The Heart of Stars

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘But we canna just leave it there!’

  ‘We’ll have to discuss later what is the best thing to do,’ Cailean said. ‘I must admit I hate the thought of it lurking inside the pages of the Book o’ Shadows like a swarthyweb spider!’

  As they packed up their belongings and tried to erase all signs of their presence in the circle of stones, they discussed every aspect of the plan. To all of them, the two murders involved in the plan were by far the most difficult. Isabeau was adamant that she would never be able to kill Dide, no matter how strong the compulsion, and he was as adamant that she would have to.

  ‘It’s the only way to be sure the compulsion is fulfilled,’ he argued.

  I killed my beloved, Cloudshadow said, with deep sadness in her mind-voice. It is the price we Stargazers must pay for the gifts of the Summer Tree. In time my daughter too must do the same.

  Donncan’s eyes flashed to Stormstrider. The tall Celestine was, Donncan knew, Thunderlily’s chosen husband. It was he who would die under her knife when the time came. How did he feel about that? It was impossible to tell from his face, which was as cool and composed as ever. Thunderlily did not have such control over her expressions. He saw her eyes drop and her lip quiver, and colour rose under her pale skin. Living among humans had changed Thunderlily a great deal, Donncan thought. Surely she could not think of having to sacrifice her own husband with anything but deep abhorrence? Yet Thunderlily had said she would not seek to change her future, that she would submit to her duty. It must fill her with dread and horror, surely, the idea of lying with a man she did not love, bearing him children, then killing him for the blooming of their sacred tree.

  She turned her head and looked at him. Her third eye was open, dark as night. You do not understand, she said silently in Donncan’s mind, for only him to hear. He is a good man, brave and true. His children will be born with honour. I may not love him with the desperate passion that you humans long for, and suffer for, but I will love him as Celestines love, with deep affection, trust and tenderness. He will give me his seed and his blood, so that our kind may go on flourishing, and he will die among those who love him, honoured and revered. Is there a better death?

  Donncan gazed back at her, feeling suddenly humbled. He thought of Bronwen, his wife in name only. He had longed for their wedding for years, longed to feel her skin next to his, to kiss her mouth and her silken hair, to lose himself in what Thunderlily so rightly called desperate passion. The very thought of Bronwen’s strange beauty was enough to make his blood heat and his loins tingle. But Donncan had not thought much beyond those first days, weeks, months of their marriage. He had not imagined themselves growing stout with a brood of noisy children; or old, grey and impotent. It had always been the now that had driven him. For the first time he began to imagine Bronwen as the mother of his children, as an old woman who looked up and smiled tenderly as he came into the room, despite his bald head and stooped shoulders. He was surprised to find that he wanted that desperately, wanted it, perhaps, even more than the passionate consummation of the now. He wanted to build a rich, happy life, he realised, and to grow old basking in the knowledge of having lived it well.

  Donncan was brought out of his reverie by Ghislaine touching him gently on his arm. They were, he realised, ready to go. The sun was rising and Cloudshadow was running her hands over the great stone menhirs, setting their course. Stormstrider was shouldering his heavy sack. Isabeau was pressed close to Dide, her arm about his waist, her face pressed into his shoulder. The elf-owl Buba waited on top of one of the stones, and Cailean stood ready, his head on Dobhailen’s big black head. Donncan nodded and tried to smile, taking Ghislaine’s hand. She looked back sombrely, her green eyes filled with fear. This was, he realised, no game of mere chance they played here. If they failed, Dide would be dead and Brann the Raven alive, and the future of the whole world changed. His hesitant smile faltered, and he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. It was his job, and Cailean’s, to make sure that did not happen.

  The journey through time was not any easier for being their third time. If anything, it left them even more wrung-out, sick and exhausted. Isabeau fell to her knees, retching and gasping. They had to splash water in her face and sit her with her head between her knees before the swoon passed, and then she was very weak and faint, her hands trembling visibly. Buba perched on her shoulder, hooting in concern, and she rubbed his ear tufts, trying not to weep. Isabeau did not say so, but they could all tell that being so close to Brann’s grave was putting her under unbearable pressure.

