The Heart of Stars

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘I can block your third eye, for a time at least,’ she said. ‘It will make things easier. And Ghislaine can dream-walk with ye, and find the door that has been opened and shut it. I think ye will have to come to the Theurgia, though, Dide, and learn as much as ye can about controlling and using these new powers.’

  He did not answer. Dide had never submitted to the discipline of the Coven. He had always been a free spirit, a wandering jongleur, spying in his rìgh’s service. All these years Isabeau had tried to draw him into the Coven and he had always resisted. She did not want to press him now, their love still feeling so fragile.

  ‘There are other things we can do,’ she said quietly. ‘I have been thinking … the first thing we should do is gather together a circle o’ sorcerers and go to Brann’s grave and exorcise him. He has lingered too long, it is time he went on to the spirit world and was born again, to learn his lessons anew.

  ‘Then we need to hide or destroy the page on which he wrote the spell o’ resurrection. I have been very troubled in my heart about this. The Book o’ Shadows is our most sacred text, the Coven’s grimoire. But that spell is wrong, it is evil, and it has the potential to do harm again. It canna be allowed to lurk inside the Book o’ Shadows like … like …’

  ‘A sand-scorpion,’ Dide suggested.

  She smiled. ‘Aye, or a swarthyweb spider. No, it must be destroyed.’

  He nodded, the tension in his face relaxing just a little.

  ‘Dide, leannan, the best thing ye can do … to keep yourself safe, I mean … is fill your life with love and joy and good things. Evil spirits can only possess ye if ye have room in your heart for them.’ As she spoke, Isabeau began to draw small circles on the smooth skin of her chest, slowly moving her hand lower. She bent her head and kissed his shoulder. He stirred and turned to her.

  ‘Love,’ he whispered.

  ‘Aye,’ she whispered back. ‘Drive away the darkness, the fear, all the bad things, with the good things, the things that matter.’

  As her mouth and hand moved lower, he smiled and tangled his fingers in her hair. ‘Now that is a very good thing indeed,’ he murmured, and closed his eyes.

  Margrit paced up and down the shabby old room. She was smiling, an expression Piers had already come to fear.

  ‘That red-haired auld hag!’ she laughed out loud. ‘She thinks she can defeat me with her pitiful little ice storm? Hah! What is your laird doing? I thought he had a Talent with weather? Tell him to strike the hag down with a bolt o’ lightning!’

  ‘Their witches are too strong,’ Piers said, and immediately regretted it.

  ‘Too strong!’ she shrieked. ‘She’s no’ even fully trained. She doesna even have a full circle o’ power! They’re apprentices, half o’ them.’

  ‘It’s more than we have,’ Piers said.

  ‘Ye were meant to come with a circle o’ necromancers. And what do I find? An auld mad laird, a village skeelie, some stupid servants, and a pathetic, impotent harper who canna even sing the song o’ love properly.’ Her voice rang with scorn. ‘Two days we’ve been holed up in this freezing, draughty auld fort, and ye have the temerity to come and tell me we’re out o’ gunpowder!’

  Piers wisely did not tell her they were out of firewood too.

  Margrit stopped at the window embrasure, the snowy wind blowing back her grey-streaked dark hair. She was wearing a heavy fur-trimmed mantle over a rich velvet dress, yet still she shivered and rubbed her gloved hands together. It was bitterly cold. The fire in the hearth glowered sullenly, spitting occasionally as snow fell down the chimney. Outside nothing could be seen but the white driving snow. There was no glass in any of the fort’s windows, and Piers had helped Jem and Ballard nail up rough shutters to try to keep out the worst of the cold. It was little use. The wind was so wild, it wrenched their makeshift shutters off the nails, or caused them to bang so ceaselessly that Margrit had been driven mad with irritation, and threatened to hammer nails into all their heads if they did not stop the noise immediately.

  ‘I never liked this rat’s hole anyway,’ Margrit said suddenly. She turned away from the window and came to warm her hands at the low fire. ‘It was never a fitting residence for I, Margrit o’ Arran. Ye say Fettercairn Castle is very large, and rich?’

  ‘Aye, my lady,’ Piers said with misgiving.

  ‘And strong. It’s never been defeated, is that no’ right?’

  ‘Only once, and that was by guile and trickery,’ Piers replied.

  ‘Och, aye, by the MacCuinn, the time he killed your laird’s brother. I remember the story. Well, it sounds a lot more salubrious than this stinking hole. We shall go there.’

