The Cursed Towers

by Kate Forsyth

  Moreover, Margrit was a potent sorceress, with the power of illusion at her fingertips and the ability to command air and water. Only Meghan of the Beasts was more powerful, and the Keybearer was four hundred and twenty-eight years old and showing her frailty. If she had wished, Margrit could have supported the Coven in its fight against the Ensorcellor and helped bring the witches back into power. Instead she had given aid to Maya and persuaded the grey-winged Mesmerdean to lend their strange powers to the Red Guards.

  Even more unfathomable to Iain was the treaty she had signed with the Fealde of Tìrsoilleir, allowing the Bright Soldiers to march through the marshes and into Blèssem. The Tìrsoilleirean hated and feared witchcraft, as had Maya and her Anti-Witchcraft League, and were sworn to stamping it out; yet Margrit of Arran had given her support to them, instead of to the Coven.

  She was even using her powers to thwart the Coven, keeping the mist and rain within her own borders and preventing Iain and Meghan from calling it to cover the Greycloaks’ movements. Iain’s mother was mistress of the Tower of Mists and none had her ability to control the patterns of wind and rain. All of the great weather witches had died in the Burning, and although Meghan had some ability to control air pressure, she was unable to match Margrit’s skill. The banprionnsa of Arran kept Blèssem and southern Rionnagan baking under a hot sun, the sky clear of all but a few small clouds, while the fenlands remained shrouded in mist.

  Iain sighed and glanced back into his suite, where Elfrida sat nursing their newborn son, her face soft with tenderness. His own heart contracted with a fierce, possessive love. All Iain wanted was a life of peace and tranquillity: to read and study and laugh with his friends; to make love to his wife, whose pale, delicate body inspired him with a passion that surprised and sometimes frightened him; and to watch his son grow to manhood in peace and merriment, and the confidence of knowing he was loved. All the things that Iain had been denied in his own childhood.

  Iain’s mother had humiliated him, oppressed him, nullified him, all his life. As his love for his own family deepened, so did his hatred for his mother. He had thought he would be free of her malignant influence once he had escaped Arran, but he knew now he would never be free of her while she still ruled in the Tower of Mists, spinning her webs of malice and intrigue like a swarthyweb spider.

  He came away from the window and knelt by Elfrida’s chair, holding her tightly and laying his cheek against the downy head of his child. She stroked back his soft brown hair, knowing his thoughts.

  ‘Fear no’, my love,’ she whispered. ‘She shall never be able to harm ye or Neil. We shall win the war and her power shall be broken. Then we may all be at peace.’

  He nodded, though his face was still sombre.

  Neil Lachlan Strathclyde MacFóghnan had been born at Blairgowrie three weeks after their victory there, on Fool’s Day, a date his parents hoped was not going to be indicative of his nature or his intelligence. Named after Iain’s father and the Rìgh, Neil was a small, frail child with a fuzz of fair hair. Iseult had brought Donncan to Blairgowrie Keep as soon as Lachlan and Meghan deemed it was safe enough for her to travel. With only three months in age between the two little boys, both Iain and Lachlan hoped that the two boys would grow into friendship as they had.

  The MacFóghnan and MacCuinn clans had been bitter enemies for centuries, and Iain could only presume his mother’s actions were driven by a desire to hurt the MacCuinns. He did not share her obsessive hatred, however; quite the reverse, in fact. After two months fighting by Lachlan’s side, Iain had formed a close friendship with the winged rìgh. They were close in age, and each was newly married with a newborn son. Both had inherited magical powers as well as a noble name and heritage, and were acutely aware of the weight of responsibilities such an inheritance gave them. Perhaps most tellingly, both were acutely self-conscious, Lachlan because of his years as a cripple, Iain because of his stutter.

  Iseult and Elfrida, on the other hand, had not grown into friendship, despite their closeness in age and circumstances. The Banrìgh was disdainful of Elfrida’s meekness and docility and often had to grip her hands together to prevent irritable words from spilling out. Elfrida had not had an easy birth and took some time to recover her strength and vitality, while Iseult was restless, chafing at the proprieties which kept her confined to Blairgowrie while Lachlan rode to war. Although she felt tenderness towards her little winged son, she saw no reason why having a young child should prevent her from fighting at her husband’s side. She knew her attitudes shocked and alienated many of the lairds, so she tried to contain her impatience, turning her energies instead to planning the war campaign and coordinating the logistics of feeding and arming such a large force.

