The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  But there were other sounds and other sights.

  Presently, from away to the right, there came the sound of something running. Nothing could be seen, but the footsteps sounded like the feet of a deer. The sound came up and passed them, but still they could see nothing, only hear the sound of drumming hooves, fading.

  “Never show fear,” Sianadh said in a low voice, “no matter what happens.”

  Farther on, an ululation of hundreds of voices came out of the trees—some crying and the others laughing—but the travelers passed them by without looking to right or left, although their skin crawled. Later, a wooden tub rolled along ahead of them for a time. Sporadically, pinecones dropped from the upper tiers like scaly fruit, too green to have detached themselves yet.

  Here and there tiny streamlets threaded their way downhill. Underfoot, cushion plants, damp mosses, and dwarf brackens jostled against clutters of fallen logs, which made walking difficult. After plodding for a long time, a despairing anger overcame the lad, that he must have been so stupid as to have donned iron boots that morning. He tried to think back to his last sip of water, but the world, already on a queer angle, inconsiderately turned upside down and fell on him.

  “Flay me for a cova donni, what was I thinking of? Drink this.”

  Supporting the youth’s head, the man brought a leather bottle to his lips. He drank and fell back, watching as the man took a swig.

  “Rest now. Aye, I need the rest, too, and some tucker. But we have not much longer before what’s left of the light fades. I think we will not walk farther this day—I shall look for a place to spend the dark hours out of reach of night-stalkers.”

  Gazing upward, he walked away and the forest quickly closed in to swallow his bulky form. Alone, the lad fought panic. He could still hear the faint, regular crashes that marked Sianadh’s progress.

  The drone of insects seemed louder now and the trilling of birds shriller. So innocuous the forest seemed. Then, piercing through the natural babble, a strangely beautiful music; the dim skirl of distant bagpipes and the thud of drums rising from below the ground, filtering up like an invisible, audible mist. Indeed, its cadences evoked a land of mist; vaporous cobwebs through which tall and glittering ferns could be glimpsed; a land of mountain and cloud and of somber lakes lying close under dark skies. Nearer these sounds traveled, until the wild melody rose up all around, blocking out all else, it having halted right beneath the lad’s feet. As if carved from stone the listener stood, at a loss. His fingernails bit into his palms. The vibration of the drumbeats rattled the ground. Stately, the music moved away, evaporated.

  Sianadh came racketing back, oblivious and triumphant.

  “I have found just what I was looking for, chehrna—a tyrax’s nest, halfway up a weather beech. They are easy to climb, those weather beeches.”

  A sobbing wail sounded, like a lament, far off. Almost human. The music’s spell dissipated.

  “There is no time to lose. Come quick.”

  The weather beech’s lower branches were within easy reach. Sianadh coiled his rope around one shoulder and swung up, then dropped an end of rope down. His companion tied it to his own belt and ascended, half-hoisted.

  The tyrax’s nest was a huge, messy weaving of sticks, twigs, mud, and dead leaves, more than roomy enough for two people. It was lined with dry grasses; there was no sign of feathers.

  “Their reek has gone,” said Sianadh, sniffing. “The big fliers have not occupied this for a long time.”

  He took food from his knapsack, ship’s bread, cold mutton, some dried figs and raisins. They ate in silence as daylight drained through an unseen rent in the western sky and the oppressive heat faded to balminess. Great flocks of dinning birds came in to roost, bringing uproar to the forest, but none settled in the weather beech.

  Sianadh’s hair gleamed copper in a last blink of light. He put away the few remnants of food and busied himself with changing the makeshift dressing on his wounded arm.

  “Give me a hand with this, would ye, chehrna?” he said between clenched teeth that held one end of a strip of clean cloth. His companion obliged, tying on the fresh bandage carefully. The man stowed the bloodied cloth in the knapsack.

  “’Twouldn’t do to drop that overboard here-abouts. The whiff of blood, even dried blood, attracts many things fell and foul. Here, wet this cloth and wash those scrapes. ’Tis not wise to leave wounds uncleaned in the wilderness.”

