Read Online The Cursed Towers by Kate Forsyth - Free Book Online

last stages of her contractions, her red curls wet with perspiration. She was pacing the room, magnificent in her swollen nakedness, her jaw set with determination. It was just on dawn; through the half-drawn curtains the flowers of frost on the windowpane were stained rose. Isabeau, limp from sharing her twin's pain, paced with her, arm about her back, as Meghan explained to Johanna, the eldest of the League of the Healing Hand, exactly what she was doing.
    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