by Kate Forsyth
There was a short silence. Cailean had pressed his lips together, and beside him Dobhailen lifted his head from his paws and growled softly.
‘I often travel back to my childhood in my dreams,’ Ghislaine said dreamily. ‘Sometimes it is a glad journey. Sometimes I wake weeping. We have been experimenting with travelling back further too, back past the moment o’ one’s birth, back to the lives that came afore.’
Isabeau nodded. She was well aware of such experiments. Many sorceresses, herself included, had visions of previous lives while deep in a trance. It was always difficult to remember them upon waking, like any dream, but dream-walkers were trained to remember and record the images their deepest subconscious mind threw up, and to try to direct what they dreamt.
‘To go back so far, though, and in my own body … indeed it seems impossible,’ Ghislaine said, and raised her eyes for a moment, to look directly at Isabeau. ‘I canna help being afraid.’
‘I have travelled every road in Eileanan, except this one,’ Dide said cheerily. ‘I think it may be the greatest adventure ever.’
Isabeau smiled at him. ‘We would be fools no’ to fear what lies ahead,’ she said. ‘There is no doubt about that. But I trust in the Stargazer. I am sure she will lead us true.’
The frown between Cailean’s brows deepened, and he pulled at Dobhailen’s ears to soothe the low growl that again rose from the dog’s throat.
The one who can whistle dogs is troubled, Cloudshadow said, rising to her feet and coming to stand before them. Hearing her voice in his mind, Cailean looked up, startled. He is one that sees beauty in order and in knowledge. He loves to know that he can use the power and insight of his mind to make sense of what seems unknowable. In many ways, I have sympathy with him, for the desire to bring order out of chaos is something that my kin have in common with those of your kind. However, it is one of the fundamental laws of nature that disorder will always multiply. An apple is a shape and form of utmost perfection, yet it shall rot and fall apart and ultimately dissolve back into the earth, and from it shall, perhaps, in time, grow another apple tree, that shall in time fall also. This, too, is true. The stuff of this earth, this universe, cannot ever be destroyed. It simply changes from one form to another. An apple rots away and feeds the earth. An apple seed becomes a tree. A tree falls and becomes firewood which is burnt and becomes ash. Order breaks down and becomes chaos. It is best to remember this, dog-whistler.
They had all listened silently, entranced by her words.
We cannot undertake this journey beset by fears and doubts, she continued. The malevolent spirits that haunt the Old Ways are drawn by such emotions. They feed off them, and become stronger. I do not wish to have you at my shoulder, dog-whistler, if you doubt my ability to navigate through time and space.
Colour rushed up Cailean’s face. He would have protested, but she held up her hand and he fell silent, gripping his lip with his teeth.
We of the Celestines, as you of your kind like to call us, have learnt over the centuries not to easily trust in you humans or, for that matter, in anyone. To keep our laws and lore secret is natural to us. These are high mysteries. They are sacred. However, this evening I shall in all willingness break one of our most holy taboos. Considering what we are about to embark upon together, I feel it is a small matter to reveal other secrets to you. Stormstrider, will you show these humans what you carry?
The young Celestine had been listening quietly, his arms folded over his chest. The knot of skin that concealed his third eye was clenched tightly shut, as if he was scowling. He did not respond to Cloudshadow’s request for a long moment, long enough for Cloudshadow herself to frown and turn towards him commandingly.
Stormstrider, she said softly.
As you wish, my Stargazer, he replied then, and unfolded his arms and unknotted his brow. His third eye opened and raked them all with a dark, unfathomable look. Then he bent and retrieved from beside the door the large sack he had carried over one shoulder.
Very carefully he unknotted the cord and drew back the folds of the cloth to reveal a sphere of interlinked metal circles. He lifted it between his two hands and released a little lever that swung down and turned into a delicate stand set upon three feet. Stormstrider secured the sphere upon its stand, then gently spun it round. The witches all cried aloud in astonishment and wonder as the sphere sprang apart with a little whirr.
