The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Viviana approached.

  ‘My lady—’

  ‘Come no closer, Via. I cannot endure the stench of the oil in your hair.’

  ‘It is strong, I’ll concede, but not truly offensive, surely? Some might consider it pleasant.’

  ‘I have ill recollections of the stuff,’ said Rohain. Her face closed in on itself.

  Sensing some inner perturbation, Viviana nodded silently. She curtsied and withdrew.

  Rohain remembered: Here in Isse Tower they use siedo-pod oil for many purposes, including the assuaging of every hurt from cuts and scratches to bellyaches and warts. Grethet used the stuff for the cuts on my back—yet I detested it well before then. I fought against her but I was too weak. She smeared it on, and as soon as I could I rubbed it off, rolling on rough bags, which opened the wounds afresh; but the stench—the stench clings for ages.

  Restlessly, she stood up and walked to the next window. Along the hairline crack between the shutters, a glimpse of starry sky ran like a black thread stitched with, seed pearls. The brandy had warmed her, had taken the edge off the pain of her tortured scalp, but she ached with the longing to go straight away to the King-Emperor and plead for Sianadh’s life. And she blazed with a desire to see which of the Dainnan had accompanied him to the Tower.

  All of that lay outside the barred doors.

  Around midnight, a hammering on those doors announced the end of the waiting period—the Tower had been cleared of eldritch incarnations.

  Chaos resumed. As the Stormriders and their ladies returned to the upper floors, all able-bodied servants were ordered into action preparing billets and provender for the King-Emperor and his attendants and men-at-arms. Heligea disappeared precipitately, in a clanging lift-cage.

  Rohain, eluding Viviana to escape the siedo-pod fumes, took another lift-cage up to Floor Thirty-seven. Lords and ladies moved to and fro shouting orders. Overworked servants hurried to obey.

  ‘Where is the King-Emperor?’ Rohain asked.

  ‘His Majesty is at the topmost floor, my lady,’ was the reply. ‘He may be in conference or at meat. Is there anything you require? A repast is being set out on the tables in the dining halls.’

  ‘Thank you—no.’

  A passing Dainnan knight started at the sight of her face. Simultaneously she jumped, taken by surprise at the sight of his uniform. Recovering his composure, he bowed.

  ‘May I be of assistance, lady? I am Sir Flint.’

  His unbound hair fountained in bronze filaments to the small of his back.

  ‘The King-Emperor’s quarters on the top floor—do you know where they are?’

  ‘His Majesty holds conference there with the Royal Attriod. The while, the Stormriders of the Tower are gathering in the dining halls to take refreshment. May I conduct you there instead? Allow me to call your servants.’

  Seeing herself suddenly as he must see her, it struck Rohain that she could not kneel at the feet of the King-Emperor dressed in a torn and inside-out riding habit, with her hair tousled. To beg for a man’s life, she must appear sleek and well-groomed, as etiquette demanded. She sighed.

  ‘You are kind, Sir Flint. I wish only to retire.’

  ‘Your name, my lady?’

  Already she was walking away, not wishing to delay.

  He bowed again and watched her go.

  When she was out of his sight, she ran to her suite. On reaching it, she checked abruptly with her hand on the door-jamb and stared in.

  The rooms had been ransacked.

  Furniture lay splintered. Chests had been forced open and turned out, then apparently picked up and thrown across the chamber by some agency far stronger than any man, to crash and sprawl open, lids twisted awry, spilling out the remains of their contents. Garments had been strewn, torn to shreds. The looking-glasses lay in splinters on the floor—even their backings had been punched through. Only the frames of their obliterated faces remained. The bed had been reduced to no more than a welter of kindling and rags, scattered with dead leaves and a couple of live loam-worms, dusk pink and jointed. Rohain’s jewellery was unrecognisable—misshapen as though melted in a hot fire. Every item she owned had been broken or corrupted. An odour of compost hung over the whole scene.

  Softly, she left the scene of the shambles. There was no sign of a door—save for buckled hinges half torn off the door-frame—or she would have closed it.

