The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  <>

  “I will escort you, then,” Diarmid said heavily. “It is not safe to travel alone, especially for a woman.”

  “Go your way to Isenhammer, Captain Bruadair,” interrupted a musical voice. “The road to White Down Rory is fair in all seasons, and I would fain take a stroll along it.” Thorn had crossed the yard to where they stood.

  Diarmid’s halfhearted protestations were overruled. He looked constantly toward his sister and the loaded wagon bound for Isenhammer. Plainly he was relieved to be absolved of his perceived duty toward Imrhien.

  “Then, I shall go with Muirne,” he said at last. “My lady Imrhien, prithee send word to let us know where you are lodging, and I shall have repayment delivered to you with all speed.” Now that he was taking his leave, he spoke with painful courtesy, unable to meet Imrhien’s eyes. “I … you have been kind …” His words trailed away. Turning to the Dainnan, the Ertishman lifted his head.

  “My lord,” Diarmid said, clearly moved, “if I am successful in assaying for the Brotherhood, then I would have only one boon in the world left to wish for—that I might do my duty under your command.”

  “That may yet come to pass,” said Thorn. Abruptly, Diarmid dropped down on one knee and bent his head. After a moment, as if bestowing on him some title of honor, Thorn touched him on the shoulder.

  “Rise, brave captain, and good speed. Fare well.”

  Diarmid stood up. “Fare well, both my companions on the Road,” he said. “May we meet soon.”

  He bowed deeply to them both, then, as an afterthought, suddenly enveloped Imrhien in a swift embrace and jumped up onto the wagon. Imrhien’s hands danced urgently.

  <>

  Diarmid reached down and helped his sister climb aboard. Then Imrhien tossed up a wrapped package to them. It contained the fire-red ruby. If her friends should not find success in Isenhammmer, at the least they would not have to beg on the streets. Before they had a chance to find out what the parcel contained or even to call out their thanks, the driver gave a shout. With the crack of a whip, a clatter of hooves, and a rattle of iron wheels, the wagon moved out through the archway, turned into the road, and bowled away.

  It had rained during the night. Thorn’s and Imrhien’s boots swished through wet leaves. Lacking polish, Imrhien’s allowed water in. Soon her feet were drenched. The grasses by the verge, tall and cream-colored amid new blades of pale wine-green, bowed their heads in obeisance to the faintest caress of air. Thrushes trilled. Errantry soared overhead, scattering the songbirds, then swooped to alight on the Dainnan’s shoulder. He raised his feathers, shook them into place, opened his hooked beak in silent commentary, and snapped it shut.

  Sunlight brushed Imrhien’s skin with warm flakes, although the breeze was knife-sharp and bitter. Stamped against a blue enamel sky, the first wattle-blooms of Winter bubbled in bright, soft gilt on the trees and powdered the distance with gold-dust. Oak-leaves yet clung to ancient groves by the wayside, in masses of bronze and saffron that could not outshine the wattles’ glory. But Imrhien might as well have been walking in a black tunnel under Doundelding, being blind to all save the path before her feet and deaf to all save the voice of he who walked beside her.

  The road to White Down Rory ran up and down, through trees that parted occasionally to allow glimpses of rolling meadows and wooded slopes beyond and secret, misty dells threaded by streams glimmering like electrum. The way rolled down into one of these dells and ran beside a willow-lined beck that widened into a pool. Dragonflies flickered across its surface—at least, they appeared to be dragonflies until one looked closely. In fact, the forms between those shimmering double vanes were tiny folk, much smaller than siofra. Toadlike waterleapers scattered into the reeds at the approach of the intruders, flapping their fans of wings. When fully grown they would be huge and quite terrible, if they survived to adulthood.

  There the travelers stopped to rest, and from a wallet given him by the innkeeper Thorn produced great doorsteps of bread and thick slices of ham. Her heart sickened by the imminence of parting, Imrhien could not bring herself to eat. Presently he put the food away without sampling it himself.