  It was early morning at the Tomb of Ravens, seventy-five years after the death of Brann the Raven. Since they were navigating by the stars, it was once again midsummer at the full moon, at the first rising of the Kingfisher, the brightest star in the summer sky.

  The Tomb of Ravens dominated the skyline, huge and grey, its stones now stained with moss. There were no guards. Brann’s son Dugald would be dead by now, and some other MacBrann ruling. Donncan rather hoped it was Dugald’s son, by another marriage. He had found the tale of Dugald and his murdered wife Medwenna very sad, and hoped that Brann’s son had found some measure of happiness in his life. Donncan thought he would go and read the annals, when he was home again. There was so much he did not know about the history of Eileanan, the land he now ruled. Or, rather, the land he would rule if he made it back home alive.

  They had a day to waste, since the spell of resurrection must be done at midnight on the night of the full moon. So they wasted it sleeping under the hemlock tree, taking it in turns to stand guard. Cloudshadow was particularly worn out by the journey through time, and she and Thunderlily both slept heavily, guarded over by Stormstrider, who sat very still, his hands folded before him.

  Isabeau and Dide sought privacy in the forest, and wasted their time a little more energetically, if their flushed cheeks and languid limbs were any indication when at last they came back, arms about each other’s waists. Donncan found himself longing for Bronwen very much.

  Rather to his surprise, he found he was not the only one so affected. Ghislaine had watched them go and return with brooding eyes, then got to her feet, holding down her hand to Cailean and saying rather abruptly, ‘Fancy a walk?’

  Eager desire flashed in Cailean’s eyes. The young sorcerer let Ghislaine pull him to his feet and lead him down the hill into the forest, and they did not return for over an hour. When at last they did return, hand in hand in the dusk, Cailean was glowing with joy. Donncan realised with a start that Cailean had always been in love with Ghislaine, and never expected she would ever return his feelings. It was impossible to tell what Ghislaine felt. She was smiling and relaxed, it was true, but he saw none of the painful intensity of Cailean’s emotions on her face.

  Dobhailen was extremely put-out, and sat with his back to Cailean, his ears down and his tail tucked under his bottom. When Ghislaine went past to fill up her water-skin at the spring, he growled at her, lifting his lip to show his huge fangs. She only smiled, and went past unbothered.

  Dide spent the rest of the day leaning up against a tree, with Isabeau asleep in his lap in the shape of a long-haired red cat. He sat still, content to soak up the sunshine and gently stroke Isabeau’s soft fur, while Buba slept in a hollow of the tree above, and Dobhailen watched hungrily from a distance.

  Once Thunderlily woke, refreshed from her long nap, she and Stormstrider wandered together through the forest. When they came back, she wore a crooked wreath of clover and daisies on her long pale hair, and she too was smiling. Donncan was surprised to feel a pang of jealousy, though he could not have explained why. Perhaps because Thunderlily had been his friend for so long, and he was resentful of this new closeness with Stormstrider. Or perhaps it was just because he would so have loved to have made Bronwen a wreath of meadow flowers, and to have kissed her smiling mouth as he crowned her in the dappled dimness of the forest.

  As the sun sank down in the west, Cailean and Ghislaine together contrived a fea
st of herb-stuffed mushrooms, grilled vegetables, honey-tossed greens, and fresh fruit. Dide took his guitar out from its battered case and played and sang for them. His voice was deep and sweet and true, and Isabeau was not the only one to weep.

  ‘O fare you well, I must be gone

  And leave you for a while:

  But wherever I go, I will return,

  If I go ten thousand mile, my dear,

  If I go ten thousand mile.

  The raven that’s so black, my dear,

  Shall change his colour white;

  And if ever I prove false to thee,

  The day shall turn to night, my dear,

  The day shall turn to night.’

  Donncan found himself blotting his eyes on his sleeve more than once, and at one point had to get up and get himself a drink of water from the spring. Thunderlily wept too, and Stormstrider moved closer to her, and after a while took her hand in his. Cloudshadow raised herself up on her elbow and watched and listened with her face softened with pity and regret. Ghislaine lay back in Cailean’s arms, and he bent his head and touched her brow gently with his lips, and smoothed back her flaxen hair with his hand, and she looked up at him wonderingly, her eyes filled with sorrow. Dide was the only one who seemed genuinely cheerful and at peace, his only regret being, he said, the lack of whisky with which to drink his own health.

