The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  The lad leaned close to Jarred.

  “I hear you are asking after a man named Connick.”

  Froth spilled on the table as the drinking vessel almost slipped from Jarred’s grasp. Quickly controlling himself, he coolly replied, “Aye.”

  “What is the reward for sharing some private knowledge?”

  “You will be paid in coin,” said Jarred without hesitation, “for the truth.”

  “Show me first your coin.”

  Jarred reached inside his shirt and pulled out a leather purse. He hefted it in his hand but did not loosen the drawstring. The contents jingled.

  “How can we know you speak the truth?” Jarred asked, quickly putting away the purse.

  The boy’s pale eyes slid sideways like oiled beans. Every plane of his posture seemed taut as a drumhead. In a low voice, he said, “My name is Fionnbar Aonarán. My great-uncle was steward to the mightiest sorcerer who has ever dwelled in the kingdom of Slievmordhu. In such employ, my uncle learned not a few secrets. Come with me to his abode, and he shall be teaching one to you.”

  Lilith, who had overheard, leaned forward. Excitement lent urgency to her tone.

  “Which enchanter? Not the Lord of Strang?”

  “Himself.”

  Jarred eyed the boy with distrust. “What Lord of Strang?” he demanded. Yet even as he spoke the words, some dim recollection of the name came to him like the tolling of a distant bell.

  The lad appeared disconcerted. “You have not heard of him, sir? Ah, but by your clothes and speech you are hailing from Ashqalêth—perhaps he is not so well known in foreign parts these days. After all, it is many Winters since he died. Ach, ’tis terrible thirsty I am.” He stared meaningfully at Jarred’s tankard. “Would you give me a sip, sir?”

  “Drink the lot if you wish,” said Jarred, rising to his feet, “then lead us to this uncle of yours, if he knows aught about the name of Connick.”

  The boy took the vessel in both hands, drained it in one draft, and wiped his forearm across his mouth.

  “Wait!” Lilith lightly placed a detaining hand on Jarred’s shoulder. To the boy she said, “Why is it your uncle does not come here to meet with us? What is your game? Are you after leading us to some den of thieves?”

  “Ruairc MacGabhann is my great-uncle,” said the boy defensively, “the brother of my mother’s father. Old he is, and sick. He cannot leave his bed.” He scowled. Angrily he added, “If ’tis suspicion you are having, I’ll leave you to it.” He turned his back and made as if to depart.

  “Take no offense,” Jarred quickly reassured the boy. A silver florin gleamed on the southerner’s open palm. Next instant, it had vanished into the lad’s pocket. “There will be more if you guide us to useful tidings.”

  “Not both. Only you, sir. Only one.”

  Jarred scrutinized the smeared young visage. Then, turning to Lilith, he said, “I must.”

  With a curt nod, her face drawn tight against misery and dread, she lifted the silver chain of the amulet from her own shoulders and replaced it about the neck of her sweetheart. At her swan’s-down touch, a hot ripple went through him like silk. “If you must,” she murmured.

  Taking leave of her and his companions, Jarred shouldered his way through the crowd with the boy in his wake. Once outside the Harp and Clover, they moved on down the street, away from the lamplit doors and windows overhung with horseshoes and other protective charms. The boy trotted swiftly, passing between pools of moonlight and shadow like the flickering glow of some marsh wight’s gas lantern. As they wended through the contorted city streets, Jarred said to him, “Tell me of this Lord of Strang.”

  The boy obliged, his thin chest rising and falling with quick gasps. “In the northeast of this kingdom, a few days’ journey from Cathair Rua, there is a region called Orielthir. ‘Tis lying toward the great range of sleeping volcanoes on the borders of Slievmordhu and Narngalis. In Orielthir there rises a lofty dome called Castle Strang. Alone it stands, abandoned and sealed. Once it was the fortress of the Lord of Strang. He was a powerful, mysterious enchanter who came from over the Fire Mountains. Twenty years ago, the enchanter died. Now all the lands around the Dome are bound by stillness and an eerie quiet.” He led Jarred around a sharp corner, and they started off down another narrow street. “Some say he fled the country.” They veered around a bend. “The knowledge of what happened to him is not at me,” said the lad, “but all folk are knowing he locked the Dome, and it has been locked ever since. No one can find a way to enter. ’Tis said great treasures lie hid within, and terrible secrets.”

