The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  The sun shrank once more as the cooler season arrived, this year somewhat milder than usual. Once again the marshfolk gathered the wares they traded for a living and journeyed to the Autumn Fair in Cathair Rua.

  As they prepared their supper one melancholy evening, they could hear someone singing, somewhere out among the encampments on the Fairfield.

  “Long ago we’d a plan for a garden,

  For we dreamed of great times that were coming,

  While rejoicing birds greeted the morning

  And the bees in the flowers were humming.

  “We were planning rare deeds of high valor,

  We were singing of cities resplendent,

  Stirring ballads, fine artworks, true justice,

  And auspicious stars in the ascendant.

  “We had hopes for a world that was braver.

  We were promised a future triumphant.

  But we swallowed the years in our winecups,

  And our laughter was tied to the moment.

  “Tell me, where are the harps that were playing,

  And the sagas proclaimed at the fountain?

  They are gone like the mist in the morning,

  Blown away like the wind on the mountain.

  “What became of our visions of gardens?

  What became of the plans we were making?

  They have gone like the days of our childhood,

  Disappeared like a dream upon waking.”

  “If that singer does not soon cease his whining,” said Jarred sharply, “I shall be sorely tempted to find him out and break his harp. Who in the Four Kingdoms wants to hear sorrowful songs? Jolly ditties are what we need. Life is severe enough without harping on tragedy. Come, let us join in a merry round!”

  His companions lifted their voices in chorus, but after singing the round twice through they drifted into silence. Their mood was too drear to be lifted by music.

  Presently a disturbance was heard at the edges of their campsite. The man on watch escorted a slight figure toward the fires—a lad with fair hair, flax-fine and lank.

  “This boy says he is looking for you, my friend,” announced the watchman.

  “Fionnbar!” exclaimed Jarred, jumping up. “What do you here?”

  “My great-uncle is wishing to see you again,” said Fionnbar, looking anywhere else but at Jarred.

  “Why?”

  Fionnbar hung his head. “He is having more information for you,” he said abstrusely.

  “Rather, he is having desire of more money,” muttered Earnán in disgust.

  The lad did not respond. He merely stood staring at Jarred’s feet.

  “I will come,” said Jarred at last, “but I have no more coin.”

  Fionnbar nodded his dirty head.

  “Jarred has nothing left,” declared Lilith hotly. “He is not worth robbing. Do you still want him to go with you?” The boy’s mouth hung slackly open. Lilith wondered if he were a half-wit, and regretted her harsh tone. “Here,” she said, thrusting an apple into his hand. He pocketed the fruit without a syllable of thanks, then turned and walked away.

  Jarred followed.

  “I will not be long away,” he called over his shoulder.

  Back through the city gates the lad guided Jarred and into the labyrinth of streets. As they went, Fionnbar waxed unusually eloquent.

  “’Tis fortunate you are,” he said tonelessly. “You with your lady and your fine clothes and no fear of want or hunger. I would that I possessed wealth. If I were rich, the best druids would attend me, that I should never fall ill or die. I would live to a great age. Perhaps forever.”

  “You have seen much of sickness and death perhaps,” said Jarred, not without compassion.

  “That I have. My mother and father died of the consumption. My great-uncle has suffered from various ailments for as long as I can remember. ’Tis a sad thing to be always cooped up with a sick and whining creature, yet there’s no choice if I am to sleep beneath a roof.”

  “He is generous, to take you in,” said Jarred.

  “Generous?” The boy’s eyes were two steel pins as for the first time he glared straight at Jarred. Jerking his head aside, he spat into the gutter. “Generous? Not he! ’Tis vile and malicious he is. He uses me for his own ends, that is all. I hate him.”

  “Why do you not seek other accommodation? Surely some well-off merchant would take you as a servant.”

  The steel pins of Fionnbar’s pupils shrank to pale blobs and sidled to the corners of his lids. He shuddered. “I cannot.”

  “Why not?” persisted Jarred.

  “He’d not allow it, my great-uncle.”

  “How could he prevent you?”