  ‘How?’ Piers asked, and looked out at the howling storm.

  ‘We will negotiate,’ Margrit said, smiling sweetly. ‘Either the auld hag gives us a ship and safe passage out o’ here, or she watches her precious laddie being disembowelled on the battlements. Slowly.’

  Piers took a deep shaking breath. ‘That could work.’

  ‘O’ course it’ll work. Is this whole stupid battle no’ all about her trying to free her bonny son? I’ll give him back, almost in one piece, if she gives us safe passage out o’ here. Then, once we are safely back at Fettercairn Castle, we can make plans for the future.’

  ‘My laird wants to sacrifice the MacCuinn lad to raise his brother,’ Piers reminded her.

  She snorted. ‘Lord Malvern’s had his revenge in slitting the sister’s throat. Tell him no’ to be greedy. We’ll be able to find a nice young man to do the job when we are back in Ravenshaw. Has he thought beyond that point? What does he plan to do once his brother and nephew are alive again?’

  ‘I do no’ ken,’ Piers answered.

  ‘Well, I can think o’ a few pretty tricks o’ my own. How auld was the boy?’

  ‘Six,’ Piers said reluctantly.

  ‘A little young, to be sure, but he’ll grow. And they’re malleable at that age. I’ll be able to teach him. Och, aye, it’s the best plan. Now send someone down to the town with a message. Tell Iseult o’ the Snows that if she doesna bring me some warmer weather, and a promise o’ safe passage, by dawn tomorrow, I’ll be gutting her son myself. With pleasure.’

  ‘Aye, my lady,’ Piers replied, and thankfully bowed himself out of the room.

  Down in the pirate town, Iseult and her companions were sitting at a big table before a roaring fire, with rough diagrams of the town and the old fort laid out before them. They were planning an assault on the fort in the morning.

  It was the evening of the second day after Olwynne’s death. The days had each been spent in bitter, brutal fighting, winning and securing the pirate town, and then attempting to take the fort. Although it was half in ruins, the fort was in a virtually unassailable position, high on its hill with only one road leading up to it. Quite a few of the pirates had managed to retreat to it before the road was barricaded, and the fort’s old but still effective cannons had been turned on the town, reducing much of it to rubble. It was difficult for Iseult’s forces to retaliate, as the cannons on their ships were not powerful enough to do much damage to the fort. So they had used magic, pounding the old ruin with hailstones as large as fists, rattling it with gusts of wind powerful enough to tear off much of the roof, and sizzling it with bolt after bolt of lightning.

  This was exhausting work for the witches, particularly since both Margrit and Lord Malvern had powerful magic of their own. The sorceress had sent mists filled with illusions to mock them and terrify them and weaken their resolve. Mists filled with snakes and tentacles and dreadful creeping beasts; mists filled with rank after rank of warriors that marched upon them mercilessly; mists filled with the voices of the dead and the desired, pleading, mocking, seducing.

  The lord of Fettercairn had turned their own weather back on them whenever he could, and had managed to kill a whole company of soldiers by hitting a barrel of gunpowder with lightning. The lord’s methods were more brutal, but Margrit’s far more subtle and cruel,
undermining everyone’s faith and resolve, and making many a hardened soldier weep with yearning for a lost loved one.

  Iseult had not wept. The grief she felt for her murdered husband and daughter was deep and bitter, and she was still riven with anxiety over her two sons, but she was determined not to lose herself in the blackness of despair again. Iseult’s mother sank into sleep whenever life grew too hard for her to bear, and Iseult had always mocked and resented her for that weakness. She was all too aware that the wildness of her grief had only made things worse after Lachlan’s death. If she had not conjured ice and snow, if she had not called the dragon’s name to chase after Rhiannon, instead of begging it for help to find her children, if she had not sulked in her room for two long weeks, instead of using her powers to find Lord Malvern, perhaps Olwynne at least would still be alive. So Iseult was keeping her emotions firmly under control, and focusing all her energies on saving Owein, and defeating Lord Malvern and Margrit of Arran.

  ‘I do no’ want to blow the whole fort up!’ she said now in exasperation. ‘Owein is still locked up in there somewhere. I think a stealthy attack to find him and liberate him is a far better idea, Captain Tobias! Then we can blow them up, as often as ye like!’

  ‘My lady, we do no’ even ken if your son still lives,’ the captain said.

