The Cursed Towers (42 page)

"Any fool can bleach in a white lock." Margrit's dimples flashed across her cheek.

"True, Your Grace, if they had the knowledge. Dressing hair is hardly my area o' expertise, though. How can Her Highness be certain? She has no' seen her daughter for nigh on two years, surely?"

"Do ye think I do no' ken my own daughter?" Maya replied silkily, lifting one webbed hand to play with the wedge of hair that fell onto her neck. Renshaw stared at her, a faint sheen of sweat springing up on his high brow as he saw the gills that fluttered gently just below her ear.

"But, my lady . . ." Renshaw stammered, his fingers working nervously at the buttons of his crimson gown. "How can this be? I had no idea . . ."

"Ye lie," Margrit said sweetly. "Do ye think ye can deceive the Thistle?" Her smile was like the grin of a snake, full of malice. The Grand-Seeker fell silent, licking his dry lips, eyes darting from face to face.

"Ye have been false with me, Renshaw, and that is something I do no' forgive lightly," Margrit said affectionately. "Ye came to me, seeking sanctuary and offering me a chance to strike a blow at the MacCuinn clan that they would no' recover from easily. I took ye, fed ye and sheltered ye, and gave ye servants to wait on your every whim. I made plans that gave me much pleasure in the contemplation, and find now all my schemes are hollow. What would ye have done if we did overthrow the young Pretender and your imposter had been given the Lodestar to hold? It would have killed her, and ye would have been exposed as the charlatan ye are."

"I never expected ye to let the child live that long," Renshaw admitted. "The enmity ye hold toward the MacCuinns is legendary."

She laughed. "True," she admitted. "True on all counts."

"Ye have brought me here on a wild sardine chase," Maya hissed. "I have been searching for Bronwen for months, and ye laid a false trail that led me here! Where is my daughter?"

"I have no idea, Your Highness," Renshaw replied. "This was a mere crofter's daughter who had a close resemblance to your daughter. I kent the country folk would flock to my standard if I said I had the true banrlgh under my hand. With her disappearance, many would have supported the winged monster simply because he was all they had to look to. They might have suspected him o' murder and regicide, but who was to prove it? With the country plunged into war, they had to look to someone to save them, and the tales they were telling o' ye, Your Highness, were far worse than what they may have suspected o' him." His pronunciation of her former title was made with such a sarcastic intonation that Maya drew herself upright, her mobile nostrils flaring in anger. Margrit was also angry but for a far different reason.

"Ye brought a peasant's daughter to my palace and told me she was the NicCuinn?" she said sweetly.

"That was a very bad mistake, Renshaw, a very bad mistake indeed." Her smile deepened, and she held out her ring-laden hand, pointing two fingers at him.

The Grand-Seeker's hands flew to his throat. Gasping for air, he fell to his knees, his distorted face turning a strange purplish color. Maya looked on, repelled and fascinated, as he fell forward onto the floor, writhing and choking as his own hands throttled the breath from his body. His heels drummed against the floor, and spittle flew from his purple lips. He turned desperate, bulging eyes her way, then fell back limply. Renshaw lay where he had fallen, his engorged tongue protruding from his mouth, his hands still locked around his throat.

Margrit called to the terrified bogfaery. "Call the guards to remove the garbage and throw it to the golden goddess," she instructed. Then she turned and smiled at Maya, who found herself quite unable to move or speak. "One does not touch the Thistle without pain," the Ban-prionnsa of Arran said sweetly. "Ye would be advised to remember it."

* * *

The cursehag stank so foully that Maya almost gagged. Margrit gave her an apple studded with cloves to hold to her nose, and Maya took it gratefully, drawing herself away. The cursehag chuckled evilly, staring at her through the matted rat's nest of gray hair that fell over her wrinkled, grimy face. She was a thin, bent creature, dressed in a strange collection of rags so filthy it was impossible to tell their original color or texture. Her hands, tipped with black, broken nails, scrabbled in the sack she carried over her hunched shoulder as she muttered nonsense to herself.

Maya glanced at Margrit doubtfully, and the banprionnsa frowned reassuringly. "Do no' worry, my lady, Shannagh o' the Swamp can cast the most potent o' curses. She has lived in Arran since I was but a bairn, and did much work on behalf o' my mother."

