The Cursed Towers (7 page)

Iseult smothered a groan and clung to the mantelpiece. Isabeau supported her weight as her twin bore down with all her strength.

"I can see its head!" Johanna cried. "Look!" Iseult bit her lip and pushed again, and Johanna knelt behind her. Her plain face transfigured with amazement, she cradled the baby's head between her work-worn hands and, under Meghan's watchful eye, guided the baby out. "It's a boy!" They heard the cock crow the coming of the dawn, and light illuminated the window as the sun rose. The baby gulped for breath and uttered a thin, wailing cry.

"Ye have a bonny son," Meghan said gently, "and how this can be, I do no' know, but he has wings, Iseult, just like his father."

Tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, Iseult strained to see. Meghan held up the naked child to show her the tiny, wet wings glued to his back. They were the same burnished gold as the downy hair on his head.

"Winged," she sighed in wonderment, then another convulsion of pain wracked her and she gripped Isa-beau's hand tightly, biting her lip so she would not cry out. Scarred Warriors did not scream in pain, not even in childbirth.

"The second one should come quickly," Meghan said, giving the baby boy to Sukey to wash and swaddle. "It'll soon be over, my dear. Johanna, give Iseult some more o' that feverfew syrup." Despite the old sorceress's words, the birth of the second babe was a long, slow, painful process, and Meghan's face was creased with concern. Iseult was white as the icicles framing the window, and blood from her bitten lip ran down her chin. At last the second child was born, but her umbilical cord was wrapped tight around her throat and she was blue as ice shadows. Meghan bent and put her mouth to the baby's, breathing her own breath into the tiny lungs, gently pumping her chest to try and make her heart start beating, but it was no use. "I'm sorry, my dear," the sorceress said, tears standing in her eyes. "I'm so sorry. It's too late. She does no' live."

Rocking her baby boy against her breast, Iseult gave a strange, wailing cry. "Curse ye, Gods o' White, for taking my daughter!" she cried. She shook her fist at the window, where the first rays of sun were melting the frost so the snow-humped branches outside could be seen.

Tears wet on her own cheeks, Isabeau tried to soothe her while Johanna somberly wrapped the dead baby in linen. "Let me hold her," Iseult said quietly, resting her cheek on the soft head of her son. "Let me hold her afore ye take her away."

With the little boy cradled in one arm and his dead sister in the other, she crooned over their heads, speaking to them in the strange, guttural language of the Khan'-cohbans. Where the boy's head was only faintly touched with fire, the little girl's hair was as bronze-red as newly minted pennies. The sorceress opened the door and let a haggard, white-faced Lachlan in. He had been able to hear Iseult's cry from the corridor, and he was sick with anxiety and fear. Jorge the Seer was there as well, his lined face wet with tears, a serious-faced Tomas huddled by his side

Both knew there was nothing that could be done for the dead baby.

"Do no' grieve so bitterly,
leannan,"
Lachlan murmured, holding Iseult in his arms and rocking back and forth. "We have a fine, strong son, bonny as the day is new. We've been blessed indeed. Look at our wee bonny boy."

At last Meghan took the little girl away, leaving Iseult to nurse her son. Exhausted with emotion, Isabeau moved about the room, tidying away the blood-stained linen and packing up her herbal potions. Wondering that Bronwen should have remained so quiet during the uproar, she bent over the cradle and what she saw made her suck her breath in sharply. Bronwen was awake, her silvery-blue eyes wide open, babbling happily to herself. In her tiny hands she held the Lodestar, shining white. Panic rushed through Isabeau's veins. She glanced up and saw Lachlan's scepter still lying on the chair where Meghan had left it, though now the silver claws were empty. Somehow Bronwen had called the Lodestar to her while everyone else was distracted with the birthing. Her pulses pounding, Isabeau wondered what to do. Lachlan rarely let the scepter out of his hand, and he would be greatly enraged if he realized what Bronwen had done. Isabeau could not take the Lodestar from the baby, though, for it was death to anyone but a MacCuinn to touch it. If Meghan had still been in the room, she could perhaps have taken the Lodestar without Lachlan noticing it had gone missing, but the sorceress had taken the dead baby away to prepare for burial.

