The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “By the time he reached the age of fourteen, Jovan had endured more than enough of his sire’s depravity and vice. Unlike his mother, he escaped. Jaravhor let him go, knowing his scion would come to no harm. Do not mistake me—my employer nourished no love for his son, no love for any one but himself. In Jovan, Jaravhor saw his own immortality; he was preoccupied with wanting his sole heir to thrive and beget another generation, thus ensuring his own living legacy. Jaravhor harbored no terrors but one—the fear of annihilation. Through his son, and his son’s sons, he believed he could perpetuate himself. As long as his descendants walked beneath the sky, he would never truly die. Thus he set certain wards on all those of his bloodline who would come after, that no harm could scathe them by way of plagues, poxes, fevers, and so on, or by means of eldritch wights, rope, fire, water, stone, metal, or any plant growing in the soil of Tir, known or unknown. Oh, but there was one thing he left out, I forget what—nothing of consequence or for certain he would have included it. He ensured that all who were born of his blood would be invulnerable. Not immortal, mind, but invulnerable. Within all mortal beings there exists a timepiece measuring our span of days—over old age he was powerless.”

  MacGabhann paused. An obsequious grin twisted the ruins of his face.

  “I suspected you were his heir,” he said, “so I set you a test. The Iron Tree grows in Fountain Square: a strange example of vegetation, barren of foliage, bearing only small white flowers in Spring. Many folk fear it. It cannot be destroyed. ’Tis one of Jaravhor’s works—it was he who arbitrarily flung the jewel into its center in days of yore. Who can tell his reasons? Not I, oh no. It might have been merely one of his whims. Or perhaps he guessed his heir would find it at last. But how could I know? MacGabhann never questioned the master. Nobody has been able to reach the jewel until now. You did it. You are of the sorcerer’s blood, invulnerable. The proof is everywhere.”

  Something struck Jarred in the side, glanced off, and clattered to the floor.

  It was a knife; with surprising dexterity and force, MacGabhann had thrown it.

  “Behold!” the old man babbled. “I was telling you so! The blade deflects, as they all must. Naught can get through.”

  Too dazed to wax wrathful at this assault, Jarred stared at the fallen weapon.

  The door sprang open. In came Fionnbar, leading a girl by the hand. She appeared to be terrified. By her gown of rose pink samite patterned with lozenges, her cloak of carmine velvet, and the blond hair glinting beneath the gauzy veil, Jarred knew her to be the same girl who had petitioned him in Fountain Square. The drudge had scrubbed herself clean and donned clothes of fine quality, presumably stolen from some gentlewoman.

  “I bade the boy bring you here by a circuitous route, good sir,” cackled MacGabhann. “I doubt not he spun you some luring untruth. He was always good at lying, weren’t you, Fionnbar!”

  The lad scowled.

  “This is his half sister, Fionnuala,” MacGabhann wheezed. “She makes a pretty noblewoman, does she not?” The girl peered at Jarred from beneath etiolated eyelashes. “And not surprising, given that her mother was a royal concubine! And would it surprise you to learn that her brother here is the unacknowledged progeny of a king?”

  Fionnbar flung MacGabhann a look of loathing. “My great-uncle enjoys a jest,” he said bitterly.

  Ignoring the accusation of dishonest jocularity, MacGabhann leaned toward Jarred. “Herein lies the trick,” he croaked. “Fionnuala caused you to take the jewel. By my cunning I have showed that the Star rightfully belongs to you. You must take it with you.”

  Jarred regained his feet. “I have heard enough,” he said grimly.

  “Wait,” urged the old man. “Now that you know who you are, perhaps you will show your gratitude to the loyal servant of your family. What are your powers?”

  “Had I any, I would not inform you,” Jarred said. “If ’tis gratitude you want, take this bauble you call the Star.” He nudged at the white jewel with his boot.

  MacGabhann recoiled as if from a striking serpent. “Never!” Cowardly terror distorted his already warped features. “It belongs to the descendants of Jaravhor of Strang and possesses some eldritch quality—I believe he got it from wights. Take it away!”

  Against his better judgment, Jarred picked up the jewel. It glittered between his fingers like a galactic daisy.

