The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “Soon it will come! It might well be today. Why waste what we have?”

  “We have delayed far too long already.”

  “What are you afraid of? The blue-faced crones? Poor Weasel, frightened of the grannies!”

  “I say, get them out of here.”

  “No. A good strong ghost-maker will come this night. I feel it.”

  The voices faded as the men moved away, still arguing.

  “Oh,” said Muirne in a small voice, “how hreorig. No doubt this be an unshielded house, and we are to be used as gilfs before we are sold.”

  <> Imrhien’s hands demanded.

  “Gilfs—performers in shang. Folk who choose, or who are forced, to bare their heads in the unstorm and become part of some act or event that, during later unstorms, be shown to a paying audience. These shows, these unshielded houses, be illegal. The black-hearted skeerda criminals who run them charge a high fee for viewing and be always on the lookout for some new act to draw back old customers—new gilfs, more exciting stunts.”

  <>

  “I know not, but I dread to imagine. I have heard these things spoken of in quiet corners when older folk believed I could not overhear. The gilf-shows in these illegal houses—men are made to fight one another to the death or to wrestle wild animals. Sometimes they must jump through fiery hoops or walk upon hot coals, barefoot. Always they must perform acts of great daring. Through their fear, their images burn brighter on the shang.”

  <>

  “Oh, aye—great joy burns brightly, too, but it is easier for such uraguhnes as these to inspire fear than joy. And not the kind of gray, sweating fear that turns folk to stone, but the full-blooded terror that pushes them to deeds they could not normally do—that makes for better entertainment. It seems we are to be used for this, when the next shang wind comes, Ceileinh save us. There be worse things than death.”

  No unstorm came that night, to turn the city into a jewel box—or the next. But Weasel came in, drunk, and spoke to them.

  “This used to be a busy house with a profitable gilf-room upstairs,” he confided with uncharacteristic garrulity, “until one night during a ghost-maker, when the audience was packed around the walls, watching the shows, there came a loud voice saying, ‘Where is my golden eye?’ and a great hairy Hand or maybe a Foot came down the chimbley and groped out into the room. The onlookers fled in terror. Since then, every time there is a ghost-maker the Voice says, ‘Where is my golden eye?’ and the Hand comes down the chimbley, grasping and seeking. It drove away all the customers. Scalzo has tried many ways to get rid of this Thing in the Chimbley, but with no success. So he keeps a watch-worm locked in the gilf-room in case the Thing comes down the chimbley one night, and then slides down the stair to these lower rooms where we sleep. Still, we do not rest easy in our beds, and we cannot open the gilf-room to trade. Now we find ourselves with two prisoners who have no better fate in store than the slave-ships. What chance—you both have eyes! Are they golden?”

  “Manscatha!” hissed Muirne.

  “You will both be sent to the gilf-room as soon as the next ghost-maker comes. When the Thing in the Chimbley asks for eyes, it can take its pick of the two of you—the gooseberry eyes of the bleached hag or the robin’s eggs of the henna’d queen.” He shrugged. “Who kens—mayhap the Thing will not know the difference, or care. Then maybe it will be content and leave us in peace. If one of you remains unmarred, she shall be taken away to be sold.”

  Corpse-pale, Muirne clenched her fists until her nails bit her flesh. She could not speak. Weasel, suddenly as wooden as always, made his exit, remembering to lock the door.

  Imrhien had scratched the twenty-second mark on the wall when she felt the first premonition of it—the same prickling thrill that accompanied the buildup of any massive thunderstorm. Through that day the precognition grew, slowly. As evening deepened, Muirne nervously clutched at her companion’s arm.

  “The unstorm! Imrhien, it comes this way!”

  With that awakening, a sudden wail broke out from beyond the walls, a wild and tragic cry of grief.

  Muirne shuddered. She lapsed into silence, and they both hearkened. Once, twice, three times—at the third cry, the long, grievous lament trailed off brokenly on the evening breeze. The Weeper of Tarv had dwelled by the river long before the first buildings of the city had sprung up on the banks. Rivers were the age-old haunts of weepers. If they were to be perceived at all by mortal eyes—which might happen perhaps once in a hundred years—they would be seen kneeling at the water’s edge, apparently washing the bloodstained garments of those about to die. Their grim warnings were distributed among townsfolk and countryfolk alike, and they were always accurate.

