Isabeau gave him a strange look. “There was no guard. The door was unbarred. He was as puzzled about why as I was. I brought him marchpane and said that I—I said that I wanted to talk to the king of the korriganed.”
Anne was cold. Her limbs were so cold. “Unbarred?” she asked Henri.
“Not that I ever heard of,” he answered.
Gently, Anne said, “The king of the korriganed? Why, Isabeau?”
Isabeau said, “I thought that I could get the korrigan-king to help us. If he married me. The same way you got Maximilien to help us.” Her voice became a whisper. “When you married him. I thought it would be worth it. Like your marriage was worth it.”
Anne was briefly speechless.I didn’t wed Maximilien only for you to learn that the only thing you and I are good for is sacrificing ourselves.
Isabeau said, “I thought the korrigan-king would come when I offered, but he didn’t. But someone else came. To that room. A—an anaon. Climbing the stairs. She was a woman—strangled—she had a rope round her neck.” Isabeau was shuddering. “She was very terrible. I was frightened. But Moreau—” Isabeau’s face brightened with remembered wonder. “His augury is in mirrors, remember? He didn’t have a mirror, but he had the reflection in a cup of wine. He used it—somehow—to send the anaon away. He did it! He said he didn’t remember how he did it, but he did! If he remembered that, he might remember how to get Elesbed back, even if he doesn’tknowhow he remembers. He must have learnt it in the Lost Lands. And he has a proper mirror now to use. He promised me, he gave his word that he would help us.”
Anne had never been so angry with Isabeau. She bit back her first question:Why didn’t you tell me?Instead, she said, “Where did he get a mirror?”
She had never used that tone with her sister. Isabeau quailed. “I—gave him the small one that you brought back from Brocéliande. I thought it might be better for his augury, since it came from the Lost Lands already. He is a kind man, I’ll swear. He promises that if he remembers how to do more enchantments, he will help us drive off the French.”
Anne made her voice level again, but Isabeau’s hands still twisted together. “It is possible that Julien Moreau has not been entirely truthful,” she said. “Certainly he has told me nothing of powers beyond his old divination, nor that you brought him the mirror. Let him be brought out under guard. This same hour. I want to speak to him again.”
“Damn you for a little fool,” said Henri to Isabeau, anger in his usually cheerful voice. “And let us only hope it is not your poor Elesbed who is paying for it.”
Julien Moreau appeared in Marguerite of France’s chamber just as one of her attendants was relaying a garbled account of a strange scene inthe water-meadow. Everyone saw him at once; they startled up like pheasants. One demanded, “How did you come in here? Knave, you shall be whipped.”
“I summoned him,” said Marguerite, to pacify them, her eyes resting on Moreau’s face. “Leave us.”
Her staff were well trained. They restrained their dubious glances and the room cleared. Marguerite was resplendent in her day-dress, a veil like cloud drawn over her hair. She beckoned him near. “Did you escape again? What happened in the water-meadow?”
“Madame, does it matter?” Laughter lurked in his eyes. “The duchess’s advisers are all afraid now. Didn’t I say I would bring about this French marriage? Soon even the most reluctant of her councilors will beg for your help out of purest fear. Will you reward me when Brittany is added to the crown of France?”
They stood close together. She stood stiff, mostly against the impulse to shiver. It was almost, she thought, as though the flickers of the blaze beneath the fire-hood did not match the moving shadows on his face. Slowly, she said, “Help is earned. So is trust. I know nothing about you, save for things that are almost too strange to contemplate. Your pranks seem cruel to me. I do not want the duchess for an enemy.” And yet, Marguerite could add privately to herself, she did not want to tell the duchess the truth either. Not about Moreau. The Bretons’ fears would hasten the French marriage, and she knew it.
“Not an enemy? Just a vassal, then,” said Moreau. “Ihaven’t harmed her or anyone. Do you think she will hate us when she knows? I think she will grow used to it.”
Marguerite remembered Anne’s sunlit face before the Triumphal Entry. “I don’t think she has a nature formed for hating,” she said. “But how can I trust that you have France’s interests at heart? You have lied to the duchess, who brought you safely from Brocéliande. Are you lying to me now?”
Moreau answered with sudden passion, looking her in the eye, “Is it unnatural that I would put my own realm of France before hers? What can I do to make you trust me? Here—shall I tell you the natureof enchantment?” He caught her hands in his; to her own surprise, she let him. Gravely—and quite honestly, she thought—he whispered, “This knowledge is the fairest thing I have, and the only thing that is mine. But I will share it with you now. Will you hear me? Shall I tell you what I learned in the Lost Lands? And then will you trust me?”
She thought. “Tell me,” she said. “And to answer your other question, if you bring about the Breton marriage and carry these secrets of magic to France, I shall make you great among men.”
“Among men,” he said, with a strange smile. “That is all I have ever wanted these many years.”
“Did you escape?” Marguerite asked, unable to contain her curiosity. “Are they cruel, the korriganed?”
“They are as unlike men as chalk from cheese,” said Moreau. “Will you hear my secrets? I shall lay them like pearls at your feet.” His eyes burned wildly.
What had it cost him, this knowledge? She turned away, seated herself. Her heart was beating fast. “I will hear.”
He steepled his fingers, earnest as a scholar at viva voce. “Men nowadays know of only one sorcerous art. That is divination. But logic alone tells us that there must once have been others. For what is the ritual of transubstantiation during the Eucharist if not the relic of a lost power?”
Marguerite, intent, did not reply.
“In the Lost Lands, there are in fact three sorcerous arts.” His voice was not quite steady in his eagerness; he was like an alchemist with a pig of lead. “The first is divination. This is the art of learning by signs what the senses do not perceive. It is the simplest.”
She shifted on her chair, unable to take her eyes from his face.
“The second is enchantment. This is the ability to influence the senses of others—chiefly, but not always, sight—to show folk what they otherwise would not see.
“The third and greatest art is sorcery. And this art is not just to influence the senses, but to make manifest new things in the world. These two latter arts are drawn from the Lost Lands, which containin their untracked vastness everything that mankind has ever lost. A clever sorcerer can reach into the Lost Lands and draw out anything he pleases. Sights—sounds—textures—things—men—beasts. It is said that the queen of the korriganed once found an empty city in the Lost Lands, and set it into the living world as a gift for her daughter.”
