The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Across the island Eoin’s feet took him, through groves of trees whose starlit boles were slender silver dancers, shadow haired. To his right, water glimmered. He continued in his solitude until the trees thinned and he walked out upon a grassy, open space. Then a deep shudder rippled through him, and he felt a certainty of novel strangeness permeate his mood.

  A mysterious and alarming racket arose on all sides, as if from the throats of a great concourse, and he knew with a thrill of fear that he was among eldritch wights, although he could not see them. High-pitched laughter and shouts of merriment were interspersed with sobbing—not an extraordinary phenomenon where wights were concerned—but one of the wailing voices suddenly complained, “A bairn is born and there’s nowt to put on it!”

  At this, Eoin jumped backward and sideways, for the voice had seemed to emanate from right under his feet.

  “A bairn is born and there’s nowt to put on it!” squeaked the woeful voice a second time.

  In the name of all good sense, what am I doing out here? Eoin belatedly thought in growing apprehension. Alone, with no one nigh for miles to hear my screams should any ill befall me!

  “A bairn is born and there’s nowt to put on it!” shrilled the melancholy voice again, and all the while the crowd of merry voices giggled in high jollity as if madly celebrating the birth of a child and the two or three sorrowful voices moaned and wept about the lack of covering for the infant. And the eel-fisher saw nothing except the gem-encrusted night sky, the dark grasses bending in the breeze, and the glint of starlight on black water.

  The weirdness of his predicament, the horrible possibilities, struck him forcibly, cooling his ire and bringing him back to a rational state of mind. He knew he must extricate himself from this discomfiting situation with all haste. Swiftly unfastening two bronze shoulder brooches, he doffed his cloak and cast it to the ground.

  “Take this!” he tried to say, but the words emerged as a barely intelligible rasp.

  Instantly, the cloak was seized by an invisible hand. The howlings died away, but the sounds of mirth and celebration intensified.

  Hoping his action would be sufficient to content the wights, Eoin took his chance and fled.

  Cathair Rua was also known as the Red City, for it was built of reddish sandstone and roofed with a variety of slate so rufescent it appeared stained, as if blood had rained on it from the sky. Most of the city’s buildings were enclosed within its stout, battlemented walls. A conglomerate of rooftops and gables, towers and turrets, spires and belfries jutted over and between the machicolations and crenellations.

  The streets and buildings sprawled over a low hill with three crowns. Each crown was topped by an imposing landmark: the royal citadel, the sanctorum, and, built of stout red oak, the Red Lodge, headquarters of the Knights of the Brand, the elite fighting men of the kingdom. The king’s palace nestled within the royal citadel. It boasted towers constructed of red porphyry, a stone composed of lustrous crystals of feldspar embedded in a crimson matrix. Statuary adorned the royal abode, carved from scarletveined marble and florid jasper. Atop the sanguineous roofs, flocks of flags flapped against a sheer blue sky, each proudly bearing the fiery device of Slievmordhu: the Burning Brand.

  Many were the marvels of the metropolis, especially seen through the eyes of bucolic visitors. Not least among these marvels was a curious item of vegetation that grew beside a well in one of the city squares: an indestructible thorny bush known as the Iron Tree. Caught among its boughs was an inaccessible jewel of astounding beauty. People passing through Cathair Rua would come to gawk at the tree, and a favorite pastime was trying to break off one of the long spikes, or crack the stony boughs, or burn them, or even to cut a groove in the bark. No one had ever succeeded in scathing the Iron Tree or so much as touching the jewel. After they had exhausted their inventiveness and grown tired of watching a tree by a well, the bystanders would move on.

  It seemed the city had expanded too much to contain itself—wooden hovels and shanties grew like fungus at the feet of some of the outer bulwarks. Set a little apart from these pioneers and outliers, the Fairfield spread out beneath the shadow of the high walls. The market that mushroomed thereon was a sprawling, dusty affair cluttered with tents, booths, and stands. Man-powered pushcarts trundled hither and thither. Clowns and jongleurs vied for extra pennies from the profligate rich or the reckless poor. Among the stands, children worked and played. Horses clopped along the makeshift roads between the stalls while dogs dived and darted amongst thickets of ankles. Over all hovered a powdery haze, caustic with cooking smells and the bitter stench of unwashed armpits.

