The Witches of Eileanan (48 page)

"Well, well, well," she said with a chuckle. "Traces of Celestine, no less. What is your Talent, lad?"

Tomas slowly put out one finger and laid it on the papery skin of the nyx. She shuddered and moved away. "This is no ordinary lad," she said. "His touch sings to my heart. All my weariness has melted away, my blood dances around my old body."

"He heals by the laying o' hands," Jorge said. "He tried to cure my blindness."

The nyx chuckled, and drifted back into the shadows. "I see him chasing you around a room, you with your robe all kilted up and your skinny legs kicking."

Jorge nodded. "Ye see rightly. Indeed, I barely escaped, he was so determined."

"He will be difficult to conceal."

"That is why I came to ye, Ceit Anna. I beg your help."

"Many times you and your brethren have come to ask my assistance. Each time you have made promises of rescue and redemption; each time you say the persecution of fairies will end. I am the last of my kind, Sightless One. I am old. I am tired. When I pass again into the night the nyx shall be no more. Why should I help you? Your kind has feared my kind for centuries. We have been hunted down, persecuted, subjected to the light so that we dissolve. I have no wish to help anymore."

"It would be a dreadful thing if the nyx should be no more," Jorge said anxiously. "Indeed, I hope this is no' true. I have searched, Ceit Anna, as I promised ye. The mountains are wild, though, and the nyx canny. If they did no' wish me to find them, what can I do? Ye must trust me a wee longer. Have I ever betrayed ye? The day is at hand. The nyx are patient. Many times ye have told me this yourself. The nyx can wait and plan, when others rush in. Will ye no' be patient a week longer?"

"I am patient," Ceit Anna replied in her hoarse voice. "I am merely bored with your constant importunities. Why will you not leave me alone?"

"It is seven years or more since I was here," Jorge said. "The spell ye wove for me then was a powerful spell. It was a very great favor. It is because o' your kindness then that we are so close to freedom now. I would no' come to ye if I could think o' anyone else who could help me."

The nyx drifted back and forth before them, her slanted eyes gleaming. She turned to the boy once more and bent over him, and Tomas stared up at her and held out his hand to her again. This time she let him touch her, and he laid both palms upon her narrow skull, his fingers deep in the snakes of hair. When at last his hands dropped she made a low keening sound in her throat.

"I am tired no longer," she said wonderingly. "Indeed, it is a wonderful power that he has. Hope seems to flow from his touch. I could almost believe nyx still walk the night and fly the wind. I could almost believe the Celestine still command the forests." She sighed. "Very well. For his sake, not yours, Sightless One. For the sake of the Celestine."

She drifted soundlessly back into the darkness, and Jorge let out all his breath in a glad sigh. The nyx were always difficult to deal with, and Ceit Anna more difficult than those Jorge remembered.

"What is she doing?" Tomas asked in a tremulous voice.

"Ye may go and watch, if she lets ye. She seems to like ye, so maybe she will let ye stand by."

"What is she?" Tomas whispered. "She's no' a person, is she?"

"No, she's a nyx," Jorge replied. "Her people lived in this land long afore Cuinn Lionheart brought our ancestors here. She is a spirit o' the night, a very powerful one. Speak respectfully to her, for her magic may well save ye."

It took a long while for Tomas to find the courage to explore the dark cave or to follow the nyx, but eventually he did. Jorge had sat down against the wall and was asleep, his long beard spread over his chest. Though Tomas had been walking all day and half the night, he was too excited to rest and was not yet fully accustomed to sleeping on the ground. In addition, he was very curious about the nyx. He had seen cluricauns and nisses before, for both were common in the highlands of Rionnagan; they were both small charming fairies, prone to trickery and thievery, but generally harmless. The nyx was so tall, her limbs so long and thin, her eyes so dark and bright, her personality so powerful that, despite his fear, Tomas was fascinated.

The witch light had gradually faded while Jorge slipped into sleep, but Tomas's hands shone with a strange faint silver light. He held his hands out in front of him and they cast a feeble shadow on the wall before him. Tomas had never noticed any nimbis of light around his fingers before, and the sight made him quiver again with fear. Curiosity was still stronger, however, and so he stumbled forward, trying to pierce the darkness with his shining hands.