  Who would die this night?

  Stars grilled themselves to white cinders on the cold grating of the window. With a metallic clang, the door opened. Men stood in the frame, outlined by flaring torches. An order was barked. A short man stepped forward. Sores clustered at the corners of his mouth.

  “Time for the show,” he remarked. He pulled the taltries from the heads of the captives, then pushed them out through the door and up some stairs. Their escort parted ranks and closed in behind them.

  At the top of four flights, a man unbolted a door and kicked it wide. Two others thrust blazing torches into the darkness of the room beyond, a chamber opening out long and broad.

  “Back! Get back there,” they barked at something beyond the door. They jabbed forward their brands. Flickering light flooded the corners of the room as more torches entered. The captives were pushed through the portal.

  A scream rose up in Muirne. It snapped from her mouth like a whipcord. She and Imrhien tilted back their heads, staring in wonder.

  The flat, wedge-shaped head of a giant snake towered over them, rising out of a spiral of coils. The snake was a rainbow taken out of the sky and twisted into the shape of a corkscrew and covered all over with flattened water drops that refracted the rainbow’s living light, glinting iridescent like the inner lining of an abalone shell. As thick in the girth as a man’s body, the watch-worm made a hiss like steam, flicking out its forked tongue from between the wide jaws. Its eyes were fathomless, multifaceted crystals. Evanescent colors rippled down its convolutions: zircon, ruby, emerald, diamond, sapphire. The men swung torches at the creature, driving it up one end of the room, where it began to gather its coils in a coruscating slither of sequins and pearl buttons.

  This chamber, this gilf-room, occupied the entire upper story. At one end gaped a blackened and toothless maw of a fireplace, hooded by a stone chimney. At the other squatted a massive chest, with open lid. Bits of smashed walls jutted, showing where the chamber had once been divided into smaller rooms. It was painted all over—walls, ceiling, floor—with brightly colored, amateurish murals crudely representing battles and acts of wizardry. The window shutters hung askew, the wall-murals flowing over them uninterrupted.

  One of Scalzo’s men was shouting: “Pack away the watch-worm—the ghost-maker’s coming!”

  A jinking, chinking sound was approaching, as of a million tiny bells. Imrhien’s hair bristled like a sunburst, crackled like ice. Fear and elation filled her. Muirne held her arm in the grip of a steel trap. A black post stood near the center of the floor, and to this the two gilfs were now efficiently roped.

  “Now don’t you try to get free,” the short man declared, “or it will be the worse for you. I won’t have chits like you overlapping with my other tableaux and getting things all confused. There’s been an old, half-baked one there where that pillar is—it’s always looked a bit faded, so tonight we’ll overlay it with something better, eh, Golden-Eyes?” Cracking a whip he had been holding at his side, he stepped back. The victims shivered.

  The watch-worm was darting its huge head toward the torchbearers. Scalzo’s men stabbed forward with torches, passing the flares across the sliding metallic hide of the massive boa. It jerked and thrashed as if
it were in pain and opened its fanged mouth to emit a hiss as loud as an arsenal of white-hot weapons being plunged into cold water. The dorsal spines, which had lain quiescent along its backbone, lifted like a crest, like a row of shot-silk fans, their flaring membranes radiating colors from angry carmine to violent violet. The men must leap and dodge now, flying like birds in a whirling cage, to avoid the flogging tail. The worm lunged for the door, and the short man’s whip bit into its neck, just below the fins.

  “Get that thing into the chest quick, or I’ll millstone the lot of you! Hurry—then get out of here!”

  With flaming brands, the men tried to chase the creature toward the cramped chest that was its prison. At that moment the shang storm struck with full force and the theater of horrors sprang to life. Imrhien was too intent on watching the snake to concern herself with the terrible scenes that had awakened throughout the length and breadth of the unshielded room.

  Muirne had begun to tremble violently, her face a wooden carving of terror. Somewhere, a muffled drum, or possibly a heart, began to pound. Swept up by the ecstasy of the shang, Imrhien had no room for fear.