  The hour had grown very late. Made aimless with shock she wandered, dazed. The torchlit halls were empty now that the nobles had gone to their supper. Dry leaves eddied along the floors, whispering, blown by a bitterly cold breeze from the gargoyle-wreathed balcony overlooking Isse Harbour. It was there she had stood on the night of the unstorms, watching a ghostly galleon being wrecked off the heads, and wrecked again, over and over.

  One of the balcony doors stood open, Beyond it, stars dripped thick radiance down the sky. The sight attracted her. Thomas’s words came back: ‘Go into the wilderness on a clear night and look up. Look long. Then you will have seen something of Faêrie.’

  Heedless of the slap and sting of the cold, she stepped out. A wide vista opened across gray water. The moon and the Greayte Southern Star had wheeled out of sight on their inevitable courses and only the fantastic splendor of the other starry realms remained, to draw heart and mind out through the eyes and send them spinning into the void.

  Someone else was already on the balcony. A Dainnan leaned on the parapet. Ribbons of black hair rained across his wide shoulders and down his tapered back, reaching to his belt. A sea-draft driving up the walls of the Tower lifted fibers of darkness across the winking stars—the weft from which night itself was woven.

  He straightened, turning. He was looking down at Rohain.

  Instantly, all her thought was swept away by intense emotion. Speech and movement became impossible under that pierching gaze. Every wish, every hope, had come true in front of her eyes. The sight of him, so often imagined, was hard to invest with reality. For so long had his image existed only in intangible form that she had become accustomed to knowing him as a dream, and could not at first believe what she saw.

  As from a distance, a dark, strong voice said,

  ‘So, you came at last to Court, Gold-Hair.’

  A response was required. Rohain’s numbed mind could prepare none. Mechanically, she murmured, ‘Yes.’ Her eyes remained wide, fastened on him steadily, drinking him in. The action of speech released her paralyzed thoughts.

  ‘Is it really you …?’ She faltered.

  ‘It is I.’

  She must say something else, something to keep him here, for the longer he remained the more substantial he became.

  ‘I am glad to see you.’

  The statement seemed so feeble an offering, compared with the intensity of feeling it represented—as if she’d held oceans in readiness to offer him and instead, through lack of expertise, had handed over only a spoonful of water.

  ‘And I you.’

  Like Pod, he had known her immediately, despite the complete transformation, and yet he uttered no comment about her hair, her face, her voice.

  ‘How brightly the stars shine tonight,’ said he, turning again to look out at the spectacle. She, moving to his side, was now blind to the radiant glory of the glittering haze spread across the sky. Only, she was aware of a heat on her left where he stood, like the heat of a beacon-fire, pulsing warmth all down one side of her body while the other was chilled. And so they stood together looking outward, and the rising thermals caught their hair, making it flow out behind them, the dark locks mingling.

  An hour passed, or it might have been half an hour, or a minute. It was not forever, although Rohain craved that it should be. Although they kept vigil in silence, it seemed to Rohain that a million words were traced upon the air. They hung there in runes of fire, slowly fading. It was unspeakable to be there beside Thorn at those moments. It was to fall into stars, to ride sky in a thunderstorm, to dance in a riot of jewels at a masquerade b
all on the uttermost peak of an ice-mountain, to be swept up on the winds of shang.

  ‘I have searched long for you,’ Thorn said quietly at last. ‘Will you come with me to Court?’

  ‘I will.’ Terror and delight swarmed, fizzing like sweet and savage acid.

  ‘I want you to belong to me, and to no other.’ Just like that, with no preamble. She felt too stunned to ask questions.

  ‘That I do already. I will be yours for my life.’ Did he truly speak those words? Am I sane?

  ‘Do you swear it?’

  ‘Upon the Star, upon my life, upon anything you wish to name, I swear it.’

  He held out his hand. She grasped a levin-bolt whose convulsion sizzled from fingers to feet.

  ‘Now we are troth-plighted,’ he said, as though he had noticed nothing about the effect of his touch. Indeed, she would swear he had felt nothing.

  The sound of boots approached, crunching along the corridor. A group of Royal Legionaries came to the open doors. At the sight of the two on the balcony they dropped to their knees, heads bowed.

