The Cursed Towers (20 page)

They rode back to Blairgowrie through the pelting rain, singing and banging their daggers against their shields like a victorious army returning home. The streets were lined with townsfolk, cheering and waving banners, and the soldiers raised their hands and accepted the tribute, their helmets still lowered over their faces. They were not challenged until Lachlan dismounted within the inner bailey of the keep and flung back the commander's great red cloak to reveal his sable wings. There was some fierce fighting then as the few soldiers left to guard the Grand-Seeker tried desperately to hold the Graycloaks off. It was futile, though, with more than four thousand enemy soldiers having penetrated the town's defenses. With Duncan Ironfist wielding his claymore like a madman on one side, and Murdoch striking out with his double-headed war axe on the other, Lachlan fought his way into the great keep itself. When he flung open the door to the main hall, there were screams as the servants ran to hide, or seized what weapons they could to defend themselves, hopelessness in their eyes. Traditionally, any besieged town or castle that was taken by assault was ransacked ruthlessly, and all inhabitants slaughtered for their defiance. The servants of the Blairgowrie Keep had no doubt this winged prionnsa, with his blazing golden eyes and dark look of fury, would have no mercy.

Lachlan seized a terrified page by the scruff of his neck and shook him. "Where is the traitor Renshaw?" he cried.

The boy shut his mouth and refused to answer, and Finlay Fear-Naught drew his dagger with a curse. Duncan shook his head and said softly, "Do no' die for that piece o' worthless scum, lad. This is the true righ. We shall no' harm ye if ye tell the truth."

The page swallowed his terror and pointed with a shaking hand up the stairs. "The Grand-Seeker's rooms be on the third floor, through the gilded doors," he managed to say.

"Do no' call him the Grand-Seeker!" Lachlan flashed. "The Awl is dead, my lad, and shall never raise its cruel head again in my land!" He broke into a run, then to the astonishment of the cowering servants, spread his wings and soared up to the gallery above. With a glance at each other and a shrug, Duncan, Iain and Finlay hastened up the stairs, Bald Deaglan bringing up the rear with a curse at his righ's impetuosity. They found Lachlan standing in the center of an empty suite of rooms, his claymore in his hand, frustration and rage in every line of his taut body and wings. "The serpent has slithered away yet again," he spat.

On the floor was a crumpled heap of crimson where the Grand-Seeker had flung his robe. A cradle near the window showed the indentation of a small body. Duncan Ironfist crossed the floor and laid his hand on the sheets. They were still warm. "He canna have gone far," he said. "Finlay, Deaglan, close the keep. Search every closet and every room, and examine the face o' every man, woman and child in this Ea-forsaken keep. And do it fast!"

It was too late, though. Renshaw the Ruthless had fled, and with him went the babe with the white lock, the child he had named Banrigh.

Roses and Thorns

The Graycloaks took possession of Blairgowrie with disciplined ease. Contrary to the townsfolk's expectations, there was no looting, no rape and no executions. The local merchants and farmers were encouraged to bring in their produce to sell and were given a fair price for it. The dead from both sides were buried with the appropriate rituals, much to the relief of the local populous. They had dreaded the vermin and disease that invariably came after a major battle, since the dead and wounded of the defeated army were usually left to rot where they had fallen, prey to scavengers of both the human and animal kind.

Even more surprising, the wounded Red Guards were taken into Blairgowrie and given the same care as the injured Graycloaks. Usually those who were badly injured would lie among the corpses until they too were dead, sometimes killed by the scavengers who came hunting for anything of value but more often just kicked aside so the scavengers could seize their dagger or tear off their boots. Their bodies would then be picked clean by carrion birds or animals, until nothing was left but a few scattered bones to be turned up by a farmer's plow in centuries to come.

Lachlan's mercy astounded those used to the casual cruelty of the Awl, and stories soon spread of the miraculous healing hands of a young boy who traveled in Lach-lan the Winged's train. Within a few days the local peasants were bringing in their sick and maimed for Tomas the Healer to touch, and many who had believed that all witches were inherently evil found their assurance shaken. Those Red Guards who refused to take service under Lachlan's banner were marched back to Lucescere under heavy guard to work in the mines and labor in the rebuilding of the Tower of Two Moons. Many were happy to throw their lot in with the young righ, however, impressed by the ease of his victory at Blairgowrie and pleased at his ready payment of their soldiers' shilling. Renshaw the Ruthless had not paid them anything, promising them recompense once the Awl was again in power. They found they were watched closely and any breach of discipline harshly punished, but this only increased their newfound respect for the Righ and his staff of officers. Many of the Red Guards' horses had been rescued from the marsh, and the weapons had all been stripped from the corpses before burial, so Lachlan's troops were better equipped than ever before. They did not rest long after the Battle of Blairgowrie, for much of the surrounding countryside was occupied by the Bright Soldiers and Lachlan was eager to begin his campaign against them. Meghan and Iain kept storm clouds low and heavy, for the Tirsoilleirean burnt crops and farms as they retreated, and the witches wished to save as much of the land from the torch as possible. As a result, many of the battles in the following weeks were fought in rain and fog, the Bright Soldiers in their heavy armor struggling to keep their footing in the muddy battlefields.

The Tirsoilleirean began to dread the sight of an ominous sky, for the Graycloaks materialized out of mist, giving no warning of their attack and disappearing as mysteriously as they had arrived. Worst of all, the Bright Soldiers' gunpowder was kept permanently damp, disabling their cannons and harquebuses and depriving them of one of their greatest advantages. As spring turned into summer, the Bright Soldiers were driven back toward the coast, squeezed between the Graycloaks and the Fair-gean as if between the pincers of a giant crab.

