The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  In accents unfamiliar, these small and evidently dangerous adversaries demanded, ‘Halt, stranger. Who trespasses here and on what business?’ A gleam darted from their slits of eyes. Their barbed and whiplike tails switched aggressively from side to side.

  Ashalind drew herself up to her full height and tried to gain a moment to ponder, for she had not remembered to make a new name for herself. She shrank from giving them the name of anyone she knew in case it brought the owner into danger. Thoughts quarreled in her head—the kenning her father called her, and her golden bracelet, now lying on the dressing-table at home. She spoke in a gruff voice, mumbling.

  ‘I am called Elindor. I am come to ask a boon of the Lord Morragan of Carnconnor.’

  Distastefully, the spriggans eyed the filthy peasant lad.

  ‘Steenks,’ they agreed, exchanging nods. They spoke to one another in their own creaking tongue.

  ‘Follow,’ they said at last, and one entered into the opening from which they had appeared, where a stair led upward. With one last longing glance at the land beyond the hill, Ashalind started to climb, and the second spriggan came after.

  The stair soared up and up, and opened into a corridor from which led many branches and portals leading to rooms and other stairways, one of which the leading guard climbed. At the top of this second flight was a third. By now Ashalind had been rendered once again breathless, for it was difficult to ascend so far and fast. Fortunately she was not hampered by skirts or a feigned limp, although in the leg that had been broken the bone ached. Already weary from the race across the valley, she was also troubled by thirst.

  The wights led her finally to a high room in a tower. The door stood open and a resplendently furnished room lay within. The walls were clad with bright tapestries and leafy vines; the chairs and tables were wrought of gold, embellished with jewels and living flowers. One of the tables was set with goblets and jugs, and dishes piled high with fruits and sweetmeats. Warm air blew softly in at the open windows. What had at first seemed to be a blaze in the hearth was no fire, but a heap of roses so red they seemed aflame. Ashalind had never seen such a splendid room and hardly dared venture in.

  ‘Enter,’ said the creaking voice of the leading spriggan sentry.

  She went in, but the speaker was no longer to be seen, nor was the other who had been following behind. After examining the room in amazement, she moved to the windows and looked out. There below she saw the spreading of a great garden ringed by a greenwood. Birds and fountains made music, a sea of roses surged and broke like waves against the garden walls, and on the long lawns children played.

  The children of Hythe Mellyn.

  Unchanged, not a day older than when they had departed seven years before, they frolicked there, lit by brilliant sunlight that seemed peculiarly clear and pink, as if viewed through a pane of roseate quartz. Ashalind dared not call to them, disguised as she was, but tears of joy and pain stung her eyes when she spied Rhys among them. Leaning from the window, she stretched out her arms, but a sound at her back made her start and turn around.

  The spriggans had returned. They led her through the thundering halls and extravagant galleries of a fantastic palace, until they came at last to the most amazing hall of all.

  Therein, the air was charged.

  Lofty trees grew along the walls—indeed they constituted the walls, intersticed by greenery. Their boughs made a serpentine roof of leaves, forming arches laced together by the mellow breeze, tiled by glimmers of azure sky. Flamboyant birds winged across this ceiling and owls perched as if carved.

  Merriment resounded, and music of harps and flutes. Long, narrow tables stretched the length of the hall, set with gold-wrought bowls of flowers and platters of food. Seated along them was a splendid company.

  At the sight, Ashalind’s head spun. For a long instant she thought she fell upward from on a rocky height into a dizziness of open sky where points of light glistered, thick as salt. The song of the stars seemed to choir in her head.

  She was among the Faêran.

  A faint shimmer of radiance surrounded them. Their voices fell like flower petals on water, as musical as birdsong in the morning. They spoke in a language Ashalind did not understand: a tongue as smooth as polished silver, as rich as the jewel-hoards of dragons. Some wore scarlet and gold and amber like leaping flames, some were clad in green and silver like moonlight on leaves, some in soft gray like curling smoke. Others among them appeared to be as naked as needles, graced only with the beauty of their comely forms and their flowing hair, which was threaded with jewels and flowers.

  Courageously, Ashalind stepped forward. Instantaneously, silence fell and all eyes turned to her.