  Fionnbar slunk down a dank and dismal lane, with Jarred stumbling after in the gloom. “Maybe he could not,” the boy said vaguely. “The knowledge of that is not at me.”

  Their bootfalls rang hard and clear on the cobbles as they walked. “Do you fear him?” Jarred asked abruptly. He received no reply. “Why do you fear him?”

  They rounded a corner and pressed on down an identical laneway. The upper stories of the mean, pinched houses hung far out over the street, obscuring the light of moon and stars. Behind the doors and windows, voices quarreled, wailed, and laughed. Straggling groups of passersby called out drunkenly to each other. Jarred had to focus his attention to catch the lad’s words.

  “He was dwelling at that Dome,” he mumbled. “He was in the employ of that sorcerous lord. It occurs to me, maybe he learned things.”

  “Tricks of gramarye, you mean?” Jarred chuckled. “If ’twere so, do you imagine he’d be living in a slum?”

  The boy’s expression soured, and he retreated into his habitual taciturnity. A hunting owl swooped low over their heads and disappeared among the rooftops in search of rats.

  “Hey,” said Jarred, “where are you taking me?” The streets through which they were passing seemed unfamiliar.

  “To the house of my great-uncle.”

  “This is not the way!”

  “’Tis another way.”

  Jarred came to a halt. “Why?”

  “The way we went last time, that has grown perilous. Too many thieves.”

  Warily, Jarred grasped the hilt of the dagger at his side. He could find no trust in his heart for young Fionnbar. There was a cowardly ruthlessness about the lad and a bitterness beyond the measure of his years. It would not have surprised Jarred to learn he was being led into some trap. As he strode onward, all his senses sharpened to vigilance.

  Meanwhile, at the campsite in the Fairfield, Earnán and Lilith were conversing in low tones as they sliced bread and sausage for their supper.

  “I mislike that flax-haired lad,” said Earnán, stabbing at the loaf. “I doubt not he is as slippery as an eel and far less predictable.”

  “Agreed,” said Lilith. “Yet perhaps allowances can be made. His thin frame and unclean condition would indicate he dwells in poor circumstances. Such folk need cunning to survive. I fear, also, he does not have charge of all his wits—ouch!”

  Her knife had slipped, nicking the forefinger of her left hand. “That will teach me to be mindful,” she said wryly, dabbing the drops of blood that begemmed her finger like garnets.

  Jarred continued to follow the boy. A clear pane of silver fell out of the sky as the next alleyway opened out onto a moonlit square. In the center of this area was a well with low walls of stone, and beside the well grew a leafless tree. Slender spikes of thorns thrust eagerly from every bough and twig, long and cruel as a northern Winter. So numerous were the thorns, jutting at all angles, that they formed a kind of basketwork of swords. What captured Jarred’s attention was a point of convergence in the heart of the tree. It was as if moonlight were being sucked into this point and condensed to its purest essence, in the form of a mote of dazzling light the size of a cat’s eye.

  “By all the Fates!” breathed Jarred. “What is that?”

  This concentrate of silver-white, this scin
tillant, pendulated slightly as the night breeze rocked the branches of the thorn tree. It gave off sparkles of reflected radiance, pure, yet flashing with every color.

  “That?” said Fionnbar, stopping in his tracks as he was about to slouch past. “Oh, we call it the Iron Tree.”

  From the shadows of the buildings bordering the square stepped a girl. She was rawboned and gangling but quite pretty, her hair swept demurely beneath a gauzy veil that was held in place by a simple circlet. Her gown of rose pink samite was patterned with lozenges, and a cloak of carmine velvet draped from her shoulders. Sorrowfully she gazed at the luster in the tree.

  “My jewel,” she said wistfully. “My jewel.”

  Jarred then perceived that the light in the tree was actually a white jewel or crystal strung on a fine silver chain like a necklace. The chain was snagged on several thorns as if the ornament had been whimsically tossed into the core of the tree.

  The girl spoke to him. “Prithee, good sir, can you retrieve it for me?”

  Jarred felt sorry for her. He glanced at Fionnbar, who stood watching.