  Sianadh tossed his companion a linen square and a hip-flask of some potent spirit that stung when applied. After tending his hurts, the lad lay back with his head on the woven rim, eager for sleep in the aftermath of terror and exhaustion.

  “What be your name?” the man asked, settling himself comfortably. “Can ye tell me in the speech of signs, the handspeak?… No? Then it must be that your tongue has but lately been tied, for none could live long in company without parlance. My sister learned the handspeak when she was no more than ten Winters old and taught it to the rest of the family. She became mute on Littlesun Day in the year she turned sixteen. If ye like, I shall teach you something of this, maybe tomorrow, in daylight.”

  Delight leaped in the lad. He nodded, smiling.

  “But ye must have a name, chebrna, mute or not,” continued the man. He was answered with a shrug.

  “Do ye mean that ye have forgotten it? That I cannot believe!”

  The lad shook his head. He pointed to himself and shrugged again. The man stared suspiciously.

  “Ye’re not having me on, I can tell that. And ye be a bright one as I took ye for, not some half-wit. And I do not think ye be scothy, that is mad, although I could be wrong. Well then. If ye’ve lost your name, yell be needing another, until ye find it. I cannot go on calling ye chehrna forever, and we may have a long road to go together. Have ye a preference in names?”

  That word, chehrna. It seemed significant. Before that night on the Windwitch, the Ertishman had called him by a different kenning—what was it—something sarcastic? Mo reigh. Why had Sianadh changed his form of address and his manner? An irritant scrabbled at the lad’s thoughts. Something was very wrong—he had known it for a long time. He had known it in the Tower. He pushed the scrabbling thing away again.

  “No? I have many spare names that folk have given me over the years, but none fit for the likes of ye. I usually save them to hurl at my enemies. Nay, I have it! When I saw them flitting in the forest they brought me to mind of something … an Ertish name it shall be for ye, until ye have your own one again, and a fair name and honorable it is. Imrhien. Shall ye be pleased with your new name, Imrhien?”

  Sianadh cocked an interrogative eyebrow.

  Imrhien. As a name it had a good ring to it, a sound of lightness and color. The lad showed his lack of objection to it with a smile. Sianadh nodded. “Imrhien,” he repeated, as though hanging the name on the walls of the world and stepping back to admire it. The lad began to drowse—content, named, promised, protected.

  Sianadh cleared his throat loudly and spoke again, hesitatingly, fidgeting. The words he uttered thrust a lance of ice down the listener’s spine and jolted his eyes open.

  “Ye need not fear,” said the man, his features barely visible in the dregs of twilight, “I shall not take advantage. I have never harmed so much as a hairstrand of a maid or woman yet, and nor do I intend to. Besides, I’ve a sister who’d box my ears if I did.”

  The youth sat bolt upright.

  “What—hey!” Sianadh lunged forward to seize the slender form scrambling out over the side of the twiggy platform. Hauling in the struggling figure, the man took one look at the dismay-filled eyes and cried, “Oghi ban Callanan, what have I said now?”

  The figure pinned between his hands quivered, aghast. Sianadh must be crazy—mad in the worst possible way, seeming sane on the surface but dangerously unbalanced at the core and not to be accompanied a moment longer.

  “Peace, chehrna, peace! Knock me down with a belaying pin, what have I done to deserve this? T
hink ye that I would allow ye to throw your life away down there after all the trouble ye’ve given me saving it?”

  The newly named Imrhien became as still as a block of glint-flecked dominite. That which had been plucking and wearing away at the edges of thought was knocking more loudly now. It was bashing deafeningly, threatening to splinter the doors. For the moment there was no escape from the madman’s clutches. Perhaps, after a false lull, he would sleep, then the one called Imrhien could slide away quietly and the doors would remain intact.…

  Sianadh’s grip loosened slightly. His brow knit.

  “’Tis turnabout now, I see. This time ye think I am scothy.” He shook his head. “Ye have me foxed. I cannot fathom it. I do not know what is eating at ye, but I can guess what would be eating ye should ye go down to the ground at this hour. I mean ye no harm, I swear it. Can ye not see that, lass?”

