The Cursed Towers (28 page)

Thy womb-sister was raised by thy father's kin, thou wert raised by thy mother's. Now thy
womb-sister sits at the feet of Meghan of the Beasts and listens to her wisdom. It is time that thou
sat at the feet of the Firemaker of the Fire-Dragon Pride. Thy womb-sister spent the white
months of the year, the active months, with the Fire-Dragon Pride and the green months of the
year, the rest months, with Feld of the Dragons and thy mother, Ishbel the Winged. Thou must do
the same.

Isabeau's eyes widened. Even though she knew her father's people inhabited the snowy heights beyond the Cursed Valley, it had never occurred to her to seek them out. Immediately her thoughts flew to Bronwen.

I
canna
—
she will die,
she said incoherently.

The queen-dragon yawned and rested her head back on her claws. There was a long pause. Isabeau said timidly,
Ye ken I have the Ensorcellor's babe? I canna let her die. She needs salt water
to swim in, for she is o' the sea people. I have brought her so far, I must have a care for her. Will
ye no' help me?

There was no response from the queen-dragon and behind Isabeau the queen's sons stirred and hissed. Isabeau gritted her teeth and thought defiantly:
Did ye know my father had been transformed into a
horse? Why did ye no' tell Meghan when she was here? Or Iseult?

Without opening her eyes, the queen-dragon replied,
For what purpose should I have told?

Isabeau said, more incoherently than ever,
But ye must have kent that we would have wanted to ken

. . .
Realizing how jumbled her thoughts must sound, she said more carefully,
For seventeen years my
father has been trapped in the shape o' a horse, unable to tell anyone, unable to escape. If we had
kent. . .

What wouldst thou have done?
There was mild curiosity in the queen-dragon's voice.
We could have tried to break the enchantment,
Isabeau cried.

The tip of the queen-dragon's tail swayed.
The enchantment can only be lifted by she who cast it.
Moreover, knowledge of Khan'gharad's fate may well have changed all of thy fates. To know
what may happen is often to assure it does happen. We prefer not to meddle in the fates of foolish,
muddling humans.

There was a note of dismissal in her voice, and the great, crested tail was now swaying quite markedly. Isabeau bowed her head.
I
thank ye for your words and for your mercy.
After a long, sticky, heart-hammering moment, she found the courage to say,
Tell me, do ye think I did wrong in taking
Bronwen away?

There was no answer.

Desperately Isabeau cried,
I
beg ye, tell me where I can find salt so she does no' die.
The queen-dragon stirred and sighed, knocking Isabeau over with the force of the escaping air.
Thou
mayst scrape salt off the rocks in the valley above and take it with thee for the moment. Then if
thou lookest at the northern end of the Valley of the Two Towers, thou wilt find salt in the rocks
and in a chain of bubbling pools akin to our lake above. Thou mayst let the Fairge child swim in
those pools and she shall live.

Thank ye, thank ye,
Isabeau babbled, but the queen-dragon had closed her eyes again, her chin resting on the notched and blackened dagger. As Isabeau rather shakily made her way back down the long, vaulted hall she heard the sonorous roar of the queen-dragon's snores begin once again.
The Spine of the World

Isabeau toiled up the snowy slope, her mittened hands huddled beneath her plaid, her tam-o'-shanter pulled down low over her ears. Behind her the deep, wavering line of her footsteps was the only mark on a pristine landscape, the fresh fall of snow covering everything with a soft drapery. The sky overhead was blue but the air was bitterly cold, and Isabeau's panting breath hung before her face in white puffs like clouds. As far as the eye could see the tall white points of the mountains stretched, while behind her were the forest-filled valleys.

A wild whooping startled her and she glanced up. Down the slope sped a number of tall, white figures, swooping over the snow as swiftly and gracefully as birds in flight. Isabeau stopped in her tracks, half in fear and half in delight. She watched as first one then another leapt off a mound of snow and somersaulted like an acrobat before swooping on again at the same breakneck speed. As they came closer she saw they rode small wooden sleighs, not much longer than their boots. The bottoms of the sleighs were painted with ferocious red dragons breathing fire. As they soared and spun through the air, it was as if the painted dragons took flight, only to be buried again in snow as the riders skidded to the ground again.

