blue and silver, fringed with gold.
In one corner was a gilded mirror on a stand. Thoughtfully Finn went to stand before it. To her disappointment she could see herself clearly. She was about to turn away when, on an impulse, she lifted the hood over her head. A thrill went down her spine, electrifying her. She was invisible. She had simply disappeared. She could see the room behind her reflected in the mirror, but there was no image of her at all. She pulled the hood away, and there she was, a small black figure in the cloak, her face rather white, her eyes glittering with excitement.
Realising the mantle she had found in the tower’s relic room was a cloak of invisibility made her escape from the palace a much easier proposition. Smiling, she looked about her consideringly. There was a set of double doors in the right-hand wall, standing slightly ajar. She slipped through, careful not to move the doors, and found herself in a dressing room. By the richness of the gowns she knew she was in the quarters of one of the aristocracy, and wondered where the lady was. Probably gone to visit her amour, Finn thought with a grin. Beyond was a lady’s boudoir, daintily furnished and quite empty.
She went quietly through the next set of double doors and found herself in a room lit only by the flickering flames on the hearth. Glancing about she saw someone asleep in the chair by the fire, Gitâ curled on her lap. The firelight played over her copper-red curls. ‘Iseult!’ Finn cried. ‘Wha’ are ye doing here?’
She threw back the hood of her cloak and shook the sleeping girl vigorously. The redhead woke and stared at Finn with bemused blue eyes. ‘What?’ she said sleepily. ‘What’s wrong?’ Then her eyes opened wide and she sat up hastily. ‘The Rìgh! Has he taken a turn for the worse?’
She got to her feet, setting the donbeag back down on the chair. Finn stepped away, feeling scared. As soon as she had heard the girl’s voice, she knew it was not Iseult. She saw now the girl was wearing a plain grey gown with a white apron, quite unlike Iseult’s white leather jerkin and breeches. As the girl yawned and stretched, she saw one hand was tightly bound up with bandages.
‘Well, answer me!’ the stranger with Iseult’s face cried. ‘Has the cat got your tongue, lassie? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, I’m sorry. I made a mistake,’ Finn babbled, staring at her with astonished eyes. Apart from the bandaged hand and the clothes, she was identical to Iseult, down to the red-gold curl that dangled into her eyes and was pushed away with an impatient hand.
The girl cast Finn a shrewd look from her vivid blue eyes. ‘What do ye mean, ye made a mistake? Ye wake me from the best sleep I’ve had in weeks to tell me ye’ve made a mistake? Who are ye? I have no’ seen ye before. What are ye doing in the royal suite?’
Finn felt her jaw drop, her eyes widen. The royal suite? She cast a wild look around the gilded and painted room, noting the luxurious furnishings and the grand dimensions. She decided she had to get out of here, fast! Her eyes fell on the donbeag, now sitting up and watching with bright eyes. Gitâ? she thought incredulously, and the little donbeag chittered in welcome.
‘Ye know Gitâ?’ the girl said. ‘Who are ye?’
‘I’m Finn,’ she said limply. ‘Who are ye?’
‘Isabeau the Red,’ she answered and suddenly Finn knew she was a fool. She had heard of Iseult’s twin sister Isabeau; indeed, she had known Isabeau was in the palace for she had heard Lachlan and Iseult worrying about some key she was meant to have. She sat down and said, ‘I’m an idiot!’
Isabeau laughed. ‘Are ye? Why?’
Finn decided there were more differences between the twins than she had first thought. Isabeau’s face was much more expressive, and she was quick to both laughter and words. Iseult had a quality of coiled stillness about her, like a spring about to be released. She rarely laughed, and when she did, it was involuntary and quickly smothered.
‘I should have known who ye were as soon as I saw ye,’ she answered. ‘Ye look exactly like Iseult!’
‘I do?’ Isabeau replied swiftly. ‘Who is Iseult?’
Again Finn was staggered. ‘Your sister—I thought.’
‘Ah, the sabre-leopard girl.’ She chittered at Gitâ, who chittered back excitedly. She smiled at Finn. ‘Do no’ look so startled. I only found out I had a sister twenty minutes ago. Is she here too? What are ye doing here?’
Finn explained to Isabeau how she came to be sneaking through the palace. Isabeau’s interest quickened as Finn told her how she and her companions were hiding out in the ruined witches’ tower. Isabeau gave a little laugh. ‘Half o’ Rionnagan is being turned upside down for this mysterious rebel leader and ye say he’s in the very midst o’ the Awl’s headquarters!’
She hammered Finn with questions, but the little girl was growing restive. Even with her cloak of invisibility, Finn was dreading the return to the tower and worried about what her companions might do. How dreadful if they tried to rescue her and were caught themselves!
Jay’s words cut through the impassioned speech like a knife. There was no need to articulate the danger. Apart from their fears for Finn’s safety, they all knew the possibility of their hiding place being tricked or tortured from her. Lachlan seized the bow and bent it. ‘Iseult, I need to string it!’