  “What brought you here to Rua, I wonder?” the ancient frump murmured, as if talking to himself. “Inquiring after A’Connacht … Some persistent vestige of enchantment, perhaps, calling you toward the Dome?” His tone rose to a loud whine. “Have mercy on us, lord! You are generous—you will find it in your heart to reward us for this valuable information, I have no doubt. Remember your faithful servants when you open the doors of the Dome.”

  “The Dome!” Jarred exclaimed. “Never shall I try to unseal that hotbed of atrocities! From all that I have heard, Janus Jaravhor was naught but a corrupt and debauched monster. My father was right. I want nothing to do with the Dome of Strang or its Lord. Let it rot, sealed for eternity.”

  “But the secrets—”

  Without waiting for the old man to finish his sentence, Jarred threw open the door and hastened out. On his way, he happened to catch the eye of Fionnuala, who cast him a bereft, beseeching look.

  As the sound of Jarred’s departing boots faded down the lane, the old man mumbled, “Ah! Now I recollect. The forgotten item was mistletoe.”

  But by then, there was no one to hear him.

  Jarred made his way swiftly through the streets, returning by way of Fountain Square. Just before entering the square, he paused in an alleyway and peered around the corner. A hubbub had alerted him to trouble ahead.

  News spread fast in the city, even at night. A small crowd had gathered about the well and the strange, inert thorn tree. People were staring and gesticulating, loudly discussing the fact that the extraordinary jewel, which had hung tantalizingly among the barbs for as long as most of them could remember, was no longer there. Drawn by the crowd, a desperate flower seller was hawking her wares. A couple of drunken men were conducting an argument in front of the throng.

  As Jarred was observing these events, a group of six horsemen came clattering down the cobbled streets, approaching from the opposite side of the square. Alarmed, the crowd immediately began to disperse. Cavalrymen wearing the uniforms of the King’s Household came cantering into view and charged among the fleeing pedestrians. “Be off with you, you rabble!” shouted the leader, brandishing a cudgel. “You are disturbing the peace! Get to your beds or we’ll break your heads for you!” In a short time the square was deserted, and the guards rode away, laughing. It was clear that in their determination to wield their power over the populace, they had not noticed the now-barren tree.

  Jarred exited from the alleyway and strode swiftly through the precinct. As he passed the well of the Iron Tree, he tossed the jewel back into the tree’s center. The white-gold chain instantly snagged, holding fast its burden. A keen wind gusted unseasonally through the empty square, rocking the fretwork of cruelly needled boughs. Striding on toward the Fairfield, the young man did not look back. If he had, he might have glimpsed Fionnbar and Fionnuala watching him from lightless perforations in the city’s architecture. The boy’s face was folded into his habitual scowl; the girl’s eyes glowed like twin candles.

  On beholding the approach of her lover, Lilith ran from the encampment to greet him. Words tumbled frantically from her mouth, somersaulting over each other.

  “The amulet!” she gasped. “You were not wearing it, and I was, and yet—”

  “Hush,” he soothed. In her confusion, Lilith forgot her edict banning contact and allowed him to fold her tightly in his arms. “Hush,” he said again, “I have much to tell you.”

  Above the Fairfield, constellations stippled the fathoms of space. Jarred, Lilith, and Earnán sat engrossed in conversation, their faces half-gilded with a capricious syrup of firelight. Their heads were bent
close together: the chestnut, the coal, the grizzled. In low tones they murmured, so that no one might overhear. Hesitantly Jarred shared his news. He wished to hide no secrets from Lilith and her stepfather, yet a maggot of fear gnawed at him. He was revealing a heritage of aberration and corruption, admitting he was directly descended from a man who showed no mercy in his pursuit of gain, who had somehow seized powers beyond those of ordinary mortals and used them to acquire a vast domain, to build a profligate mansion, to abduct an innocent damsel and keep her against her will, to lure a noblewoman by means of deception; a man ruthless enough to destroy all who opposed him, including his own wife; a man who, when thwarted, had cursed Lilith’s family until the end of time.

  It was with considerable dread that Jarred described his last meeting with Ruairc MacGabhann. When he concluded, he and his listeners sat quietly for a time.

