Foxmask by Juliet Marillier

Author:Juliet Marillier
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: mamma
ISBN: 9781742625683
Publisher: Tor Fantasy
Published: 2001-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

NINE

Recognition. Sacrifice. Expiation.

MONK’S MARGIN NOTE

Stay close by me,” Keeper warned her as they made their way down the steep hillside toward the cove. “You must not go out alone here, not until after the hunt. It is not safe.”

“But you said—” Creidhe began, scrambling to keep up with his long stride.

“No danger from others. I will protect you. It is the traps, those that are set for the enemy. There is not time for you to learn them all. After the hunt they are dismantled; new traps next season, so the enemy cannot remember. I will show you.”

And show her he did, while Small One, apparently aware of where these sudden dangers lay and how to stay away from them, wandered about in his doglike form, sniffing at bushes and stones, racing after birds, and generally behaving just like a small hound enjoying an outing on a summer’s day. The moment of changing back, Creidhe had not seen; she supposed that eventually she would get used to it, this slipping from one form to another when the time seemed right. There was a wonder in it outside her experience, and she wished her sister Eanna could see it. Eanna, being a priestess, might have answers.

It was hardly warm; the westerly wind whipped the sea to scudding whitecaps and set Creidhe’s long hair streaming. All the same, the sun showed himself, rising high to remind them how close it was to midsummer, and the hunt.

Traps. So many traps, ingenious, clever, cruel: she had not imagined this stark landscape could conceal such pitfalls for the unwary. Creidhe blessed the ancestors for depositing her here unconscious and unaware, so she had not attempted to find her way across the shore, up the hill, into the shelter of cave or hollow. For the truth was, there was nowhere safe, save those precise ways along which Keeper led her. There were hidden pits floored with spikes of sharpened bone; there were sudden drops from ledges that appeared quite safe, but were in fact kept slippery with coatings of some fishy-smelling substance; there were rocks suspended from long cords, which an unwary step on a particular point released to come hurtling toward the hapless victim, perfectly placed to crush his skull. How these worked she was not quite sure, and she did not ask. Keeper took her up by a place where puffins nested, to show a fine view of the big holm to the west. The waves washed in fiercely here: beyond that islet was a straight view to the farthest margin of the world. They climbed back down to the rocky hillside near the narrow bay. Tunnels pierced the ground on which they stood, a network of shadowy passages, some natural, some enhanced by the work of man. So far they had observed no sign of the other tribe on their wanderings.

“There are many underground ways,” Keeper told her gravely, “some safe, some perilous. Last season, this where we stand”—motioning to an opening between

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