  Down another dusky alleyway they hastened, deeper into the poorer quarter. Here the streets were dirtier, the houses no more than hovels or lean-tos.

  “People have been trying to get in,” the boy said, his malnourished ribs heaving as he panted, “people who want power and wealth. But not even King Maolmórdha himself can gain entrance. Not even his druids. No one succeeds. Any person who tries to broach the door of the Dome falls dead instantly. It is the enchantment.”

  By this time they had arrived in silent streets, narrow and murky. The only sounds were the wind moaning through the skewed angles of architecture, the wailing of infants behind lopsided shutters, the far-off, monotonous barking of a dog. Fionnbar pushed open a rotting door in a wall, gesturing for Jarred to follow him. They stepped directly into a small, dimlit chamber.

  Squalid was the room, and windowless. A fireplace gouged the opposite wall. Some sticks of wood were piled beside it, and a poker lay on the floor. The fire was unlit. Over the dead ashes hung a sooty cauldron on a hook. On the mantelpiece stood two battered cups and a jug. A wall-shelf held some cracked crockery, two spoons, and three knives. Two strings of brown onions swung from a hook.

  The furniture consisted of a table, a bench seat, a chest, and a three-legged stool. A lamp, half a stale loaf, and a quarter of cheese rested on the table. The only other furnishings comprised a broken wicker basket, a ropehandled water bucket, and a pile of unclean rags on the floor. A drudge was sleeping in the chimney corner, her dirty hair slumped over her face.

  “Here is the one who has been asking,” the boy said to the room.

  “Ah!”

  Like some sea monster from a bed of weeds, an old man rose out of the welter of rags. One of his eyes rolled in his head, white as a sphere of talc stone. The other was lacquered with a milky glaze. He turned his desiccated head this way and that as if sniffing the air, sensing the newcomer in ways other than sight.

  “Sit down, sit down!” crowed this ancient apparition. Jarred did not take up the invitation.

  “I am knowing all,” said the specter. “All! But first you must cross my palm with silver.”

  Jarred replied, “All right. Two shillings now and four after the tale is told.”

  The old fright shrieked. Jarred thought he was in pain, then realized he was in fact laughing. “Six shillings?” the oldster said hoarsely, breaking into a spasm of coughing. “Show him the door, boy.”

  Fionnbar merely assumed a sullen expression.

  “Four now, eight later,” said Jarred.

  “Twenty now, thirty later!” smirked the ghoul. “And when you pay me, you’ll be thanking me as well.”

  “Fifty shillings?” Jarred cried incredulously. “That is many times more than a man could earn in a se’nnight of Fairs. May the Fates be kind to you. Good evening.” He spun on his heel.

  “Fifteen now, fifteen later!” screeched the molting rooster.

  Deliberately, Jarred turned to face him again. “Twenty-six shillings is all I have.”

  “Not enough, not enough. But it’ll have to do!”

  “Very well,” Jarred said, and he counted thirteen shillings out of his moneybag.

  “Here! Here!” The old frump beckoned Jarred with a scrawny chickenbone of a finger. “Give it me!”

  Jarred dropped the silver in the extended claw. As he did so, the milky eye swiveled to fix on his face. Its surprisingly steely
glare pierced him, nailing him to the spot. The rooster emitted an unintelligible cackling noise, muttered something to itself, then lowered its head in the direction of the fist now closed tightly over the coins.

  Jarred backed away. He wished he were rid of these creatures and far from this nightmare hovel. The boy crouched by the unlit fire as if from habit. He gnawed at a piece of hard cheese. The drudge had not awakened.

  “Now, speak!” Jarred said to the old man.

  “I will tell you a story,” said the pile of rags, “a story of one you seek. Not Tornai Connick, oh no!”

  Jarred clenched his fist. Wrath sparked through him, and he took an impulsive step forward, itching to strike the impostor.

  “Oh no!” shrieked the toothless creature. “Not Tornai Connick but Tierney A’Connacht!”

  Immediately the young man’s temper subsided, giving way to the thrumming of a breathless excitement. This new name demonstrated a veracity never owned by the old. “Go on! Go on!” he urged.

