The Bitterbynde Trilogy
Page 34
“’S death!” cried the guards. “It is Greb! What has happened, and where is Han that was with him?”
Greb collapsed into the arms of his comrades and was borne away. At that moment, the lights that had been glowing away under the trees suddenly went out and the music stopped dead, cut off in the middle of a bar. The same heavy blanket of silence descended, muffling even the caravan’s bells, which hardly dared to chink.
“Come back to the wagon with me. There be more evil things abroad here than could be dreamed of in a thousand years.” Muirne had firm hold of her friend’s arm.
A far-off rumbling began, as of something approaching swiftly out of the east.
“A wickedness! A wickedness be coming this way!” The Ertish girl moved faster.
“Sain us! Aroint thee, unseelieness!” the folk among the caravans cried desperately. “Avaunt, avaunt!”
With a rattle of wheels, a crack of a whip, and a clatter of hooves, a macabre vehicle passed through the trees on a course parallel with the Road. It was a coach-and-four, lit by a lurid, flickering light of its own. Dimly through verdigrised windows could be discerned a trio of occupants. The driver wore a three-cornered hat.
As the rumor of the coach’s passage faded, Muirne whispered:
“Oghi ban Callanan—there be no road for wheels out among those trees. No road at all.”
Before she had finished speaking, the sound of bitter weeping began afar off. The sobs, like those of a grieving woman, were filled with despair and depthless anguish.
Dismay infected the caravaners like plague.
“It is the first cry of a weeper,” they gasped. “We are surely doomed!”
The mournful cries broke out afresh, closer this time, not as loud but far more sorrowful, as if the weeper were heartbroken and could never be consoled. And again, for the last time; the lamenting seemed closer, almost in the wagon with them, and soft.
“Tethera. The third cry,” said Muirne, tonelessly, unnecessarily.
Some of the horses began to jump and snort as if pricked by invisible spurs. Somehow they had worked loose from their pickets. Around and between the wagons they raced, kicking up their heels and bucking, scattering the caravaners and their fires. Soon all the horses had been contaminated by this frenzy. Imrhien thought she could spy, through the haze of dust and sparks, small dark things sitting astride their backs, grinning with malicious glee. Pointed caps adorned the riders’ oversize heads, jammed between sharp, upstanding ears. Their legs were skinny and their feet grotesquely large. They appeared like caricatures of little men, parodies sketched by a humorous artist.
The caravaners’ hounds set up a yelping and a barking. They leaped crazily in and out between the kicking hooves, snapping at the riders. The archers yelled that they could see nothing to shoot at. Men ran, shouting and swinging lanterns, trying to catch the frantic animals; others rang bells, crying advice and warnings. The whole caravan had betrayed itself in the throes of pandemonium.
Screaming and frothing, the wizard’s palfrey hurdled the remains of a campfire and hurtled away down the Road as if whipped mercilessly, with all the other horses in fervid pursuit. Some of the men ran after them and, like the horses, were swallowed up in darkness. None returned.
Orders were relayed down the line.
“Keep your lanterns lit. Stay in the wagons. Turn your clothes.”
Diarmid swung himself up into his sister’s wagon. The lanterns shone on his pale face. His eyes were caverns of shadow.
“What report, Diarmid?”
“No need to fear, Muirne,” her brother said loudly, for the benefit of the other occupants, who craned forward to hear. “The wains are built of rowan and iron. They are solid protection as long as we stay within them. Come cock-crow, we shall go forth to find the horses. They will not have strayed far.”
“In truth, Diarmid, how fare we?” said Muirne in a low voice. “Tell me softly.”
Her brother hesitated, then spoke in a murmur.
“Badly, in faith, badly. Many men are lost—how many I cannot reckon. The horses—mayhap we shall never find them. My hope is that the worst is yet over.”
But it was not.
To keep the silent night at bay, the caravaners continually jangled bells and droned incantations. They whistled until their lips were as dry as the wizard’s rooster’s throat was hoarse. For a time, this appeared to have effect—eldritch sights and sounds died away, retreated.