  Iseult had been troubled indeed by the news that Renshaw the Ruthless had Maya’s daughter Bronwen. She refused to believe that Isabeau had betrayed them, as Lachlan persisted in saying.

  Finlay Fear-Naught had been sent on Renshaw’s trail and it was hoped he would be able to discover the truth of how the Grand-Seeker had come by the little banprionnsa. It was a dangerous task, for the former Grand-Seeker had ridden southeast, straight towards the heart of the territory held by the Bright Soldiers. In the meantime Meghan fretted about Isabeau and Bronwen’s safety, often trying to locate the young apprentice witch through her crystal ball. All she could see were swirling clouds, however, and this alarmed her more than ever.

  ‘I canna understand it,’ she said to Iseult one morning, pacing the floor of the royal suite in Blairgowrie Keep. ‘The seal I placed over Isabeau’s third eye was knocked away last year. I should have no trouble reaching her. Unless she is impossibly far away, or hidden from me by some magical means, that is.’ She wrung her vein-knotted hands together, Gitâ cuddling close to her neck in comfort.

  Elfrida looked up at the old witch in sympathy. She was sitting on the floor playing with her son while Sukey tried to change Donncan, a difficult task since the little boy was just learning how to use his wings.

  Meghan sighed. ‘I wish she had no’ run away like that. She should have trusted me to care for the wee lassie. Och, well, happen if we win through to Dùn Eidean, I shall be able to use the scrying pool at the Tower o’ Blessed Fields to see where she is. I just hope she is safe.’

  ‘Happen Finlay will return soon with news o’ Renshaw, and we will ken if your sister is indeed a prisoner or ally o’ the Red Guards,’ Gwilym said.

  ‘Lachlan is still convinced Isabeau fled to his enemies,’ Iseult said, looking up from her notes.

  Latifa sat next to her, helping her calculate what fresh supplies they would need to purchase before the Greycloaks again marched into Blèssem. The old cook’s face puckered in distress and she said, ‘I do no’ believe it. Isabeau would no’ betray the Coven!’

  ‘No, she would no’,’ Meghan said emphatically. ‘Lachlan should know better. He has never forgiven Isabeau for rescuing him from the Awl, the foolish lad, and so he is always prone to think the worse o’ her. Impetuous she may be, but Isabeau is no traitor. Iseult, ye and your sister have always had a close link. Canna ye tell where she may be?’

  Iseult’s thin, red brows drew together. ‘She is no’ in pain, that I can tell. I would know if she’d been hurt or was dead, I am sure o’ it. But no, I canna tell where she is. All I have is a sense o’ loneliness, o’ desolation. Wherever she is, I do no’ think she is happy.’

  Isabeau moved slowly through the tangle of briars, clipping clusters of crimson rosehips and tucking them into the pouch at her belt. Every few steps she cut away long shoots of green, clearing a path before her. Although the sun shone, it was cool and she wore an old plaid around her shoulders.

  Her face was pale and sombre, and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Occasionally she sighed, looking about her with weary indifference before forcing herself to go on with her work. Behind her was a broken arch of grey stone, thick with moss at its base, which framed a square of freshly dug and planted soil. Beyond was a towering
wall, many of its stones broken or missing. Writhing all about the arch and the wall were long, tangled briars, wicked with thorns. Here and there tight buds had opened into single-petalled roses, their white petals fringed in red as if they had been dipped in blood.

  It was almost three months since Lasair had galloped along the Old Way, Isabeau and Bronwen clinging to his back. After the dragon had flown down to investigate their passage, the red stallion had put on an extra burst of speed and fled down the magical roadway to another circle of flaming pillars like the one surrounding the Pool of Two Moons. Isabeau, her wet cheek pressed into Lasair’s shoulder, had barely been able to breathe, so great was the pressure on her lungs and heart. Curtains of fiery silver-green had shivered over them, and Isabeau had sobbed at the sharp sting and prickle of her skin. Then the stallion had broken out of the tunnel of fire, and they were within a circle of ancient stones. Unable to hold on any longer, Isabeau had slid from the horse’s back and fallen to her knees in the snow, the baby’s shrill screams echoing in her ears.