  A cobweb of soundlessness strung itself stickily between them.

  Such tidings were momentous—too much to absorb all at once. The smoke from the campfire twisted up from the burning alder wood in helixes. It stung Jarred’s eyes and clogged his throat.

  “I am sorry,” he said into the hush. Insectlike, the three words stifled in the web.

  Lilith’s exclamation rent the filaments asunder. “This is wonderful!” she cried, her voice trembling with emotion. “Wonderful! It was never the amulet that protected you, after all!” Her evident joy acted like a swift, cool rain, washing away the turmoil that had been clouding Jarred’s reasoning. Even as he caught the note of excitement in her tone, he understood and, understanding, felt as if he had burst free from imprisonment.

  “Of course!” he rejoined, a broad grin dawning on his face as realization took hold. “You are right. The amulet has no power, and never did! It is but an ordinary thing. I presume my father invented the legend of its virtues simply in order to shield my mother and me from his infamous heritage, or perhaps to guard me from the jealousy and prejudice of others.”

  “As Strang’s grandson,” said Lilith, lowering her voice in case of eavesdroppers, “you are invulnerable.”

  “Which means,” he murmured, his voice rough with excitement, “I cannot be harmed by his curse.”

  “We can be married!” Lilith was laughing softly now, tinsel tear tracks striping her cheeks.

  Uplifted by the revelation, Jarred thought he had grown wings and was flying among the stars like some eldritch shape-changer.

  “’Tis true!” he whispered. “True!”

  “Of course!” said Earnán, slapping his forehead, grinning broadly.

  “And our children also will be immune,” Lilith sobbed through her exaltation.

  Jarred drew her close to him, held her protectively. Her hair filled his hands like night made substantial. After so many long months of restraint, mitigated only by a single hasty and distracted embrace, it was sheer bliss for them both to meld in a lingering clasp of closest unity.

  “And you,” he murmured in her ear, “you will be safe.” Yet through the warmth of his happiness threaded a bitter needle of doubt. Would his invulnerability extend to her?

  “I will,” she emphasized, as if deciphering his thoughts. “I will be safe with you.”

  His sweetheart’s exuberance was boundless enough to banish all doubt from the young man’s mind.

  The voyage downstream to the marsh was a jubilant one, and for Jarred and Lilith so was the period that followed. At first they could not quite believe in the gift of invulnerability. It was too astounding an idea to accept all at once. It would take time; a time of testing, of marveling at each discovered consequence of the miracle.

  “If it is indeed true that Strang’s heritage of invulnerability lives in you,” Lilith said over and over, as if trying to convince herself, “then it must also be true that any child of yours will be invulnerable.”

  “And any child of yours,” Jarred would reply, laughing, almost teasing, “will be safe from Strang’s curse as long as I am the father. There is nothing more certain.”

  In her mind, Lilith spoke to her unborn child. Now I am sure you will be free from harm. Only now am I free to marry.

  There was one further possibility that troubled her, but she kept it entirely to herself. She wondered whether by marrying she risked sealing her own doom, for history had proved that it was only after the next generation was born that the curse was activated. This—apparently—was the sorcerer’s way of ensuring that his lethal legacy continued throughout time.

  Yet she would not hesitate to take such a risk. If the curse did claim her in the end, it would have been worth all, if she could only be united at last with Jarred; if only she might hold her child in her arms and look upon the face of that stranger summoned by love from twilight, who would be a stranger no longer.

  Life would be a negligible price to pay for such gifts.

  The season brought abundance to Earnán Mosswell and his son, Eoin. At the Autumn Fair their pickled, smoked, and salted harvests of the shallows had fetched high prices as delicacies for wealthy merchants and aristocrats. Moreover, Eoin—who spent increasing hours at games of dice since his father’s return from the Autumn Fair—accumulated a sum of wealth from his gaming: an amount which was not inconsiderable. His friends began to jest that he’d secretly acquired a luck charm from benevolent wights. Eventually they refused to game with him further, but by that time the eel-fisher’s son had saved enough in capital and owed favors to build a house of his own.