  ‘Speak,’ said Thorn.

  ‘Your Imperial Majesty,’ said the colonel, ‘the one we seek is here in the Tower—the Lady Rohain.’

  ‘You are too tardy to avail me,’ laughed Thorn, ‘for I have found her myself.’

  Have I heard aright? The aftermath of the past day’s fear and exertion, which until now Rohain had subjugated, arose again and challenged her consciousness. It mingled with her exhilaration and terror, her pain and confusion. If she allowed it to overwhelm her, she would faint like some overcorseted courtier; it would sunder her from him and when she awoke he would be gone, because this could only be a cruel dream.

  She hid her face in her hands. Tears trickled in a pewter rain between her fingers.

  Someone caught her up in a hammock of thunder-webs and carried her along. The voice of Thorn, deep and musical, spoke. She could not properly understand the words, but soon a cup was placed in her hands, and she drank, and felt the effects of a sleeping-draft coursing through the pathways of her body. The walls fell in, one by one, and she tumbled in a circle.

  Which closed over her head.

  He was gone, after all.

  Music sounded, heartbreakingly sweet and haunting; a piping that described an existence beyond mortal grasp, beyond knowledge, a prize to stretch out and yearn for, unreachable, and she, not knowing what it was, awoke crying because she could not follow.

  The sleep-memory troubled her waking mind, and a clear young voice sang:

  ‘I’ll sing you nine-O. Heark, how the winds do blow!

  What are your nine-O?

  Nine for the Arts of Gramarye and eight for the notes of singing.

  Seven for the riders in the sky and six for the gamblers’ flinging.

  Five for the rings on my love’s hand and four for the seasons winging.

  Three, three, the Chances,

  Two, two the lovers’ hearts joined close together,

  One is one and all alone and shall be so forever.’

  It was a well-remembered voice, a linnet of a voice that softly sang that old song. It belonged to Caitri, the daughter of the Keeper of the Keys, a daydreamer given to composing ditties that she often hummed to herself. The child seemed oblivious of the world beyond her small horizon, but in fact was the opposite. She sat nearby, playing cat’s cradle as she sang. She was dressed in servants’ subfusc and smelled of orange blossom.

  ‘Did I dream again?’ Bemused, Rohain raised herself on one elbow. She found herself reclining on a sumptuous couch within a richly decorated, spacious room. In a wide hearth, a fire flamed like evanescent castles of light. The windows were obscured by lengthy velvet draperies emblazoned all over with the Stormrider device, but the curve of the outer wall betrayed the room’s status as a Tower chamber.

  Young Caitri smiled, still half musing on her song.

  ‘What is dream and what is reality?’ she asked, philosophically, rhetorically, and somewhat pedantically for one so young. Such a childish face could not have weathered more than thirteen Winters.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Your Ladyship is at the fortieth story, the most exalted level of the Tower, barring the somewhat cramped turret rooms. The apartments here shall henceforth bear the title “Royal Suites”, and all future guests shall wish to occupy them. I was called upon to attend Your Ladyship and right glad I am to escape, for a time, the sorrow of the misfortune that has descended upon the Seventh House.’

  ‘Your mother,’ said Rohain suddenly, ‘is she hale?’

  ‘Why yes, my lady,’ returned the child, frowning her puzzlement. ‘My mother escaped the scourge …’ She put aside her string game.

  ‘That is well. Now I must make myself presentable at once.’

  ‘Take refreshment, an it please you, lady—here are both victuals and drink. A bath awaits and raiment is laid out. My lady Heligea has gifted part of her own wardrobe, since Your Ladyship’s was destroyed by the Antlered One and his unseelie wights. Seamstresses have lengthened the hems in haste, while you slept. Methinks the colours of the Seventh House shall become you. Your Ladyship is to be received by His Majesty this very morning.’

  ‘Has the night passed already and is morning come? Where is the King-Emperor?’

  ‘I know not, m’lady. I have not yet beheld His Majesty. Since I was called I have been in a constant state of excitement in case I should happen to glimpse him.’

  ‘And Viviana?’

