The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Beyond the edge of the marsh she went, until she ascended Lizardback Ridge. The Summer flowers had faded from the sighing grasses. The sky boiled and seethed. Cloud shapes like the shadows of ragged birds streamed away into the east as though flying in terror, hunted by some unnamed thing of dread. To the west, lines of fire burned along the world’s rim. Up the slope Lilith ran, her anarchic hair and garments blowing. In the past, every time she escaped to the high places she had left the footsteps behind. It seemed they would not follow her there.

  This time was different.

  Panic drove the last vestiges of all reason from her mind. The heavybooted, crunching steps now mingled with the drumming of hooves, and it seemed to Lilith that the sharp cries of the birds circling far above the ridge became the cries of horsemen and the jingling of bridles as the king’s men rode up the slope behind her in feverish pursuit. It seemed clear to her that in running from her husband and daughter she would save them by drawing away the pursuers. As she ran, she dared to glance back over her shoulder. So intent was she on leading astray whatever wickedness drove at her back that she took no heed of what lay before her feet. And then nothing lay before them except emptiness. On the brink of the cliff she balanced like a beautiful heron poised to fly, but her momentum had been too great and it propelled her forward so that she tumbled down into yielding wells of insubstantiality, and they betrayed her to the unyielding rocks of the cliff.

  Cuiva appeared at the cottage doorway. “I have searched the islet, but she is not there,” she told Eoin, who stood on the pontoon staithe. Jewel was sitting in the canoe, straight-backed and solemn, stiff as a porcelain doll. Her traveling cloak and hood draped in copious folds from her shoulders.

  “Jarred guessed she would be at Lizardback,” said Eoin. “He has gone after her.”

  “They might need me,” said Cuiva. Picking up her skirts, she dashed off again before Eoin could say another word.

  To the foot of Lizardback Ridge ran Jarred. The long ride from the city had depleted his reserves, yet he was resilient and motivated by passion that would have drawn him to follow his wife even to the gates of death. Looking up, he saw her silhouetted against the dizzy sky. A cloud passed from the face of the setting sun. She poised like a flame, edged with an aureole of amber light. Then she fell.

  Jarred sprang forward. Up the incline he ran, to the very top. At the brink, he looked down. In passing, her body had snapped off several sprays of the mistletoe that sprouted from one of the three stunted ash trees leaning from the precipice. Long, jagged stubs remained. Beneath the jutting rocks and trees she lay broken on a narrow shelf some twenty feet below, her body twisted.

  A cry of desolate despair welled from him and was stolen away by the wind.

  Yet her eyes were open, two amethyst cups brimming with snow-melt, and he perceived that she was looking at him.

  In the instant he knew Lilith still clung to life, Jarred let himself over the cliff’s edge and began climbing down toward her. Sheer were the rock faces, except where the ash roots had penetrated them, and the roots of wiry grasses growing in miniature fissures. Jarred’s fingers sought these cracks. He clung with all his remaining strength, edging his way down to the ledge. Unable to see his feet, he felt for toeholds one by one.

  The roots of some of the cliff-dwelling grasses had, over the years, insinuated themselves deep inside the crevices. Their relentless probing, combined with the unremitting forces of seasonal heat and cold, had stressed the rocks. Riddled with fractures, the entire cliff face was unstable. Jarred let go of a bending ash bough, grabbed an outcrop of stone, and stepped on a narrow ledge. The ledge held for long enough that he invested faith in it, before collapsing beneath his weight. He too fell. He plummeted almost to the shelf where Lilith lay, but he never reached her. His descent was halted by the leaning ash trunk.

  Here was a man invulnerable to stone, air, fire, and water. Had he fallen to meet any other substance, he would have been unharmed. What mischance! But perhaps something in his enchanted blood recognized its own bane. And perhaps something in his heart cared little if he encountered that bane, when he understood how much it had lost, and how much it had to gain.

  His descent was halted by the leaning ash trunk and an upthrusting, broken branch of mistletoe, which impaled him through to the heart. Mistletoe—it was the only material that could harm him. As Jarred lay dying in the tree on the cliff, his arm, now limp, dropped. His fingertips brushed Lilith’s face. Her eyes were already emptier than the sky, and now, so were his.