  All the way, as they walked side by side, he had laughed and sung and they had made jokes in hand-speak, and she had taught him the sign for “shang.” Travelers coming the other way on horseback had hailed them blithely, without pausing, and he had called a greeting in answer. Now he fell quiet, meditative, watching the still pool with its reflections of bare willow-withes and dormant cloudlets. The goshawk perched on a branch and closed his mad orange eyes.

  Where the stream entered the pool, Imrhien found smooth, water-worn stones, flat ones, and skipped one across the water to break Thorn’s reverie. He looked up with his flash of a smile like a piercing blow to the heart and came, surefooted as a lynx, to the stream.

  “How many times can you skip a stone?”

  Having practiced with Sianadh at Waterstair, Imrhien had almost perfected the subtle flick of the wrist. After a few tries, she achieved an eight. Thorn spun a few pebbles that bounded high, then sank.

  <> she signed.

  He nodded and gathered another handful.

  Sianadh had been a great stone-skipper at Waterstair—the champion (so he said) of his village in Finvarna—but she had never seen him skip one more than a dozen times. Thorn’s missiles now jumped twice seven, thrice seven, thrice nine times, and though she tried she could not match that and flung away her last pebble, half-vexed, half-admiring. A haggard hand shot up out of the water, caught it, and slowly withdrew. The pool was inhabited.

  Thorn juggled pebbles and made them vanish and reappear.

  <>

  He let the stones fall. They rolled on the turf.

  <>

  The road was pot-holed and strewn with fallen leaves. Wheel-ruts were many, and the leaves looked as though they had been disturbed recently, as if many travelers had passed to and from White Down Rory. They met a wagonload of folk journeying from the village, then others on foot, staves in hand.

  The sun wheeled its way to a low Winter apogee behind the clouds, which thinned and drifted northward, leaving only the white scuff-marks of their passing. Daylight sharpened each feature of the landscape, imbuing them with every tint of green, every shade of somber gold. Near at hand, the leaves were etched by their own shadows; far off, pastel chalk-dust overlaid the dozing hills.

  Long shadows were stretching to the east when at last the travelers walked over the crest of a hill and saw below, down among the folds of the hills, the roofs of a village. The road ran swiftly down. Thorn turned his compelling eyes on Imrhien.

  “To which house are you bound?”

  Ethlinn had given clear directions: <>

  Imrhien guessed the Dainnan was impatient to be on the road to Caermelor. He had accompanied her this far out of courtesy—one of the precepts of the Dainnan code was respect for women. But now, within sight of the village, there was no need for her to delay him any longer. Besides, if he continued by her side, there would come a time when her growing distress would well up and show itself.

  The road entered a thick clump of trees at the bottom of the hill. It was here that the track branched off. Just past the intersection, it turned suddenly and vanished from sight behind the grove.

  <>

  “As you wish.”

  Imrhien turned away from Thorn and strove to master her thoughts. Her hands were shaking violently. She heard him step close beside her shoulder, felt his heavy cloak blow against her skirts.

  “Change your path. There is yet time.”

&
nbsp; He was a dark flame. His nearness was too near—she must die of it.

  “Come with me to the court.”

  She started, as if stung. What? Go with him among the courtiers? To be made a laughingstock or, worse, to see him made one? To have to bear the pitying glances and the whispered asides? Yet there was that in the intense gaze he bent upon her that might have melted quartz-crystal to milk. Avoiding it, fixing her eyes on the ground, she shook her head.

  <>

  “Are you sure of this, in your heart?”

  A nod.

  Imrhien noticed a small thistle that was growing between two stones in the road, just beside the toe of her boot. Its leaves were dagged like the sleeves of aristocrats. She forced her attention to dwell on that thistle.

  “Then we must part,” she heard Thorn say, “for my path lies to the west. Yet methinks it may be long ere we meet again, caileagh faoileag.”

  Silence. She dared not raise her head, for he would not fail to observe that she stared with the eyes of madness. Dimly, from far above, the plangent cry of the goshawk was borne down the breeze.