  Death was near, Donncan knew, and so they all sought to feel alive. Love, laughter, music, comradeship, these were all bright things to set against the dark days behind them, and the darker night ahead.

  All too soon the concealing veil of night had fallen, and it was time for Dide to put down his guitar, and for the men to start the hard work of disinterring Brann’s bones.

  ‘Damn it, I wish I’d brought a shovel!’ Dide said, strapping closed his guitar case with a little affectionate caress to the battered leather. ‘Ye’d think they’d keep one lying around the tomb, for just this sort o’ occasion.’

  Isabeau managed a smile. She was growing increasingly edgy and restless and now she could barely keep still, twisting and tugging at her hair, pacing up and down, wringing her hands, and biting her lip till it bled. With her hair all in a tangle, and her shaking hands and nervous mannerisms, she seemed a very different woman to the calm, serene sorceress Donncan had always known and revered.

  ‘We need a spade,’ Cailean said. He glanced at Isabeau. ‘Why do ye no’ transform into an owl and go find us a farmhouse or croft?’ he suggested. ‘When ye have found it, come and tell us and we’ll see if we canna borrow some tools. Else we’ll be here all night.’

  Isabeau nodded, trying to hide her relief. She knew she could have sent Buba to do the searching for her, but it was utterly unbearable being so close to Brann’s grave. So, with a quick glance of apology at Dide, she turned herself into an owl and, together with Buba, went flitting away over the forest.

  It was not long before they returned, hooting through the darkness. Donncan spread his wings and soared into the air, following them across the shadowy trees. He had not been able to fly for days, confined within the ring of stones, and he found his own joy and celebration of life in that swift, silent flight through the moonlit sky, the dark trees below him and the wind in his face smelling of summer. Above him stars blazed in the wheel of the sky, and the two moons hung low, one golden-red and full, the other silvery-blue and waning, and both so beautiful it made his heart ache. They shone on the distant sea, turning it into cloth-of-silver, and illuminated the abandoned hulk of Rhyssmadill, falling into ruins on its crag above the firth.

  The owls led him to a small croft where warm light spilled from the windows onto the cobbled barnyard. A dog lifted its head and barked a warning, but Donncan spoke to it in its own language and let it sniff his hand and feet and legs as he hovered a few inches above the ground. At last the dog decided he was no enemy and returned to his threadbare blanket on the porch, while Donncan crept into the barn and gathered together as many tools as he could carry – shovels and pitchforks and mattocks – all the while directed by the soft hoots of the owls who crouched on the rafters overhead.

  It was not such a pleasurable journey back to the mausoleum, struggling as he was with armloads of heavy tools, and the knowledge of what they planned to do with them. But Donncan flew on as swiftly as he could, knowing they could waste no more time. As he landed lightly, dropping the tools to the ground, Isabeau landed beside him and changed back to her own form.

  ‘It is time,’ she said, eyes shining.

  ‘Aye,’ Donncan said, suddenly feeling very afraid.

  Isabeau laughed out loud, even as the tears flooded down her face. ‘Eà, give me strength,’ she prayed. ‘Eà o’ the dark face, let me do what has to be done. Let me no’ fail ye now.’ She was shaking all over, though with terror or exultation, it was impossible to tell.

  All had wondered how they were to find Brann’s grave when there was no marker to guide them, but they need not have feared. Isabeau could not keep away. As if a rope had been hooked into her heart and snapped tight, she was dragged to the very spot and began to dig there with her bare hands, snarling at Ghislaine when she sought to draw her away.

  Buba hooted plaintively, but Isabeau would not change back into Owl. Laughing and weeping together, she dug side by side with the men, her clothes and hands filthy, her hair wild as a tortured willow tree.

  It took hours of back-breaking work, digging through the heavy clay of the hillside until a mound of earth rose high to one side and a dark mouth yawned before them. Then Isabeau’s desperately wielded spade clunked on something wooden.

  ‘He is here, he is here!’ she cried.

  Dide leant on his shovel, panting, dishevelled, and afraid. ‘So it is time,’ he said.

  She glanced up at him, and nodded. In the darkness, it was impossible to read her expression. Her eyes were shadowed hollows, her hair streaming wildly in the rising wind. ‘Time to raise him!’ she cried.