  He caused the new abode to be constructed on a floating raft of pipewood so that he could change moorings now and then, in case of wanting a variation in scenery or a long visit to friends. In Cathair Rua he bought a weathercock of iron, the first wind vane of its kind ever seen in the marsh. Its vertical shaft was topped by a cut-out rooster of sheet metal, which sat at right angles to a fixed, four-armed cross. The ends of the arms bore the symbols η, S, ω, and ε. The rooster’s spindle was mounted on a swiveling pivot, so that when air currents came sweeping across the wetlands, the iron bird would swing away from them, pointing out the direction of their flow. The only catch was that whenever Eoin moved his house, he must realign the four points of the cross; he considered this a small price to pay for owning such a unique and practical adornment, so eminent it could be spied from a distance, above the treetops. The house was sturdily built and relatively spacious. It even boasted two brick-lined fireplaces, one in the kitchen and the other in the room containing Eoin’s couch. Twice the usual amount of buoyant pipewood was needful for the raft, to keep such luxurious accommodation from foundering.

  Eoin’s pride appeared to be magnified whenever he found himself in the company of Jarred. Generously he made a habit of inviting the betrothed couple to take in the latest view from his front porch, to admire some wicker chairs he’d obtained to furnish the interior, or to try out the new cushions covered with Grïmnørsland tapestry, while sipping swampwater from goblets of glaucous ceramic. Jarred endured the vainglory as well as he could. If it irritated him, he concealed the fact, well aware which one of them had won the best prize of all.

  It was difficult for the southerner; his own fortunes of substance contrasted sharply with Eoin’s. Due to his exertions, fellcats had become rarities in the marsh. In the cities, the fashion for their pelts had subsided, as fashions are wont, and prices had declined. He now learned to fish and thatch, turning his hand to any odd job that came his way.

  The secret of his blood he shared only with Lilith, Earnán, and Eolacha. Cuiva, who had heard Lilith declare her doubt of the bone amulet’s efficacy at the Autumn Fair, was persuaded to keep her own counsel about the matter. Whatever conclusions she drew, she discussed with no one, respecting Lilith’s unspoken need for circumspection. Amongst themselves, the Mosswell household agreed to keep the secret from all others; public knowledge of such a heritage could only attract grief. How should a man invulnerable to all harm not arouse vigorous jealousies? How should the heir of a maleficent enchanter not attract suspicion? It
was remarkable enough that the marshfolk had extended their tolerance sufficiently to accept a son of Ashqalêth in their midst. Wisely, the Mosswell-Arrowgrass elders knew that that tolerance would not extend to embracing such thoroughly alien qualities in a man. If Jarred and Lilith were to remain contentedly in the marsh town, all hint of Jarred’s extraordinary qualities must remain concealed.

  Their discretion was greatly aided by the fact that no emissary from MacGabhann in Cathair Rua came seeking Jarred; no rumors ran wild in that metropolis to permeate the seasonal fairs with talk of the appearance of a scion of Strang. If any of the drunkards who had seen Jarred rescue the necklace from the Iron Tree recalled what they had seen, they must promptly have been discredited—for, if someone had really taken the jewel, why did it hang untouchably in the tree as always? Those who had seen the iron thorn tree bereft of its adornment now had cause to disbelieve their own eyes. If any man had obtained such a precious object, why would he be fool enough to relinquish the prize? It was popularly conjectured that the missing jewel must have been some hoax.

  “I fancied the old man, MacGabhann, was half-afraid of me,” Jarred told Lilith as they sat alone beside the blazing hearth in the Mosswell cottage. “Doubtless his old employer imbued him with a panic he cannot forget, a terrified respect for my heirdom. I believe he wishes to avoid angering me. He will not seek me out or reveal my identity in case I should be offended and turn on him to rend him with my powers—whatever he imagines such powers to be.”

  “And have you discovered any sorceries in yourself?” questioned Lilith.

  The fire soared in sheets of honey. Outside, sharp darts of rain pattered. The pet upial slept, curled on a cushion.

  Jarred mused. “I am astonished,” he said presently, “by the mighty wards of protection that encompass me. Every so often I learn more about them. They are staggering in their potency, but if there is more, I have not fathomed it.”