With another loud yell, the leader of the riders came to an abrupt, curving halt before Isabeau, spraying her with snow. He was a tall, lean man with a grim, dark face, all angles and hard planes, heavily hooded eyes, and a long braid of white, coarse hair. On either side of his forehead were two massive, tightly curled horns.

He inclined his head and gave the ritualistic Khan'coh-ban greeting—a sweep of two fingers to the brow, then to the heart, then out to the view. Hesitantly Isabeau returned the greeting and he frowned. She wondered rather anxiously whether she had done something wrong. Feld had tried to teach her as much as he could of the Khan'cohban language, but it was a strange form of communication, as much gesture and intonation as sound. Luckily Isabeau was used to speaking the languages of beasts and birds, which were also composed more of body language than a complex system of vocal noises. She had a flair for languages and had studied hard, so by the time she left the Towers of Roses and Thorns to travel to the Spine of the World, she knew as much as Feld could teach her. She was still nervous of the winter ahead, however, knowing how different the Khan'cohbans' life was and already missing Bronwen, whom she had left in Feld's care.

The Khan'cohban warrior spoke to her then, uttering a few abrupt syllables that sounded more like grunts than words. He said something about the Firemaker, making a broad, sweeping gesture back up the hill. Isabeau nodded and smiled to show she understood, but he only stared at her haughtily. The other Khan'cohbans had also swung to a halt around her and she heard them grunt to each other briefly, their hands making odd, brief gestures. Then they set off again in wide, curving swoops over the snow, some yelling with excitement. Their leader did not leave. Instead, he bent down, undid the straps tying the skimmer to his feet and tied it to his back. Without a word he gestured up the hill again and then began to walk swiftly and easily up the slope. Isabeau labored along behind him, her breath coming in short little gasps, her boots sinking deep into the snow. He turned often and waited for her, and Isabeau tried hard not to resent his calm, stern politeness.

It was close on sunset when they finally reached the crest of the mountain, and Isabeau's legs were on fire, her whole body shaking with cold and exhaustion. They had climbed slope after icy slope, leaving the valley floor far behind them. The Khan'cohban had not spoken once and Isabeau was grateful for that, having no breath to spare. Above them a great outcropping of round boulders reared against the glowing sky, the long slopes falling away like the sweep of a white velvet gown. He waited for her just below the gray bulging stone, his dark face impassive. At last she reached his side and stood panting harshly, holding her side with one hand and wiping her streaming nose with the other. He gave her only long enough to catch her breath, then led her round the side of the rock. Isabeau's breath caught in amazement. The path they trod led through an archway of ice-hung stone and round to the mouth of a gigantic cave, the craggy head of the mountain rearing above. Below was a wide valley, surrounded on three sides by towering cliffs. A waterfall fell to one side of the cave mouth, the loch at its base frozen over except where the plunging water churned. There the water was a pure blue-green, its edges frothing into great blocks of broken ice. A small boy had led a herd of large, goat-like creatures with flat hooves and spreading horns down to drink, and they clustered at the water's edge, their woolly coats nearly as white as the snow.

Suddenly a tall Khan'cohban stepped out from the wall of the archway. Isabeau stepped back with an exclamation, for in his white furs he had been invisible against the snow. Her guide uttered a single, harsh word and the guard struck the palm of one hand with the edge of the other. Isabeau's guide nodded, once, and led her past.