  ‘Time for me to die?’

  She turned away from him, staring down at the coffin. ‘Yes,’ she answered faintly. ‘For he must have blood, if he is to live again.’

  Brann’s bones lay gleaming fragile and white in the moonlight.

  They had laid him out on the grass. He was a pitiful thing, all delicate bones and dust, with a grinning skull that did not seem real, like something created to scare small children in a pantomime.

  ‘Do ye remember the spell?’ Dide asked Isabeau.

  ‘Every word,’ she answered, tearing her gaze from the bones to look at Dide. She was trembling all over.

  Dide drew his dagger and presented it to her, hilt first.

  ‘Dide …’ she said.

  ‘See ye soon,’ he said, and tried to smile.

  She uttered a gasp, laughed, and took the dagger. It protruded from her hand, sharp and cruel and bright.

  ‘Ye need to lie down,’ she said. ‘On him. Hip to hip, breast to breast, eye to eye.’

  For the first time Dide looked truly discomposed. He glanced down at the bones. ‘Really?’

  Isabeau nodded.

  ‘All right,’ he said, and began to lower himself to the ground.

  ‘Naked,’ Isabeau said.

  Dide paused for three long heartbeats, then, grimfaced, he stripped himself naked. He was a fine figure of a man, with broad shoulders and lean flanks, and smooth brown skin marked with a plunging arrow of dark hair from his breast to the thicket of hair at his groin.

  His long hair was tied back with a leather thong. Isabeau stepped forward and ran her hand up his arm and then to his shoulder. She took his ponytail in her hand and cut it off with a single slash of the knife. He jerked uncontrollably, and then set his jaw, willing himself to stand immobile.

  Their eyes met. He stood naked and vulnerable. His hair fell forward over his face in a curve. Isabeau stood, his ponytail in one hand, the knife in the other.

  ‘Lie down,’ she said.

  He obeyed. He was trembling.

 
She knelt beside him, and used his own hair as a cord to tie his wrist to the two thin bones of the skeleton’s wrist. He lay stretched out upon the hard white skeleton, trying to fit his body to it like a lover, eye to eye, breast to breast, hip to hip. He was too tall, and his long, pale feet stretched out beyond the skeleton’s, soles turned upwards to the starry sky.

  He looked up at Isabeau. The moonlight bleached his face of all colour. His eyes were sunk in shadows.

  ‘I trust ye,’ he said, his voice very faint and filled with fear. ‘I do. I trust ye, Beau.’

  Isabeau’s breath caught in a sob. She bent, cupped her hand around the back of Dide’s head in a tender caress, then cut his throat.

  He gasped. Blood bubbled in the second mouth that Isabeau had cut for him, stretched like a clown’s smile from ear to ear. For several long, dreadful seconds he struggled to breathe, to get away, to drag himself free.

  Isabeau held the knife low, so the black bloody stain dribbled down into the skull’s unhinged grin and, with many hesitations and hiccups of tears, chanted the words of the spell of resurrection.

  Standing in thrall about the two lovers and the bones of the sorcerer stood Donncan and the Celestines and the witches, watching in utter shocked fascination as Dide’s body rapidly rotted and decayed away into dust and ashes. As he dissolved before their eyes, flesh began to grow on the bones of the skeleton – red, raw flesh, and blue throbbing veins, and white, hard-packed muscle and delicate traceries of nerve and capillary, all finally wrapped in translucent veils of skin.

  ‘There’s naught left to heal,’ Ghislaine whispered. ‘We canna bring him back, ’cause there’s naught left o’ him at all.’

  It was true. Dide’s flesh had dissolved to dust, and in his place lay Brann the Raven, tethered to a frame of bare bones with a cord of black hair.

  Brann shook the bones off him impatiently, and they fell to the ground in a muddle. Dide’s skull rocked on its hook and rolled free, to stare away into the darkness. The sorcerer stretched languorously, then stripped off the handcuff of hair, rolled and stood up. He was, like Dide, dark-eyed and dark-haired, but there all similarity ended. Brann the Raven was far older and heavier, with grey streaks at his temples, and heavy lines of dissoluteness weighing down his mouth.