As though gathering their strength.
The waiting was unnerving—the total lack of any sign of activity, of any clue as to what might happen next, or when.
Fear grew steadily on all those who sheltered among the wains, a dread so heavy that they could scarcely lift their leaden hands to shake the bells or force their numbed mouths to shape the rhyming words. A groping horror came down the Road, reaching out to seize them. In every breast a great need arose, to dash away from it, away up the Road out of its clutches.
“Hold fast! Stay in your wagons!” bellowed the guards.
Several of the caravaners wrenched themselves from the grasp of their fellows and fled, gibbering, unable to endure any longer, driven from their wits by terror. Those left behind leaned from the wagons, calling in vain entreaty, straining their eyes against unrelieved darkness.
From far away reverberated the dismal “holloa” of a Hunter.
Other things issued from the dark then, and it was the signal for the onset of Chambord’s Caravan’s doom.
They barreled in with a wild and eldritch uproar, the hound-pack of the Hunter. Baying and howling, they rushed in with the power of a windstorm and the fury of thunder, snorting fire. Too numerous were they to be stopped by the hail of arrows, for when one fell another two took its place. Blood lust boiled in their eyes. Bone-white glistened their coats and fangs. Their tongues and ears burned with an inner radiance, crimson as fresh gore. As for the caravaners, gone was all thought of protection, all thought of resistance—this was the final reckoning, the last grasp at survival. The hour of destruction was upon them.
Lanterns were flung away, shattering like broken flowers on the Road. The night exploded with the deafening howl of the pack, which drowned the noises of flight—the crashes, the running feet, the appalling cries, the bloody rendings.
When pallid dawn glimmered reluctantly, its light washed down over a strange scene. Twenty-eight abandoned vehicles stood in a row. About them, nothing moved. Nothing at all.
When the tumult of the hounds had first reached the ears of Imrhien and her two friends, Diarmid, grim-faced, had reacted swiftly, saying, “That sound—’tis either the Wild Hunt or the Dando Dogs. Either way, the end is nigh. These we cannot withstand. Now ’tis time to fly or perish. Leave behind all chattels. Come.”
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Panic ensued. Someone had pushed Imrhien from behind and she had fallen onto the Road. Picking herself up, she narrowly avoided being trampled by those who, in their heedless terror, jumped down from the wagon. By the light of the remaining lantern swinging on the wagon’s side, people ran hither and thither, uncertain which direction to take, lest they run straight into the maws of the unseelie dogs. Some were knocked to the ground in the confusion. Some called out, “Avaunt!” Others yelled, “Bo Shrove!” Through this milling group they struggled, Diarmid with his sister on his right arm and Imrhien on his left. Two guards collided with them, breaking Diarmid’s grip and separating the trio. In the dimness Imrhien could not find them again. Faintly through the din, she thought she heard their voices calling her name and each other’s. Imagining she saw them diving headlong into the trees, she picked up her skirts and ran for her life.
There in the Forest of Tiriendor, a kind of blindness sealed her eyes, and she lost all sense of time. Eerie howls issued f
rom all around. The flesh crawled and shivered at the back of her neck. She stumbled on, not knowing which way she was going, certain that at any moment grisly jaws would seize her. But as she lurched forward, crashing into hard objects, impeded by her garments catching and ripping on things unseen, the cries of the pack became dimmer and drew away. Eventually they faded altogether. The pursuee stopped, unable to go any farther. Exhausted, she sank to the ground and passed involuntarily into a twitching half-sleep, like animated death.
Never had morning been more welcome. Dawn, to banish the evils of night.
The light of day revealed Imrhien’s surroundings to be no murky wood of gnarled and snarling trees. It was an ordinary forest, though very beautiful. She looked around in growing awe. To waken here was to waken in the heart of a great jewel shot with vermilion, amber, topaz, chartreuse, russet: the blazing hues of maples touched by Autumn’s artistic gramarye. Strung between the finer twigs hung thousands of spiderwebs that, having caught the dewdrops, shimmered like starry nets, refracting the light, now winking silver, now violet.