  Justly were they called the Fair Folk. Indeed, they were the fairest of all, possessing a beauty that was intoxicating, almost paralyzing. Ashalind had barely caught sight of them through the half-leafless boughs of the apple trees, but now that she was so close, it seemed to her as if her heart and brain had stopped functioning and she could think of nothing to say.

  They seemed as if formed of air and light, yet as strong and living as trees, as lively as wind and fire and swift-flowing waters. Clean and finely drawn were their features, with high cheekbones and sculpted chins. At the outer corners, their eyebrows and their eyes swept up, slanting ever so slightly, as if everything about them was suspended from above and only whimsy anchored them to the ground. Tall and straight as spears were they, the lines of their forms clean and hard. Taut was their peach-blossom skin. Always they smiled and laughed. Indeed, it seemed that gravity and other weighty matters never touched these flower-ladies—fragile and slender, almost waiflike—or these virile lords possessed of the strength and grace of warrior heroes, who were beautiful in another way entirely—not as flowers, but as lions and eagles of immense power. Ashalind thought some among the assembly were older, some younger, but how they gave this impression was hard to say. No heavy jowl, no sagging chin gave evidence of accumulated years. Perhaps the effect of age was lent by an air of greater wisdom and tempered gaiety, in addition to some indefinable aspect of appearance.

  Appearing stiff and awkward by comparison with the easy grace of the Faêran, eldritch wights sat among them. These seemed to be mortal men and women, but were not. Some were lovely to look upon, others ordinary—but all were betrayed by some deformity, no matter how minor. Others not so beauteous also mingled with this astonishing company: dangerous fuaths and murderous duergars, unseelie wights of assorted hideousness whose spindly shanks and outsized extremities made a screamingly grotesque contrast to the beauty of their companions. To Ashalind they appeared like fungoid growths and molds sprouting amid wildflowers.

  Woodland beasts she saw also—the mask of a narrow-eyed fox, the curve of a deer’s neck, lop-eared hares pale as curd flitting over the roots of the wall-trees, a raven on a high branch.

  A voice announced, ‘Elindor of Erith comes to beg audience of His Royal Highness, Morragan, Crown Prince of the Realm, Fithiach of Carnconnor.’

  Bright, melodious laughter rippled around the hall as Ashalind approached the high table and knelt, hardly daring to raise her eyes.

  ‘His Royal Highness bids me welcome you, stranger,’ said a corrosive voice. ‘Come, drink the guest-cup with us.’

  The fellow who had spoken gave a rictus of a smile. He was small and thin, with bloodless lips, a savage, wrinkled face of a yellowish-brown hue, a greasy beard sprouting from his chin. His hair hung lank and stringy, like tangled rats’ tails, but it was striped with the colours of dandelions and mud. Clothed in shades of tan and yellow, he stood behind the shoulder of a tall Faêran lord who was seated at the centre of the high table.

  As Ashalind dared to lift her gaze for a moment to this lord, a cool, keen wind gusted through the hall.

  Or so it seemed.

  With eyes as grey as the cold southern seas, he was the most grave and comely of all the company. Hair tumbled down in waves to his elbows, and it was the blue-black shade o
f a raven’s wing. The heartbreakingly handsome face betrayed no sign of any passion. Leaning his elbow on the table with the relaxed poise of the omnipotent, he regarded his petitioner, but said nothing.

  Bending forward, the wrinkled fellow at the lord’s shoulder poured a draught into a jeweled horn and offered it to the newcomer, along with a knowing leer.

  ‘Drink, erithbunden.’

  ‘Sir, I respectfully decline your hospitality, but let it be no cause for ill will, I beg of you. I am come but for one task, and I have vowed to neither eat nor drink until I have accomplished it.’

  It was a sore trial to Ashalind to say this, for the wine was sweet-scented, clear and pale green like the new leaves of Spring in Ysteris, and thirst shriveled her palate.

  ‘You are as discourteous as you are decorated with the dirt of your country,’ reprimanded the rat-haired fellow, handing the horn to a gargoyle-like creature, which gulped the drink. ‘And what may be that task?’