  And yet a faint smile curved her lips, as if in greeting, and that same expression was mirrored on his face.

  It was as if she were covered in a counterpane of crimson rose petals. He lying facedown along the bough, she lying face up on the rocky shelf, the two an arm’s length away from each other—that was how the carlin found them.

  In the gloaming, the White Carlin of the Marsh returned to the Mosswell cottage. She forced herself to run, although her feet weighed like mallets and an abysm of horror threatened to engulf her.

  Her husband waited at the landing stage with Eoin and Jewel. Cuiva, half-blind with tears, said, “Eoin, you must depart with Jewel straightaway. Take her from the marsh. Lilith and Jarred are dead.” She told them what she had seen. In the canoe, Jewel sat, a porcelain doll beneath her shield of ice. With her young face, her butterfly eyes, her floss of dark hair, she looked fey.

  Eoin’s countenance was the color of old bones. “I cannot escort Jewel,” he said. “I have not long to live. I have seen a portent, and I will die within the twelvemonth.”

  “Hark!” said Cuiva. “The weeper is now silent. Your day is not this day.”

  “But soon!”

  “Who else can convey Jewel to safety? I am the carlin of the marsh. Odhrán is needed here. Earnán has not returned from the Fair, and the king’s men will presently be at our doorsteps. You must go. Conduct her to safety if it is the last thing you do. Quickly! There is no time for argument!”

  Cuiva’s silk silver hair folded about her face like the wing of a mute swan. She was dressed in bleached linen, and her complete albescence glimmered in the twilight, softly pale as a waxen candle, unlit. Once she had thought very kindly of him. Now their lives had been blighted, and bitterly he regretted it.

  “I will do it,” said Eoin.

  As the vessel pulled away from the staithe, a sound like a wound emanated from within the cottage. Howls of pure loss and desolation, born of the knowing spirit of the loyal sheepdog, soared up into the heavy clouds that hung mourning over the marsh.

  They departed in the nick of time. Soon after, the Royal Slievmordhu Dragoons came plunging and scattering through the marsh with their flaming brands and their harsh, barked orders. They had commandeered boats and punts, clumsily rowed by suborned marshfolk. Some of the soldiers were running along the paths and causeways, unaware that marshfolk ahead were drawing up the rickety bridges and disconnecting the floating walks to thwart them.

  Evening shadows converged.

  By shorelines upholstered with green velvet mosses and tapestries of fern, beribboned with lush grasses, frogs carried on their ritual choruses of evening. Flocks of mallards paddled, quacking, into gold-green halls curtained by trailing willow withies. A swan sailed to an island haven in elegant symmetry with its own reflection.

  Night curdled.

  Through secret backwaters known only to the more intrepid marshfolk, Eoin navigated. In the stern of the canoe, Jewel sat stiff and upright. Neither one spoke as he rowed. The keen prow of the canoe sliced through the water and glided among shadowy, sinister washes where long, straggling curtains of moss draped half-dead trees. To postpone the pain, Jewel fastened her thoughts on her immediate surroundings. Looking down into the water, she fancied she saw pale shapes floating like evil flowers, or faces. They reminded her of an Autumn night when she had glimpsed, or dreamed, a handsome countenance suspended beneath the water, a dangerous face framed by hair blacker than w
ickedness.

  Remotely, she hoped such a face did not exist.

  On the lightless staithe of the Mosswell cottage, Cuiva and Odhrán Rushford stood together, the moon-pale and the sun-browned. Their faces were folded in on themselves, creased and wet with crying, and they leaned upon each other’s shoulders.

  They could hear the king’s men crashing and splashing through the marsh. Frogs twanged. Stars had fallen into the water, or perhaps they were dying blossoms.

  “So,” said Odhrán, “in the end the sorcerer wreaked his full measure of vengeance.”

  They stared out in the direction Eoin and Jewel had taken, and after a while Cuiva said, “I wonder what will become of them.”