Jesyah hopped forward with him, turning his sleek head every now again to regard the boy with one bright eye.

The nyx was sitting at the very back of the cave, where the darkness was thickest. As Tomas approached her, his hand grew brighter and brighter so that he was able to see quite clearly. She was playing cat's cradle with her hair.

"Close your fist, my lad," she said. "We want no light in this weaving."

Obediently he closed his fingers and the light dimmed, though he could see his knuckles shining red as if he held a candleflame in his palm. After a moment he sat down. He could see little, only the hunched shape of the nyx within shadows, the quick movements of her hands as she twisted her hair about her fingers, the occasional frightening gleam of her eyes.

"I am making you a pair of gloves," Ceit Anna whispered. "Once I wove a cloak of illusions this way, and seven days and seven nights it took me. Afterward I was drained of life, an empty husk of shadows. I do not think I could undertake that weaving again, and not pass into shadows myself. Your hands are small, though. I shall make the stitches tight, tight, so none of your light spills through. And afterward ye will touch me again, and I shall feel as though I can ride the night winds, as I once did and shall no more."

"Why no'?" Tomas's voice was shrill in the darkness.

"I do no' wish to ride alone," Ceit Anna said sadly. "Once the night was filled with the whisper of the nyx. Now the wind is desolate, desolate."

All night Tomas sat by the side of the old nyx, and listened to her stories of the darkness, while she wove him a pair of enchanted gloves from her hair. She told him of caves where the nyx had hung in their thousands, their wings rustling, their voices murmuring. She told him of the magic of the night flights, when the light of the moons were hidden by thousands of nyx wings. She told him how soldiers had come, with hammers to knock out the walls of the caves so sunlight had poured in. She told him how her brethren had fled the cruel light, knocking their wings against the walls of the cave, fighting to shelter in any dark corners or cracks. Most had dissolved into a black dust that drifted away on the wind.

"We are not meant for the light of day," she said in her hoarse voice. "We are children of the night, and to night we all return."

Sometime during her stories, Tomas fell asleep, and when he woke she had slipped away, leaving in his hands a tiny pair of black gauntlets, closely knit with spiral patterns weaving around the wrist. When he put them on, they fitted perfectly and for a moment his hands felt cold and numb. When he went to wake Jorge and show him, the old seer could not see him.

"She has wrought a fine thing," Jorge said at last when Tomas had taken his gloves on and off several times. "The cloak she made for me was far larger but no' so complex or subtle a creation. That was meant only to conceal, to hide what lay beneath it and present an illusion to the world. These gloves hide ye even from my sight. They will protect ye from any seeker, no matter how clear their second sight. And no doubt they have other properties which we will discover in time for a nyx weaving is a wonderful thing—"

Tomas was very hungry, as they had not eaten since midday the previous day. He interrupted the old man to rub his stomach and complain, and so Jorge laughed and bade him lead the way up the ladder again and into the sewers below Lucescere. "I have a friend who will feed us," the old man said in his quavering voice. "But keep those gloves on, and keep by my side. I do no' want to lose ye."

The two travelers made their way through the city to a chandler's premises where a soft tattoo of coded knocks on the side door saw them whisked inside into a great warm kitchen where Tomas was fed to his heart's delight. Jorge began to tell all his news to the chandler's wife, a massive woman with arms as thick as Tomas's entire body and a voice like a foghorn. So deep in conversation were they that Tomas was forgotten and he spent a happy few hours exploring the extensive pantries and playing with a litter of kittens he found there. One of the kittens had a swollen, weeping eye, but even though Tomas handled him thoroughly, his magic had no effect. After casting a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching, Tomas eased off his glove and touched the kitten's head with one finger. Slowly the dried pus softened and melted away, and the kitten was able to open her eye again. Delighted, Tomas jammed his glove back on again, but the brief flash had been enough for Jorge, who scolded him soundly for taking it off at all. With the kitten snuggled securely in his pocket, Tomas was able to accept the scolding meekly.