  “Wait a moment,” he said to the boy. After rolling up his shirtsleeve, he eased his arm carefully between the thorns. Reaching high, he grasped the jewel; it filled his palm, as cool and hard as a piece of the moon. With a quick, dextrous tug he freed the chain and withdrew his limb, unscathed.

  “Here it is,” he said, offering his prize to the girl.

  Instead of taking it and thanking him as he had expected, she stared at him aghast. Her scream clove his skull like an axe. Still screaming, she picked up her skirts and fled. At a loss, Jarred stood holding the jewel in his hand. He turned to Fionnbar. “What was the matter with her?” he asked, baffled. Fionnbar, however, was staring at him with a similar expression of horror.

  “Where has Jarred gone, and what happened to your finger?” asked Cuiva Stillwater, joining Lilith and Earnán at their fireside.

  “I accidentally cut myself,” said Lilith ruefully, “and Jarred has gone with that fair-haired boy we saw last time we were here.”

  “The dirty boy? Him again?”

  “None other.”

  “He is a strange kettle of fish if you ask me,” said Cuiva. “I suspect he is as stained within as without. It is well that Jarred can guard himself. He carries a dagger, does he not?”

  “Of course, and also the talisman—” Lilith’s hand flew to her throat, encountering there the smoothed bone surface of Jarred’s amulet. “Oh despiteful fate!” she cried. “I had forgotten. ’Tis he who should be wearing this, not I!”

  Jarred had believed the square to be empty, but in cities there is always a watcher near. Passersby were beginning to gather around, keeping a cautious distance from him. They talked amongst themselves, extending long, accusatory fingers.

  “Where is the owner of this bauble?” Jarred demanded, angered and mystified by this treatment. He held out the jewel in his open palm.

  “How have you done this, stranger?” shouted a man from the throng. “No one else has ever succeeded.”

  “I merely reached in and took it,” said Jarred in exasperation. “Where’s the harm in that? Anyone might have done so at any time. There’s no mystery. Who owns this?”

  “D’ye think plenty of folk have not tried before you?” the man said suspiciously. “The jewel has been hanging there for nigh on one whole generation of men. D’ye think we’ve not tried chopping and burning the Iron Tree to get at the treasure? I repeat, how have you done this?”

  In a strangled squeak, the boy Fionnbar said in Jarred’s ear, “Quickly, come with me. Hasten!”

  Glad to escape the stares and whispers, Jarred ran after the lad, who dived down yet another alleyway. Through the most squalid city byways they raced, until they reached the door of Ruairc MacGabhann’s hovel. Leaping inside, they slammed it.

  MacGabhann himself was sitting up in his pile of rags, peering eagerly and shortsightedly at the two newcomers like a vulture catching sight of carrion.

  “Well?” he screeched. “Well?”

  Fionnbar scrambled as far from Jarred as possible. He pressed himself into the chimney corner, whimpering like a newborn pup.

  “He has the Star,” he stammered.

  In disgust, Jarred hurled the jewel to the floor. The momentum of the throw sent it skidding into a pile of refuse. “By all that’s unspeakable,” he shouted, “what is the meaning of this?”

  “He has the Star?” repeated MacGabhann, jerking about like a stringpuppet. Oddly, neither he nor the boy made any effort to scoop up the treasure.

  The campfire of the marshfolk flickered cosily.

  “Rest easy,” Cuiva reassured Lilith. “Few wights dwell in cities, as you know. Those that do are chiefly of the seelie kind, like house brownies. Jarred will be safe, even without his charm.”

  From Lilith’s throat came a sound like cloth being torn to rags. Her eyes fixed on a distant point, as though she gazed upon a sight beyond Cuiva’s vision.

  “On my life,” she said, “this amulet protects the wearer against all kinds of hurt. And yet, just now I have cut myself with a metal blade. How is it possible? I have been harmed …”

  “Come closer! Come closer!” yodeled the old man, bouncing as though bitten by fleas.

  Jarred stayed put.

  “Ah, but I have seen your face,” chuckled MacGabhann. “I looked upon it as I told you the tale last time we met. What is your father’s name?”

