The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Caitri was biting her lip, uneasy about conveying ill tidings. ‘And then the Duke, he told Prince Edward to hush, not to speak so loudly, for doubtless the wizard would soon be recaptured and it would not do to cause undue alarm by revealing this threat, which in fact was no threat at all, because my lady dwelt in security on the Royal Isle. And the Prince after a time, he said yes, he knew that. They did not say more, after.’

  ‘Are you certain of what you heard?’

  ‘Yes. There was no mistaking it. I am so sorry, but I thought it best to warn you …’

  Tahquil-Rohain stared at the cinnamon rind of the weather-beech. A brightly enamelled ladybird walked across it, a tiny hemisphere of scarlet and black on barely perceptible feet. The fragile insect teetered along the edge of a crevasse in the bark.

  ‘Gramercie, Caitri,’ she said. ‘It is well done, to inform me that yet another enemy seeks my blood. Nay, I do not mock! I mean every syllable in earnest. Those who know their enemies are better prepared to defend themselves. The disagreeable Sargoth, wherever he might roam, shall not catch me unawares!’

  But, having allowed recollections of Tamhania to return, Caitri was weeping now. ‘Poor Edward!’ she sobbed. ‘And dear Thomas!’ Her tears were a catalyst. Memories of all they had ever loved and lost sprang clearly to the forefront of the damsels’ minds. The impetus of Tamhania’s tragedy, postponed during their scramble for survival, now returned to them in full force. Together, embracing one another, the three of them wept inconsolably until no more tears would come.

  As aftermath, a deep tranquillity pooled within them.

  Ultimately, Tahquil swung out of the tree, scrambling down the woody creepers to the ground. She landed hard and did not glance up.

  ‘Come.’ Her throat rasped, irritated by volcanic fumes. ‘’Tis time we were away.’

  Above the leaf canopy, rain clouds gathered. They let down their silver hair to wash away the grieving ash, the corrosives.

  The next morning the air struck clear, wincing, sparkling like polished crystal.

  Northeast they walked, keeping about two miles inland from the coastline. A northerly breeze brought the savage scent of the sea. The sounds of wights bubbled all around, especially at night: footsteps, rustlings, occasional bursts of manic laughter or screams, that sense of unseen presences that raised hairs, prickling, on the scalp, and choked the throat with a cold hand and hammered at the heart. Either their tilhals or the shining ring or good sense or luck or all four had, so far, kept safe this trio of inexperienced wayfarers.

  From time to time, Caitri and Viviana continued to anoint Tahquil with oil of stytchel-thyme to prevent recognition by her scent, because there were, in the world, things that would not be barred by charms and good fortune. Tahquil showed her companions the gold enamelled bracelet and told them all that had returned to her as she sat in the shadow of the caldera. They were left awestruck.

  ‘After all that has transpired, my lady is in fact a lady,’ Viviana declared, with a courtier’s consciousness of rank. ‘A right rare one, if I may say so!’

  ‘How is it, my lady,’ wondered Caitri as they travelled, ‘that you are not dust? In the tales, when mortals return from spending many years in Faêrie, they crumble away after setting foot on Erithan soil.’

  Ashes to dust. ‘I know not, unless it were part of the Lady Nimriel’s gift, or a property of the Gateway in whose shelter I spent a thousand years.’

  ‘But can you not remember the exact location of this Gateway?’

  ‘I cannot. Yet I think that if I set eyes on it I shall know it.’

  ‘To search for it—that is where we are going?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But should we not instead seek out the King-Emperor so that you may inform him of all you have recalled?’ persisted the little girl. ‘For, if anyone can aid you in the hunt for this Gate, it is His Majesty! Why, with the Royal Attriod and all the Legions of Erith at his command, he could not fail!’

  ‘His hands are full enough with the conflict in the north,’ Tahquil said quickly. She paused, as if reconsidering, then added, ‘In all truth, I would fain keep my lord from this perilous business of Gates and Faêran princes and unseelie hunters. Already, he risks his life at the battlefield. I have no wish to bring further danger upon him.’

  ‘In my opinion,’ Caitri responded, choosing her words with tactful care, ‘a decision against taking your news to His Majesty is unwise. He is our powerful sovereign, and a Dainnan warrior beyond compare. Wizards throng to his summons. He governs great armies of bronze and iron. Does my lady truly believe such a one cannot defend himself against unseelie foes? I say he can—and he can facilitate your quest as well.’

  ‘I thank you for your outspokenness,’ Tahquil said with sincerity. ‘There is much in what you say.’

  Additionally, she reflected wryly, between my love and myself, who are handfasted, there should be no secrets …

  ‘Surely it is our duty as citizens,’ interjected Viviana, ‘to acquaint our sovereign with the nature of the disquieting undercurrents that are stirring. Surely it is his right, as Erith’s monarch, to be able to name the enemies of the Empire.’

