The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Then miraculously her fingers found purchase, and she was bursting upward, tearing through a slow and clammy viscosity, clawing free of the water’s loving embrace and hanging on to solidity—a corner of the raft, now no longer a lid but a buoyant ally. With rasping gulps she drew in the gases of life, and as soon as she was able, hoisted herself up and onto the platform once more, where she lay on her side, breathing hard, coughing up water. Sunlight blocked out her eyes like white chalk.

  The raft had floated well away from the shore. The winged toads that had worked it free with their little sharp teeth now leaped about on top of the water, their skinny, barbed tails lashing like whips. Sianadh was running along the shore, helpless, roaring like a bull, waving his fist. Still dazed, the girl could not understand what he was saying. By now the rickety craft had reached midstream and was being swept along in the thrall of the current. The wayward wights skipped on and off it, flopping their slimy bodies among the treasure chests. She chased them away. The banks began to rise more steeply. Soon the river rounded a bend and passed through a narrow cutting, overhung by perpendicular cliffs. Here it became impossible for the running man to find a foothold near the water’s edge, and he was forced to climb higher, looking for a path. Picking up pace in the swift-flowing channel, the raft quickly outstripped him.

  It rocked and spun like a leaf in a flooded gutter. Imrhien clung on grimly, gripping the lashings that held together the leaky craft. As she was whirled around another bend, a greater peril was revealed, lying directly in her path.

  Straight ahead ranged a long ramp of semisubmerged rocks like low stairs—waterstairs—not high but many. Between them the water boiled, lathered with white froth.

  This was unlooked-for. Would the crudely made stage slide over the top of these gray, humpbacked behemoths of rocks? Would it slew around the heads of the greater boulders and slip between them? Or would it simply bounce up on the first one and crash down, tearing itself apart? Imrhien’s grip tightened. The current picked up the raft and whipped it down a teeth-jarring stony incline, at the bottom of which the platform spun on its axis and shot to one side, crashing into a rock wall. Letting go with one hand, the girl slid her bay-wood staff out from among the knots that had tied it on board. She had the measure of this water-path now; had seen what it might and might not do. It was rough, but maybe it would let her pass if she worked with it, precorrecting the raft’s course, using the confluences and divergences of the flow to negotiate the worst of the obstacles. With jaw clenched in concentration she labored: a push here, a shove there, now rebalancing, now waiting for the moment—riding the bucking platform like a horse-breaker.

  It tossed her into the air, but she was tenacious. And she miscalculated many times, but the timbers bore the brunt of it. On and down she rode in the seething foam, until with a final sickening lurch the raft dropped, battered but floating, into a smooth, quiet stretch of water, white with flowers drifting down from overhanging trees.

  The treasure remained on board.

  Placidly the raft floated downstream, listing slightly. There were no oars. There was no way to get to shore. Hours drifted past.

  The sun began to sink into the forests and mountains. Here, where fantastic dragonflies and glittering midges played, more of the little wide-mouthed toads with bat-wings were skipping over the water’s surface, making free among tall rushes growing along the shore. They were quite lovely in a loathsome way, their froggy hides spangled gold and green, their tails long and thin, barbed at the tips. So translucent were the veined vanes of their wings that light shone through them. Their eyes were great, glowing, amber jewels, their teeth numerous, tiny, and pointed. The girl looked at them from beneath her tangle of dripping hair, now threaded with long leaves of eel-grass. She fingered the tilhal at her throat. The winged toads did not attempt to trouble her. They were juveniles. At that age their only threat was mischief.

  Finally the raft bumped against a sandy spit. Its passenger tied it to a fallen tree that lay along the slender promontory. Then she rested, not wanting to sleep. Someone must keep watch over the treasure, and now there was no one else to accomplish the task. Hunger, too, never gave her peace, but in the dozing trances that slipped fitfully over her that night, she was half-aware of finely drawn faces, their eyes slightly upswept at the outer edges. The owners of these faces rose half out of the water to peer at the mortal girl from among tresses of long green hair that floated on the river like harps strung with weed. Dreams, they were not.