It was a celestial globe, illustrating the positions of the sun and planets and moons and stars. Unsprung, it had been no larger than a man’s head, but once released it spanned twelve feet in all directions. In the centre was the sun, a globe of burnished red metal inscribed with wavy lines. Around it, each on its own elliptical cycle, spun the planets. Their own planet was no bigger than a green crab-apple, and its two moons were as small as pepper-corns. Around the whole were several metal circles inscribed with measurements and symbols. Isabeau recognised it at once as being very like the skeleton globe of the heavens which was kept in the observatory at the Pool of Two Moons. This was far larger and more intricate, however, and was driven by some sort of clockwork device so that all the little pieces swung and moved.
‘It’s like an astrolabe!’ Cailean exclaimed. ‘A celestial astrolabe. See these discs, Beau? They must measure … what? The rising and setting o’ stars?’
Stormstrider’s face warmed at the eager interest in Cailean’s voice. He nodded and began to explain the device to the sorcerer, showing how little bronze markers could be moved here and there on the outer dials to set the time and place, and how all the little globes swung in response, showing the exact celestial position of every cosmological marker.
‘I dinna ken the Celestines had such things,’ Dide said softly to Isabeau. ‘I thought they lived simply in the forest, eating berries and fruit. I didn’t think they kent how to work metal.’
Just because we do not make weapons of war, or tools to rape the earth, or worthless follies to decorate our limbs does not mean we are entirely without the skill of forging metal with fire, Cloudshadow said coldly. Stormstrider is of the Starforger family. Like all of his family, he has been taught the secrets of using metal to measure and record time and space. Other families are taught the secrets of stone, or water, or silk, or trees and flowers. We all share the common songs and stories, but the deep wisdom, that is the burden of the nine families.
Both Isabeau and Dide were speechless. The more they learnt about the Celestines, the more they realised they did not know, and the more shallow their assumptions seemed.
‘Look, this is truly amazing!’ Cailean turned to them with a glowing face. ‘It works just like an astrolabe really, but so much more precise! We are here …’ With a touch of his finger he sent the delicate rings swinging about until they could see clearly where the earth was in relation to the sun and the other planets, and where the moons were in relation to the earth. Then he showed them where all the constellations were rising and setting in the night sky, his words coming in a tumble.
‘Now, we ken where we want to go back in time, and so if we just move this little marker all the way round here, look, we can see exactly where everything was in relation to everything else a thousand, one hundred and sixteen years ago. The difficulty is, of course, calculating the difference between our solar years and their lunar years but because they mark everything in cycles, it is no’ as hard as one would imagine. See, here? Two hundred and thirty-five o’ their months exactly matches nineteen o’ our solar years, each having six thousand, nine hundred and forty days in them. They call it a Great Cycle. If you quadruple that, you have seventy-six solar years or nine hundred and forty lunar months, each having twenty-seven thousand, seven hundred and sixty days in them, which is what they call a Sacred Cycle …’
‘It’s times like this that I regret no’ having had a formal education,’ Dide said in a wry undertone to Isabeau.
‘This outer circle is what they call the star dance, and it marks the times of star-rise and star-set, and this
little one is what they call the mansions o’ the moon, so you can see, just by adjusting this lever, what phases the moons were in at the time a certain star was either rising or setting, and by doing that, ye see, ye can figure out exactly what the sky looked like at dusk where and when we want to go. The Stargazer fixes these in her memory along with the landscape markers, that horizon calendar ye explained afore, and then sets her course as it were. It really is just like navigating, though across time as well as space.’
‘How amazing,’ Ghislaine said. ‘I wonder if I could use such a mechanism to aid me in dream-walking back in time? We tend to use memory markers. Ye ken, smells, shapes, the touch o’ certain materials, music or other sound prompts. But they are very imprecise.’
Cailean and Stormstrider spent the rest of the day studying the celestial astrolabe, and doing their best to explain its mysteries to those who did not have so much of a fascination with astronomy and mathematics. Ghislaine did not listen. She was off in a reverie, imagining her own navigational tool to aid dream-walking. Dide sat and strummed his guitar, and began composing a dirge in Lachlan’s honour. Isabeau paced back and forth, biting her fingernails till her cuticles bled, and doing her best not to shriek with irritation at the dragging of the hours. Here, in Brann’s tomb, it seemed his voice was louder and more compelling than ever.