  It had been a long while before she had been able to recover her composure and look around her. Untying the baby and cradling her to her shoulder, she had scanned the horizon in bewilderment. Snowy meadows and forests stretched in all directions, overshadowed by the jagged peaks of mountains. Two great, crooked peaks thrust into the sky like gnarled fingers. The air was bitterly cold and burnt her lungs. Heady as greengage wine, it made her senses swim and her pulse quicken. Although the sky to the east was only just lightening, they had somehow managed to travel high into the mountains, so high that the abrupt change in altitude was making Isabeau giddy. She sat back in the snow, letting the dizziness pass, then slowly got to her feet. The two peaks towered over her, so like the narrow pinnacle of Dragonclaw that Isabeau was conscious of a dislocation within her. It seemed impossible that they could have travelled so far so quickly, yet the shape of the two mountains was so disturbingly familiar that Isabeau could only stare at them and believe. They were in the Cursed Valley, on the far side of Dragonclaw from the secret valley where she had lived with Meghan. They were in Tìrlethan, Isabeau’s own land.

  The red stallion was standing still, his head hanging, his heaving sides steaming. Isabeau saw his slender legs were trembling and laid the baby down on her shawl so she could rub him down. She felt sick and dizzy, but fought off her nausea so she could tend him. Somehow Lasair had once again brought her to safety, and she knew how dangerous the bitter air was to him in his hot and exhausted state. She filled her pewter bowl with snow and, using her powers, melted it so he could drink, leaving her plaid draped across his shoulders. Then she picked up the fractious baby, feeling how wet her swaddling cloths were. Somehow she had to find shelter so she could change and feed the wailing child, then build a fire to warm them all.

  She was gazing about her rather helplessly when she saw a slender white figure flying towards them through the brightening sky. Isabeau shielded her eyes with her hand and watched in bemusement and growing delight. It was a woman, her long, silver hair floating behind her like a banrìgh’s wedding veil. She flew as quickly and effortlessly as a snow goose, her hands stretched out before her, her flimsy dress fluttering about her. As Isabeau’s eyes widened in recognition, the woman dropped down to the snowy mound with easy grace.

  ‘Ishbel!’ Isabeau cried and held out her hands, tears stinging her eyes. She had met her mother only once and had not then known who she was. Happiness flooded her—at last they could meet as mother and daughter and make up for the sixteen years they had lost.

  But Ishbel seemed hardly to notice her. She took a few, faltering steps forward, hands stretched out to the stallion, who lifted his head and gave a long, echoing whinny.

  ‘Khan’gharad?’ Ishbel whispered. ‘No, it canna be!’

  The stallion danced over to her, shaking his red mane. Ishbel put out her hand imploringly, then, to Isabeau’s utter consternation, swayed and fell to the ground.

  The red stallion had stepped up to her, nudging her with his nose and gently lipping her cheek. Then he had turned and stared at Isabeau with great dark eyes, saying, Help her! Please, daughter, help her.

  Isabeau sighed as she recalled that day, then snipped back the last few briars so that she could see the waters of the loch lapping at the ground beneath her feet. She bent and brought a handful of the water to her lips. It was sweet and very cold. She drank deeply and looked across the still waters that reflected in perfect mirror-image the two snow-tipped pinnacles of the Cursed Peaks towering over the valley on the other side of the loch. Walking together on the far shore were Ishbel and the red stallion, her hand entwined in his mane. Isabeau sighed again and sat on the ground with her bare feet in the water, watching them.

  Those first moments after Ishbel’s appearance and collapse had passed in a dizzying whirl. After the terror and exhaustion of the long night and the frantic escape down the Old Way, it had all been too much for Isabeau to deal with. She simply knelt by her mother’s side, staring from her pale, unconscious face to the restless stallion. The wailing of the baby at last roused her to action. Glancing around rather wildly, she realised she must indeed be in the Cursed Valley. Iseult had described the place to her, with its twin peaks, its river and loch, and the twin Towers hidden in the depths of a thorny forest. Isabeau could see the black, frozen surface of the loch stretching away from the foot of the hill, its far shore thick with tangled briar. The parapets of two tall, round towers rose from the winter-bare forest and Isabeau knew she would find refuge there.