  ‘He still lives,’ Finn said. ‘I can feel him clearly. He and Rhiannon are in a dark cell somewhere to the right.’

  ‘Rhiannon!’ Fèlice cried in joy. ‘Rhiannon is there?’

  Finn nodded and smiled at her. She had spent the past two days on one of the ice-bound ships and had only come to join the soldiers after the town had been won. She was looking wan and puffy-eyed, and had a big cloak wrapped round her against the cold. Goblin, her familiar, was curled up as close to the fire as it could get without singeing its fur.

  ‘Aye, she’s there. I feel her strong as a bell. She’s been injured, but no’ seriously.’

  ‘Finn, will ye lead a covert expedition to free them?’ Iseult asked. ‘Only ye can do it. Ye could climb the cliff, like ye did when ye freed Killian the Listener from the Black Tower.’

  ‘O’ course I will,’ Finn said.

  Jay had been listening quietly, frowning. Now he leant forward and seized his wife’s hand. ‘Nay, Finn. It’s too dangerous. Ye canna do it.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Finn said and waved him away irritably.

  ‘Finn, I mean it.’

  ‘Flaming dragon balls, man, will ye no’ be quiet!’

  ‘Nay, I will no’! It’s the life o’ my baby ye’re putting in danger just as much as your own. I won’t allow it.’

  ‘Who are ye to be telling me what to do?’ Finn demanded, but without too much conviction.

  ‘Finn! Are ye trying to tell me ye’re pregnant?’ Iseult cried.

  ‘I’m no’ trying to tell ye aught. It’s Jay that’s let the cat out o’ the bag, no’ me. Typical male. Canna stop their tongues from flapping.’

  Iseult was out of her chair in an instant, and hugging first Finn, then Jay, smiling for the first time in days. ‘A wee babe! What wonderful news. Och, no wonder ye’ve been so sick.’

  ‘I’m always sick on boats,’ Finn said, her colour rising in her embarrassment. ‘Jay says I’m like a cat, I hate being on water. It’s got naught to do with the babe.’

  Everyone else crowded round them too, congratulating and teasing them.

  ‘No wonder Finn’s been so cross,’ Dillon said, hugging and kissing her. ‘Ye’ll have to take things more slowly now, my wild cat.’

  ‘No, I will no’,’ she scowled. ‘Why should I? It’s a babe, no’ a disease.’

  ‘Just ye wait until ye’re nine months along, and then I’d like to see ye scaling walls and walking tightropes,’ Iseult said. Suddenly her face altered. ‘Oh, Eà! O’ course, Jay is right. Ye canna be climbing the cliff in your condition.’

  ‘What a drayload o’ dragon dung. O’ course I can. Why, my belly’s no’ that big yet. It willna get in the way.’

  ‘But what if ye slipped and fell? Jay would never forgive me. Isabeau would never forgive me. Do ye ken how rare it is for a babe to be born o’ two sorcerers?’

  ‘That was why we were rather surprised ourselves when we found out,’ Jay said drily. ‘Neither o’ us ever thought it was possible.’

  ‘Oh, it’s possible. Just no’ common,’ Iseult said. ‘Why dinna ye tell me earlier? I would never have let ye go in pursuit o’ Owein and Olwynne if I kent.’

  ‘That’s why we dinna tell ye,’ Finn replied.

  Iseult was troubled. ‘Oh, Finn, ye should’ve. I ken it must’ve been a shock to ye, to discover ye were with babe, but ye should no’ be putting yourself or the babe at risk now that ye ken.’

  ‘I remember that ye were pregnant with Donncan when we marched on Lucescere,’ Finn pointed out, scowling. ‘We had to walk for miles, and climb mountains, and cross raging rivers, no’ to mention fight once we got there. I remember how much I admired ye for it.’

  ‘But I was pregnant with twins, remember,’ Iseult replied softly. ‘One o’ which I lost. I would no’ wish ye to lose your babe, Finn. It’s no’ an easy grief to get over.’ Her voice broke, and she dashed one hand over her eyes and turned away, shoulders hunched against her pain. Iseult had lost both her daughters now, and it was a grief she thought she could never recover from.

  Finn’s eyes widened. Though she did not reply, she no longer argued with Iseult. Goblin got up, stretched languidly, and came to jump into her lap, and Finn sat quietly in the firelight, petting her familiar, her face thoughtful.

