The Witches of Eileanan by Kate Forsyth Page A

doing.
Meghan smiled at her. "Listen," she said, and Isabeau concentrated. Soon she discerned a faint difference in the quality of the stone—one seemed colder, darker. "No' that way," Meghan said.
They wandered the stone maze for over an hour, until Isabeau was stumbling with tiredness and beginning to wonder whether Meghan knew where she was going. Once or twice they heard voices, and once they passed through the cave that looked out onto the other side of the mountain. Its rough floor was littered with the small, black bodies of the elven cats who normally guarded the entrance. A Red Guard stood uneasily in the entrance, peering out into the darkness. They flitted silently through and into an antechamber without him suspecting a thing. A few minutes later they were free of the mountain, Meghan leading them out through a crack in its flank. Outside the ground was thick with snow. Isabeau pulled her tam-o'-shanter down over her stinging ears, and huddled her mittened hands under her plaid. "Havers it's cold!" she cried.
"Quietly, now. Try no' to leave a trail. Remember the Mesmerd," and Meghan lead them through the night, Jesyah the raven flying ahead on midnight wings. By the time they finally stopped to rest, Isabeau was virtually sleepwalking. She huddled into her plaid and was asleep in a moment, but she slept badly, becoming more and more restless. She woke with a jerk and the conviction that something had happened. It was pitch-black, though overhead the comet slowly passed, huge and red, a long trail blooming behind it. Both Jorge and Meghan were on their feet, staring at the comet. Birds screeched everywhere in the forest, and somewhere a snow lion was roaring.
Dark shapes flew around the jagged peak of Dragon-claw, and the resonating bugle of their call made Isabeau's blood run cold. Dragons!
"What's happened?" she asked.
"I do no' ken," Meghan replied.
"A great act o' magic," Jorge said. "Something strange and magnificent. Someone has mastered the comet magic. Comets are no' lightly bridled." He shivered. "I am frightened, Meghan."
"So am I." They stood and watched the comet for a long while, until the flowing tail at last faded and the comet sank. "Today was the eighth day," Meghan said. "Come, Isabeau, we must speak."
She wrapped her ward back up in her blanket and sat beside her, clutching her own plaid tightly around her. "Today is your birthday, Isabeau. Ye were a few weeks auld when I found ye, wrapped in a torn cloth and placed in the roots o' my tree, where I could no' help but fall over ye. Ye had the dragoneye ring in your fist, and around your neck, a tablet o' ivory with your astrological details. This tablet I will keep, for such precise knowledge o' your place and hour o' birth can be dangerous." She paused for a moment.
"Isabeau, this is your birth-hour and this is your birthplace now."
At Isabeau's expression she chuckled a little, and said, "Really, I do mean it that way as well, for ye are now reborn a witch, no longer Isabeau the Foundling, but Isabeau the Apprentice Witch. But I mean that this hour—midnight on the eighth day o' the comet—is when ye were born, sixteen years ago. Ye were born here too, if no' quite on this precise spot. Your astrological tablet says quite clearly ye were born at Dragonclaw."
"So I wasna brought here, I was actually born here?" That demolished Isabeau's theory of a wicked uncle.
"According to the tablet," Meghan replied. She paused, her face bent. "Ye were given to me partly because o' who I am, but mainly, I would say, because I was the closest person. No one bides in these mountains, they're considered too dangerous. I have no doubt that our valley was discovered today by mischance. The Guards were here to hunt dragons, and were lead to us by that pretty trick Seychella showed ye the other day, and by the other various demonstrations o' power that we've been throwing around. You see, Isabeau, you must no' play with weather until ye understand a wee more about