Gradually the sun had dropped towards the horizon and the little party began to make its preparations. Dobhailen had gone hunting, and came back with a bloody muzzle and a few tufts of coney fur sticking to his mouth. The Celestines ate a frugal meal of seeds, nuts, dried fruit and water; the witches had a slightly more substantial meal of bread and cheese and bellfruit jam, and dried apricots, and a bottle of goldensloe wine. This was a wine normally reserved for festivals and weddings, taking a great many goldensloes to make, and it gave their picnic a ritual feel, as if it was indeed to be their last supper.
When all had eaten and drunk their fill, and tidied up after themselves, they came to stand by the pool, linking hands in a chain. Cloudshadow had spent her time painting runic symbols into flat dark stones which she had gathered from the parkland about the mausoleum. She had arranged these around the pool in the same pattern that the menhirs would once have stood in. Now she held one of those stones in her hand. Painted upon it were four symbols, signs for setting sun, rising star, three-quarter moon and rock. She stepped forward through two of her rune-painted rocks and disappeared, drawing Isabeau after her.
Isabeau fell into a whirlpool of roaring red light. It dragged at her arms and legs, sought to draw her head away from her body. Although she tried to run, as one must do when travelling the Old Ways, her body responded only very, very slowly. It was like one of those nightmares when one tries to scream but has no voice, tries to run but one’s feet are stuck to the floor, tries to punch but finds the air has turned to treacle. Even drawing of breath was an immense effort and the air seemed to shrivel her lungs.
Normally, when one ran the Old Ways, one could see the landscape which one traversed blurring on the other side, as if each step carried one a hundred leagues. What Isabeau saw through the red inferno of flames was quite different. The landscape in its essentials stood still. Everything, however, changed, and so rapidly Isabeau had no time to absorb any details before they were gone. Stars wheeled overhead, rising and setting in seconds, to be followed by the rapid blowing of clouds, the brightening and darkening of the sky, the swift passage of the moon from new to full, to new to full, over and over again. Grown trees shrank back to seeds, cleared land became forest again, storms raged and stilled, seasons flickered past. The courses of streams and rivers changed, and the thick, gnarled trunks of the ancient yew trees became young, slim saplings, newly planted. All this happened in the time it took her to take four painful, rasping breaths and to force her immensely heavy, unresponsive limbs four staggering steps forward. Her joints were screaming with pain, and her extremities were numb and tingling with pins and needles so that she could not feel Dide hanging onto her hand behind her.
Suddenly she was sucked down through the whirlpool. It happened so fast, so unexpectedly, that Isabeau could not scream. For a moment it felt as if she was being dragged apart by horses, the pressure on her limbs utterly unbearable. Then she was spat out at the other side, falling to her knees upon the flagstones, sobbing in pain and terror.
She was kneeling beside the pool in the forecourt of the Tomb of Ravens at dusk, in exactly the same place where she had been standing scant seconds before. Yet nothing was the same.
The bells tolled out, filling the air with their melancholy clamour.
The hearse moved slowly along the road, pulled by six black horses draped in heavy black caparisons. Their heads were hooded, and tall black plumes nodded from their forehead straps. Alongside them walked six black-clad lords, carrying banners that snapped in the cold breeze. The royal piper marched at the head of the procession, playing a mournful lament, with heralds carrying more banners behind him.
Iseult, clad in sombre black from head to foot, walked behind the hearse. Not one strand of her red hair could be seen beneath her heavy headdress. Her dress was pinned at her throat with an ebon and glass brooch in which could be seen a lock of her dead husband’s hair.
Behind her came Bronwen, dressed as soberly, her face bowed. The Lodestar clasped between her two hands shone like a pale star, the only brilliant thing in the whole solemn procession. The line of mourners stretched for two miles behind the hearse, making its stately way to the palace graveyard. All were dressed in solid black, and many among the crowd wept as Lachlan the Winged was taken at last to his rest.