The cursehag giggled and gave Maya a look of surprising intelligence as she laid various twisted roots and branches on the table. "Indeed, the NicFoghnans have always found auld Shannagh o' use, no'

wanting to dirty their own fine hands with curses and calamities. Shannagh knows what plants to gather to make the vilest poisons and what time o' the moon it is best to pick them. It was Shannagh that made the dragonbane for ye when ye were Banrigh. It was Shannagh that concocted that bold brew, and I ken ye found it o' use."

"Enough, auld woman!" Margrit cried.

Maya could tell she was angry that the cursehag had revealed where the banprionnsa had got the dragonbane Maya had used in her attack on the dragons in the spring of the red comet. Maya had paid dearly for that poison and was interested indeed to know who had had the courage to distill it. The three women were locked in a room at the height of Margrit's own tower. It was Samhain, night of the dead, and outside an eerie wind moaned. On Samhain the veils between the world of the quick and the dead were at their thinnest, and Margrit had chosen this night as the most auspicious for casting a potent curse against Lachlan MacCuinn. The room was all hung with black curtains painted with strange symbols in silver and crimson paint. Tables were crowded with peculiar instruments and there was a strange odor to the room, like old blood. Maya resisted the temptation to huddle her cloak about her, standing tall and proud in one corner of the room.

Maya had been loath to reveal the feather and lock of hair to the Thistle and had kept them hidden for some weeks while she tried to decide on her best course of action. The discovery that the little girl was not her daughter had left the Fairge in Margrit of Arran's hands without a card to play. She had desperately needed the sorceress's help in locating Bronwen but was aware that Margrit wished her daughter only ill.

For three weeks the women had been charmingly polite to each other, all the while an undercurrent of menace and threat keeping Maya tense and wary. She had told Margrit about her spies in the very heart of Lach-lan's camp and that had intrigued the sorceress sufficiently to prevent her from ordering Maya thrown to the golden goddess. Margrit had quickly seen how such spies could be of use to her and they had hastened to set up lines of communication so that Maya could easily contact her spies. Next Maya had brought out the thick braid of red hair, using all her wit and wiles to convince Margrit to help her track down Isabeau the Red and the lost banprionn-sa. Margrit had clearly seen how much better it was to have Maya's daughter under her own hand rather than out in the countryside, a wild card that could be used against her at any time. So she had used her own powerful magic to locate Isabeau through her scrying pool. She had seen the young woman in a shining world of snow that could only be found on the Spine of the World. There was no sign of Bronwen but Margrit's Khan'coh-ban chamberlain had been able to recognize the shape of the peaks towering behind the red-haired apprentice witch. "They are the Cursed Peaks," he had said in his harshly accented voice. "She is in the Cursed Valley."

Margrit's interest had quickened visibly. "Indeed?" she had purred. She turned to Maya with a sweet, dangerous smile, saying, "But o' course I shall help ye find this lass! Why, as soon as the winter storms have subsided I shall give ye my swan-carriage and ye can fly up the mountains as swiftly as the snow geese. And I shall send Khan'tirell to guide ye! He knows those mountains like his own scarred face. Ye would never find the way through without him. He and all my servants shall be at your disposal." Wondering what double game Margrit was playing, Maya had thanked her effusively and promised to return to Margrit's protection with the little banprionnsa, a lie she had no compunction in uttering. Only then, when her path had become clearer, had she brought out the feather and lock of hair. Margrit had been pleased indeed. Her whole body had quivered with eagerness, her face set in a scowl of joy.

"At last!" she had cried, reaching out for them. "With these we'll be able to cast a curse o' such power!

The MacCuinns shall truly rue the day they scorned the Thistle."

Maya had held on tight to them, saying warily, "I give these to ye only on the condition that ye do as ye promised and help me find Bronwen. If ye betray me, it is ye who shall rue the day!"

"O' course, o' course," Margrit had smiled. "It shall be your blood that seals the curse. I shall be merely your humble instrument."

The cursehag grinned, singing to herself as she sewed a little doll out of cloth. With a stick of charcoal she drew features uncannily like Lachlan's upon its face, then stuffed it with wilted rue leaves, deadly nightshade berries and water-hemlock. As her gnarled fingers worked quickly and expertly, she explained to Maya what she was doing and the Fairge watched in fascination. Shannagh sewed the doll closed with black thread, then wrapped it in a scrap of green plaid torn from the kilt of the young righ. She sewed to its head the tangle of dark hair Maya's spy had stolen from his comb.