That afternoon they went out into the city again, in search of money and food to refill their empty packs. The blind seer led them through the narrow streets to a great square, where stalls of all sorts were set up, and bands of ragged jongleurs roamed, juggling apples and bellfruit, and pulling coins from behind people's ears. Jorge found an empty spot to crouch, and began to wail out his beggar's song, calling for coins and good wishes. In between verses, he listened to the gossip of the marketplace and planted a few seeds of his own. The afternoon sped past so quickly it was only when Jorge began to pack up that he realized Tomas was no longer crouched beside him.

With the enchanted gloves muffling the boy's magic, Jorge had no way of knowing when the boy had crept away or how long he had been missing. Cursing fluently, the seer called down Jesyah and instructed him to search the marketplace. He then began his own search, casting out his mind anxiously and tapping his way through the thinning crowds. Jorge was well known in these parts, and so many people called greetings to him, some kindly, some not. To all that were kind, Jorge asked if they had seen a small blond boy. Fair hair was rare enough in this land of dark-eyed, dark-haired people for him to be sure Tomas might have been noticed. All his queries were in vain, though, and Jorge cursed the nyx for creating a concealing magic so strong it would hide his apprentice from his own eyes. By the time night was falling and the torch-bearers were filling the square with orange smoky light, Jorge was close to tears. Lucescere was not the city for a young boy to be lost in.

Scruffy pushed against a well-dressed man in the crowd and felt through his heavy coat the fat, hard shape of a well-filled purse. A smile flickered over his face but he drifted away as the man looked round sharply, feeling the presence of someone too close for comfort. By the time the man's hazel eyes were scanning the crowd, Scruffy was well away, a piebald puppy galumphing at his heels.

"We'll eat tonight, Jed," Scruffy whispered, pulling at the puppy's flea-bitten ears. They followed the man through the marketplace, never hovering close enough to attract any attention, but never losing sight of the plump man in his fur-lined cloak.

The puppy was just four weeks old, and the only thing in the world that Scruffy had to call his own. He had rescued the puppy from being eaten, for meat was scarce after the long, hard winter and many a lady's pet had found its way into a thief's cookpot. Painfully thin as the puppy was, it still meant the best meal the thieves had had for a long time and they had not been happy at Scruffy's interference. At first Scruffy himself was unsure of why he had rescued the little dog, or even why he did not eat it himself. After a night spent with the warm little body snuggled under his shirt, he did not wonder any longer. He just knew the puppy was his and had to be protected.

Scruffy was an orphan, and like many children in Lucescere, lived off what he could beg or steal. His mother had been a maid in the royal palace, his father a gardener. When the Rìgh left Lucescere and took his royal court down to the new palace by the sea, they had been left without jobs, despite their families having been employed by the MacCuinns for generations. By the time Scruffy was born, his father was one of the famous band of Lucescere thieves, his mother a prostitute. In Lucescere there was not much else for an ex-lady's maid to do. By the age of five, both his parents were dead, and the little boy was left to fend for himself as best he could. It had not taken long for Scruffy to adjust to living on the streets, and the thieves of Lucescere had a strict honor code that protected their own. Scruffy thought his life was a good one, even though cold and hunger were his daily bed-mates.

The chance for Scruffy to steal the man's purse came as the Lady of Lucescere's litter was carried swaying through the marketplace. The plump man stopped to stare, as indeed did everyone in the square, for the lady had chosen cloth of gold curtains for her litter and they glittered in the bright sun. Servants beating drums and blowing pipes led the procession and followed after, and the litter itself was born on the shoulders of four gaudily dressed men. Fascinated as he was by the sight, Scruffy took the opportunity to press up close to the man, slip his hand in his pocket and gently remove the purse. He was just slipping his hand free when Jed caught sight of a kitten perched on a young boy's shoulder, and with a hoarse bark of rage, launched himself forward. The cat shrieked and dived for cover, and the puppy promptly gave chase, his ears flapping wildly as he skidded and lost his footing in the mud. Scruffy gave a shout and followed after, afraid of losing the dog in the crowd, as the plump man clapped his palm to his empty pocket.