  A small enclave closest to the city gates was always set aside for the vendors of high-quality or rare goods, so that litter-borne aristocrats would not have to travel the length of the Fairfield in search of fine purchases. There well-to-do customers could find bolts of silk, damask, muslin, baldachin, velvet, linen and fine woollen cloth, furs, crocodile skins, spices, ornaments, silver and bronze jewelry, glassware and perfumes, distilled liquors, ornate ceramic ware, musical instruments, and mechanical toys. Merchants’ hired mercenaries kept the riffraff out of this precinct.

  However, if any visitors hoped for a glimpse of the Royal Family, they would be disappointed. Royalty, and the higher echelons of the aristocracy, never set foot in the Fairfield. Their agents would go amongst the stalls, examining the goods, following which they would command certain vendors to present themselves at the palace or some majestic house, there to display their merchandise in privacy.

  Throughout the larger part of the Fairfield, common buyers could inspect livestock and deadstock, sacks of flour, preserved meats and fish, dried vegetables and fruits, waxed cheeses, barrels of beverages, candlesticks, cauldrons, lanterns, arrowheads, knives, spoons, ladles, tankards, plowshares, oarlocks, adjustable pothooks, fishhooks, chains, axes, spearheads, saws, bells, cups, gimlets, nails, adzes, spades, pitchforks, hoes, baskets, jugs, bowls, purses and belts, horse trappings, bales of wool, jars of oil, and sundry other articles. Hungry passersby could buy penny-farthing griddle cakes from a woman and her daughter who toasted them on a griddle-iron over a fire. A knife grinder was charging twopence ha’penny to sharpen blades on a rapidly whirling whetstone that was kept in motion by an apprentice laboring at the handle. One man was charging a farthing to look through a spyglass mounted on a tripod. Further entertainment was provided in the form of cockfights, prizefighting, archery competitions, games of dice, jugglers, storytellers, musicians, fire-eaters, puppet shows, and stiltwalkers.

  The hiring of servants and hands took place on the first day of the market. A wooden platform stood near the high-priced enclave; folk who wished to be employed would climb the steps and stand thus elevated so that prospective employers might observe them. The most able-looking men and women gained positions before noon. Others had to wait all day; some were passed over entirely. Theirs would be a grim homecoming, if they had homes to go to.

  “My mistress is needing a nursemaid for the children,” a man shouted up at a pink-cheeked lass. “Are you hardworking?”

  “That I am, sir.”

  “Do you have the consumption or any other malaise?”

  “No, sir.”

  “One shilling and eight pence a se’nnight, including board. What say you?”

  “Might I ask, where be your mistress’ house, sir?”

  “In Carrickmore. What say you?” he repeated.

  “Gramercie, sir.” The pink-cheeked lass stepped down from her perch.

  Slievmordhuans comprised the bulk of the crowds, including, sometimes, the formidable Knights of the Brand from the Red Lodge, but visitors from other kingdoms mingled among the locals: flamboyant Ashqalêthans in somber tangerine and mustard yellow, jangling with brass ornaments; fierce, hard-bitten sea merchants from Grïmnørsland, some wearing copper torcs verdigrised from constant contact with salt winds and seawater. More rarely there would be knights from the north, remote and steely eyed, clad in ch
ain mail and cloaks of deepest indigo, their superbly crafted swords hanging by their sides; or paladins from the deserts of the south; or warrior champions from the maritime realm of the west. Even one or two weathermasters had been seen striding along the aisles between the booths, grave and self-possessed in their storm gray cloaks, their belts buckled with volcanically forged platinum, a triangle of runes blazoned over their hearts. Most foreigners, however, were commoners. In their plain fashion of dress there was little to distinguish them from the working folk of any other realm.

  The marshfolk reclaimed their own traditional enclave on the southwest corner of the field, not far from the river landings. There they set up their stalls, building pyramids with their firkins of pickled eels, hanging up their fellcat pelts and goat hides, suspending braces of smoked fish from poles and displaying their haberdashery. They took turns to man the booths, keeping a keen eye out for possible thieves and potential customers.