The return of awareness brought memories of loss like a blow, with redoubled force. Now, once more, was she alone. The grieving for Sianadh that was ever present, at this time extended to embrace the entire caravan, draining her initiative and leaving a hollow emptiness. There was only one hope to cling to—that Muirne and Diarmid, or some of the others, had survived.
The dew, so eye-catching on the webs, was cold and clammy on the skin. Shivering, Imrhien moved stiffly from the red-gold drift of leaves into which she had fallen, brushing herself off with bruised and aching hands. Her aimless, panicked footsteps of the previous night had plowed a path through the forest carpet. She retraced it until it lost itself among ferns. Still she stumbled on in the same direction, hoping it would take her back to the Road. Of course, there was a strong possibility that she had been running in circles the night before and therefore might strike off in the wrong direction—parallel to the Road or even toward the heart of the forest—but there was no way of knowing. She had to do something, to search, however despairingly—to move her limbs so that warmth would return to them. Had she been able, she would have called out a greeting to whoever might be near. For surely someone from the caravan must be within earshot.…
In a little glade, tall flowers glowed—crimson lilies whose cups had filled with dew. She tipped them and drank nectartinct water. High above, birds twittered, cheeped, chirruped, and whistled from every branch. Oh, to put on a sildron harness, to be able to go glissanding as nobles did for sport—as, it was said, the Dainnan sometimes did. At a height of fifty to seventy-five feet, clearing the smaller vegetation and about halfway up the taller trees, glissanders would take hold of a branch and propel themselves forward to the next. Momentum carried them a long way, down in the shelter of the trees where there was little air turbulence, but if glissanders found themselves suspended helpless, stationary, with no branches nearby, they would use the ropes they carried, throwing an end to the nearest bough, then pulling themselves in, hand over hand. Sildron repelled the ground but would not, of itself, propel—no wizard had yet been able to invent a suitable bladed rotor for personal propulsion in glissanding, and the idea of it had been discarded long ago. Imrhien considered the sildron she owned, which was now sitting uselessly in a box in the valuables-coach of Chambord’s Caravan. Special tools and expertise were needed to shape the metal, none of which had been available to Ethlinn’s family—otherwise she would have had a flying-belt made in Gilvaris Tarv, with an andalum cover to slide over it.
A crackling of boughs over to the right arrested her musings. Something pushed through the foliage—a giant, covered in dusky fur. The bear passed by, ignoring her, and lumbered away.
Strangely heartened by this sight of a beast that was not eldritch, the girl pushed on.
At her back, the sun rode higher. From time to time there came distant sounds that might have been the barking of some creature. Not knowing whether the Road was to the right or to the left, the wanderer decided to continue heading west, merely because her original destination lay in that direction; to keep going until the Road swung around and crossed her path or until she perished from hunger or from assuaging the hunger of some other creature.
A second disturbance in the lower boughs made her heart knock. An icicle of fear lanced between her ribs. Another lorraly beast or some apparition of unseelie, come to finish a task?
A branch moved and a head appeared, turning to scan the surroundings. A man’s head, brown-haired. She might have wept for joy, for it was Diarmid. He had not caught sight of her, apparently, and began to move away quite swiftly. Distracted, she tried to call out, but only a sigh issued from her throat. A half-formed warning floated in her thoughts but was drowned by the need to catch his attention before he disappeared.
She snatched at a dry branch and swung on it with all her might. With a resounding crack it broke off. In the instant she tumbled with the branch, Diarmid’s skian flew past her ear and stuck, quivering, in the bark of the trunk. The warning, belated, formed itself clearly across her vision: If you take him unawares, he will think you a creature of unseelie.
An outline blocked out the leaf-framed sky, the silhouette of a man with sword upraised in both hands. As she flung up the broken bough to defend herself, he cried out in amazement.
“Obban tesh!” Ertish—a lapse.
His sword lowered, he helped her to her feet, gazing upon her with eager relief.
“Is Muirne with you?” His face fell when she shook her head.