  “I must needs ask you—a matter has been troubling me.” On the brink of a question, he hesitated, sighed. “No. It is not possible. But there is something about you, I thought …”

  He extricated something from beneath his tunic. “This, a gift for you.”

  It was the red crystal phial of Dragon’s Blood that he dropped into her palm. Tears pricked behind her eye sockets. What had she to give him in return? To gift him with one of her jewels seemed paltry and somehow discourteous.

  “May I have something of yours?”

  <>

  Three sudden, sharp pains. Her hand flew to her head. A trio of golden hairs lay in Thorn’s palm. “These I shall take as a token,” he said, twisting the fine filaments together and rolling them into a circle. “Safely shall I keep them.” He placed the ring on a finger of his left hand. “And now, since the phial was nothing, what would you truly ask of me?”

  The thought flashed into Imrhien’s head, unbidden: A kiss. She hoped he had not read it on her countenance. In her confusion, her hands faltered, bungling the signs.

  <>

  He nodded and stood a moment as if pondering. Then swiftly, before she understood what was happening, he stepped forward, placed one hand gently under her chin and the other behind her head, and kissed her full on the mouth.

  Only twice before had there been direct contact between them. Now, bolts like the Beithir’s, only sweet as ecstasy, went through and through from head to toe, over and over, until she thought she must die; then he released her quickly and strode away up the hill, and she fled, stumbling, weeping, through the trees.

  Salt tears coursed down Imrhien’s face, stinging. The footpath in its ribbed tunnel became blurred, swimming in grief and loss. She ran faster, to outstrip sorrow, to leave it behind, but always it followed close at her heels. Away and around and down, over the bridge and up and around again, now slicing between high hedges or under stone walls, now passing across open turf, now through an oak coppice, now beneath the spreading boughs of chestnuts, black in the fading light. Eerie, slitted eyes glared from among tree-roots and winked out. Sudden laughter rattled in outlandish throats. Things scurried suddenly, unseen. A white hare bounded across the path. Something hooted.

  Ahead, warm yellow lamplight spilled from two windows and filtered through the trees, growing stronger as she neared it. Her face drenched with salt water, she found herself at a cottage door. The tears would not stop, nor did she care anymore, although they made her flesh itch intolerably. Distraught, she thumped her fists on the portal and slumped against it, dragging in breath with hoarse gasps.

  When the door opened she half fell inside, was caught by strong arms, and looked into the face of an old woman. The beldame held her shoulders in an iron grip for a few moments. Her left eye bestowed on the unexpected visitor a searching stare. There was a hollow where her right eye had been. The eyelids were crudely stitched shut. Above the eyes, a painted blue disk on the forehead.

  “Great ganders, what’s all this?” exclaimed the woman. “Govern yourself, colleen!”

  Shudders racked Imrhien’s body. The crone led her to a straw pallet and bade her lie down.

  “It will be a cure for the paradox you’re wanting, no doubt. That much I can see. I shall do what can be done. But first, drink this. ’Twill calm you.”

  Imrhien gulped the liquid. The flavor was unusual but not unpleasant, reminiscent of riverside herbs nodding in the rain—cool and fragrant. Tranquillity flowed along her veins. She lay quiescent. Only her face still itched, and she tore at it idly with her fingernails.

  “Stop that. It is for me to see to.” The carlin drew Imrhien’s hand away, firmly. Placing her own sinewy hands on her patient’s face, she hesitated, then drew a sharp breath.

  The girl cared little. An irresistible desire to sleep had surged over her, and she abandoned herself to it, closing her eyes and drifting. The carlin’s voice seemed to issue from far away:

  “Very well, sleep now. That will give me time to mix up the mud.”

  Then sleep’s dark current carried her away under the green herbs that overgrew its banks, in a ceaseless rain.

  There was a face, once. It had been the first one. But it was more than a face—it was comfort to assuage yearning, satiation to defeat hunger, warmth to drive out chill, cool to calm heat, movement instead of stillness, company against loneliness, sweet sounds to alleviate silence, peace to replace distress. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth—there was nothing else about it—no characteristics of age or gender, yet it was the one face to be recognized above all. It meant the source of life.