  Toward morning, Jewel and Eoin reached a northwestern edge of the marsh. They came ashore and set the canoe adrift. Shouldering their bundles, they disappeared into the gray woods like trows hastening to depart the haunts of mortal men before sunrise.

  Epilogue

  The desert rose like wildfire grows upon the wetted dune;

  For fleeting days a stunning blaze that withers all too soon;

  A gorgeous flood as rich as blood, blooming in rare beauty

  For days too few; alas, doomed to ephemerality.

  Survivor tough, you’re strong enough to live where others die.

  Your patient seed, no common weed, slumbers throughout the Dry.

  Your hardy line, time after time, outwaits adversity

  Until the rain pours down again, and desert turns to sea.

  Put on your gowns, your shining crowns, your silks with jewels pinned.

  Sheer elegance! Curtsey and dance, partnered by sighing wind.

  Drink of the dew the heavens strew, ’tis sweeter far than wine.

  Mantle the land with colors grand, dusk pink and almandine.

  Although you’ll fade like morning shade, your memory lives on.

  All shall recall the Floral Ball long after you have gone.

  Your secret seed, a special breed, bides indestructible.

  Like you it waits to greet the spates: dormant, invincible.

  Heed we the rose, who wisely knows good times will favor all.

  No land’s so sere, so parched and drear, that rain shall never fall.

  I, Adiuvo Constanto Clementer, now conclude my tale. If I have told it amiss, or caused grief in my readers, I ask forgiveness. I have interviewed many eyewitnesses, and what was not revealed to me I have interpolated as best I could. Pray allow me to add some footnotes to this history.

  According to the wishes of Earnán, Lilith and Jarred were not cremated on Charnel Mere. Instead, the marshfolk buried them on a lonely islet beneath headstones engraved with the inscription, Together forever, their troubles over. Upon their graves, as I have told before in this chronicle, there grow two marvelous trees, the likes of which have never been seen in the Four Kingdoms of Tir. They lean toward one another, intertwining their boughs, and in Springtime the blossom of one tree is the color of sapphires and Summer skies and tranquillity and all things blue, while the flowers of the other are as red as passion. The blooms drift down to alight upon the mounded tombs; a shower of blossoms, a soft, colorful silk-and-satin rain of petals that falls like a fragrant snow and covers their graves like kisses.

  As I write this, I weep.

  Lilith and Jarred did not die in vain. They lived and perished, but their years were rich and filled with happiness. At the end, it was for the sake of their child that they gave their lives, and in that, they triumphed. Lilith decided to marry in the knowledge that motherhood might possibly bring the curse on herself but in the certainty that her future child would be spared.

  And spared her child was; for Jewel Heronswood Jaravhor escaped the curse of Strang, and her story continues elsewhere. Whether she would ever again behold that dangerous and compelling visage she once glimpsed in the water beneath the moon, or find out what it meant, is beyond my knowledge. My heart, however—bewildered fellow that he is—tells me that this vision may eventually play some vital role in her life. Whether her story will finish in happiness or sorrow I cannot say, for that is still to come, and I have not the gift of prophecy. But this I can record in certainty: she inherited the spirit of her parents, and she carries that flame into a life of adventure beyond my own imagining.

  As Jarred began to venture down the precipice toward his dying wife, he would have believed there was no danger to his person in a hasty descent, only the risk that he might fall past Lilith and hurtle far into the valley, thus losing the last precious moments of her life.

  Yet perhaps, as he reached for his sweetheart on the cliff, he sensed his own extraordinary death was suddenly nigh and had a momentary chance to thwart it—who knows? As a chronicler I can only guess at the thoughts that passed through the minds of those whose lives I record.

  Aware of what he was about to lose, and what he had to gain, he might have allowed himself to become somewhat careless. Maybe, as he lost his foothold, he could have made more of an effort to save himself. We can never be sure. All we can know for certain is that he understood that his own death would ensure security for his child, for if the king’s soldiers found his corpse, they would cease to hunt for the descendant of the sorcerer of Strang. And by dying, he would never be parted from Lilith.

  As for Lilith, she too spent her final moments believing she was saving the lives of her loved ones.