For three days he had lain in state in the banquet-hall, surrounded by tiers of candles, and watched over by his widow and friends and servants. Then the midwives had come to wash and wind him, swaddling him in white linen as tenderly and efficiently as they would a newborn babe. Flowers and herbs were placed between the bands – rosemary and sweet woodruff and lavender – to help combat the smell of putrefaction.
Normally the coffin would also be heaped with flowers, but the frost which had bitten after Lachlan’s murder had laid the garden waste. The midwives had been hard put to find any living herbs at all to tuck inside the winding cloth. So Lachlan’s coffin was topped with an arrangement of evergreen leaves – yew and ivy and holly – and those who walked behind the hearse carried sprigs of evergreen rosemary in their black-gloved hands.
Lachlan the Winged was buried beside the tiny grave of his daughter Lavinya, Donncan’s twin sister, who had died at birth. Iseult did not weep. Her face was as expressionless as a plaster mask. The only sign of her bitter grief was the cold that clamped down upon the graveyard. Snow whirled down out of a leaden sky, and the breath of those that watched blew in white plumes before their faces. Everyone was glad to hurry back to the palace and warm their hands on goblets of mulled wine and draw as close to the roaring fires laid in the hearths as they could.
‘Eà’s blood!’ Douglas MacSeinn, the Prionnsa of Carraig, growled to King Nila. ‘It’s as cold as the Castle Forlorn in the dead o’ winter. I wish I had brought my seal furs.’
‘Even I find it rather fresh,’ King Nila admitted. ‘May I offer ye some seasquill wine to warm your blood?’
The MacSeinn shook his head. ‘No’ unless ye wish me to shame myself by falling down dead drunk,’ he replied with a wry twist of his lips. ‘I havena the head for it at all. I will have some whisky, though, to toast our dead Rìgh. To think Lachlan should be struck down in the very prime o’ his life. It’s a sad day indeed.’
‘Indeed it is,’ King Nila said soberly. ‘He was a great man.’
‘And now your niece sits the throne,’ the MacSeinn said. ‘I have no wish to cast aspersions on one o’ your blood, Your Majesty, but I must admit it makes me uneasy, such a young slip o’ a girl and one best known for dancing and partying.’
‘Aye, ye ken what they say,’ a grizzled old lord struck in. ‘A whistling maid and a crowing
hen …’
‘Her Majesty is descended from royal blood on both sides,’ King Nila said in a cold voice. ‘I think ye will find she is well aware o’ the gravity o’ her position.’
The grizzled lord looked very doubtful, but no-one wanted to insult the King of the Fairgean, a race known for their pride and temper, and so both he and the MacSeinn murmured something appropriate as they lifted their cups and drank.
The great hall was a sea of black. Every man, woman and child from the most lowly to the grandest was dressed head to foot in the colour of mourning. Many of them, having no time for anything else, had been forced to throw their entire wardrobe into giant vats of black dye made from oak galls, alder, meadowsweet, or even crushed blackberries, anything the city dyers could find to render material black, even if only for a few days.
Black swags of material hung above the mantel-place and down the grand staircase, and because the curtains were all drawn across the windows, the hall was dim and gloomy.
Bronwen stood by the foot of the staircase, greeting those who came in and accepting their commiserations. Beside her stood her mother, dressed in a low-necked gown of oyster grey. Her black hair was cut in a straight fringe above her eyebrows and then level with her ears so it swung forward onto her cheekbones in two smooth wings, emphasising her exotic angular features and doing nothing to hide the gills that fluttered slightly just below her ears. Her eyes were icy blue, and one thin cheek was scarred with a fine fretwork of white lines, starring out from a central point, like glass that had been broken by a bullet.
Maya’s grey dress gleamed amidst all the black with the sheen of mother-of-pearl. Bronwen would have much preferred it if her mother had bowed her head to the conventions and worn deepest, darkest black like everyone else, but if Maya had had her way, she would have been dressed in a gown of her favourite crimson red.
‘But red is the Fairgean colour o’ mourning,’ Maya had said earlier that morning, smiling, when Bronwen had exclaimed in absolute horror at the sight of her in a dress the colour of blood.