  Its disappearance had precipitated a void that sucked the light out of that part of existence.

  The second face had begun like the first, as beloved, yet differently. It had evolved, over time, and become the countenance of a man of wisdom and kindness, the corners of his eyes crinkled with good humor. Always he had been there, smiling down from a great height: solid, dependable.

  The third face had altered, too. It had made its appearance on the edges of the lacuna left by the first, beginning as no more than a blur, an irritation to be dismissed, but evolving to be the sweet visage of a little child: precious, cherished, a friend and companion, a marigold. Apple-blossoms reached over the child’s head. Petals drifted like snow. Small green fruits swelled and ripened on the boughs, like red lamps, and were gathered …

  Woman, man, child. A dream?

  A churning of thoughts, released by sleep, or, at last, some memory?

  For as long as she could remember, the rain had been drumming its impatient fingers. Seemingly it had done so since time itself had begun—but no, it had been raining only during the night, and now the night was over.

  Imrhien was lying on a straw pallet among blankets of white wool. There were bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters, a mortar and pestle on a low table, and a boy kneeling, building up the fire. He finished his task, glanced at her, and moved away. She raised herself on one elbow and saw, through narrow slits, Maeve One-Eye sitting in a chair, watching her. The beldame’s shaggy bush of hair stuck out in all directions like spikes of frost.

  Imrhien’s face felt odd—very peculiar indeed. It still itched, but not unbearably, and it tingled. Her cheeks were numb to the touch, and stiff; her eyes would not open properly.

  “You will not feel a thing under all that mud,” observed the carlin. “I put it on you while you slept. That way, I knew you would, at least, not wriggle about. It is caked on thickly, and it has dried—do not try to smile—you will find it impossible. All the way from Mount Baelfire it is, the blue mud—that’s the only place in Erith you can get the really good
stuff. You look a terrible sight, I can tell you. Once it has soaked right into the poisoned areas, the mud will flake off of its own accord and take some of the bad flesh with it. How long that will take, I cannot say—it varies with each case. It might be one day or three, or ten, but you will not be able to eat while it is on, only sip through a hollow reed, so I hope you are not hungry. Look in the glass, over there by the window.”

  Light-headed, Imrhien stood up. Immediately the itching returned with redoubled force. The carlin’s long mirror stood by the window. It was made of glass and silver, the frame wrought in the shapes of twining lilies and watermaidens with flowing hair. The surface gleamed like watersheen—an eldritch-seeming looking-glass.

  Imrhien viewed in it her reflection, tall and slender, dressed in the country garb of Rosedale. Her long hair cascaded free of the wimple, in ringlets and straight tresses, like skeins of tangled silk, framing a mask with two slits for eyeholes. But the irritation of salt tears under the hardened mud was too much to bear, and she raised her hands to her face. Somehow she must find relief. Her fingers worried at the mud-mask, and it came off in her hands.

  It lifted off in one entire piece.

  Beneath it, the face.

  Ah, the face. The lips formed such a perfect, rosy bow, as though painted upon the smooth, creamy peach of the skin. Clean-molded lines, high cheekbones, a softly rounded chin and small, neat nose, the soft curve of the cheek, arched eyebrows, the great jewels of eyes, fringed with their sweeping lashes—this was the face looking back at Imrhien from the glass.

  Scarcely knowing what was happening, not daring to believe, she touched that face with her fingertips, explored it all over, gently, and it did not disappear; only, color like roses flooded it, and the light of morning sprang into the eyes. The lump that had been sticking in her throat ever since she awoke expanded painfully now.

  Was it beauty or homeliness that gazed out of the mirror’s frame? She could not tell, for aesthetic perception is subjective, and she habitually assumed the source of her own reflection was repugnant. Only, she knew that it was symmetrical and thus more acceptable than before. More acceptable—that was all she had hoped for.