The cave mouth yawned far above her head, all fringed with icicles. Huddling her plaid around her numb cheeks, Isabeau followed him inside. The cave stretched far back into the mountain, with many shallow alcoves and smaller caves leading off from the main chamber. A stream ran down one side, some of its shallower pools iced over at the edges. Many small campfires glowed along its earthen floor, each surrounded by a pile of furs and bundles of cooking utensils, weapons and rough wooden bowls. At the very back was a large bonfire, its smoke streaming up toward an aperture far above their heads. Flaming torches were stuck here and there in the rough walls, but their light did not pierce very far into the gloom. With the smoke from the fires stinging her eyes, Isa-beau had to peer to see. She saw a number of straight-backed men and women sitting cross-legged around the bonfire. They were all dressed in long, tight leggings of soft, white leather, with white knitted shirts and leather jerkins over the top. Most wore long cloaks of animal furs huddled round their shoulders—Isabeau recognized woolly bear, timber wolf, arctic fox and the thick white wool of the
geal'teas.
There was even the rich spotted fur of a saber leopard, the ferocious head with its curving fangs still attached, and the white pelt of a snow lion. The old woman wearing the snow-lion cloak sat on a thick pile of furs, the black-tipped mane and snarling muzzle hanging down her back. Unlike the other women sitting around the fire, her face was clearly that of a human, though strongly boned with high cheekbones. Her eyes were as blue as Isabeau's own, and the long hair bound back from her brow was gray with red intermingled. She looked up as Isabeau drew near the bonfire, and looked her over with an autocratic gaze. Isabeau had been looking forward immensely to meeting her great-grandmother and her impulse was to rush forward and greet her with a kiss and a hug. The cold, autocratic face daunted her however, and so she merely made the gesture of greeting. Once again she wondered whether she had somehow made a mistake, for the faces of the warriors were all stiff and the Firemaker frowned in response. Then she pointed at Isabeau and then at the ground near her feet. "Sit," she said, the word stilted. Obediently Isabeau sat, wondering what was to come. She felt very self-conscious and ill at ease, though none of the many Khan'cohbans in the cavern seemed to have noticed her presence. They kept on with their tasks of spinning, knitting, carving or hammering with not a single glance in her direction. Even the Council of Scarred Warriors paid her no attention, even though she sat so close to them she could smell their sharp odor and see the strange, colorless glint of their eyes.

Still the Firemaker subjected her to intense scrutiny and Isabeau returned her gaze with equal curiosity. The old woman's thin mouth thinned even further and her hand suddenly lashed out, striking Isabeau across the face.

"Rude, stare," she said.

Isabeau put her hand to her cheek. "But you're staring at me!" Again the old woman slapped her. "Rude, answer back!"

Tears stung Isabeau's eyes but she lowered them and kept them lowered. After a long moment she felt rather than saw the Firemaker make an emphatic gesture and call, "Khan'kahlil?" A Khan'cohban woman rose from a nearby fire and came to kneel at the old woman's side, her head lowered and her hands folded before her. Isabeau recognized the few guttural syllables she uttered as meaning, "Yes, Firemaker?"

The Firemaker issued a few orders too swift for Isabeau to understand. Khan'kahlil said, "Yes, Firemaker," again, but this time with a slight difference in intonation. Isabeau listened intently, determined to learn as much of the language as she could. Otherwise her life here for the next few months would be very difficult and lonely.

A quick stinging blow to her ear caught her by surprise. The Firemaker pointed at the Khan'cohban woman and said, "Go. Khan'kahlil teach manners. Return when polite." Isabeau fought down her protest and, in exactly the same pose and manner as the Khan'cohban woman had, said, "Yes, Firemaker."

The Firemaker nodded in abrupt dismissal but Isabeau sensed her approval and followed the tall, lithe figure of the snow-faery in silence. Although her great-grandmother's cold welcome had brought her perilously close to tears, Isabeau managed to choke back her hurt and disappointment, determined not to show any weakness before these stern, grim-faced strangers. Khan'kahlil gestured to a pile of furs and Isabeau sat obediently. Without a word, the Khan'cohban woman passed her a stone bowl and pestle and Isabeau began to ground the wild grains within to powder.

Khan'kahlil was, like the other Khan'cohbans, tall and olive-skinned, with an abundant white mane and long fingers with four joints. Only the male Khan'cohbans had the thick, down-curling horns, but the strong, prominent bone structure of her face and the deep-set eyes marked her clearly as a different race from Isabeau.

She soon realized Khan'kahlil was very low in the hierarchy, little more than a servant to the warriors, storytellers, metalsmiths and firekeepers, who were the most respected people in the pride. Khan'kahlil had only one scar, a crude arrow on her left cheek, and her name meant "little coney," a term of affectionate condescension. The fact that the Firemaker had spoken her name in front of Isabeau was a sign of how little respect she received. Names were secret, only revealed to kith and kin. As a stranger, Isabeau had no right to know anyone's name. She learnt to call others by their title and position in the hierarchy.