  ‘Dillon, ye will have to be the one to lead the party up the cliff,’ Iseult said, once she had regained control of her voice. ‘It’ll have to be under the cover o’ darkness. Do ye think ye can do it?’

  ‘O’ course, my lady,’ he replied, frowning, his hand caressing the hilt of his sword. ‘Finn is no’ the only one able to scale a cliff.’

  ‘I will come and show ye the best place to approach,’ Finn said sweetly, and he flashed a look at her, half-resentful, half-amused.

  ‘Finn, if ye could mark where Owein is on the map?’

  ‘My lady …’ Fèlice said hesitantly.

  ‘Aye?’ Iseult turned to her, an eyebrow raised.

  ‘The laird o’ Fettercairn used to be a Seeker o’ the Anti-Witchcraft League, remember? He can track people, just like … Finn can.’ Fèlice hesitated a little before saying the sorceress’s name, knowing that she was a banprionnsa by birth. Having been brought up in the exquisite politeness of the court of the MacBranns, Fèlice found it difficult not to call Finn by her true name and title. Finn hated being called ‘my lady’ or ‘Your Grace’, though, and had made her feelings known quite strongly on the first day of their sea journey together. Fèlice still found it difficult to address her by name, however, and quite often avoided the issue by not addressing her at all.

  At Fèlice’s words, Iseult frowned and bit her thumbnail. ‘That’s true. I had forgotten that. Rhiannon said she felt he knew she was coming several times, and lay in wait for her. They will be expecting some kind o’ assault. I do no’ want to send ye into a trap, Dillon.’

  ‘How profound is his Talent?’ Finn asked. ‘Does he always ken, without effort, or must he focus his thoughts upon a particular person?’

  ‘Apparently he was a powerful Seeker,’ Fèlice said. ‘But I do no’ ken any more than that.’

  ‘Lewen and I once eavesdropped on him without him realising,’ Nina said. ‘We could no’ do that to ye, Finn.’

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘Nor to any true witch. If I remember rightly, Laird Malvern was kicked out o’ witches’ school while still an apprentice. I imagine he has a raw ability, untempered by much training. In which case, he can probably only focus on one or two people at a time, and only on people he knows, or if he has something o’ theirs to hold. We could perhaps trick him …’

  ‘By sending a decoy,’ Captain Dillon said, a spark lighting in his hooded ey
es.

  ‘Aye. Nina would be best. He kens her, and has reason to fear her powers, after their confrontation at Fettercairn Castle.’

  ‘While I could lead a small, well-concealed party up the cliff at another spot.’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ Iseult said. ‘Right. Let us think about the best timing. Together, or at different times? Which would be best?’

  Just then there was a loud, cawing sound, and then a cry from the sentry. Captain Dillon got up and strode to the door, opening it a crack, shielding his body with the wall.

  ‘What is it?’ he called.

  ‘Raven’s brought some kind o’ message,’ the sentry replied in a low voice. There was a pause, and then a small scroll of paper was passed in to Dillon, a little damp from the snow. They could hear the mocking cry of the raven as it soared back up to the fort.

  Dillon read the message, frowning, and then passed it to Iseult. She read it quickly, then sat down, the message pressed to her heart, her face very white.

  ‘What does it say?’ Nina asked anxiously.

  ‘They want safe passage out o’ here,’ Dillon said. ‘Another attempt to take the fort and they’ll kill the prionnsa. Slowly, and with great enjoyment, it says. They want a ship, armed and provisioned, and fair weather. If we give them all that, they’ll give us back Prionnsa Owein, alive. If we do no’, we’ll get him back in pieces, it said.’

  There was an outcry from all round the crowded room. Everyone began to debate the message and its implications, and what was the best course of action. Some thought they should storm the fort at once, and wrest Owein back. Others pressed for caution. Some thought pessimistically that they were bound to get the prionnsa back in pieces no matter what promises they gave. The hubbub was deafening.

  Only Iseult did not speak.

  Nina went and knelt by her chair, putting her arms about her. ‘What are we to do?’ she asked gently.

  Iseult looked up at her. ‘Whatever they want, o’ course,’ she said. ‘I’ll do naught to risk Owein’s life! I have already lost my darling girl, do ye think I want to lose Owein too? Nay, nay, Margrit will have her ship if I have to hand her onto it myself. Once we have Owein back safely, then we’ll think about how to deal with Laird Malvern and the Thistle.’ She smiled down at the paper in her hand. ‘Slowly, and with great enjoyment,’ she quoted softly.