  Then the mad roaring, down through the vent over the fireplace, into the room:

  “Where is my golden eye?”

  Terrible was the Voice, bitter and ancient, harsh with menace. Muirne’s screams mingled among the yells of the men.

  Beyond the screams, beyond the gold-limned cameos of the unstorm shimmering in random repetition, and the flowing scintillas of the watch-worm’s gyrations—behind the backs of their tormentors, the disjointed shutters of a window fell open and two figures entered, jumping down from the ledge. At first, Imrhien thought them part of yet another ghostly scene, but when she looked again she realized that they had attacked two of Scalzo’s torchbearers, taking them by surprise. Bearers and torches already lay sputtering out on the floor in a puddle of blood as dark as spilled wine. Circling amid the chaos of images, the intruders managed to catch two more men unawares. As these men fell, run through by short-swords, their accomplices realized what was afoot and turned in fury to fall upon the unexpected assailants. Swords flashed from scabbards, men went flying across the room. Now freed from the ring of fire, the watch-worm careened about the walls in lightning loops of illumination. Three of the torchbearers flung down their brands and leaped for the door, wrenching it open and disappearing down the stairs. The avenging watch-worm followed them at greater speed. Another man, in terror, jumped out of the open window.

  Then a shadow fell on the hearth, a dark reflection of something moving farther up inside the chimney. It seemed to be the shadow of a loathsome claw or a hideous and gigantic spider. Scrapings of soot rained out of the core of the funnel.

  A man bellowed, “Muirne!”

  The Voice rumbled louder, more venomously, “Where is my golden eye?”

  Flourishing bloody swords, Liam and another young Ertishman dashed out of the melee of shang wraiths. They slashed the ropes binding the captives.

  Four men lay wounded or dead on the floor, beneath the translucent afterimage of the watch-worm, a wheeling vortex. Some of Scalzo’s men were running about as though they had lost their wits, too terrified to leave the room in case the watch-worm should be waiting outside, yet afraid to remain and face certain peril. Shang images repeated themselves everywhere—even high in the roof-cavities, where sildron belts had been used on past gilfs. At the other end of the room, the blackened smoke-shaft began to vibrate. Bits of dislodged mortar dropped out from between the stones, building up along the mantelpiece. A pylon rammed straight down into the fireplace and stood there. It looked like a giant chicken’s foot blasted by fire or struck by a thunderbolt.

  “WHERE IS MY GOLDEN EYE?”

  “Shut up about yer golden eye!” a wounded man shrieked hysterically.

  A wind swept through the room, followed by an eerie vacuum. The short man with the whip began to slide. He shot at speed, still standing upright, toward the hearthstone. As he entered the fireplace he let out a yell and dropped the whip. In the next instant he was gone, as if something had closed on his head and pulled him upward. As quick as thought, he had simply vanished up the chimney, like a cork jetted from a bottle, his arms and legs dangling as loosely as the limbs of a wooden doll. One moment he had been rooted to the spot, a look of horror spreading across his features, and the next he was nowhere to be seen. No sound, no scream, marked his disappearance—only a small rain of soot from the flue.

  “Hasten!” someone shouted.

  The queer wind began to blow again. The vacuum sucked at the eardrums of everyone in the room. Another man began to slide.

  The erstwhile gilfs, accompanied by Liam’s comrade, jumped out of the window, with Liam bringing up the rear. As they slid down the sloping roof, the shanged night-roofs of Gilvaris Tarv spread out before them, the soft brilliance of their frosting reflecting a clover-field of stars above. Ahead of Imrhien, the young man helped Muirne to jump down to a lower roof. From behind Imrhien’s shoulder, Liam lent a hand to steady her.

  The riverside dwellings had been built higgledy-piggledy, with no attention paid to planning. Jammed up alongside each other, their roofs reached a multiplicity of heights, like some staircase constructed by a madman, randomly punctured by the burning towers of smokestacks. While the unstorm rolled away over the housetops, the foursome slithered down each canting slope and leaped across to the next, until at last they landed in a narrow laneway where two horses were tethered.

  “Make haste,” said Liam, untying the reins, “before they can raise reinforcements.”

