The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Now she leaned over, unhooked the bright metal band, waded to land, and lay down on a muddy knoll above the tide. Her body spasmed as she gave back to the sea the water that had invaded her lungs. Clad only in a pale shift, she sprawled there like a hank of pallid seaweed, long and lank. Somewhere on the sea or under it, her discarded gown floated; a headless, handless specter among specters more truly terrible.

  Drying in the mild night within a thin casing of salt and ash, the girl lifted her aching head. She was conscious now of the careless clatter and tinkle of water chuckling down a stony sluice. A brackish freshet bounced down a rock wall, like a handful of silk ribbons. Rohain drank a long and delicious draft. As she leaned, two articles fell forward and swung in front of her face: her jade-leaved tilhal and the vial of nathrach deirge, both strung on strong, short chains about her neck. At her waist the tapestry aulmoniere remained firmly attached, though bedraggled. For the retaining of these precious accessories she was grateful.

  She sat by the laughing trickle and looked about in wonderment. This was no rocky shore or strand. Farther uphill, trees were growing, with green turf mantling their feet. Perhaps, after all, the ocean had carried her inland. Under the starless sky, its vestigial moon a haloed sliver of bluish green, the savage waters that had spat her out were now receding, as though the tide were ebbing. They seemed to clutch at the land as they dragged backward, scoring the turf with their talons. Through the ash haze Rohain saw the mermaid figurehead, wedged between two tree boles. The monstrous wave was shrinking back into itself, leaving behind a swathe of wrenched-up trees, dragged boulders, plowed ground, doomed seaweed, wreckage, flotsam, and a ragged, half-uprooted wattle-bush that shook itself and sprouted a muddy foot whose ankle was encircled with a gold band and whose toenails were painted with rose enamel.

  Staggering and slipping through the blowing ash haze, her own feet squelching in sodden turf where alabaster shells lay among bone-white flowers, Rohain seized the foot.

  ‘Via!’ she gasped. Relief surged—one other, at least, had survived. Further than that she could not bear to surmise.

  Viviana moaned. Rohain helped her from the network of wattle twigs and boughs that had caught her like some flamboyant fish. Scratched and bleeding in her silken shift, the lady’s maid could not speak. The only sounds from her were made by the ringing and clashing of the metal chatelettes of the chatelaine fastened to her belt, which had somehow, through the dunking, been spared.

  Her mistress supported the court-servant, leading her to the freshet.

  ‘Drink now.’

  She drank, and together they stumbled forward. As the salt water receded, it became clear that the wave had deposited both of them midway up a wall of gentle cliffs sloping down to the original sea level, which was currently lost beneath the retreating flood.

  The brownish mist wafted in streamers that occasionally parted. Rohain strained to look ahead through the haze, trying to glimpse humanlike shapes she had earlier seen or imagined. Staunchly the shapes remained—solidifying, growing larger with every step.

  Two embodiments coalesced, dark against umber.

  Thorn guaranteed that the leaf-ring would allow its wearer to see the truth and not be tricked by glamour.

  The cry that issued from Rohain’s throat threatened to tear her flesh in its passing, as lava tears at the walls of its vent. The two incarnations paused in ash night and turned around. One of them, Caitri, ran sobbing and flung herself into Rohain’s arms.

  ‘Sweet child,’ Rohain said over and over, gripping her in a fierce embrace. Presently she asked, ‘Who is with you?’

  Viviana sank to her knees, coughing. The figure accompanying Caitri took on the ragged form of the sea-mage, Lutey, who knelt at Viviana’s side.

  ‘Courage,’ he said. ‘Courage.’

  ‘Have you seen others?’ asked Rohain.

  ‘No,’ Caitri responded.

  Lutey said, ‘A cottage stands yonder, halfway up the cliff. Go there.’

  ‘Will they help us?’ Viviana choked piteously.

  ‘That steading is long abandoned,’ said Lutey, ‘but of those who once dwelled there, one possessed something of the Sight. When she departed, she left behind provisions to succor the needy, for she prophesied that such a dread night as this might come to pass. I know where we have come to land. This entire region, for miles around, is uninhabited by mankind.’