  Chieftain Stillwater, Earnán, and the older marshfolk were hailed by several passersby. Over the span of years, they had become acquainted with some of the other regular fairgoers from different parts of the country. It was as much an occasion for swapping tidings as for commerce. Their acquaintances were chiefly Grïmnørslanders. Hailing from the coastal realm, these hardy seafarers had great store of knowledge about watercraft and their building. The marshfolk regarded them almost as kindred.

  All through the first day, Jarred used his time away from the booths to tread the dirty byways of the Fairfield. He sought out elderly folk here and there. In as casual a manner as possible, he asked them if they had ever heard of a man named Tréan Connick, or of Tréan’s father, Tornai, who may have lived in Cathair Rua sixty years ago. In reply, they gave him nothing but shaking heads, puzzled frowns, disinterested sneers, irrelevant tales, dry retorts. A goodly collection of phrases and facial expressions he garnered, but no one could give him any useful information.

  “Let me be going with Jarred,” Lilith begged of Earnán. “I have grown so restless sitting here at the stands all day.”

  “Do you not notice how men look at you? You and Jarred walking about together asking questions—that would surely set the citizens’ chins wagging. And you know the old saying, Wagging chins wage war.”

  “Very well,” said Lilith with a sigh. “Instead, I shall pass the time chin-wagging with Cuiva.”

  That evening, after all the stalls were battened down for the night and a watch was set on them, some of the marshfolk passed through the gates into the city. Among them were Lilith, Jarred, Earnán, and Cuiva, accompanied by Cuiva’s brother, Muireadach, and father, Chieftain Stillwater.

  “Walk by my side,” Jarred whispered to Lilith. His sleeve slid against hers; an almost-touch that made her breath catch in her throat.

  “I’ll walk at your side, but I’ll not take your hand,” she said, determined to protect him from the curse of her love although every mote of her being was crying out to blend with him.

  Within its high stone walls, Cathair Rua was a marvellous medley of the very best and the very worst of the kingdom. In this, it closely resembled any other metropolis.

  The visitors saw, in the poorer streets, a horse lying in the gutter while rag-clothed children played nearby. The horse’s corpse came to an abrupt end a few inches below the withers; grotesquely, it was only half a horse. There was no trace of the lower portion, nor any obvious explanation as to why it was missing. The sight made Lilith feel sick. Attentive flies infested the corpse’s head. Skinny dogs slunk down alleyways, their briskets ribbed like the rotted hulls of shipwrecks. Wooden shacks were jammed hard up against their neighbors as if elbowing each other out of the way. The stench was almost overpowering.

  The middle-income districts supported an abundance of taverns, their swinging signboards all gaily painted with pictorial representations of names such as the Harp and Clover, the Crock and Dwarf, the Blackthorn Stick. As in the marsh, almost every door and window sported nailed-up devices to ward off unseelie manifestations—iron horseshoes, sprigs of rowan wood or hypericum, bells, carved roosters—the variety was seemingly endless.

  In the more privileged quarters, the streets were lined with tall houses built of gray granite, with a cobbled and grated drain down the middle of every road. The verdant boughs of orange trees dabbled their fingers over courtyard walls, and the tinkling of fountains could be heard from within those sequestered enclosures. Carriages drawn by matching pairs emerged from high mews gateways. Their hollow interiors contained people dressed in raiment with the colors and textures of blossoming orchards or the rich, dark forests of Autumn. Bracelets and fine chains of bronze rattled on their limbs. Bronze was valued for its strength and beauty; in Slievmordhu, it was modish to adorn oneself with ornaments fashioned from this golden brown alloy.

  At a street corner, a troubadour plucked at a lute. He sang blandishingly,

  “Fair lady, neither smile at me nor see me,

  For I am but a minstrel in the street:

  A worthless bard. Your station’s far above me—

  All I can do is worship at your feet.

  One smile, one glance from you would surely chain me

  With gyves to bind my heart in durance, while

  For love and lack of you I’d suffer vainly,

  And die forthwith. Fair lady, do not smile.”