Just then the Righ glanced up and saw her hovering in indecision over the cradle. Even as he frowned in interrogation, his eyes followed hers to the scepter and he saw at once that the Lodestar was gone. Color rose in his swarthy cheeks and just as quickly drained away, leaving him a sickly yellow. With a falcon's shriek he leapt to his feet, his wings extending, and was across the room. Isabeau shrank back. He seized the glowing orb and wrested it from the baby, who at once began to wail. To Lachlan's horror, the Lodestar slipped from his fingers and flew back to the baby's outstretched hands. He grasped it again, while Bronwen bellowed with disappointment, her face turning scarlet.

Isabeau darted forward and snatched Bronwen from the cradle. Lachlan's face was set in a mask of fury, his eyes glaring. "Do no' dare touch her!" Isabeau cried, cuddling the little girl to her chest. She saw his hands clench into fists, every tendon in his body taut with anger. With a cry, Isabeau turned and fled the room, Bronwen sobbing disconsolately. Outside all the bells in the city began to ring in triumph at the birth of the new heir to the throne, but to Isabeau they seemed to toll a warning. The House of Wanton Delights was the most exclusive brothel in all of Lucescere. Within its crimson-hung walls the most beautiful and exotic of whores were available to anyone who could afford the exorbitant prices charged by Black Donagh, the proprietor. An immensely fat man, he lounged at his ease on a couch among gold-tasseled cushions, fondling a slender young boy with one ring-laden, pudgy hand, the other toying with the embroidered hose of a tall hookah. An exquisitely dressed young laird lounged opposite, swirling whiskey in a glass of cut crystal. Diamonds glittered at his shoulder and in one ear. Candlelight flickered over the ornate fabrics of the curtains, pillows and silk-hung walls, deepening the shadowed cleavages of scantily dressed girls and the rouge-enhanced muscles of slim boys. From the smoky comers of embrasures came low laughs and murmurs, and in the center of the room danced an exceedingly well-fleshed woman, dressed only in jewels and gold chains.

Under a velvet embossed canopy a woman sat strumming the gilded strings of a clarsach. Although her dress was buttoned high around her throat and wrists, it was cut away from collarbone to navel, revealing a shapely expanse of very pale skin. Her silky black hair curved onto her cheekbones, shadowing her features, though occasionally her eyes glinted blue in the candlelight. She sang of love in a husky voice as rose-clad servitors poured wine into the goblets of the customers and brought trays of sweetmeats and comfits to lay upon the delicate little tables.

"She is new since I was last here," the young laird said languidly, reaching out one white hand to select a little spiced cake from the tray. "Where did ye find her, Donagh my dear?"

"Is she no' delectable?" the fat man responded. "As pale as the blue moon, as ethereal as sea mists . . ."

"And no doubt as expensive as moonbane," the young laird responded dryly. Black Donagh blew out a long plume of smoke, smiling enigmatically. "But o' course, my sweet. She is choosy indeed about whom she bestows her favors upon, and if she likes no' the cut o' your doublet or the smell o' your armpits, she'll give ye naught but her very smooth, very cold shoulder. She is the most exclusive o' all our courtesans."

The laird raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. "Indeed? She is bonny, it is true, but even the dim lighting ye have in here shows me she is past the first flush o' her youth."

"Ah, yes, but she has talents, my sweet. I can promise ye will no' be disappointed should ye choose to ... ah, sample her wares."

The young laird lay back on his cushion and observed the clarsach-player through heavy-lidded eyes. His long, white fingers played with the circle of diamonds securing his plaid so they flashed with brilliant light. Gently, sensuously, the musician swept her fingers over the strings and began another song, one of hoarse longing and husky promise. He moistened his lip, then smiled. "Very well, Donagh my dear," he said.

"Just how much do ye wish for your mysterious siren?"

He was the son of one of the richest of the Rionnagan lairds and used to paying highly for his pleasures. Nonetheless, the amount named was enough for him to lift his eyebrow. "Ye had best hope she does no'

disappoint me, my sweet," he said softly.

Black Donagh waved the spiced cake in his hand with an expression of bliss on his face. "Disappoint?" he purred. "I think no', my laird."

When dawn finally fingered its way through the heavy velvet curtains of the upstairs boudoir, the young laird lay sweat-dampened and satiated in the tangled sheets, his eyes hungry on the pale shape of the woman dressing before him. "Will ye no' stay with me?" he said throatily. "I will set ye up in your own house, ye can have a houseful o' servants to attend ye and none but me to satisfy."