  ‘How do you know this, Master Lutey?’ asked Rohain quietly, guessing, even before she saw.

  The choppy waters had sunk a short distance down the cliff face. There at the border, between the domain of death-cold fishes that lived without breath and the realm of beings who stalked on legs and died without breath, she sat. She was shining wet, with the seawater still coursing down her limbs. No ash-dust troubled the luminous splendor of those peacock-feather disks traced in helixes, the shot silk of the great translucent double fin, the marble whiteness of the slender arms, the spun-glass tresses that shone green-gold like new willow leaves and flowed over the full length of her graceful lines.

  ‘She lifted me up,’ said Caitri, suddenly calm and wondering. ‘She carried me.’

  ‘You must give me the Comb now, little one,’ said Lutey, holding out his hand for the sparkling thing. ‘It is time for me to return it.’

  For the first time, Rohain noticed how aged the sea-mage looked, how wizened and weighed down with years—far more so than when she had first seen him, only days ago.

  ‘You tried to stop it happening, did you not?’ she said, understanding. ‘You tried to work against the birds of unseelie. And it took away your strength.’

  ‘Aye, my lady.’ His face crinkled in a grin. ‘But sooner or later I’d have been reduced to this, in any event. In some ways’—he glanced at the shining scroll of the sea-girl—‘in some ways I’m glad ’tis sooner. She has waited long. So have I.’

  ‘But no!’ A sob caught in Caitri’s throat. ‘You must not go, sir. Perilous things of the Deep lurk out there. The Marool—’

  The old man smiled, and kissed her forehead. Beneath the erosion of years, the face that he turned back toward the vision from the sea was young, brave, and gentle. The little girl fell silent.

  Taking the Comb, Lutey clambered down the slope, straight-backed, dignified, moving slowly but with surprising surefootedness. It seemed that time sloughed from him with every tread, until he sprang forward like a lithe young man. He reached her. A sparkle passed between them. She flipped the sinuous tail and was gone without a splash. He turned, raised his hand in a gesture of farewell, and followed, walking.

  Caitri wept. The sea lapped at Lutey’s ankles, his knees, his hips. A swell rolled in and disintegrated against the land. Finally the water closed over his head, and he was never again seen by mortal eyes.

  Whitewashed and slate-roofed, the cottage on the cliff overlooked a little drowned harbour. Bordered by guardian rowans, the abandoned garden, once tamed, had burgeoned into wild dishevelment. Mostly one plant ramped over it: a sharp-scented thyme that smothered most of the other vegetation, save for some parsnips and carrots gone to seed.

  The latch lifted easily. The door had not been locked. Weatherproof, to keep out the strong sea-winds, the dwelling had resisted much of the ash-sifted air. Only a fine layer of dust greeted the three survivors.

  Inside, they found munificence.

  A chest that stood in one corner was filled with neatly folded peasant garb, plain and ill-fitting but clean and serviceable. Another ark held fishermen’s oilskins, gloves and taltries, stout boots. A drawer contained two or three knives and bent spoons, candles, a ball of twine, salt, and a tinderbox. Wood was stacked beside the fireplace. There was a hatchet and trowel, a bucket to fetch water from the well—even a sack of musty oats that, boiled up in an old iron cauldron over the fire, made a supper of edible porridge. Beds of desiccated straw lay piled against the walls. Here, by the light of the fire and a single candle, the exhausted companions lay down to rest after bolting the
door to keep out the eerie night.

  Out in the yard, silence seemed to press so strongly upon the cottage’s walls that they bowed inward. No sound came, not even the bark of a fox, the sob of an owl, the moan of a hunting wind. Leaves hung stifled under laminae of ash.

  The three young women were deeply affected by all that had happened. To see an entire island destroy itself, to survive a storm beyond their most bizarre invention, to be battered and almost drowned, to be suddenly and utterly wrenched from friends and companions, to find themselves in helpless isolation—all these experiences were too intense to bear close scrutiny. When the madness of the world exceeds its usual bounds there comes a time when the captives of that madness must either slam shut the gates of their minds or else be invaded, transformed, and broken by absurdity, horror, and grief. By some unspoken agreement the castaways endeavoured to avoid the topic of the tragedy in which they had been unwilling participants, with all its disturbing ramifications. They had remained alive; now they must persist.