“Which way did she go? Did you see her? Which way is the Road?”
His visage regained its remote and grim expression as he received her negative answers.
“I have called her name many times.…”
Finally he said, “There be nothing for it but to go on westward until we find her, or discover the Road, or both. Black was the day I first heard the name of Chambord.”
He pulled the skian out of the tree trunk, and together they went forward.
The leather harness of an outrider fared better in harsh environments than the Autumnal traveling raiment of a wealthy city lady. Stout though the broadcloth fabric of Imrhien’s outfit was, it had been pierced and rent in many places. Her jacket, kirtle, overgown, and petticoats hung in rags. Her mantle was gone, but miraculously the taltry had survived. Some of the gold coins that had been sewn into the linings had fallen out, but the small traveler’s pouch that hung concealed under her ripped bodice was still safe. It contained a key, a ruby, a sapphire, a bracelet of pearls, and an emerald. She and Muirne and Diarmid had all donned these pouches as a precaution against robbery. The remainder of their wealth lay within locked caskets inside the reinforced valuables-coach of the abandoned caravan.
“I have studied woodcraft,” said Diarmid as they pushed through thickets of orange foliage, “in readiness for the tests for admittance to the Dainnan Brotherhood. With my knowledge, we shall survive.” These statements were most reassuring, and it was comforting to think of them later that day when it began to rain and the two lost wanderers sheltered under a dripping tree, their stomachs gnawed out with hunger. Diarmid stared silently out at the steady, pattering stream. Certainly he was a more taciturn companion than his boisterous uncle.
Ah, Sianadh, thought Imrhien, if rain were the sky’s tears, it should be weeping for him. The steely face of the man beside her barely masked his own grief—his brother, his uncle, and now his sister had been torn from him.
When the showers tapered away, Diarmid started to dig a pit-trap in the middle of a track made by some animal, but the sticks he used to penetrate the soil kept breaking off, and he was forced to stop.
“I have not the right tools,” he said.
He rubbed two more sticks together to start a fire so that they could dry their garments.
“The wood is too wet.”
Imrhien helped him search for wild fruits. “These crab-apples are not edible. They
are too bitter.”
That night they slept in a pile of leaves, taking turns to keep watch, huddled together for warmth. Diarmid remained stoic against the fact that his strong sense of harmony and symmetry was injured every time he was forced to glance in her direction. Despite his kenning-name “the Cockerel” among the mercenaries, which he insisted was because he was a favorite with the ladies—but which some said was more to do with the resemblance of a cockscomb to the roots of his hair—a coldness existed between them that went deeper than the chill of the flesh. To Diarmid, all folk were either friends or enemies, men or women; she properly fitted none of these categories in his eyes, and he did not know truly how to behave toward her. She would not have wished it otherwise, except that some comradeship might have been pleasant.
In the morning, Diarmid said, “Today is the fifth of Gaothmis. If we go on at this rate, we shall not reach Caermelor until early in Nethilmis.”
Flagging, his companion admired his optimism.
That day he made a noose-trap with his belt and strips of broadcloth slashed from Imrhien’s over-gown. They waited in silent concealment for hours, but no untame thing was so obliging as to ensnare itself, save only five wine-red leaves. The sight of them almost plucked some deep string of remembrance in the inner core of Imrhien, but at the last, it failed. She retrieved the belt and makeshift rope, and they went on.
“Hunting and trapping wastes time. We shall gather as we go.”
The ache in Imrhien’s stomach felt familiar. Should I ever regain civilization, I shall learn how to survive comfortably when forced to be far from it. Reality was so different from the tales heard in the Tower kitchens. Fictional wanderers always discovered food with ease along the way, fruit and berries dropped into their hands; no matter what the season, they habitually slept on the ground without suffering from damp and dying of cold. All utter myths.
Stumbling across deep brakes of hazel seemed a stroke of good fortune. Eagerly they began to raid them for ripe nuts that lay scattered on the ground. The thicket gave a frantic heave and exploded. Its wild heart burst out, wearing a malevolent face, and the face shrieked: