The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Gin tha’ steal or gin tha’ beg,

  Tha’ll get no cobs from Churnmilk Peg.

  A green-skinned, ragged, haggard crone grew out appallingly at the marauders. She careered forth like some preposterous weed, brandishing a knopped hazel-club in a knobbled hand. Her sly, upswept eyes were the shape of narrow leaves and as hard and brown as hazelnuts. She had a furfuraceous chin, a parasitical gall of a nose.

  Peg shall beat tha’ if tha’ stay—

  Nut thieves, nut thieves, go away!

  Her rictus of a grin exposed lichened teeth, but Diarmid stood his ground. The guardian wight ground her teeth and lifted her hands. Splintery slivers of fingernails extruded like thorns from her sticklike fingers. Confronted with this evidence of vegetable malignity, Diarmid revised his plan and stepped back.

  “You wicked old thing—have your way, then.”

  Hastening from the hazel brakes, the wayfarers continued on their journey. Sounds of rhythmic churning came grinding from out of the wight-protected thicket, receding as distance increased.

  “Not a powerful wight, but too much like an old woman in looks. I never strike women.”

  <>

  Stone as usual, Diarmid did not smile.

  They went hungry on that second day, and the morning of the third showed every sign that their plight would be no different. Furthermore, the night had been cold—so cold that the wayfarers, in their damp garments, had hardly slept. With chattering teeth they had walked to and fro during most of the dark hours, too sleepy even to keep a proper watch for peril.

  But as they plodded through that morning under a misty roof of leaves, Imrhien knew that they could not continue much longer in this manner. It had been different when she’d traveled with Sianadh; then it had been high Summer. Now the seasons had turned, bringing the danger of perishing from exposure. Cold and hungry, she desired only to lie down and sleep. Stubbornness and pride drove her on.

  Although lack of nourishment made them lightheaded and scattered their wits, it did not dull their senses. If anything, it sharpened them, so that when the fragrance drifted to their nostrils it seemed the most piquant and mouthwatering scent they had ever inhaled. Their wits assembled themselves promptly. Simultaneously, the walkers moved in the direction from which allurement drifted.

  “It might be a trap. Keep watch in case we are surrounded. Have you the self-bored stone tilhal my mother gave to you?”

  Imrhien nodded. Self-bored stones were eagerly sought. Pierced by a central hole worn by the natural action of a flowing stream, such a charm was an invaluable asset if confronted with shape-shifters or the glamour—to look through the hole was to strip away illusion. Imrhien drew out the tilhal, in readiness.

  Their senses drew them to a little sunny clearing. At its edge, they peered warily out from behind flaming leaf-curtains.

  Springy turf ran down to a small, reed-fringed pool. A short distance from its mirrored surface, a pile of sticks burned on a flat stone, the flames ethereal in the sunlight, sending up a slender column of blue smoke.

  Between water and fire, a man reclined on his elbow, carelessly flicking a stalk of grass. That is to say, one who looked like a man, but since humanlike form was the true shape of many eldritch wights, Imrhien could not be certain. She was not close enough to see whether there was some defect, the inevitable sign of eldritch. She held the self-bored stone to her eye. Through it he appeared unaltered.

  “Dainnan!” breathed Diarmid. “He wears Dainnan gear. Not a wight, then?”

  <>

  “Good morrow.” The stranger’s voice carried clearly across the clearing: “In fellowship, come forth.”

  Startled, the spies glanced at one another. Diarmid nodded, squared his shoulders, and assumed the watchful demeanor of a guard. “Stay behind me.” He let his right hand fall to his side, setting it lightly on his sword-hilt.

  They emerged into the open and approached. The stranger did not move from his position. He smiled up at them, a dark smile that struck within Imrhien like the note of a great bell. A dazzle ran straight through her like a silver needle.

  “Sit you down by the fire,” he invited, “unless you prefer your teeth chattering in your heads.”

  In that brief glimpse, it came to Imrhien that to describe this stranger as “handsome” would be doing him an injustice. It would be as inadequate as applying the word pretty to a sable sky jeweled with stars, and those stars lowering their reflections like glimmering nets into a wintry sea.

  Lean and angular was his face, the features chiseled, high-boned. Beneath straight eyebrows his dark eyes seemed to burn with a cold fire, piercing. His jaw was strong and cleanshaven, although brushed with rough shadow. The hair, glossy black as a raven’s wing, was swept carelessly back from his brow, the front locks pulled loosely back and knotted together behind his head and falling, bound, nearly to the waist. Unfastened—she imagined—it would be a cloud of soft darkness, a cascade of shadow.

  As young and yet as long-enduring as Spring he seemed to Imrhien, and all in that flash she had noted he was tall and broad of shoulder, with the hard-thewed look of a warrior. There had been no defect.

  Quite the reverse.

  The warmth of the fire reached out welcomingly to penetrate the chill flesh of the wanderers. They moved closer to the blaze but remained standing. Imrhien did not know if she breathed.

  “Thank you,” Diarmid replied guardedly, “we are but passing by. Have you seen other travelers these three days, perhaps a red-haired lady?”

  “Do you enjoy giving your host a crick in the neck?”

  They seated themselves.

  Reaching her hands out to the flames, the girl stared fixedly at them, avoiding the stranger’s eyes. The pounding of her pulse was a choir of a thousand voices, as low as the rumble of stone shifting beneath the foundations of the mountains, as high as the birthplaces of the stars. Her thoughts were so vivid, she felt that they could be read easily by a blind beggar. She blushed, like the fire.

  When she had first come near, she had imagined this lone traveler might be one of the ganconers, the Love-Talkers, male counterparts of the beautiful, ruthless baobhansith. Soon the tone of his comments put her mind at rest.

  “Have I recently seen other persons as half-perished as you two? I cannot say that I have.” He spoke in a musical baritone, his words clearly articulated.

  Imrhien’s mind was numb. As from a distance, she thought, His voice is as beautiful as the rest. Surely he speaks with extraordinary power.

  “I pray you, speak more plainly,” said Diarmid, bristling like a hound at bay.

  “You wish me to give a direct answer, to prove I am no wight who has destroyed those whom you seek?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, no.”

  After a perplexed pause during which both Imrhien and Diarmid wondered what kind of validation his answer implied, the Ertishman parried, “What proof have you that we are human?”

  “The obvious signs.”

  “Such as?”

  “The new beard out of match with the rest—a human mistake.”

  Diarmid’s hand flew to his red-sprouting chin.

  “And she?” he demanded, nettled.

  “She.”

  Another pause. Imrhien burned in the knowledge that the dark, thoughtful gaze was bent upon her. She dared not look up.

  “Lady,” the voice said gently, “will you speak?”

  “I speak for her. She is mute,” interjected the Ertishman.

  “Well, lady, is that so?”

  She nodded, eyes downcast.

  The stranger took a stick and raked a pile of coals heaped by the fire, uncovering four ash-coated lumps in the shape of small, flat loaves. Their savory fragrance burst out like an assault. The girl wanted to reach her hand through the translucent flames and snatch them out.

  “What bakes there?” Diarmid’s voice had an edge to it.

  “En
ough to share.”

  With deft precision, the Dainnan hooked the loaves out of the embers onto a waiting dish formed from a scoop of bark. Beside the bark dish lay a leaf plate holding several varieties of fruits and berries. The Dainnan took up an orange-red pomegranate and sliced off the top.

  “You may not speak, but perhaps you will eat.”

  > Automatically she made the sign and accepted the fruit with trembling hands. He passed another to the Ertishman.

  Diarmid had devoured his portion when Imrhien had scarcely begun. The presence of the stranger killed her hunger. The scooped-out pith and seeds of the pomegranate tasted sweet, but she could only nibble at them.

  “Do not stint yourselves.”

  The famished Ertishman needed no second invitation. He reached for a loaf and broke it open, heedless of burnt fingers. Steam jumped from the pale gold dough inside, like shredded cloud.

  When all the food was gone and washed down with clear water from the spring, he sighed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “A noble repast. I am indebted, sir.”

  “Perhaps you are in my debt, but it is only your names you owe me, guests, in good courtesy.”

  “Captain Bruadair of Chambord’s Mercenary Guards, at your service.” Declared with a seated bow.

  By this, the giving of his family name, Imrhien knew that Diarmid had put behind him any doubt about the stranger’s humanity.

  “This damsel, the companion of my lost sister, is called by the kenning of ‘Imrhien.’ And you, sir?”

  “My Dainnan name is Thorn.”

  “You are Dainnan, yet you travel alone?”

  The stranger smiled. “How much do you know of the Brotherhood? Alone, in pairs, in groups—the Dainnan travel as needs must. In my case it is expedient—one alone is often overlooked, giving him a better chance to gather information unobserved. I travel on the King-Emperor’s business.”

  “We were journeying to Caermelor when our caravan was waylaid by unseelie wights on the Road. All folk were driven from it or destroyed.”

  “Wights?” the Dainnan said sharply. “What was your reckoning of their number?”

  Diarmid told him.

  “So many and so strong.” He looked grave. “My undertaking—about which you are doubtless vexed—while royal business, is no secret. It is to measure the strength and numbers of unseelie wights pouring up from the south in this strange new tide. As it happens, I am near the end of my mission and on my way back to Caermelor. Join me and teach me this intriguing speech of hands you have between you. I will show you how to find food.”

  Imrhien now noted that no rucksack was in evidence—only a bow and quiver lay nearby on the grass. The stranger journeyed lightly burdened.

  “Sir, food-gathering is a skill I already possess,” Diarmid said, simmering with pent-up resentment.

  The Dainnan shrugged. “As it please you.”

  <>

  Diarmid added hastily, “But in courtesy we will go partway, at least, in your company.”

  “If only in courtesy, let me assure you there is no obligation. I travel faster alone.”

  Thorn rose to his feet, lithe as a great cat, and kicked the fire out. Tall and straight he stood. Imrhien studied him from the corner of her eye, cataloging every detail.

  He wore a shirt of fine wool with wide sleeves gathered at the shoulders and rolled up to the elbows; over this, a tunic of soft leather reaching almost to his knees and slit on both sides along the length of his thighs, to allow freedom of movement. Beneath the tunic, leather leggings. At each shoulder, the Royal Insignia was embroidered—a crown over the numeral 16 with the runes J and R on either side. Around his right forearm was wrapped a supple calfskin bracer laced with leather thongs. From a baldric swung a silver-clasped horn, white as milk, and a smaller, sun-yellow horn mounted in brass. At his belt, a water-bottle, a couple of pouches, and a coil of rope. From a weapon-belt depended a sheathed dagger and a smaller knife, as well as a short-handled axe.

  He picked up a second baldric, heavily embossed, slinging it across his chest from his right shoulder. A longbow and quiver protruded from behind that shoulder now, and arrows crested with bands of green and gold, fletched with dyed goose-feathers.

  “May we accompany you, in any case?” Diarmid asked, his face set, stonily trying to betray no emotion, no weakness.

  “Would this arrangement please you?” This was addressed to Imrhien. Again she nodded in response to Thorn’s question, again without meeting his eye. Something was knotted in her, hurting. If only she did not have to besmirch those eyes by presenting them with such a face to look at. If only she could shape-shift and become the wind, unseen to tug those strands of black hair.

  Thorn picked up the cloak on which he had lain and whistled softly. A goshawk flew down to his shoulder.

  “Come, then.”

  He strode from the clearing, and they had no heart but to follow.

  Imrhien called to mind all that she had learned of the Dainnan. An elite brotherhood of warriors were they, a company of men who were more than royal bodyguards, for their role was as peacekeepers in these times, and they had been soldiers in times of war. When they were not at court they roamed throughout the lands. In Summer they lived in the open, in Winter they sometimes billeted with the people. Their leader was the famous Tamlain Conmor, Duke of Roxburgh, who was sometimes called the greatest warrior of Erith. Most youths aspired to the ranks of the Dainnan, but those who wished to join had to pass strenuous tests. The first prerequisite was expertise in Erithan historical sagas and poetry, yet this was easy compared with the famous tests of fighting skill and valor, of swiftness, agility, and fearlessness, that the Dainnan demanded. Only the cream of the candidates succeeded.

  He traveled light, this Dainnan. Obviously, woodcraft stood him in good stead to survive in the wilderness. He went swiftly but with astonishing silence, causing neither twig to snap nor leaf to rustle. Although revived by the mouthfuls of food she had swallowed, Imrhien had difficulty in keeping up—her tattered skirts hampered free movement. Before her, Diarmid crashed along like a berserk bull, occasionally turning impatiently to offer her his arm—had they both always been so clumsy?

  Thorn paid no heed to their noise but drew them aside now and then to reveal the secrets of the season—the shriveled, twining tendrils that must be tracked with patience as they wound through rocks to the point at which they entered the ground, indicating the presence of tubers, which he dug up with a sharpened stick; the white-barked wild fig-tree, its slender branches extending from the crevices of a rocky outcrop, bearing clusters of long, dusty green leaves and reddish orange fruit; in moist gullies, the tree-ferns with their “fiddleheads,” or unopened fronds, never to be eaten without first being roasted to remove their acids.

  Once, he pointed to a liquidambar tree, alone in a clearing: 150 feet of brilliant ruby, gold, and deep purple.

  “What can we eat of that?” Diarmid asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “A man cannot draw sustenance from beauty.”

  “I can.”

  Foods, medicines, dyes—all could be obtained from the wilderness, Thorn informed them in his beautiful voice, and Autumn was the richest season, in other ways as well. The gorgeous hues of the Forest of Tiriendor hung festooned on all sides like jeweled curtains. Spreading tupelos boasted bright red leaves and vivid blue fruits. The flat, fanlike sprays of the white cedars’ aromatic foliage were turning from dark green to orange gold. High above, crimson glory-vines climbed rampant, sunlight shining through their stained-glass leaves.

  The sun was sinking when they came to yet another rill—there had been no shortage of watercourses along the way; indeed, it seemed they had been leaping over them constantly. Along the banks of this one, among a profusion of fishbone ferns and sword-leafed irises, grew grass bushes, heavy with seed-heads.

  “Panicum grass.” Thorn, on bended knee, stripped the tiny seeds off the stalks. Following hi
s example, Imrhien soon had a skirtful of seed. He held out the leather pouch for her to pour it into, then brought the fingertips of his open hand, palm facing inward, down and forward from his mouth.

  He smiled, as he often did, and Imrhien imagined how that breath-stopping, white, wolf-smile no doubt made slaves of every lady of the court. So—he had already learned “Thank you” from her earlier inadvertent gesture.

  “See,” said Diarmid, indicating with outflung hand, “that tree is leafless, yet it bears bunches of yellow berries, like beads. Beauty that can be eaten.”

  “Taste them and die. Melia’s berries are poison. Sometimes the most beautiful things are the most ungentle,” replied the Dainnan. “And conversely.”

  The goshawk flew off from time to time, but always it returned.

  “No jesses, no bell, no hood,” Diarmid remarked, “yet surely at night the bird must be tethered?”

  “Not by me.”

  “It is trained well. An imprint?”

  “No.”

  When chill evening drew in, they made camp by a rocky pool formed by the streamlet. It was overhung by red-gold maples whose discarded leaves floated, suspended on its glasslike surface. They piled up dry sticks collected along the way, and Diarmid used the Dainnan’s tinderbox. Flames budded along the dark twigs like luminous flowers. Beside the fire, Thorn excavated a hole a foot deep and a little more in diameter.

  The Dainnan showed them how to rub the grass-seeds between their hands and let the breeze winnow the outer glumes away. He used a stone to grind the seeds into a thick paste with water in the hollow of a rock. This he poured onto the hot ashes in six small flat loaves, covering them with glowing sticks. By now the fire had burned low, forming coals. He lined the cooking pit with these, placed the washed tubers inside, and covered them with coals and warm soil. When the upper surfaces of the loaves had been toasted, he turned them over, heaped hot ashes over the top, and left them to cook through. While they waited for the baking to be completed, Diarmid and the girl roasted fiddleheads and feasted on figs. Thorn unstrung his longbow and stood rubbing it down with wax.