The sea-faeries had swarmed into Dun Gorm, taking the Tirsoilleirean soldiers by surprise. Before they had had time to retreat into the countryside, most of the soldiers stationed at the blue city had been impaled on a Fairge trident or dragged into the water by a giant tentacle and drowned. The ships moored in the harbor had all been sunk by the sea serpents, which coiled their long bodies around the bows and crushed them to splinters.

Meanwhile, the crofters of Clachan had retreated to the rocky crags that thrust out of the flat coastal plains like petrified fingers. On the summits of these tall crags were ancient walled towns, built long ago when the high tides of early spring had swept in from the sea every year, drowning the land and bringing the Fairgean hordes in pursuit of the blue whale. In the four hundred years since Aedan's Wall had been built to keep the tides back, the Clachans had spread out across the plains, building towns and villages where they pleased. Now they crowded into the old towns, leaving their fields and villages untended. For the Fairgean had set their sea serpents and giant octopi to tearing down great sections of the bulwark, crumbling from years of neglect, and the tide again flowed as it pleased. The battalions of Bright Soldiers marching through Clachan had been caught by surprise. Some were drowned as the sea raced in across the flat land; others died in fierce fighting as the Fairgean transformed into their land shapes and attacked in a wild, triumphant charge. In great confusion, the shocked and exhausted Tirsoilleirean had retreated into Blessem, only to be greeted by Lachlan's orderly and well-rested troops. When the high tide had rushed into the Berhtfane, it had washed away many of the wrecked ships that littered the harbor and had split into the streets of the ravaged city of Dun Gorm. The Fairgean rode the tide up the winding course of the Rhyllster to Lucescere Loch, so that the soldiers left to guard the city looked down from the garrison walls to see the loch far below seething with scaled bodies, like the palace fishpond. Some of the Fair-gean tried to leap the Shining Waters, but the waterfalls fell almost two hundred feet down a sheer cliff-face, and not even the strongest Fairge could leap that high. Others left the water, transforming their shapes to attack the city from the land, but Lucescere was impregnable on its island between two great rivers. After many Fairgean had died trying to swarm over the Bridge of Seven Arches, the sea-faeries retreated and concentrated on killing Bright Soldiers, who had no such impregnable defenses.

With the seas thick with murderous sea-dwellers, the fleets of Tirsoilleirean ships no longer sailed down the coast and into Dun Gorm harbor to discharge their cargo of fresh troops and weaponry. Sea serpents or giant oc-topi sank many ships before the Fealde learnt her lesson and stopped sending out her navy. Instead, she concentrated on sending fresh battalions of Bright Soldiers into southern Eileanan through the marshes of Arran. As a result, Lachlan's army found itself attacked from the rear and had to retreat back into Rionnagan to avoid being caught between the two forces of Tirsoilleirean, one desperate and angry at the reversal of its fortunes, the other untried but anxious to prove itself. Iain MacFoghnan gazed through the window of Blair-gowrie Keep and shook his head wearily at the burning blue sky. Now that summer had arrived, bringing long days of sunshine, it was harder for Meghan and him to control the weather. The clouds they summoned melted away in the warmth of the summer sun, and the Graycloaks were no longer able to hide their forces in mist and rain. The Bright Soldiers' gunpowder dried out and they were again able to fire their cannons and harquebuses upon Lachlan's troops. The tide retreated, and with it went the Fairgean warriors, to hunt the blue whale in the summer seas. All along the soft sand of the Strand, female Fairgean gave birth to their young, protected by the younger Fairgean males. Without the threat of Fairgean attack, the Bright Soldiers were again able to mobilize their forces and Lachlan's army found themselves hard pressed. The fighting surged back and forth across the meadows and fields of Blessem, villages being burnt to the ground, crofters intimidated and murdered, and the spring crops trampled.

Iain, his bony fingers clenching the windowsill, remembered the most recent disastrous engagement with a heavy heart. Many good men had died, men he had come to think of as friends. He could not understand what obsession drove his mother. Why she should allow the soldiers of Tirsoilleir to march through her land and into southern Eileanan, unleashing such death and devastation, was beyond him. Arran was a beautiful and mysterious country, with fens that rustled with bulrushes and cattails, diverse waterways, slow-moving rivers and shallow lochan. Snow geese and crimson-winged swans flew the skies; the song of the giant frogs reverberated through the rushes, and shy bog-faeries peered through the grasses with huge, lustrous eyes. It was not a rich country, however. Most of it was covered with lakes and marshes, so it did not have much arable land that could be plowed and planted, unlike Blessem with its fields of wheat and corn, its lush grazing meadows, its laden orchards. It had no abundant lodes of iron or gold or any thriving industries like Rionnagan.

Although it was not as rich as Blessem or Rionnagan, Arran was not a poor country however. Its marshes were thick with fish and fowl, and it had a monopoly on the export of rys seeds, the aphrodisiac honey of the golden goddess flower, and the mysterious fungi called murk-woad which grew nowhere else and had such remarkable healing properties. These three commodities had made Iain's mother a wealthy and powerful woman. The Tower of Mists was filled with every imaginable luxury, and Margrit NicFoghnan had many servants to cater to her every whim.

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 gray-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 Tirsoilleir, allowing the Bright Soldiers to march through the marshes and into Blessem. The Tirsoilleirean 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 Graycloaks' 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 Blessem 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 El-frida 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 tranquility; 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.