  The thing in the rags smacked its rubbery lips. “Tierney A’Connacht,” it repeated with satisfaction, “the youngest of the three brave A’Connacht brothers, and the finest, and the bonniest. They were all mad for her, y’know.”

  “Mad for whom?”

  “She was the queen of maidens, the fairest damsel ever seen in the Four Kingdoms,” said the old man in a singsong, wistful chant. “Álainna O’Lara Machnamh, the Rose of Orielthir. Light as a breeze she walked, and her smile was a blossom in Juyn, and she’d a way about her that could coax an apple from a hungry pig. Her face was lovelier than sunshine and her eyes were two blue butterflies.”

  Jarred flinched as if he had been struck. His excitement grew. Entranced, he listened closely as MacGabhann painted a word picture on the pages of his mind …

  The wind howled like jackals over the hills of Orielthir. Gray clouds fled before it, their shadows racing like primitive birds across meadows and forests. Away to the east, the storm clouds vanished. The wind’s feral voices sank to a low moan, then faded to the fretful susurration of an Autumn breeze. A line of crows winged its way across a sky now lightly chalked with streamers of vapor, pure white.

  Lapped by that breeze, three youths and three maidens were playing a game in a meadow under the eaves of a rowan wood, shouting and laughing as they kicked a ball. Ankle deep in fallen leaves they ran, breathless and tousled, their hair as dark as crows’ wings, their cheeks flushed red as the ripe rowan berries, their skin as pale as cloud. The eyes of the damsels were so intensely blue that when they cast down their gaze it seemed as though their lids had been brushed with a kiss from an icy mouth so cold it had marked them with the blue stain of its lips.

  They were the daughters of Machnamh.

  As comely as wights of lethal allurement were they, but the comeliest of all was the youngest, Álainna.

  Their old, sere nurse and their handmaidens sat among the withered leaves, watching the boisterous game. “Those girls were always wild,” the nurse said fondly.

  On the hill overlooking the meadow stood a stately house of many windows, gables, wings, and chimneys: the House of Machnamh, called The Rowans. Far away across the gentle sweep of the valley a second great house could be seen, dark against the greensward. That was Charter Hall, the House of A’Connacht. From there the three youths often traveled with their lady mother, for they were welcome guests at The Rowans.

  As the servants watched, one youth kicked the ball too high, too far. Over the heads of the lasses it soared and into the wood of rowans.

  “I’ll find it!” Álainna sang out, and without hesitation she disappeared amongst the trees.

  Awaiting her return, her sisters and friends laughed and joked together. Time wore on, and at last they began to wonder when she would reappear. Concerned for her welfare, they began to search, calling her name.

  Álainna could not be found.

  The servants were summoned: the gamekeeper with his dogs, the shepherds, the gardeners, and the dog boy; the cook and the pantryman; the butler and the steward. Frantically they scoured the woods, but they discovered only the abandoned ball lying in the ferns. Deeper and deeper they plowed between dark boles arched over shadowy aisles lushly carpeted with leaf compost, but no trace of the lost girl could they find. Only the dying rowan leaves went drifting down, only gaunt boughs creaked.

  Evening crept out of the interstices of the wood and soaked up the daylight. The shire reeve was sent for. A full-scale search was mounted. Splinters of scarlet and gold torchlight pierced the woods throughout the night—to no avail.

  One of the youths was not among the searchers. As soon as evening fell, he had leapt upon his horse and ridden away into the northwest, so fast that none could catch him.

  “Let him go,” said his lady mother. “He left word with the stableboy that he is riding in all haste for High Darioneth. Tierney is certain some great evil has befallen Álainna, and I feel in my heart that he is right. He goes to seek the help of Aglaval Stormbringer.”

  Thus began the famous Ride of A’Connacht. During later years, this ride became a legend and was woven into song. In fine weather it would take twenty-six days for a man on horseback to travel the rugged road from Orielthir through the Border Hills, across Canterbury Water to the seat of the weathermasters at High Darioneth. Never sleeping, galloping flat out until one by one his horses expired beneath him, Tierney A’Connacht completed the journey in fourteen.