  First, though, she had to rest and eat and tend to the baby banprionnsa, so she covered the sleeping sorceress with blankets, gathered firewood and cooked up a pot of porridge which she and the baby shared. By the time they had eaten, clouds were pouring over the mountain ridges and the wind was freshening. Anxiously Isabeau hurried to make a rough litter from dead tree branches, lashing them together with rope from her pack and covering them with blankets and her plaid. When she finished heaving her mother’s unconscious form on to the litter, which she had tied behind the stallion, she was trembling with exhaustion.

  Her arduous journey had only just begun, however. It was well after sunset when the weary procession at last struggled through the snow to the forest’s edge, their progress hampered by the storm which had swept over them during the afternoon. Isabeau may well have lost her way in the swirling snowflakes had it not been for a light burning in the windows of one of the towers. Whenever her knees threatened to give way beneath her or her spirit flagged, she had only to fix her eyes on that beacon and fresh energy would spur her on. Isabeau knew they would all die if she were to give in to her overwhelming desire to sink beneath that soft counterpane of snow.

  Still, they might never have been able to fight their way through the thorny forest if Feld of the Dragons had not been out anxiously searching the darkness for Ishbel. It was he who had put the beacon in the tower window to help the witch find her way home and, as the storm thickened, had come out into the bitter night, calling her name, a lantern in his hand.

  Isabeau was in such a daze of tiredness she was barely stumbling along, her hand clenched around the rope that bound the litter to Lasair. The stallion’s neigh of recognition roused her and she raised her cold-numbed face to peer around. She saw the swinging light of the lantern and managed to raise her voice in a hoarse shout.

  The old sorcerer hurried towards them, the light from his upraised lantern illuminating his lined face and straggly beard so he looked like some strange demon. ‘By the Centaur’s Beard!’ he exclaimed. ‘Iseult, is that ye? What are ye doing here?’

  The lantern’s light fell upon the litter, where Ishbel and Bronwen huddled together under a thick mound of snow. Feld exclaimed again but managed to compose himself enough to lead the miserable party back to the Towers of Roses and Thorns, where he fed and tended them all as tenderly as a mother her newborn babe. He soon realised the bedraggled young woman was not Iseult, but he could make no sense of
her confused explanations.

  ‘Never ye mind about that now, lassie,’ he said to her kindly. ‘Let’s get ye into a warm bed with some nice hot posset to warm your insides, and we’ll hear all about it tomorrow. Never mind about the horse, I’ll have a care for him, I promise, and as for the wee babe, ye just leave her to me.’

  The old sorcerer carried Ishbel back to her room in the Tower. Isabeau followed him, unable to take her eyes off her mother’s pale, sleeping face. Once he reached Ishbel’s room, empty of all furniture, Feld simply let her go, and she floated there in mid-air, the silver-fair strands of her hair twisting themselves into a nest about her fragile form. Impossibly long, they brushed Isabeau’s face and neck, and she pushed them away with one hand so they drifted back to twine about the sleeping woman. Ishbel sighed and lifted her hands to her thin cheek. ‘Khan’gharad,’ she murmured, then turned and nestled down into the cocoon of hair.

  For the first two weeks after their arrival, Isabeau visited her mother every day and simply sat staring at her. She settled easily into a routine at the Tower, searching for food in the valley, digging and planting a garden, caring for the baby and reading books she found in the great library where Feld spent most of his time. It was a life very similar to the one she had lived with Meghan in the secret valley, and it increased her sense of unreality, as if time and space had slipped and she was again a young girl, eager for romance and adventure.

  She found it almost impossible to comprehend that she was here, at the Towers of Roses and Thorns, her long-lost and much-longed-for mother floating before her, bound again in the depths of her enchanted sleep. Even harder to believe was the fact that the chestnut stallion which had carried her so far and so strangely was indeed her father, trapped as surely in equine shape as Lachlan had been in the form of a blackbird.

  Although this would explain many things about Lasair—their instant rapport and slowly deepening connection, his few frantic words in her mind, his ability to travel the Old Ways—her mind simply refused to grasp that he was really her father. Again and again she tried to grapple with the concept, only to have her heart quicken and her palms dampen. She had stared into the stallion’s dark, liquid eyes and begged him for confirmation, or reassurance, but he had merely shied away, shaking his mane. She had tried to reach him with her mind-voice, and he had butted her with his nose, whickering softly. She had reminded herself that Lasair was descended from Angharar, one of the six stallions Cuinn Lionheart had brought with him in the Great Crossing, only to remember that it was Maya who had said so and she could not be trusted.