Iseult’s face was impassive. ‘I will get ye one o’ Cloud-shadow’s hairs.’ The Celestine had pulled out a handful of her coarse mane for them, and they were coiled in one of the many compartments of Iseult’s satchel.
It was a tall bow, and strongly made. Few men could have bent it and strung it, but Lachlan managed it. All the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulged, and a sheen of perspiration sprang up on his brow, but it was done in moments. Iseult’s jaw tightened. It seemed her pupil was outstripping her.
‘We must hurry. How are we to get to the palace safely? It is almost midnight, and the rain is blowing over.’
‘Call back the rain. And mist, a thick mist.’ Iseult spoke quickly. ?
??We have watched Meghan do it, and she says we are both strong in the Element o’ Air. And ye have a Talent with water, Lachlan, ye ken ye do. All ye have to do is use it!’
He nodded, his jaw determined. Iseult held out The Book of Shadows. ‘It will help us, I know it will.’
Their eyes locked and he smiled. ‘Ye must all stay here,’ he said to the others. ‘Nay, no arguments. Iseult and I can do this better alone.’ Lachlan caught up Finn’s hunting horn, which lay on the table with Jay’s viola. ‘I will blow on the horn if I am in trouble. One blast, I want ye to come to me. Two blasts, and ye must get out as fast as ye can. Either way, someone must ring the tower bell to alert our friends in the city. Understand?’
Jorge said urgently, ‘Be careful, my dears. It is Samhain, night o’ the dead. I feel death is very near. I am afraid …’
‘That is why I must go, Jorge. It is Jaspar’s death ye feel, and he is the last o’ my brothers. Ye do understand?’
The blind seer nodded, though his cheeks were wet with tears.
Iseult and Lachlan ran up the stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. Out on the balcony they knelt between the delicately fluted columns and set The Book of Shadows on the ground before them. They were both afraid.
They did not know how to ask the book for help and so they just stared at it. The cover flung itself open, the pages riffling in a rising wind. They clasped hands. ‘Come rain, come mist, come darkness, come concealment,’ they chanted, drawing in their will and focusing their desire as much as they were able. ‘Come rain, come mist, come darkness, come concealment,’ Lachlan sang, finding a melody in the chant, ‘Come rain, come mist, come darkness, come concealment.’
The pages fell open, and a small tornado rose out of the book. It spun, gaining height and force, and they gripped hands, rain spitting over their faces. Leaves began to twist into its heart; lightning speared out, needle-thin but quick and deadly. Thunder shook the pillars, and the tornado veered out and into the night, gathering momentum. Their hair blew away from their faces, and in another flash of lightning much greater than the first, they saw each other’s terrified faces.
‘How did we do that?’
‘It was no’ us, it was the book,’ Iseult cried. She closed it, goodwishing it fervently, and thrust it back into the pouch at her belt. They scrambled to their feet and ran to the stairs. An eerie sound was rising. Suddenly ghosts were all about them, frail, white, shredded into cobwebs.
‘It is midnight,’ Lachlan cried, and cowered down. He knew ghosts were only psychic emanations of what had gone before, but the grief and horror of their passing quivered the air like the aftermath of lightning. Iseult caught his hand. She was used to ghosts, for the Towers of Roses and Thorns was thick with them and they did not wait till Samhain to cry. She dragged him forward, and the ghosts passed over them like a shiver. Down the stairs they raced, flinging open the door and running across the garth, not looking to see if anyone was watching. There would be no patrol on the ramparts now.
Snow swirled about them. A wolf howled, close behind them. They could feel coldness at their necks and they quickened their pace. Never before had Lachlan been so nimble and quick on his claws, the beat of his wings propelling them forward over the flagstones. The wind battered them with leaves and twigs, swept away, then returned with a spurt of sleet. The lanterns along the palace were blurred globes of yellow. Lights burnt in only one wing, and Lachlan panted, ‘There.’
‘How do we get up?’
‘We fly, leannan. What else? If we can conjure a storm, can we no’ fly?’
He spread his wings and leapt towards the lights, and she leapt with him, not thinking, just following where he led. In one graceful arc, they reached the windows and caught at the shutters, which banged once again the wall. They hung there, shaking, triumphant and amazed.
The curtains inside were dragged back, and they flinched and huddled against the wall. Iseult transferred her grip to the stone fretwork, and took her dagger from her belt. The window was flung open. ‘Just the shutter banging in the wind, Your Highness,’ a man’s voice said. Lachlan nimbly swung over Iseult so he was hanging from the fretwork beside her. The shutter was banged closed, and they heard the window slammed down again.
They hung there in the snow-whirling darkness. It was bitterly cold. Lachlan smiled with stiff lips and whispered, ‘Let’s find a way in, leannan.’
Step by slow step they made their way along the wall. They passed two sets of shutters, but they were both locked tight. They inched their way along to the next set of windows. The shutter was ajar, and they hung outside, arms aching, and looked inside.
