The cursed towers 255
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She fell back on to the floor and then the Mesmerd was upon her, its great clusters of shiny eyes and
out-thrusting proboscis filling her vision. The stench of the swamp was in her throat, a strange giddiness
like that of love or lust or intoxication filling her veins. Pulses hammering, senses swooning, she clenched
her hands together and blue fire leapt from her fists, drilling through one of the Mes-merd's compound
eyes. Its head exploded into dust, and she was enveloped in its soft gray draperies. Choking and
coughing she fought her way free, the Mesmerd's body dissolving into a fine gray dust that stank of mud.
She tried hard not to breathe in the odor, reeling away across the room to stand against a pillar, coughing
and trying to shake her hair and clothes free of the all-pervading dust. Her vision was obscured by
dancing lights and her ears roared. She tried desperately to shake away the darkness overwhelming her,
peering down the hall, expecting to see her father fallen in a pool of blood and the Khan'cohban warrior
advancing on her with bloody knife.
Instead she saw her father scrabbling on all fours, his eyes staring blue and mad through the tangled red
hair and beard, trying to rear and buck as strange neighing sounds issued from his contorted mouth. The
dagger lay on the floor.
Coughing, her hands pressed against her painful chest, Isabeau stared uncomprehendingly. There was no
sign of the Khan'cohban warrior. She heard a loud croak and looked down. A toad was crouched
against the pillar, its lustrous black eyes staring unblinkingly. She looked involuntarily at Maya.
The Fairge smiled. She came down the hall, bent and picked up the toad. "He looks much nicer like this,
does he no'?" she remarked. She raised it to her face and looked in its bright, jewel-like eyes. "If only
your blay-gird mistress had been here too," she said, "ye could have both lived happily ever after together
in the swamp. It would have given me as much satisfaction to turn her into a toad as it gave me to turn
ye." She put it back down on the floor and it hopped a few steps away, hunching its square, ugly head
down between its shoulders.
"Bronwen!" Isabeau cried and started for the stairs. Then she saw the old sorcerer lying on the steps, his
hands clutched over the wound in his abdomen. "Feld!" she cried. "Oh, no, Feld!"
His eyes were shut but he opened them at the sound of her voice and smiled feebly. "Ishbel?" he asked in
a reedy voice. "Is Ishbel safe?"
Isabeau sent a pleading look back at Maya but the Fairge was already hurrying up the stairs. Isabeau
knelt beside Feld, feeling for his pulse. Tears choked her. She could hardly breathe with grief and guilt
and the taste of the swamp still in her mouth. "Oh, dearling Feld, are ye all right?"
"Aye, lassie, no' so bad," he answered and lifted his bloodstained hands for her to see. She bit her lip at
the sight of his bruise-colored entrails pressing up out of the wound, pulsating slightly with every hoarse
breath he took. She tore a strip from her shirt and bundled it into the wound, feeling an unfamiliar
helplessness. "Ishbel and the babe?" he asked and she said reassuringly, "Maya has gone after them."
His look of horror and the frantic scrabbling of his fingers suddenly made her realize that Feld still thought
of Maya as the enemy, while she had, imperceptibly, come to think of the Fairge as something more like
a friend and ally.
"Save them," Feld whispered, gripping Isabeau's arm with surprising strength. "Ye mun save them."
"But—"
"Nay, Isabeau, go! Do no' worry about me, I beg ye! Save Ishbel and the babe!"
Isabeau did not stop to argue, nodding her head and stumbling up the stairs, dizzy and confused. She