  ‘I suppose the previous occupants must have been wealthy as well as generous, to leave so much behind,’ mused Caitri, lying back against the straw bedding. ‘I wonder why they chose such poor lodgings.’

  ‘Unless they departed in a hurry. I wonder why they left at all,’ said Viviana. She glanced quickly toward a window, as though expecting some sudden, malevolent shape to flit secretively past, or dash itself against the panes.

  ‘Somehow I must send word of our survival to His Majesty,’ said Rohain. ‘How, I cannot fathom.’ She swept salty, tousled hair from her forehead. ‘I am weary beyond belief. But I cannot seem to fall asleep.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Caitri.

  They listened, for a while, to the oppressive silence, wrapped like a muffler about the cottage’s walls. The candle flickered.

  ‘Peril walks near this place, I fancy,’ said Viviana after a while. ‘All is too quiet and still. It is uncanny. And the fog in the air makes it seem more so.’ She sniffed. ‘The stench of brimstone and burning clings about us. Phew! Only the smell of the garden thyme overpowers it.’

  Rohain said, ‘Yes, there is an uncanny feeling about this place. This night will prove long, I fear. Make the dark hours fly past, Caitri,’ she went on, forcing a smile. ‘Tell us a story, prithee.’

  The little girl settled back against the wall, drawing her cloak around her shoulders. Her vision turned inward as she told of a man who danced with the Faêran for one night only, as he thought, only to discover when day dawned that he had in fact been absent from the world of men for sixty years. As he stepped once more upon the greensward of the mortal realm his footsteps grew lighter and lighter, until he crumbled and fell to the ground as a meagre heap of ashes.

  Caitri stopped speaking. Outside the cottage, along the sea-cliff, no living thing stirred.

  She sighed. ‘You see,’ she elaborated, ‘he did not return from the Fair Realm until long after his mortal span had elapsed. Time there had a pace different from time here, yet mortal time and Faêran time seemed to somehow interlock at moments.’

  ‘Entrancing tales,’ said Viviana, ‘but only dreams, in truth; as are all tales of the Fair and Perilous Realm.’ She yawned.

  Forgetting the story, drifting into sleep at last, Rohain thought of all the other questions she ought to have asked the sea-mage. Where was this coast on which they had been cast ashore? What fate had met the other boats? Why was this region empty of mortal men? Where was Prince Edward? Had any others survived—Alys-Jannetta? Thomas? Ah, Thomas—am I doomed always to grieve for kindhearted Ertishmen torn from me? If my friends have perished, it is in large part because I insisted on the kindling of the Light. The guilt weighs heavily on me …

  Caitri’s smothered sobs came softly to her ears. So much had been lost to them all.

  And then Rohain allowed herself to think of Thorn and a piercing, sweet sorrow flooded through her.

  Oh, my dark fire! My knight of chivalrous grace whose joyous temper overlays depths unfathomable, as light leaves float on a forest pool … Severely I miss your amazing touch, your regard of stern tenderness … How shall I send word to thee? Shall I ever again find myself at thy side?

  Over all these questions hung another, unanswerable, like a somber mantle. This place, this cottage on the cliff, seemed familiar. Have I been here before?

  During the night, Rohain woke to silence. Or so it seemed. She fancied she had been roused by the sound of snuffling around the house, as if a dog prowled out there. For a time she lay awake—it made no difference whether she kept her eyes open or not, the darkness was impenetrable.

  Abruptly, it gave way to dawn. The colour of the air paled to gray and then to the washed-out blue of diluted ink.

  ‘Last night I dreamed that a bird was beating its wings against the cottage door,’ said Caitri, on waking. Instinctively, Rohain glanced up at the ceiling, as though she might stare beyond, to the sky. Fear tightened its noose around her neck.

  ‘We must away as soon as possible,’ she whispered. ‘Already we have stayed too long.’

  Below the cliffs, the sea had receded noticeably. Still the air looked burned, like toast, yet it had cleared a little. The sun remained blue-green, like an opal, hanging in a yellowish sky. Southwest of the little harbour, not far from shore, a tall, cone-shaped island lifted its head. Farther west another reared up, and beyond it several more in a great sweeping curve dwindling around to the northwest.