  “None of your business,” retorted Jarred. He turned to depart, reaching for the door.

  “If you would have the mystery explained, I must know. Was it Jovan?”

  Jarred flinched as if stung. Caught off balance, he steadied himself against a jamb. “How should you know?”

  “Jovan was the son of Janus Jaravhor, the Lord of Strang. You, sir, are the grandson of the sorcerer!”

  Firelight was painting swift shapes on Cuiva’s face. “I do not understand,” she said. “Are you saying Jarred’s amulet has the power to make the wearer invulnerable?”

  “He has worn it all his life,” said Lilith dazedly, “through wrestling matches and falls from horseback, through battle-training and rough clowning with his friends. Never has he received so much as the smallest scratch. Yet I wear the talisman now, and I am injured.”

  “Then it only works on him!” deduced Cuiva.

  Lilith shook her head. “I surmise it does not work on him,” she said, “or on anyone. It has no power at all.”

  Cuiva stared at her with owl-eyes, uncomprehending.

  On the floor of MacGabhann’s hovel, Jarred was kneeling in the attitude of a man abasing himself before majesty or pleading for his life. In a way he was pleading for his life, but that was not why he knelt; his legs refused to support him.

  “No,” he said to the old man, or else to the floor in front on his own sightless eyes. “No.”

  “Think on it,” urged MacGabhann. “What are you knowing of your lineage?”

  Automatically, Jarred’s hand went to his throat, seeking the amulet of bone. Its absence shocked him; all his life he had been able to reach for its reassuring smoothness, the precious gift of invulnerability from his father. He knew very little about his father’s origins, only that Jovan had, as a youth, fled from his family out of hatred for his own father. Jovan refused to discuss anything more concerning his past. Jarred recalled his father as a restless man; anger and fierce sorrow seemed to seethe below his outward manner, barely restrained. When Jarred had been ten Winters of age, Jovan had left his son and wife in R’shael and gone adventuring, crossing the Fire Mountains to the wastelands beyond the known lands of Tir: the unmapped deserts of no return.

  In the slums of Cathair Rua, Jarred knelt on the polluted floor, his face buried in his hands. The voice of MacGabhann was the squeaking of a decrepit hinge.

  “I first suspected it when I saw your face,” said the old wretch. “You are thinking I am blind, eh? Almost. Not quite. MacGabhann sees enough, even t
hrough the cataracts. He is hearing voices too. He hears the voice of Janus Jaravhor. When the young stranger comes closer, MacGabhann sees he wears the face of Janus Jaravhor. A well-made man was Jaravhor, most fine looking. When I was meeting you the first time, the suspicion came to me—had the errant Jovan fathered a child? Jovan ran off when he was fourteen Winters old. At the ripe age of forty, Jaravhor had got his son on a noblewoman of the city-she wed him in a confusion of blind infatuation, but she’d been at Castle Strang for a year when she realized her error. She tried to leave, but Jaravhor prevented it—his wife was never seen again. ’Tis only myself that is knowing what happened to her!”

  Through the miasma of half-formed questions churning in his mind, Jarred was tempted to ask what had become of the woman who must have been his grandmother. For an instant he struggled with the urge to press the repulsive creature for more information, but confusion and dismay dispelled his resolve.

  A snigger gurgled out of the fetid depths of MacGabhann’s wizened carcass. Breaking off his narrative, he raised his chin and sniffed the air like a hound scenting game. “Boy!” he rapped out. “Where is the wench?”

  The fair-haired lad, cringing in the corner, said, “She has not yet returned.”

  “Well, go and fetch her!” snapped the old man.

  Giving Jarred a wide berth, Fionnbar slunk out the door like a whipped cur. For the first time, Jarred noticed that the drudge who had been sleeping by the hearth on his first visit was no longer there.

  “Pray forgive the interruption, sir,” the old man said ingratiatingly. “Now, where was I at?” His overwhelmed guest could not bring himself to speak. Overlooking the lack of response, MacGabhann continued, “Ah, I recall,” and resumed his monologue.