The Skull of the World by Kate Forsyth

Author:Kate Forsyth
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2001-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Isabeau sat cross-legged in the garden, naked, her hair flowing down her back in a mass of unruly curls. Her eyes were shut and her face calm and empty of all expression. The clouds of stinging midges did not seem to bother her, nor the occasional low growl of thunder in the south. She sat as still as if she had grown from the rock itself.

Slowly the darkness lifted. Isabeau opened her eyes, swept one hand out then the other, stretched her arms overhead and rose to her feet. Gracefully she went through the thirty-three stances of ahdayeh, warming her muscles and keeping her focus still and small. Ahdayeh was meditation in movement, as her previous trance had been meditation in stillness. Both enabled her to reach a plane of heightened awareness, a sense of being both in the world and apart from it. It was in this plane that the One Power could be seized and wrought to her will.

When she had finished the last difficult ritualistic move, Isabeau picked up her satchel and walked slowly and steadily towards the Tower of Two Moons. She came to a small garden near the entrance to the labyrinth, surrounded by high hedges and planted with the seven sacred trees in a circle, their branches intermingling.

The trees were incredibly ancient, their trunks so thick two men could not have touched hands around them. Within the circle of overarching trees was a stretch of smooth turf where five witches sat, their eyes closed in meditation, their long grey hair flowing down their bare backs. Firelight danced over their old faces and sparkled from the rings that loaded down their gnarled fingers.

Isabeau stood in the dimness, trying to calm her nerves. She breathed deeply till she was serene once more, then stepped into the glade. In the brightening light she could clearly see the shape of a circle and six-sided star scored deeply into the earth. The witches’ staffs had been driven into the soil to mark where the six points of the star and the circle met. There was a gap of about a foot in the circle and without saying a word Isabeau walked around the outside of the circle until she came to the gap. She paused, made the sign of Eà’s blessing, and stepped inside the circle.

At once the witches’ eyes opened. Isabeau bowed to Meghan, who sat at the northern point of the star, a small pot of soil set before her. The old sorceress wore nothing but her rings and the Key, dangling down between her breasts. Meghan bowed back, unsmiling.

Isabeau then bowed to the other witches. At the southern point of the hexagram sat Daillas the Lame, his face heavily seamed with age. One leg hung thin and useless, withered as an old stick. He held a ceremonial dagger in his hands, its dark blade inscribed with magical runes.

On Meghan’s left sat Gwilym the Ugly, a dark, saturnine man with a hooked nose and pockmarked skin. He too was crippled, with one leg ending at the knee in an ugly-looking mass of scar tissue.

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