The Catswold Portal Read Online Free PDF Page A

licking fires, was healthy and alive. Just as, beneath the secrecy of enchantment, her past was alive.
    She did not leave the presence of the tree, the tree left her, vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared. She went on, filled with a strange anticipatory excitement. But then coming down the bank to the cottage she saw Mag’s horse rolling in his pen, and she began desperately to invent a lie.
    She dared not tell Mag she had been to the Hell Pit or that she knew her name. She led the pony into the corral and unsaddled him and rubbed him dry, delaying, unable to think of any reasonable lie.
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    In the cottage she found Mag kneeling before the wood stove bedding down newborn piglets in a basket, and she was filled with guilt. The sow had farrowed. Against Mag’s instructions she had left the cannibalistic sow alone.
    â€œI saved nine,” Mag said, scowling up at her. “Who knows how many she ate.”
    â€œI—I was hunting mushrooms. I felt stifled in the cottage, I forgot the sow—I had to get out in the air.”
    â€œAnd where are the mushrooms?”
    â€œI lost the basket down a ravine—the pony bolted, I dropped the basket. Flying lizards were everywhere.”
    Mag sat back on her heels. “Lizards don’t come for nothing. What were you doing, that they would watch you?”
    â€œI told you, hunting mushrooms. I’m sorry about the pig. Truly, I forgot her.” Why had she mentioned the lizards?
    Mag searched her face cannily. “Whatever you were doing, Sarah, it was to no good. And lizards promise no good. You’d best be wary, miss. You’d best stay in the cottage until the lizards tire of you.” Mag looked deeply at her. “You could be asking for more trouble than you imagine.”
    She looked back at Mag innocently, but she was shaken. What did Mag know, or guess? Mag said nothing more until supper. She was, Melissa felt certain, angry about more than the sow. Could Mag know that she had gone to the Hell Pit? Or did the canny old woman know about the papers she had found beneath the linen chest?
    Or was Mag’s distress about something else, some village crisis perhaps, or something to do with the secret rebellion? The rebels’ plans for war seemed so frail to Melissa. Yet the rebels were totally committed, and their ranks were growing. Selfishly she hoped Mag’s anger was centered around their problems, and not on herself.
    She waited until supper, than asked innocently, “Did you not trade well for your beautiful cloth? The blue one alone should—”
    â€œTraded fine,” Mag snapped, breaking the bread, her round, wrinkled face pulled into a scowl.
    â€œWas—was there trouble for the rebels?”
    â€œYes, trouble!” Mag spread butter with an angry thrust. She had obviously been bursting to talk, and too upset to start the conversation herself. “Three leaders from Cressteane have been captured by the queen’s soldiers.”
    â€œOh, Mag. But how?” The rebels’ movements and identity were so carefully hidden. It was only with well thought out plans that she and Mag ever approached a rebel cottage. Even where a whole village was against the queen, the rebels were painfully discreet.
    â€œBetrayed by one of our own,” Mag said. “And if those captured men are tortured into talking, our plans could be destroyed.”
    â€œWhere are the captives?” she asked casually. “In—in the dungeons of Affandar Palace?” And the Lamia’s voice filled her thoughts, The Toad sleeps — in the dungeons of Affandar Palace.
    â€œWhere else would they be but Siddonie’s dungeons?”
    She stared at her plate. “Who was captured? Are they men I know?”
    Mag looked hard at her. “You have never asked rebel secrets.”
    â€œIf they are captive, they are no longer secret.”
    â€œThe queen will not learn their names easily. What you