  By the time gray dawn drizzled out of the sky, a deep chill had seeped into Imrhien’s flesh. Still slightly damp, her spidersilk garments afforded her little comfort. She shivered, trying to chafe warmth into her upper arms. Lethargy slowed her down. She was lost and alone. There was, for the moment, no cause to go on, no reason to make decisions. Her head drooped. Now, at last, she slept.

  The sun was hovering overhead when she was woken by the sound of a heavy body crunching through undergrowth. Quickly she unslipped the knot of the mooring-rope, but before she had a chance to pole the raft away from land, a voice yelled:

  “Obban tesh! I have never been so glad of the sight of—of treasure in all me days!”

  The Ertishman strode down the riverbank, grinning out of a filthy face, his hair a rat’s nest. Of bow and arrows there was no sign, but he was cradling something close to his chest, wrapped in his shirt.

  “So, here’s where ye be, messing about in boats while I strut through the jungle on me pins, avoiding things that bite. Ye’ve led me a merry dance, that ye have! The treasure, is it all here? All safe?”

  She nodded, smiling with relief. He ran along the spit with surprising surefootedness and thumped himself down on the raft beside her.

  “Ye did well in that white water. I passed it a way back, expecting to see the raft smashed to smithereens somewhere on the rocks. Ye’re not strong of arm, nor do ye have wizardly powers, but by harp and bow, chehrna, ye have sharp wits, and that’s what saved ye.” He patted the treasure chests lovingly. “Ye’ll be ready for some breakfast by now, no doubt! I found eggs back there, up in the trees—big ones. I ate ’em, sucked out the insides. Brought some back for ye in my shirt—here. Ach, obban! One’s cracked and ruined me good spidersilk smock.”

  <>

  “Ain’t ye hungry? Suit yourself—I’ll eat ’em, then. But bide a moment—did ye leave this on my cloak when ye ran back to the raft to skitch the ’leapers?”

  He held up a flower, its petals as blue as a mountain tarn cupped close under the sky. Imrhien recognized it as the same flower she had given to the Gailledu when he had warned them against danger—not merely the same kind of flower, Imrhien was certain, but the same one. There had been a notch in two of the petals where some insect had bitten it. Yet the bloom looked as fresh as if it had just been plucked. In wonderment, and also in response to the Ertishman’s question, she shook her head.

  “Nay? I thought not. I’ll guess our leafy friend the guardian of woodlands has been here. Mayhap he has been following us. Why should he gift me with this weed?”

  Their eyes locked, briefly. At once, they both knew the answer.

  The travelers moored the raft while they effected repairs to the damaged parts and constructed a pair of makeshift oars. When all was as well knit as they could manage, they cast off and continued their journey.

  Sianadh did not again mention hunting, but the problem of feeding themselves had not vanished. The next few days were a season for hunger. To distract their thoughts from victuals, they used this time to practise handspeak and relate stories. Sianadh remained typically optimistic.

  “When we get to the city, my sister, Ethlinn, may be able to heal ye with her carlin’s lore. Or, if not, there be wizards and dyn-cynnils in Gilvaris Tarv who could do it—mighty men of powerful gramarye. Their services do not come cheaply, but that matters not, now. Ye be rich. Ye can spend what ye like on cures, garments, the best of everything. Your life be changed now. T
he good times be here at last.”

  His companion was not convinced. A feeling of foreboding grew, as every day the current bore them closer to the urban precincts.

  The river widened slightly, passing through densely wooded country. Behind the trees, cliffs rose high against a brilliant blue sky. To the south, a few clouds swirled like flocks of silver gulls.

  The raft drifted on.

  The Ertishman turned from telling stories to expounding history lessons, but Imrhien suspected his ramblings were a way of dulling the edges of craving. For herself, the hunger pangs had died now, leaving a curious light-headedness and an inability to concentrate on what Sianadh was saying.

  She thought she had heard some of his anecdotes before, at some time, but could not recall the occasion.

  “Our good King-Emperor, James the Sixteenth, be both wise and strong. He rules well, but even royalty be not beyond the reach of the unseelie. Aye, ’twas a pity, the terrible misadventure that befell his Queen. D’ye know of it?… Nay?”