"But do ye no' live in the highlands, my laird?" she answered in her deep, husky voice. "It would no'

amuse me to live so far away from the city."

"Ye can have anything ye want, anything," he answered.

She tossed the heavy bag of coins he had flung at her to make her stay with him till dawn. "This is what I want," she answered, "and I have taken all that ye have."

"I can get more," the laird said eagerly. "I just need to speak with my father . . ."

"Then come back when ye have more," she answered indifferently. He lunged across the bed and caught her arm, dragging her back onto the bed and ripping open her bodice so he could kiss her breasts. Suddenly he stilled, looking at her with dread. In the dim light filtering through the curtains, he could see three thin, translucent slits on the .side of her throat, which fluttered gently as she breathed. She did not attempt to resist as he tore the dress from her shoulders, revealing the wide, serrated fin that curved out of her spine, the frills of fin that ran from elbow to wrist. He understood now why she had insisted on snuffing all the candles before disrobing, despite his pleas for light, and why she had not allowed him free play with her body, teasing him unbearably by withdrawing each time he tried to caress her. He had thought it a game and it had excited him immensely. Now he knew there was a deeper reason for her teasing and tantalizing, but his lust for her was only heightened. He pressed his hot, urgent mouth to her flesh, and she lay still, watching him with mocking coolness.

"Ye are an
uile-bheist!"
he cried. "They will stone ye to death if they should find out. If ye will no' come with me, I shall tell Donagh, I shall betray your secret!"

She smiled and ran her webbed fingers through his sweat-damped hair. "Ye think Black Donagh does no'

ken? Why do ye think I am so expensive? It is no' every day that ye can spill your seed into one o' the sea folk, ye ken. Do no' be a fool. This new righ o' yours has outlawed the stoning o' faeries, ye ken that. Besides, who shall suffer the most once it is kent ye have lain with one o' the Fairgean? I shall just slip once more into the back ways o' the city and find myself a new protector. Ye shall be branded forever." He lay still, dry sobs shaking his ribcage. She slid out from under him and rebuttoned her dress, hiding the heavy coin-pouch in her clothing. Then she picked up her clarsach from where it had fallen to the floor, and began to strum a lullaby. "Sleep, my honeyed sweet, sleep," she sang, tender emotion thrilling through every note.

"Rocked in the cradle o' my arms

forget all your fears and qualms,

dream only o' precious love,

rocked in my wings like a dove,

forget, my honeyed sweet, forget,

sleep, my honeyed sweet, sleep."

His head cradled on his arms, a tear slipping from the corner of his eye, the young laird slipped into sleep. When he woke at the clamor of bells, he remembered nothing but the sweetness of her voice, the thrill of her embrace, and his own helpless longing.

The baby girl was named Lavinya, after Lachlan's mother, and buried in the MacCuinn graveyard at one end of the palace garden. White as the snow, Iseult held her little boy closely, the two of them well wrapped against the bitter cold. He had been named Donncan Feargus, after Lachlan's two brothers who had been transformed into blackbirds and hunted down by Maya's hawk.

The Banrigh did not weep as her baby daughter was buried in the iron-hard earth; her face was set as cold as if it were carved from marble. Isabeau wept for her, bitter tears that scalded the skin of her face.

"It is the price the Gods o' White have demanded for my betrayal," Iseult said as they walked back toward the palace. "I should have known they would no' let me go so easily." Dide the Juggler had been among the mourners gathered at the burial ground, and he came up and took Isabeau's elbow as she walked by her sister's side. "I'm terribly sorry about the wee lassie," he said awkwardly.

"Aye, is it no' sad?" Isabeau replied, tears springing again. "Still, they have a bonny wee boy, and he seems strong and healthy."

Dide pulled her away from the procession of mourners and kissed her in the shadow of a snow-laden yew tree. She stood quiescent in his arms for a moment, then pulled back. "Dide, what news had ye o'

Bronwen in the countryside? What is the mood toward her?"

He was startled. "Ye mean the Ensorcellor's babe? There were some who supported her, o' course. We heard talk o' a move to put her on the throne, but that be only talk . . ."

"Did ye tell Lachlan?"

"O' course I told him," Dide replied irritably. "Is he no' my master? What is all this talk o' the Ensorcellor's babe?" He tried to kiss her again, his mouth rigid with desire, but she moved her face away so he could only reach her cheek.