  Like the wildflowers of the desert, these two were ephemeral, their lives short but spectacular, blossoming to give life to their seed, that their legacy might continue through the generations.

  One final note: I am not one to give credit to the existence of shades, but it is said among the folk of the marsh that from time to time a solitary child, or a sleepless lover, or an old man looking out across the lakes at dusk, hearkening to the cries of the herons flying home to roost, might glimpse two wraithlike lovers walking hand in hand by the water’s edge, never taking their eyes from one another. One has the appearance of a woman whose eyes in the twilight glimmer blue, like two wings of the Blue Lycaenidae butterfly; the other seems to be a man, tall and lithe, with hair the color of cardamom spice. And they are smiling, as if they had come at last to their heart’s desire.

  I, Adiuvo Constanto Clementer, am only a scribe, a wandering scholar in search of truth. That love can be transcendent, sacrificing all, is a phenomenon that fills me with humility and renders me awestruck beneath the gaze of the stars.

  Here ends

  The Crowthistle Chronicles, Book 1: The Iron Tree

  The story continues in

  The Crowthistle Chronicles, Book 2: The Well of Tears

  and

  The Crowthistle Chronicles, Book 3: Fallowblade

  GLOSSARY

  a stór: darling (a STOR)

  Ádh: luck, fortune (AWE)

  Aonarán: loner, recluse (AY-an-ar-AWN)

  Áthair: father (AH-hir)

  Breasal (BRA-sal; first “a” as in “apple”)

  Búistéir: Butcher (boo-SHTAIR)

  Cailleach Bheur: The Winter Hag (cal’yach VARE or cail’yach VYURE)

  Cap-a-pie: from head to foot

  Cinniúint: destiny, fate, chance (kin-YOO-int)

  Cothú: sustenance

  cruinniú: a flotilla of pontoons used as a central meeting place, from the Irish word for “gathering, meeting, collection” (crin-YOO)

  Cuiva: (KWEE-va); in the Irish language, this name is spelled “Caoimhe”

  Doireann: (DIRRIN)

  Earnán: (AIR-nawn)

  Eoin: (OWE-in)

  Fionnbar: (FIN-bar or FYUN-bar)

  Fionnuala: (Fin-NOO-la)

  firkin: a firkin is one-fourth barrel, i.e., eight gallons, i.e., sixty-four pints

  Freemartins: heifers

  A gariníon: granddaughter (a gar-in-EE-an)

  A garmhac: grandson (a gar-voc)

  Gearóid: (GA-roid)

  Lannóir: Goldenblade (lann-OR)

  Laoise: (LEE-sha)

&nbs
p; Liadán: (LEE-dawn)

  Luideag: scrap, tatter of cloth (LEE-dyug)

  Maolmórdha: (mwale-MORGA)

  Marfóir: Slayer (mar-FOR)

  Máthair: mother (MAW-hir)

  Mí-Ádh: bad luck, misfortune (mee-AWE)

  Míchinniúint: doom, ill-fate (mee-kin-YOO-int)

  Muireadach: (MWIRR-a-doch; “i” as in “it”)

  Muiris Ó’Cléirigh: (MWIRR-ish o-CLEE-ree)

  A muirnín: darling (a mwirr-NEEN)

  Neasa: (NA-sa)

  Neasán: (nas-AWN)

  Ó Maoldúin: (o-mwale-DOON)

  Odhrán: (O-RAWN)

  Oisin: (USH-een)

  Paid: (PAWD)

  Scáth: protection

  A seanmháthair: grandmother (SHAN-waw-hir; “waw” as “au” in “Maud”)

  sláinte: healing

  staithe: landing stage

  Suibhne: (SIV-na)

  To sain: to call for protection from unseelie forces

  shiofra: tiny supernatural beings

  To shram: to benumb with cold

  Uile: (ILL-e; “e” as in “best”)

  Widdershins: counterclockwise; contrary to the apparent course of the sun

  Wittern: another name for mountain ash or rowan

  Also by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  THE BITTERBYNDE TRILOGY

  Book 1: The Ill-Made Mute

  Book 2: The Lady of the Sorrows

  Book 3: The Battle of Evernight