  ‘She was, in sooth, the one called to attend Your Ladyship but she asked me to take her place, since she cannot rid herself of siedo’s faithful stench.’

  ‘Caitri, I am glad it is you who came.’

  ‘Do you know me?’

  ‘Yes. I wist that you are worthy.’

  ‘I thank you, m’lady.’

  ‘I wist you show kindness to unfortunates, to outcasts.’

  ‘I suppose you mean Pod—that I treat him fairly.’

  ‘Oh, Pod—yes. A curious lad.’

  ‘Your Ladyship has seen him, then? Some say he has the Sight, you know.’

  ‘Indeed! That would explain much.’

  ‘And somewhat of a gift of prophecy. Yet it is sad, for part of his wit is lacking. Possessing such wondrous gifts, he is unable to use them profitably and is betimes erratic in his augury. Dine now, prithee, or I shall be taken to account for failing to sustain you. I can assure you, our chief cook had no part in the preparation. Confidentially, Rennet Thighbone is a slovenly one.’

  ‘What is the Sight, exactly?’ asked Rohain, picking up a cup of milk and honey. The girl’s talk distracted her from the one thought that churned around and around in her head, threatening to drive her to the brink of madness. She welcomed the distraction.

  ‘Well, I suppose it is the gift of seeing what is real. It is a rare talent—only a very few folk are born possessing it, although the Sight disregards all barriers of social distinction. The rest of us must try to find four-leafed clover, for when its leaves are carried, somewhat of the Sight is acquired, but not always full-blown, and only temporarily.’ After a pause, Caitri added, ‘Personally, I think Pod does not have the Sight. I suspect he possesses an extraordinary sense of smell, like animals, or some wights.’

  Rohain sipped the drink but could barely swallow one mouthful. A tightness knotted the pit of her stomach. Her heart raced. What she had seen last night—was it true? Could she believe her eyes and ears, or had she been overcome with distress and fallen into a strange hallucination? And what had become of her companions on the road?

  ‘Tell me,’ she said to Caitri. ‘Featherstone and Pennyrigg, Ustorix and the rest who were with me when I rode out—have they returned?’

  ‘The servant of Master Zimmuth’s, he never returned. My lord Callidus was badly wounded. The others are all home and hale, m’lady, which is more than can be said for the many folk of all ranks who were slain or wounded within the Tower’s very walls. Truly, doom came among u
s, and had not the King-Emperor come to succor us we had all perished. ’Twill be long ere we forget.’

  By the Powers, let my meeting with Thorn not be a mere delusion. If I ask the child and her words prove it an invention of my mind, I shall lose hope. Therefore I shall not ask her.

  Rohain bathed. Her assistant helped her dress in Stormrider finery. The black armazine gown, equipped with long, tight sleeves that would have been considered screamingly out of mode at Court, was bordered at the collar, cuffs, and hem with wide bands of black ducape stitched with winged crescents in silver. Caitri pinned a scrollwork brooch at the throat. The folds of the sable cloak displayed richly patterned sarcenet linings, and it was fastened at the front by fine chains laced through small silver bosses at either side. A girdle stitched with silver thread in a diamond pattern on a black ground passed around Rohain’s waist at the back, but angled down to a V-shape at the front. The shoes were painstakingly embroidered with a pattern of tiny horses.

  Dark tresses flowed rampant down Rohain’s back, still damp. Caitri raked them with a broken-toothed ivory-and-tortoiseshell comb, then fastened silver stars in the midnight cloud of them, and placed a spangled gauze veil over all, bound with a fillet encrusted with milk-crystals and tiny beads of jet.

  ‘They gave me this to put on you,’ she said, fastening a golden chain around Rohain’s neck. It was a new tilhal—three bunched hypericum leaves made of jade, clasped in gold.

  ‘Your Ladyship is indeed comely beyond the ordinary, as all have been saying,’ she continued gravely, naively unaware of her boldness. ‘His Majesty is certain to be pleased when my lady goes before him.’

  ‘Thank you. I am ready now. But I am frightened. I may have dreamed last night, but which is the more terrifying, to be awake or asleep, I know not.’