  Sianadh rambled on in subdued tones, saying something about a dangerous wight that had, some years ago, slain the Queen-Empress, leaving the King-Emperor bereft and young Prince Edward motherless. Imrhien drowsed. Clouds of small insects droned. The sun’s rays danced on the water.

  Tranquillity was torn apart by a shrill scream.

  It broke the spell of the gently rocking raft. A great shrieking and splashing arose farther downstream. Imrhien’s eyes widened in horrified amazement. In the water, a young girl was thrashing about.

  “Kavanagh!” the young girl cried. “Kavanagh!”

  Sianadh spat out Ertish curses, expressing his bewilderment. He stood up. The raft pitched and yawed.

  “Obban tesh, ’tis Muirne,” he grated, hoarse with shock.

  Instantly he began to fling off his cloak. His companion grabbed his arm, shaking and pinching him.

  “What are ye at, Imrhien? My sister’s daughter is drowning, can ye not see? Let go.”

  Violently Imrhien shook her head. The man strained wildly toward the struggling figure.

  “Kavanagh! Kavanagh!” A beseeching voice, trembling with panic, choked off by mouthfuls of water.

  “Muirne! I come!”

  Imrhien’s open hand smashed across the side of the Ertishman’s face. He swore a violent oath and turned on her, wearing an ugly expression, his fist raised as though he were about to slam it across her head. At the last instant he hesitated and blinked, shaking his head as if to clear his brain of cobwebs.

  “Oghi!”

  Taking a deep breath. the Frtishrnan sat down. He was shuddering. His lips moved, soundlessly at first. “Iron blade and rowan-tree save me from the likes of ye,” he muttered, and then he began to whistle. Turning his head, he averted his eyes from the sight of the screaming girl. The veins on his neck and temples stood out like snakes. Sweat rose in a dew on his forehead. The water-girl wailed and sank. The river closed over her head. She did not reappear.

  The raft floated over the place where she had gone under. Sianadh did not utter a word but sat motionless, his countenance ashen. When they had passed the spot, the voyagers forced themselves to look back.

  A feminine manifestation rose, to the waist, out of the water. This time she did not flail about—indeed, she did not paddle or swim at all, and it was impossible to deduce how she managed to keep afloat. Instead she remained poised like a waterlily, with water flowing like silk about her lily-stem waist and her thin white arms reaching toward the mortals. The drowner, cheated of her prey, did not scream in rage. No recognizable expression crossed her delicate features. She reacted in no human fashion.

  “Kavanagh, Kavanagh,” she called, or chanted,

  “If not for she,

  “I’d have drunk your heart’s blood,

  “And feasted on thee.”

  Having spoken, she subsided gracefully, leaving a faint turbulence.

  “I shall not be bathing hereabouts,” Sianadh said shortly.

  They drifted on, the riverscape unfolding around them. Frogs croaked among forests of feathery swamp-grass. Tall trees leaned overhead, their roots protruding into the water, vines dangling from their boughs.

  “Doch!” exclaimed the Ertishman, slapping his brow. “I left the four-leaved clover in my old shirt when I doffed it and took on this spidersilk. No wonder I could not see through the drowner’s glamour. Being rich has addled me brains. Your wit has saved us again, chehrna—ye saw fit to bring along some of the leaf. Can ye spare a bit?”

  Shaking her head, the girl tried to explain that she too had neglected to bring the spell-warding plant—that, like him, she had been beguiled by glamour, but that common sense had won out. It had been too coincidental, too unlikely, for Sianadh’s city-dwelling niece to appear right in front of her uncle in the middle of the wilderness. Her store of hand-signs was barely adequate to convey this to Sianadh.

  “Ye’re certain ye have not got the Sight?” he demanded suspiciously.

  Vehemently she nodded.

  A shang wind, not fierce, came and went one evening. Brief showers of rain also passed over. Cuinocco’s Way eventually joined up with another flexuous stream, which later flowed into a yet wider waterway. This ran at last into a proper river, the Rysingspill, which would take them on the last lap of their journey, to the city-port at its mouth. Steep cliffs and mountain gullies had given way to hills that humped ever lower under a porcelain sky the color of Sianadh’s eyes.