  His companion jerked violently away, almost eluding him. Sianadh’s grasp tightened again. His visage cleared, and a look of amazed enlightenment dawned on his blunt features.

  “Ah. Can it be? I have heard tell of this. Mind-rinsing, they call it, or thought-training or some such. Can it be that ye yourself do not know? There was a tale in Finvarna of a baby whose parents were lost at sea, shipwrecked. He was given to his grandmother in a distant village, to be raised, but she had no fondness for boys and she got him up as a girl. He went about in skirts with his hair in ribbons. Not having any other way of knowing, he grew up believing what the cracked old biddy told him. The truth found him out at last, but I do not know what happened to him in after days.

  “And ye with your forgetting—it makes sense … if ye had forgotten what a girl is like, ye wouldn’t know of your being one. Stranger things than that I have seen and heard, yet … it is strange. Someone has made ye believe what is not true. I heard it has best effect on folk in a weakened and sick condition. Ye, so wasted and gaunt, a slight shape not obvious beneath those rags—what have ye suffered? Starvation? Is that how ye were weakened? And aye, that answers another question. I heard it said by my sister that maids who starve lose the moon’s blessing; some call it the curse. My sister, the mute, she is a carlin. She knows these things. Someone has drawn ye into a lie, cheh—Imrhien, I do not know why. Mayhap to protect ye. It protected ye on the pirate vessel, indeed, for a time. Nay! Do not weep!”

  But his protests were in vain. The doors had fallen in with a roar, and light had burst through. Great, silent sobs racked the girl’s body with uncontrollable spasms.

  Oh yes, it was true. It was all plain, now, looking back. The songs told of such things. There was the maiden who could not be parted from her lover and had dressed herself as a soldier and gone to battle, to be by his side. And in truth, there had been a scullion in the Tower who had pined for a sailor-lad from a Windship, and would not take food, and had worn to a shadow and lost the moon’s blessing before she died. There was a young girl who had once been fair but had grown old knowing misuse at the hands of men, and her name was Grethet. And there was another maid who had forgotten and been tricked, to spare her just that.

  To be a maiden, a lass, a wench. To be born in second place in the world’s favor—from what he—she had seen at the Tower, she knew. To be subjugated, idolized, preyed upon, used, and pampered. To be judged on appearance by all men, and in her case to be judged and found wanting, worthless, guilty; to be condemned. To have one’s essence dismissed and overlooked because of the vessel that contained it. To be forbidden the opportunity to ride sky. To be forbidden the rights of the heirs of Erith. That was to be a maiden, she understood.

  But she did not weep for that. She did not weep for the sorrow of losing that one fragile status, that illusion. She wept for joy; for joy, because at last, here was a Truth.

  A cat of a wind sprang up during the night, playing with the forest giants as if they were skeins of yarn. It battered them this way and snatched them that, now gentle, now suddenly cruel. The sturdy beams of the weather beech did not flail in panic, they merely rocked the tyrax’s nest: a mother lulling her babe.

  It might have been the fading of the wind’s deep-throated choir or the easing of the branches’ protesting creaks or the cessation of the lullaby swaying that roused the transformed refugee. It might have been any of these things, but it was not. Uneasiness had pervaded his/her restless half-sleep. The erstwhile lad opened her/his eyes to see that Sianadh, who had volunteered to keep the first watch, was asleep, twitching and snoring intermittently. Some inner prompting caused her to remain motionless—only her eyes slid laterally, like oiled buttons. Sloughing the last shreds of drowsiness and redundant self-image, she became aware of the effect that had woken her—a high-pitched whine, thin and unbroken like a wire stretched taut against the darkness, an ill-boding humming, dreary and remorseless, that set the teeth on edge.

  What it was she could not guess, that narrow, winged form flying very slowly, as if searching, into the rift in the leaves. Sidereal light illuminated the diaphanous membranes, devoid of color, the delicate antennae, the feminine waist and long, improbably spindly legs and arms that shone as if covered with tiny scales, the face with its bulging, faceted eyes, and the attenuated tongue, still searching. The whine’s volume increased. The creature could not turn her head much from side to side, and indeed, it seemed as though she hardly needed her eyes to hunt. The antennae flicked responsively. Elegant, fragile, she drifted closer.