  Undaunted she bowed, replying, ‘I have come to win back the children of Hythe Mellyn.’

  The crowd of Faêran murmured among themselves, and, the sound was a brook in Spring, or wind through the cornfields.

  ‘And why do you wish to take them away from this happy place?’ barked Rat-Hair. ‘For mark you, they dwell in bliss.’

  Ashalind found no words for reply but bowed her head in silence, afraid of causing insult and losing her chance to redeem the lost ones.

  ‘His Royal Highness’s Piper should have been paid,’ continued the puckered fellow. ‘A bargain is a bargain. The brats are our playthings now, to toy with as we please. Mayhap we will keep them forever. Mayhap on a whim we will send them back’—with a sudden grin he cocked his head to one side—‘in a hundred Erith years’—his head jerked, birdlike, to the other side—‘and watch them wither with accumulated age, crumbling to dust as soon as they set foot on Erith’s soil!’

  This drollery was greeted with joy by several of the more insanely hideous unseelie wights.

  Then for the first time the raven-haired prince spoke. His voice was deep and beautiful, like a storm’s song.

  ‘What shalt thou give, to earn these children?’

  Ashalind, still kneeling, heard her blood thump behind her ears. She chose her words carefully before she made reply.

  ‘Your Royal Highness, ask of me what you will and I shall endeavour to provide it—if such is within my power, and causes no evil.’

  ‘Think you, that you can make conditions, cochal-eater?’ snapped the ocher-faced fellow. As he spoke a large rat ran across his shoulders and disappeared, and the warm wind from the window-arches turned chill, lifting the gray-eyed lord’s fall of hair as if he were undersea in a current, spreading the strands like dark wings.

  But the prince-lord smiled.

  ‘Elindor of Erith thinks to consider his words wisely,’ he said. ‘Consider this. If thou canst solve three questions of me, then thou shalt take away thy noisy brats. If not, then they shall stay for ever, and thou also.’

  Ashalind bowed low.

  ‘Sir, your offer is accepted as graciously as it is given, and I am ready for the three questions.’

  ‘First, tell me how many stars shine in the skies of Erith. Next, tell me what I am thinking. Last, thou must consider two of the Doors which lead from the chamber below this hall, and tell me which one leads to Erith.’

  At these words the ratty fellow laughed hideously, but his master’s face still revealed nothing.

  Despair threatened to overwhelm Ashalind. She tried to play for time.

  ‘Those questions are …’ she fumbled for words, ‘not easy, sir. I beg leave of you to take time to ponder them anon.’

  ‘Beg, snivel, grovel,’ said the servant. ‘Now or never.’

  ‘Hold thy tongue, Yallery Brown,’ said his master, ‘or I shall have thee again imprisoned beneath the stone. Go then, mortal, I grant thee the time. But speak no word, scribe no symbol, and make no sign until thy return, for the answers must be of thine own inspiration and not of others’. Return when the moon of thy land waxes full again. Give me the answers then or my servant Yallery Brown shall have thee too.’ He turned away, to drink from a goblet he held in his hand.

  Then the spriggans seized her and rushed her down from that place, and when she came out from Hob’s Hill she found herself alone in the night and the falling rain. But the moon was crescent and three weeks had already passed.

  When Leodogran’s daughter was discovered to have vanished, the city had roused to uproar. She was sought high and low, until Oswyn in fear and shame confessed a garbled version of all that had passed—that Ashalind had met a wizard named Easgathair who had told her how to find a way to the Perilous Realm.

  ‘Alas,’ mourned Leodogran, ‘for now she too is lost.’

  He fell into a fit and would not allow a morsel of food to pass his lips. Oswyn had expected dismissal, but Leodogran told her she was blameless, whereupon she fell to her knees and thanked him for his mercy and justice.

  The learned wizard Razmath was consulted.

  ‘Easgathair is not a wizard but the Gatekeeper of the Faêran,’ said he. ‘Mayhap Ashalind has been ensnared because, after all, she is the One Who Would Not Follow when the Piper played his dire tune. The laws of the Faêran, so it is said, are absolute. It may be that she was marked as their own from the very moment the Piper blew the first note.’