  Aglaval Stormbringer was Storm Lord at that time, he whom the holders of the high country named Maelstronnar, the leader and most powerful of all weathermasters. He had been a great friend of Tierney’s father in the days when that bold man had lived to walk the green hills of Orielthir. Now the elder A’Connacht lay cold in his grave, but the Storm Lord had sworn to protect his living family in any way that he could.

  At High Darioneth, on Rowan Green under Wychwood Storth, the doors of Ellenhall burst open. Dashing in, Tierney A’Connacht flung himself at the feet of Stormbringer. The youth was lathered in sweat, foam, and blood; rain blurred his eyes, and strange visions swam there. He had entered so precipitously that the wind had no time to leave him; still it combed his long black hair. The assembled folk looked upon this wild intruder with astonishment.

  The jade eyes of the Storm Lord were hooded by deep lids; his nose was hooked like the beak of an eagle. Straight-backed and snow-haired in his ashen robes, he appeared as strong and imperturbable as an ancient oak. The young man stared wildly up into those green eyes, and his voice issued from his throat—a sound so hoarse, so rasping and utterly tortured, it sounded inhuman, the growl of a beast.

  “Lord, for the sake of the friendship you bore my father, aid me now. Álainna is gone. Can you find her?”

  Aglaval Stormbringer required no more than this. It was not necessary for him to inquire “Who is this Álainna?” for the beauty of Álainna Machnamh was renowned as far as the utmost borders of Narngalis. Nor did he ask “How is it that she is gone?” for the words left unsaid by the messenger, and the desperate state of his arrival, told the Storm Lord all he needed to know.

  He said, “If she is anywhere within the Four Kingdoms, I can find her, whether she lives or no.”

  At this pronouncement hope and despair sprang so agonizingly in Tierney A’Connacht, he thought his heart would burst from his breast like a hunted stag from a copse.

  The Storm Lord bade his stewards make ready one of the great skyballoons by placing a sun-crystal in its cradle. The crystal beamed forth the stored heat of the sun, and the spidersilk envelope ripened like a gourd. Slung beneath the crystal, the wicker gondola strained at its moorings until at last Aglaval Stormbringer gave the signal and the mooring lines were cast off. The sky-balloon ascended from Ellenhall like a pearly bubble, and as it rose nine thousand feet above High Darioneth the Storm Lord summoned a northwesterly wind to blow it straight to Orielthir. Out across Narngalis it glided, over Canterbury Water, toward the Border Hills. Borne aloft in the basket, Tie
rney A’Connacht slept at last and cried out in his dreams, but Stormbringer stood leaning on the rim, raking the skies with his eyes like dark emeralds, putting forth the far-reaching senses of a weathermaster. Of the clouds, the invisible thermals and fronts, the pressure systems, evaporation, convection, temperature inversions, wind currents, and other weather phenomena, there was very little he did not mark.

  For half the night and all the next day they flew. In the west the sun, like a crimson comet, was falling toward the horizon as they neared the hills of Orielthir. Over those hills rested a long bank of violet rain clouds. At the approach of the northwest wind, they stirred and rolled away to the east.

  When the sky-balloon landed, Aglaval Stormbringer wasted no time.

  “Where was she last seen?” he asked, and the households of A’Connacht and Machnamh guided him to the meadow under the eaves of the rowan wood. Rainpools lay there like silvered looking glasses framed by the twisted roots of the rowans. Long did Stormbringer gaze into the rainpools, as if he saw there more than the captured images of trees and sky and wisps of cloud like the breath of ghosts; as if the raindrops in their long descent from lofty heights had absorbed the memories of the air and pooled them like essence, an ephemeral record of recent history for those who could read it. Long he gazed into the quicksilver sky-mirrors, and long he stood motionless, hearkening to the language of the wind. Through the rowan trees, the Autumn airs filtered themselves, whispering, murmuring in their own inchoate tongue tales of what had passed, or what may have passed, in the woods: leaf legends, fables of the ferns, sylvan shadow-stories.

  At last Aglaval Stormbringer was able to tell the households of A’Connacht and Machnamh what had happened.

  “Álainna Machnamh lives,” he said.

  At this, a chorus of joyous shouts went up, and the two households fell upon each others’ shoulders weeping with gladness.