The cursed towers 242
Bạn đang xem bản rút gọn của tài liệu. Xem và tải ngay bản đầy đủ của tài liệu tại đây (3.06 KB, 1 trang )
sported in the inky black waters, her body gleaming like pewter. She had seen Maya change shape
before, when the former banrigh had dived into the heart of the Pool of Two Moons to escape Lachlan's
vengeance. Then her wrists and ankles had been braceleted with flowing fins, like the frills the young
lairds at court wore on the ends of their sleeves. She had seen the same fins on Bronwen when she gave
the little banprionnsa her bath. She had never seen anyone with a tail like a fish before, however.
Maya swam to the shore and floated there, looking up at Isabeau, her scaled arms moving through the
water slowly. "Thank ye," she whispered. "I would have died if ye had no' brought me here." She looked
up wonder-ingly at the arches of stone icicles, which looked like the closing jaws of some great monster.
"Where are we?" she said hoarsely. "How can this be, a sea beneath the ground?"
"It is an underground loch," Isabeau said. "It is bitter like the sea—I thought it would help."
Maya rolled, her tail twisting up through the water and away again. The silvery scales were spotted black
along one side.
"Aye, it is like the sea, only dead," she said when her face emerged again from the water. "The sea zings
with life while this is stagnant, without life. It is salty though, salty enough for me to transform to my
seashape. It has been a very long time since I was last able to fully transform and so for that too I thank
ye."
Isabeau nodded. "What do ye do here?" she asked brusquely. "How did ye come to be lying in the
meadow and how did ye hurt yourself so?"
Maya lifted one webbed hand to her forehead. "My head nches terribly," she said huskily. "And I feel
very faint. It is a long time since I last ate."
Isabeau saw with concern that blood was pulsing again from the wound at the Fairge's temple and that
she was indeed very white. "Come," she said roughly. "I will take ye somewhere where ye can rest and
eat, and then ye shall tell me how ye came here and why."
Maya looked at her steadily. "But I came for my daughter," she said softly. "How could ye think anything
else? It has taken me all this time to track ye down. Where is she? Where is my Bronwen?"
Isabeau flushed and bit her lip. Determined not to feel ashamed, she shook back her red curls angrily and
said,
"There is no one here but me. Come, can ye walk? We have quite a way to go." And although the Fairge
asked her again and again where her daughter was as they made their slow, tortuous way out of the
caves, Isabeau would not reply.
At last they stumbled out of the darkness into the cool dusk. Stars were beginning to prick the sky above
them and the moons were rising, looking frail and insubstantial in the twilight sky.
Above them ancient trees towered. Their thick trunks looked like pillars of jet, their sun-touched leaves
like the gilded ceiling of some grand hall. Through their outspreading branches Isabeau could see the
dark, bent shape of Dragonclaw rearing against the sunset sky. Despite her misgivings she could not help
giving a little sigh of contentment. She had lived in this little valley for sixteen years and she had missed it
sorely. It was grand to be home.
Their progress through the woods was slow. Maya, still faint and rather dizzy, had to stop often to rest.
Her filthy velvet skirts were sodden with water and she had lost the tattered remnants of her slippers, her
bare feet bruised and scratched. Isabeau knew the Fairge would not be able to climb into the trees.