  Even as he spoke, it was too late. Shouts, the clamor of hooves, and the crunch of booted feet erupted at the bottom of the lane, and saffron torchlight splashed the night.

  Muirne was up and onto one of the horses with one practiced swing. The young Ertishman jumped onto the other steed, then leaned down and reached toward Imrhien. Liam tossed the girl up in front of his comrade. She grabbed a handful of mane and hung on grimly.

  “Liam!” cried Muirne. Agitated, her horse pranced and sidled.

  “Go!” her brother shouted. “’Tis myself to blame. I shall hold them off until ye get away.”

  “No!”

  But Liam slapped each horse hard on the rump. Startled into flight, they took off up the lane at a gallop, leaping over the now gray and plumper shape of the avenged watch-worm wending its way down to the river.

  Far behind, cries arose. The pursuers closed in on the man who stood alone against them.

  Along winding lanes and through tunnels beneath overarching tenements the horses dashed, until they reached the outskirts of the river district. There, in a square whose center was marked by a well with a small, steeply pitched roof, their deliverer called a halt. The steeds stood breathing hard, their flanks steaming in the starlight. Sparrows, disturbed by the clatter, twittered from the eaves of a house.

  “I must go back for Liam.” The young Ertishman leaped down to the cobblestones. “Ye both, go on back to Roisin’s. Muirne, ye ken the way from Farthingwell Square.”

  “I will come with ye, Eochaid,” Muirne sobbed in a low voice.

  “Nay. What if they should take ye again? If he lives, I will bring him back. If he does not, would ye risk that the lad should have given his life in vain?”

  In a cool, calm manner, Eochaid confirmed directions for finding their way to the house of Roisin, and then he was gone, running lightly down a lane between two buildings.

  Many windows overlooked the square. The shutters of one of them now opened.

  “Who goes there?” a belligerent voice demanded. “Is that you, Pardrot?” Other voices began to join the first.

  “Come,” said Muirne in a tight murmur. She cantered out of the square, pulling Imrhien’s horse by the reins.

  They hammered on Roisin Tuillimh’s back gate. Roisin and her coachman, Brinnegar, admitted them, bundling them indoors. After that, everything seemed to happen at once.

  On hearing th
at Liam was in danger, Ethlinn lost no time. With the Wand at her side, she ran out to the stables. She was mounted and off down the street at a gallop while the rescuees were still being bandaged and embraced and endeavoring to answer Roisin’s barrage of questions.

  “But what was Liam doing back in Tarv?” Muirne kept asking. “Why was he not on the expedition with Uncle Bear?”

  Roisin explained that she and Ethlinn had not seen Liam since his departure with Sianadh’s company. When the two girls had disappeared, the alarm had been raised across the city by a network of neighbors, friends, and carlins. Swiftly and efficiently, Diarmid had assembled a band of mercenaries to join the hunt, but all attempts had been unsuccessful. Serrure’s Caravan had left without him—he had given away all thoughts of leaving the city until his sister could be found.

  Word had arrived from the neighbors in Bergamot Street. Odd-looking characters had been seen snooping around the empty house and asking questions as to the whereabouts of its previous occupants. Their questions were in vain—those who knew the carlin and her family loved them too well to betray them. Lately, Roisin’s house also had been watched.

  “Each and every time we leave this house, we catch a sight of some ill-favored thing spying from some angle or roof’s top,” Roisin said. “I’ve no doubt they are the minions of Korguth, and it is Sianadh they are after. But we have not let them deter us—in sooth, we have been trying to catch one of these watchers, in case they might give information leading us to you.”

  “I saw no spies when we arrived just now,” said Muirne, fretful and distracted.

  “Had Ethlinn not just come in the moment before you arrived, you would not have slipped past them. She has been out after them, with the Wand. In trying to elude her entrapments, they relaxed their attention. Meanwhile, upon our very doorstep you appear, all praise to the Lord of Eagles! Brinnegar has gone just now at my despatch, swiftly, with word to Diarmid of your safe whereabouts, bidding him make haste and comb the river district in strong company, to aid Liam and Eochaid. How came Liam here to the city, we know not. Back from the expedition and all by himself—’tis a mystery, and one that smacks of foul play.”