Read Online The Witches of Eileanan by Kate Forsyth - Free Book Online

by storm. Weather in the Sithiche Mountains was dangerously changeable.
On an open patch of earth near the edge of the cliff, the tremulous surface of the waterfall's edge only a few feet away, a large circle had been scratched deeply into the dirt. Within the circle, a five-pointed star had been traced, its shape barely discernible in the dim light.
At four of the five points of the star sat a witch; their staffs stood upright in the soil behind them, marking the point where star and circle met. The witches were naked, their hair unbound, and they sat cross-legged, their eyes closed. They had sat that way all night, each enduring the Ordeal in silence. Isabeau bowed to all four witches, then sat at the fifth point of the pentagram. To her right was Meghan of the Beasts; to her left Seychella, whose powers were strongest in the elements of air. Opposite sat Jorge the Seer, who saw what others could not. At the fourth point sat a witch Isabeau had never seen before. Like Jorge, she was very frail, and she sat wreathed in pale hair that floated about her, long as a banrìgh's wedding train. As Isabeau stared at her wonderingly, she opened her eyes and they were a bright and brilliant blue, and wet with tears.
"Let us celebrate the rites o' Candlemas," she said, in a melancholy voice, very soft.
Isabeau bowed her head, and fell into the familiar chant, the rites which she and Meghan had performed at the dawn of the Season of Flowers every year of her life. "In the name o' Eà, our mother and our father, thee who is Spinner and Weaver and Cutter o' the Thread; thee who sows the seed, nurtures the crop, and reaps the harvest; by the virtue o' the four elements, wind, stone, flame and rain; by virtue o' clear skies and storm, rainbows and hailstones ..."
Deprived of food and rest for a full night, and shivering in her nakedness, Isabeau fell into a light trance, so that the sound of the chanting, the thick scent of the incense and woodsmoke, the gleam of light on water, came and went in rushing billows. When they rose to dance, she felt as though her body was twisting and stamping her feet into the earth without any prompting or control from her—she was apart, separate, away.
Afterward Seychella said, "Isabeau the Foundling, ye come to the junction o' earth, air, water and fire, do ye bring the spirit?"
"May my heart be kind, my mind fierce, my spirit brave."
"Isabeau, ye come to the pentagram and circle with a request. What is your request?"
"To learn to wield the One Power in wisdom and in strength. To ask for admittance to the Coven o' Witches so I may learn from them the laws and responsibilities o' the magic. May my heart be kind enough, my mind fierce enough, my spirit brave enough."
All four witches made a circle with the fingers of their left hand and crossed it with one finger of their right. "Meghan, your guide and guardian, says ye have passed the First Test o' Power." Isabeau looked at Meghan in surprise. "She tested ye on your eighth birthday, as the auld laws decree."
Isabeau remembered her eighth birthday, clearly. Meghan had tested her all morning on her witchcraft skills, but she had thought those tests had been to punish her for carelessness, not the First Test of Power.
"As the Second Test o' Power decrees, ye must first pass the First Test again." Isabeau looked to Meghan for reassurance but there was none in her grim face. Suddenly a stone was thrown at her by Jorge, a hard throw and directly at her face. Automatically Isabeau deflected the pebble and it spun into the stones.
"Isabeau the Foundling has passed the Trial o' Air—to move that which is already moving," the unknown witch said. Her voice was very faint. "Breathe deeply o' the good air, my bairn, and good wish the winds o' the world, for without air we should die." On the last words, her voice was tremulous with tears.
Obediently Isabeau breathed deeply of the forest-scented air and felt exhilaration fill her. She had passed the first Trial, and it