They saw a fire burning low, its light shining copper and gold on the heads of two girls, close together, talking. Just as they recognised the faces, the red-haired girl looked up and saw them.
Her pupils flared in instant recognition. She rose and walked towards them, her intense blue gaze never faltering. She raised her hand, and outside in the snow Iseult raised hers. Their fingers touched through the frosty glass.
Jorge sat still for a time, the children staring at him. The raven hopped restlessly from foot to foot and gave a caw that sounded like mocking laughter. Jorge lifted his blind face and said huskily, ‘Dillon, call in the soldiers. They canna guard us against banshees. Anntoin, my lad. Extinguish the fire.’
‘But, master …’
‘Do it, lad. Johanna, do no’ weep. Come close, all o’ ye.’
They gathered around him, and he showed them the Samhain cakes he had baked that afternoon and the Samhain cider he had concocted with apples, honey, whisky and spices. ‘Do no’ be afraid, my bairns. Most o’ the spirits that fly at Samhain are no’ evil. We will light a bonfire and have a feast, and leave the night for the ghosts.’
The Blue Guards came in, followed by a restless and worried Duncan. Jorge tore a page from the end of a book, grimacing a little as he did so, and gave them all scraps of paper. ‘Tonight is the time we cast away our weaknesses and seek to make ourselves strong and vital. Write down all your failings and we shall cast them into the festival bonfire.’
‘But we canna write,’ Johanna cried. ‘None o’ us know how. Only Finn knew.’ She burst into tears again.
‘I can write a few words,’ Duncan volunteered. With a quill plucked from the raven, he wrote down their failings one by one, in their own blood. That macabre suggestion was Dillon’s, and only done because they had no other ink. By the time they had argued over each other’s weaknesses—which ranged from Johanna being a scaredy-cat to Dillon liking to get his own way too much—it was midnight.
Jorge had cleared the grate of ashes and laid a bonfire there with the sacred woods—ash, hazel, oak, blackthorn, fir, hawthorn and yew. He drew the ceremonial circle with ashes, water and salt, making it large enough to contain all of them. The children sat cross-legged around the fireplace, with the soldiers pressing close behind them. Most of the soldiers were very superstitious and would rather have been spending Samhain Eve at any other place but the ruined witches’ tower.
‘Midnight on the eve o’ Samhain is the time when the veil between worlds is thinnest,’ Jorge said. ‘I shall do a sighting, and so ye must all have a care for me.’
Carefully he added herbs and powders to the kindling, lighting the fire with a thought. As flames began to flicker up, he swayed back and forth, chanting, ‘In the name o’ Eà, thee who is Spinner and Weaver and Cutter o’ the Thread, thee who sows the seed, nurtures the life, and reaps the harvest, feel in me the tides o’ seas and blood …’
He was whirled away in a vortex of visions. A rainbow-striped viper writhed out of the sea—Lachlan struck it again and again with his claymore but each time the snake gave birth to smaller, more vicious serpents that twisted and squirmed all over the land. He saw Lachlan raise a bow of fire and shoot arrows like comets. One of the fiery stars turned into a child, winged and haloed with light. The child fell, and Jorge saw he had a shadow of ice.
Dreams he had
had many times came to him, more vivid and sinister than ever. He saw a white hind being hunted through a dark forest, blood on its breast. He saw a black wolf leaping. He saw a girl-child with one foot on the land and one on the oceans, the Lodestar blazing white in her hand. He saw mirrors, some breaking in tinkles of silvery glass, some dissolving into water. He saw the moons embrace and devour each other, and heard a strange song swell and deepen into an orchestra of sound.
The dreams changed. He dreamt of snow whirling and fire leaping; he saw an owl flying over a snowy, shadowed landscape, a white lion racing beneath, a star falling overhead. The land was torn apart by war, blood soaking into the cornfields. A tidal wave rose, taller than any tower and seething with glinting scales and fins. It broke upon the land and swept away town and village, faces sucked down despairingly. The visions swirled faster—he saw Tòmas with incandescent hands in a whirlwind, he saw him dead on a field of war. He saw Dillon with a bloodied sword in his fist, howling with grief; he saw Finn wrapped in darkness, wandering lost, he saw her flying with wings of night, stars on her brow; he saw Jay playing a blind viola as the hand of a storm clenched around him. Then Jorge saw his own death and understood both the time and place of its coming.
Isabeau and Iseult sat and stared at each other. Neither had said a word since Isabeau had hauled Iseult in through the window, their hands gripping each other’s wrists. Finn had filled their silence with words, dancing about excitedly as she told Lachlan all about her adventures. The winged prionnsa was drying the string of his bow by the fire, melting snow dripping from his cloak.
It had been a strange, uncanny feeling, that first sight of her twin. As Isabeau had walked towards the night-black window, her reflected image had merged with Iseult’s, so that she had stared into her own eyes and touched her own fingers as well as those of Iseult. It had been like looking into a mirror and seeing your counterpart move with its own vivid, independent life.