  In the house of na Pendran, one rainy eve, Pryderi the loyal young steward sat by the fireside with Leodogran. All the servants were abed, for the hour was late, when the hound Rufus began joyously to bark and there came a knocking on the door. There on the threshold stood Ashalind—wet, dark, dirty, dazed, unspeaking. From her black hair, ink ran in rivulets down her face and her ill-fitting men’s garb. Leodogran clasped her in his arms.

  ‘Never shall I let you from my sight again, Elindor mine,’ said he. ‘My bird, my precious bird is come home.’

  But she spoke no reply.

  A cool wind was blowing from the south. Leodogran’s daughter left her father’s lore-books where she had been studying them in the library. Throwing her cloak about her shoulders, she unlatched and opened the front door, but her father, appearing at her elbow, closed it again and took her hand.

  ‘Ashalind, you must not go out.’

  He studied her face. He could see that a great conflict was happening within her, and knowing this hurt him grievously.

  ‘How can I help you? Why do you not speak?’

  But his daughter was afraid to make any sign, even to shake her head, for the power of the Faêran was everywhere. Somehow they would know, and the chance would be lost forever. She turned again to the door.

  ‘Wait. I shall walk beside you.’ Concerned only for her welfare, Leodogran took up his own cloak and his walking-stick. If, in her sickness, she needed to wander, so be it—only he would never let her from his sight.

  Thus, every day at dusk in the wooded hills about the city, Ashalind walked with Leodogran and Pryderi, while the dog Rufus followed close in her footsteps. Tears ran unstaunched down the damsel’s face, for she sought there Easgathair, believing he might help her in some way, and she feared he would not appear before her unless she walked alone. Yet her father would not leave her nor could she ask it of him. Her hope was that Easgathair would tell her the answers to the three questions without even being asked, for it was certain he would know of the bargain she had struck in the hall under the hill. But all that passed through the eringl woods were the white moths and owls. Without the help of Easgathair, she and the children must be doomed.

  The third problem set by the Faêran prince at first appeared not to be difficult. She had seen two Doors leading out from a chamber below the Hall of Feasts, one made of polished silver and the other made of oak. It would seem simple enough to recognise the portal leading to Erith—but perhaps over-simple. Faêran things were often not as they seemed, and that task might prove the most treacherous of all. For the Erith Door
to be fashioned of wood was too obvious. It was a trick—yet what if it were a double trick? Believing she would choose the silver Door, they would make sure the wooden one barred the way to Erith. Or perhaps not … Alas, that question might be more formidable than she had supposed, after all. For the second question she had prepared an answer—whether it would prove acceptable or not was another matter. But for the first there seemed no solution.

  Every night, returning to the house, Ashalind gazed up at the sky. To look up and suddenly see the majesty of the far-flung net of stars burning blue-white in their trillions, that was an awesome experience. Always that moment of first seeing them was like the moment when, after silence in an echoing hall, a choir of hundreds burst into song, high and deep, accompanied by the rumbling growl of a pipe organ. The stars, indeed, seemed a heavenly choir if only she could hear their music. The Longing for the Fair Realm ached in her more gnawingly than before, ever since she had scented the rosy breeze at the end of the tunnel in the hill and walked the halls of Carnconnor. The sight of the stars in their quietude and utterness eased that pain yet exacerbated anxiety. How could they possibly be counted?

  The swiftly waxing moon rode high in the heavens, pooling shadows in Leodogran’s eyes. The glory of the stars blazed like diamonds thickly sprinkled on velvet. As soon as Ashalind began to count them, some faded and others twinkled forth, and they moved as on a great slow wheel, dying and being born.

  On the night of the full moon, Ashalind stole secretly from the house and crept to the stables. There she had hidden a cloak that laced down the front. With this she covered her gown, adding a close-fitting wimple to hide her golden hair and a hood to overshadow her features. She smeared her face and hands with filth as before, and embraced the white pony standing in his stall. Silently, in thought only, she bade him farewell, not daring to even whisper his name. Win or lose, she must now honour her promise to return to the place beyond the hill. And lose she must, for should she solve the last two problems to the satisfaction of the Faêran, the first she could not answer.