"What sort o' curse do ye wish me to cast?" she asked.

"Do ye want him to be hurt or maimed, or merely ruined? Do ye wish him to lose his wits or his strength, or do ye wish to bind his mouth and silence him forever? Do ye want him to die, and if so, straightaway or a slow, lingering death? Do ye wish me to curse his blood, and all that are born o' it? What is your desire?"

"I want him to be ruined, as he ruined me," Maya replied slowly. "I want him to lose all he has gained, and know defeat and weakness and cold, as I have. I want him to be cruelly hurt, to suffer and slowly die in pain and misery, his power returned to me."

Shannagh nodded her matted gray head. "Ye had best pay me well for such a curse, or I shall make sure it is the Clan o' the Thistle that suffers so," she warned. Mar-grit smiled contemptuously and tossed the old faery a large bag of coins. She counted it obsessively, at last revealing her broken stumps of teeth in a smile and stowing the money away in her sack.

The cursehag then pulled out thick black candles that smelt strongly of belladonna and rue and set them into a squat iron holder. A snap of her fingers and flame burst into life at the ends of the wicks. The smoke smelt strange, and shadows danced over the room with their own fey life. In her stained cauldron the cursehag mixed together urine from a black cat, a few pinches of dried dragon's blood, a handful of grave dirt, yew leaves and berries, and a few globules of sap from the elder tree. With her pestle and mortar she ground a mandrake root to dust and added that, then she took Maya's finger and pierced it with a slender dagger, squeezing until three drops of her blood dropped into the cauldron. The cursehag then stirred the foul concoction with the dagger, muttering under her breath,

"By the power o' the dark moons

I make potent this brew,

Fill it wi' coldness

Fill it wi' darkness

Fill it wi' hurt and sharpness.

By the power o' the dark moons

I make potent this brew,

Fill it wi' nastiness

Fill it wi' ugliness

Fill it wi' shame and sadness.

By the power o' the dark moons,

I make potent this brew."

Maya watched, both repelled and fascinated, as Shan-nagh drew the long, sable feather plucked from Lachlan's wing through the dark, sticky fluid until it was wet and bedraggled. Then the cursehag passed it to her, telling her to snap it in two and repeat after her:

"I curse thee, Lachlan MacCuinn,

By the power o' the dark moons,

And wish ye the harm ye have done me;

I curse thee, Lachlan MacCuinn,

By the power o' the dark moons,

And wish ye the harm ye have done me;

I curse thee, Lachlan MacCuinn,

By the power o' the dark moons,

And wish ye the harm ye have done me;

By the power o' the dark moons,

I curse thee, I curse thee, I curse thee."

Maya did as the cursehag said, bringing all her anger and hatred to the fore as she did so. The feather snapped with a sound like cracking bone, and she passed it back to the old hag with a peculiar sensation in her stomach. Shannagh had been soaking a length of black ribbon in the cauldron. She bound the broken feather to the poppet's body with it, winding the ribbon round nine times as she repeated the final line of the rhyme. Obediently Maya chanted it with her. "I curse thee, I curse thee, I curse thee." Shannagh then wrapped the poppet in black cloth, tying it securely into a knot. From Maya's finger she squeezed another three drops of blood onto the knot, and the Fairge said, her voice quavering despite herself,

"Bound to me are ye by blood, none may free ye from this spell but me." Then she snuffed out the candles so the room sank into darkness.

"That will make sure none but ye can break the curse, no matter how powerful they be," the cursehag whispered. "Ye must keep the poppet wi' ye, for ye are bound tightly to the MacCuinn now, your fates entwined. Be careful though. Curses are like chickens—they come home to roost. Ye must guard yourself carefully against negative forces. Ken also that the MacCuinn may be able to resist the curse if he is strong enough, and if he keeps his spirits positive. Though by all accounts he is a man o' dark moods and quick temper—that will make it easier."

Maya nodded, stowing away the poppet in its black bag. She was conscious of a shadow on her spirits, and a strange smell to the air. The cursehag removed the black candles, lighting an incense brazier and waving it in all four corners of the room, and kindling fresh white candles that smelt sweetly of angelica. She washed out her cauldron and dagger and carefully packed away the jars of dragon's blood, mandrake root, cat's urine and grave-dirt. Once the room was purified, Maya was able to breathe more easily, though she still felt oddly afraid. The poppet seemed like a tangible presence, hot and breathing in her pocket as if it were alive.