‘I don’t know how.’ Lennox could see the fear returning to her.
‘It’s easy,’ he told her, forcing a smile. ‘Trust me. I’ll show you. First thread the needle. My hands are too big and clumsy for it.’ Plessie took the thread, licked the end and carefully inserted it into the eye of the needle. She looked up expectantly at Lennox. Twisting his head, he could see the ragged red line of the first cut on the top of his shoulder. Taking the needle, he pricked it through the skin. ‘You do it like this,’ he told her, as a wave of nausea hit him. ‘Just like this.’
Plessie began to cry. ‘You’re not going to die, are you, Uncle Lennox?’
‘From little scratches like this? No. Now come round to my back and show me your sewing.’
Taliesen led Caswallon away from the cabin, and on into the trees. It was not cold, but the breeze brought a promise of autumn in the air. ‘The child will be the future Queen – if she lives,’ said the druid.
Caswallon stopped. ‘What do you mean, if she lives? We know she lives. I watched her die after the killing the Beast.’
Taliesen gave a dry laugh. ‘My boy, you saw one Sigarni. But it would take too long to explain the infinite possibilities when one deals in time, the paradoxes created. Merely hold to the concept of impossibility made reality. This child is in great danger. First and foremost is the sorcerer Jakuta Khan. He was hired to bring about the fall of the King, Sigarni’s real father, and in exchange he was offered wealth – and the life of the King’s daughter. He is a gifted magicker, Caswallon. He will track her down; the crofter cannot stand against him.’
Caswallon sat down on a fallen tree. ‘The thought fills me with sorrow, Taliesen, but what can we do? My people need me. I cannot stay here and protect the babe. Nor can you. We do not have the time.’
That word again – time,” responded Taliesen, sitting beside the taller man. ‘It matters not how long we wait here, for when you return no time will have passed in the world you know. There is a small settlement close by; we will rest there, and be offered food. Then we will journey back to the falls and make camp by the rock face where the Gateway opened. There you will see in one day what few mortals will ever see.’
The following evening Caswallon built a small fire by the rock face, and the two men sat eating a meal of honey biscuits and watching the fragmented moon dance upon the rippling water of the falls pools.
‘How long do we wait?’ asked Caswallon.
‘Until I feel the magic of Jakuta Khan,’ said Taliesen. ‘But now there is someone I must summon.’ Rising, the little sorcerer moved to the poolside. As Caswallon watched, Taliesen began to chant in a low voice. The wind died down and a mist formed above two boulders close to the pool’s edge. Caswallon’s eyes widened as the mist rose into an arch some ten paces in front of the sorcerer. Tiny lights, like fireflies, glittered in the archway, and then a man appeared, tall, impossibly broad-shouldered, wearing a silver breastplate and a shining mail-shin of silver steel. His hair was moon-white, his beard braided.
‘Who calls Ironhand?’ he asked, his voice low and deep like distant thunder. Caswallon rose and walked to stand beside Taliesen.
‘I call upon you, High King,” said the sorcerer. ‘I, Taliesen, the Druid Lord. Your daughter lives, but she is in peril.”
They killed me here,’ said the ghostly warrior. ‘My body lies beneath those boulders. They killed my wife, and I cannot find her spirit.’
‘But you daughter lives: the babe sleeps in a cabin close by. And the hunters will come for her, the demons will stalk her.’
‘What can I do, Taliesen? I am a spirit now.’
‘You can do nothing against men of flesh, Ironhand. But I have planted a seed in the child’s mind. When the demons materialise she will flee here. The creatures, though flesh, are also summoned through spirit spells. You can fight them.’