  The river neared its destination.

  “Now that we have gained the Rysingspill, ’tis likely we shall begin to see river-traffic,” the Ertishman warned. “Fur-trappers sometimes come this far upriver—savage uraguhnes who would risk other folk’s lives—and their own—in eldritch haunts, for profitable trade. We could not outrun their fast boats if they took an interest in us, so we must keep an eye out and make ourselves scarce if we get wind of them. They would think nowt of scuttling a couple of gray drifters and making off with our goods.”

  They kept the chests covered under Sianadh’s spidersilk cloak.

  Gilvaris Tarv, he told her, was a colorful sinkhole of a seaport city where riffraff and brigands walked the streets, mingling with the citizens and the nobility. It was a city with no walls or guarded gates or curfew; a festering, interesting venue where fortunes were made and lost; an ebullient, belligerent center of brisk trade. The very rich dwelt there, while the very poor hung on at the fringes and sometimes fell off. Being on the east coast of Eldaraigne, Gilvaris Tarv was a popular port of call for ships out of Namarre, whose stated business was not always genuine. Port officials turned a shuttered eye to shady dealings and thrived for it.

  “No use our floating into Tarv Port on a craft we can barely steer. Some merchant would run us down. Besides, it would look suspicious, and I want no questions asked. If word got about that we carry treasure, even so much as a shilling piece, our lives would be forfeit. Nay—we shall go ashore before we reach the outskirts of town and traipse in on foot, like peddlers.”

  They met no trappers’ vessels. On the fifth day since the departure from Waterstair, the trees thinned. A low mist rose from the water. The river, now broad and lined with slate-green casuarinas, carried the raft into rolling lands. Here and there, thatched cottages squatted in groves of rowans and fruit-trees. Stone walls enclosed paddocks where a few animals grazed, or fields rippling with ripening oats and barley.

  It was getting dark. The Ertishman appeared jittery.

  “We are close now. ’Tis too risky—we might be seen by farmers or fishers along the shore. And what would two strange-looking folk be doing floating down out of the Lofty Mountains? To be sure, we should be taken for wights.”

  Using their rough-bladed oars of whittled yew, the voyagers directed the raft to the west bank. It grated against the gravel of the shallows, and they came to land under a belt of casuarinas, whose skeins of long, drooping needles cascaded like unbound hair. After unloading the three caskets, the travelers untied
the ropes holding the raft’s logs together, pushed it away, and watched it drift downstream, slowly breaking up.

  There was an indefinable sadness in this.

  “Now,” Sianadh said briskly, rubbing his hands, “we be peddlers out of Tarv, come to try our luck in the countryside. And now, at last, we sleep dry!”

  It was indeed pleasant to nestle in fragrant fallen needles but difficult to get used to the motionlessness of land. Imrhien lay awake in the darkness, listening to the river’s sighs. She thought about the city and its probable horrors.

  Come morning, Sianadh was no longer beside her.

  Imrhien drank from the river, washing her face and hands. Magpies chortled their euphonic greetings. Beyond the trees, the sun’s morning light lay long on fields of grain, weaving a pattern like tapestry. The caskets remained where Sianadh had stashed them, shoved far back under some myrtle bushes for concealment. The Ertishman would not be far away. She waited. When he returned, cackling with pride, he bore half a loaf under his arm.

  “Tuck into that, Your Ladyship! Ye’ve got to keep your strength up—I cannot carry the tambalai treasure into the city all on my own!”

  She tore the bread into two pieces and began to eat, offering him the larger chunk. He pushed her hand away. “Who d’ye think ate the other half?”

  Who would have thought that a simple cob could taste like joy, sweeter than a feast? Imrhien could have eaten twice as much. Her friend’s weathered eyes followed the chunks of bread to her mouth like the eyes of a despairing lover. For all his protests, he could not hide the fact that half a loaf had not staved off his hunger. When the first piece was devoured she feigned satiety and watched him fall like a starving wolf on what was left.