  A slight movement told the girl that her companion was awake. He, too, had seen it.

  “Culicida,” he breathed. “They travel the path of living breath and target the warmth and sweat of flesh. Burrow into the leaves.”

  Cold leaves abounded, shredded drifts of stained and twisted parchment in the deserted nest. In their depths, infinitesimal spores bedded, each mycelium a gangling hair, a frail, inexorable agent of decomposition. Into this mold the cuckoo’s nestlings dug themselves, until they were completely covered, not daring to breathe the fungous atmosphere. The monotonous song of the hunting Culicida came and hung right over them, piercing their ears, drilling into the marrow of their bones. A long time the creature hung there, sensing, while those she sought, with burning lungs, endured the scarlet flashes of oxygen depletion vivid against their eyelids.

  The predator moved away, droning off into the night. Her would-be prey exploded from the heap of leaves and melancholy yeasts like corks from ale-jars, gulping fresh air. Panting like a hunted fox, the Ertishman scanned their surroundings.

  “I’ll warrant she’s foretasted something she liked better. Ha! Here are dry leaves of pennyfoil and elder, which the tyrax used to line its bower, praise be! Those herbs and some others may drive away her kind. For the moment, we are out of peril. I never thought to see Culicidae here—their clans dwell mainly in Mirrinor, where they lay their egg-rafts among the bulrushes in the long lakes and the swamps. They can only fly short distances and that only in still airs. But winds can blow them hundreds of miles. You do not know of them … Imrhien? Mosquito-folk, they be, cousins to the insect swarms. Their prettiness belies their strength. They be not eldritch wights, aye, but they be deadly evil. Vectors, like the one we saw, be the worst among them. Their pricking tongues bring diseases and plagues the like of which have wiped out countless numbers of mortalkind, and they know that. Yet they have no conscience, none at all.” He fell silent for a time, craning his neck up at the nets of white stars framed by the trees.

  “There, ye see? That is the Swan—the constellation of the Swan. Nine stars. Ye can see them at this time of year, here and at home in Finvarna.” He traced out the bird’s shape with a stubby finger, then began to pick leaves and a small caterpillar out of his mustache.

  “Sleep now. I will watch.”

  Shaking her head, his companion jabbed a thumb at her own chest. Sianadh shrugged.

  “As ye wish, then, chehrna, if you be so set on it. But first let me teach ye to say that in handspeak.”

  He pointed to himself, then held out his left ha
nd, curled in a fist.

  “This be the slegorn rune, the dragon, that hisses like a snake. With the right hand ye make the vahle rune, that is the valley, with the index and middle fingers extended. These fingers be the two eyes watching. Rest the heel of the right hand on the back of the downturned left hand. This be the sign for watching with the eyes, the dragon watching under the valley. Now ye have had your first lesson in the handspeak.”

  He yawned and then fell asleep almost immediately.

  She could not sleep. She walked on the edge of oblivion but could not have let herself drop into it, even had she tried. For danger she watched, all the while the salt of self-doubt rubbing on the raw graze of confusion. All the hidden embers of defiance had been doused now. How had she prevented herself from knowing that Truth? When Grethet had pulled tight the straps confining her chest and hissed warnings in her ear, how had she snapped spontaneously into apathetic acceptance?

  Because, she told herself, Grethet was all and only. And you were new, bruised, needing guidance. The crone had seen too many wenches suffer. It may be supposed she herself had been violated. Ill-tempered and selfish, she was, but she saved you. She gulled the rest, too. Do not condemn her for gulling you.

  But she condemned herself. To be gullible was to be adrift on the world’s sea at the mercy of tide and current.

  Search your heart, fool. You knew in there, all along. Plunder your heart for the Truths therein and cleave to what you find.

  An owl “boo-booked” across the scufflings of Summer night, and the quenched firedrake’s eyes kept watch under the valley.

  The quicksilver notes of a magpie struck the bleaching air like a bell-hammer. Dawn’s alchemy transmuted the canopy’s edges from blue gray to green gold. Sianadh snorted awake.