  A fulgent coin spun from the window of a passing carriage and landed—chink!—at his feet. The coachman flicked the thin serpent’s tongue of his whip and the equipage rolled on, leaving a legacy of stifling dust.

  “Sain thee, my lady!” the minstrel cried before being overcome by a fit of coughing.

  At the edges of the exclusive neighborhoods burgeoned some of the more prestigious Guild-Houses, including the Silversmiths and Bronzesmiths, the Jewellers, the Perfumers, the Tailors, the Silk Merchants, the Distillers, and the Armorers. The visitors wandered on, absorbing the spectacle. In one of the wealthy precincts, people of all classes were congregating around a striking edifice. Built of the universal blushing sandstone, it was a high, colonnaded, beehive-roofed structure reached by flights of stone stairs. Emptiness held the columns apart, for there were no walls. Jarred recognized this structure as an oratorium. Similar constructions were to be seen in all the major towns of Ashqalêth; they were in fact stages set aside for public speaking. The common folk were not allowed to tread within the bounds of such arenas. Only druids, royalty, certain aristocrats, or druids’ agents might step thereon.

  “Look there,” Chieftain Stillwater indicated with a gesture. “Someone is taking the speaker’s place now. Methinks he wears the raiment of a Druids’ Scribes’ Hand.”

  A hush dampened the crowd. High on the rubicund platform of the oratorium stood a man. He was dressed in voluminous, deeply hooded robes of dark red fustian. A scarf of bleached linen was draped about his neck and shoulders. This was the only sign of druid’s white any Scribes’ Hand was permitted to wear, other than the insignia of the White Cockatrice embroidered on his sleeve beneath the sigil of the Burning Brand. At the Hand’s back, two men lurked like sturdy monoliths, their faces shadowed by the cupola. These were his henchmen. A little aside hovered a slight youth all in red fustian, a small Cockatrice sigil glowing on his shoulder. This servant stepped forward and shouted to the crowd, “Be silent and give respect for the honorable Tertius Acerbus!”

  The last murmurs ceased. The Hand lifted his head and began to speak.

  “Hear now the Word of the King’s Druids,” he intoned from the back of his throat, “and as the druids prophesy, so shall it be.”

  Agog, the listening assembly stirred.

  “On the last day,” quoth the Druids’ Scribes’ Hand, “the sun shall sink in the east. The wells shall be dried up, the bridges shall burst asunder, and darkness shall cover the land. Blood shall run from the cores of the mountains, and every mother shall weep for her sons. The very hearts—er, that is to say, hearths—shall freeze over.” Pausing, he directed a
sinister stare at the front row of his audience, where a couple of people had begun squirming in a manner he must have considered disrespectful. “Truly it is said,” he thundered, “The wise man heeds not the fool.”

  The front row stilled.

  “The sword of the bravest knight,” the Hand droned on, “shall strike the dolorous blow. Two lovers shall awaken from troubled sleep to find a naked sword laid across their throats. The virgin’s tears shall be caught in a silver dish. Twelve lords shall keep vigil at the tomb. The most trusted man shall fail his friend in the hour of need. The white stag—ehrm.” The speaker’s brows knit in concentration. “Yea, verily, the white stag shall be hunted through the court of the king and the betrayed knight shall be exiled beside the fountain.”

  A sneeze from the front row drew his attention. Once more he directed his tirade toward the offenders. “Truly it is said, Heed not the voice of the crow, for he who rides before thee shall mourn at the dawn of day!”

  A traumatic squeaking sound from the audience indicated the stifling of someone’s sneeze. One of the Hand’s henchmen stepped forth ominously from the shadow of the oratorium. The squeaking ceased. Without having had to raise a finger, the guard stepped back.

  “But all is not lost!” cried the Hand. Rings of electrum glittered on his fingers as he flung wide his arms in an expansive gesture. “For the day shall come when the storm birds fly widdershins and the white horse runs over the graves of the Eleven who—ehrm.” He broke off. The slight youth at his elbow whispered a word or two. “Who journeyed to the High Place,” resumed the Hand. “Then the brand shall flame again, the kings of Slievmordhu shall rise up and prevail over the enemies of Tir, and all shall be illumined!”