  ‘The Chain of Chimneys,’ Viviana said, as she stood on the cliff top with Rohain and Caitri. ‘My governess told me about them when I was a child, in Wytham. I have never seen them before. I think we are on the desolate western coast of Eldaraigne, not far east of—not far from …’

  ‘What?’ asked Rohain.

  ‘That place. The place we never reached; Huntingtowers.’

  They searched along the shore, calling, but no other survivors could be found. In the trees farther down, they discovered a few fish that had been caught among the branches and left by the receding wave, to suffocate in the air. These victims they fried for breakfast, since the bag of oats was small and would not feed them for long.

  ‘The oats are our only provisions,’ said Rohain, ‘and they will run out after a few days. Time is not limitless either. For now we must rest and regain our strength, but when we leave here on the morrow, you two must take the oat-bag and follow the coastline to the southeast. Make for the Stormriders’ Hold at Isse Tower, keeping well away from the Ringroad and its dangers. Tell the Relayers to take word to His Majesty that I am secure.’

  ‘Ugh! That Tower is traiz olc,’ muttered Viviana.

  ‘My mother is there, at Isse,’ said Caitri, fingering the miniature she wore on a chain around her neck. ‘I would that she and I had been placed in service elsewhere. It is a dreadful pile, that Tower. What has it do with you, my lady? Why did you visit there?’

  Rohain told the little girl how she had once served alongside her in the Seventh House of the Stormriders. After the tale ended, Caitri waxed pensive.

  ‘So, you were he,’ she said at last. Strange events had ceased to astound her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There were some marks on your flesh when they brought you in.’

  ‘I know. My face was disfigured by paradox ivy. My throat—by something else.’

  ‘And your arm also. It looked as though a band or bracelet had dug into your wrist. I could not help noticing. I felt sorry for you. After a time, the weals faded.’

  ‘I do not remember any marks on my wrist.’

  All fell silent.

  Eventually, Rohain said, ‘I have here a vial of Dragon’s Blood, see?’ She produced the tapestry aulmoniere, which still enclosed the swan’s feather and Thorn’s gift. ‘Nathrach deirge it is called, yet ’tis not the blood of dragons but an elixir of herbs. It gives warmth and sustenance. You shall take it with you. Our ways must part here. Viviana, you say Huntingtowers lies close by. I shall go and seek it. No, prithee, d
o not protest! It would be far more perilous for you to accompany me than to do anything else. I am Huon’s quarry. This I have come at last to understand, and I know that he will never give up until he finds me. But I do not know why.

  ‘As a vulture in human form once pompously stated, “knowledge is power”, and if I can find out why I am Huon’s target, perhaps I shall have a better chance of eluding him. After all’s said and done, there is only one way for me to discover the reason he hunts me. I must retrace my footsteps in earnest. Once, I tried it, and failed. This time, either I will succeed or Huon will win. But until I meet or defeat my doom there will be no safety for those I love. Those who accompany me anywhere shall become his quarry as much as I.’

  ‘But Your Ladyship must come to the Stormriders’ Tower yourself, to send the message to Caermelor that you are safe,’ Viviana said earnestly. ‘Otherwise, how shall we be believed?’

  ‘I wish that none should know my whereabouts. Not even His Majesty. Tell them that I live, send word to His Majesty, but never reveal my purpose or destination. I do not want others to come seeking after me; they would be seeking their doom.’ Turning her face away she murmured softly, ‘Anyway, I am as good as dead already.’

  ‘In Caermelor they would never let it rest at that,’ argued Caitri. ‘They would extract the truth from us by fair means or foul. And then they will come after you, for your own good.’

  Rohain was forced to concede the truth of this assertion.

  ‘In that case, do not admit that you have seen me at all. Then they shall have no reason to ask further—’ She broke off. ‘Ah, but to leave His Majesty uninformed cuts me to the quick. Yet if there is no other way to keep them from me …’

  ‘We shall not go off without you,’ burst out Viviana. ‘We shall not leave you in the wastelands.’