  A look of pain twisted Tahquil’s features. Racked with indecision, she strode faster, her hands plucking at the air as if grasping for answers. Unable, for the nonce, to decide whether to let the arguments of her companions sway her, she permitted her thoughts to briefly stray.

  Indeed, he does rule armies of bronze and iron, she mused. His own armour is wrought of polished steel, and had I not seen him wearing it, I would wonder—not for the first time—whether Faêran blood flowed in his veins. Yet the touch of cold iron to the Fair Ones is as the touch of flame to mortals. No Faêran lord or lady may brush so much as a fingertip against steel and not be tormented with agony beyond measure.

  No, he is not of their race. It is my love for him that makes him seem more marvellous than other men. ‘Love is blind,’ they say; rather should they say, ‘Love makes heroes of ordinary fellows, princes of commoners, Faêran of mortalkind. In the eyes of all lovers the beloved transcends the mundane, forsakes all flaws and becomes supernatural.’

  Besides, how could he be other than mortal? He is the King-Emperor, whose very birth was witnessed by the Lord High Chancellor, not to mention a multitude of midwives and carlins.

  Abruptly, Tahquil slowed her pace and waited for the others to catch up.

  ‘Speed is imperative,’ she said resolutely. ‘If we go looking for His Majesty, much time will be lost. The sooner my plan is put into action, the sooner the Faêran will depart from Erith and leave us in peace. The more we dally, the greater chance Prince Morragan has to find the Gate before us!’

  ‘True enough!’ Caitri agreed.

  Resignedly, Viviana shrugged. ‘Then so be it. Against my better judgement I follow.’

  ‘I do not compel you,’ Tahquil rebuked mildly.

  The courtier smiled. ‘Well!’ With a flourish of her hand she indicated their wild and leafy surroundings. ‘Where else would I go?’

  A rill fed a woodland pool; a dark-green stillness flooring a frog-hollow lapped in vernal shade. Here the travellers halted, warily, to bathe their hands and faces. They kept watch for signs of unseelie presences, wights of water, such as drowners, waterhorses or dripping fuaths. They dared not venture in, lest pallid hands should shoot forth from submerged lairs and seize them. Nothing untoward took place, save that as they left the pool Tahquil looked back and, in the shifting light and shade, thought she saw something sitting alone at the water’s edge, where only emptiness had sat alone before. Pulling her taltry well forward she urged her companions to hasten.

  The jade-misted birch woodland gave way to groves of blossoming pear and almond, and now they walked beneath a sea of another kind: foaming acres of exuberant white petals in luxuriant profusion, an aerial wedding-world, zithering with bees.

  ‘The last remnants of an old orchard, perhaps,’ said Viviana. ‘Like Cin
narine. Oh, to see those lands in Spring.’

  ‘Cinnarine is too close to the battlefields for my liking,’ said Caitri.

  The long, narrow, pointed spear-blades of almond leaves and the shorter, rounded, glossy discs of pear foliage still lay wrapped tightly inside their buds, on the point of unfolding. On boughs bereft of any greenery, only pristine clouds of starched blossom gathered, their white wax petals flawlessly formed. Nebulae of paper-white butterflies steamed among the flowers. Flocks of milky doves ascended and descended like snowy, burst pillows. Thistledown wafted like the ghosts of fallen stars.

  The wanderers dined on chicory leaves and silver-weed roots. Contrarily, the astringent flavours evoked for Tahquil a contrasting picture of Oswyn’s honeyed pears poached in cardamom and anise sauce, and her almond bread, rolled into buttery crescents, last tasted a millennium ago though it seemed only a short span of time. Yet even the memories of these dainties could not put zest into her appetite, already dulled by the Langothe.

  As the dusk chorus of birds had foretold, the sky bloomed like a grey-blue pearl, dim but faintly luminous. Treetops were suspended, dark against its satin. From the finest end of the finest overhanging bough, silhouetted, a tiny possum let itself down delicately, slowly, quietly, by its tail. Its hands grasped the twig below. It swung sideways and was gone.

  That night, waiting for sleep, hammocked high in a natural web of ivy strung thickly between almond boughs, Tahquil lay and listened to the rustlings of the possums. As her eyes began to adjust to the moonlight, she became aware that she was staring at one of them, and it was looking back at her. She saw it, dark against the pale black sky. Its shy partner had dashed away in panic, crashing down into the ivy net. This one regarded her solemnly then unhurriedly melted into the night—a wild thing, courageous, inquisitive. Untouchable.

  She fancied, for an instant, that if she did but turn her head she would find Thorn lying beside her. And so she did not turn her head, lest he was not.

  Her companions slept soundly. Caitri’s triangular face, surrounded by its abundant cloud of wavy, brown hair, was at peace. Her thin, pale limbs sprawled among the leaves and her neat, bow-shaped mouth was relaxed, slightly open.

  Next morning the companions journeyed on. On the other side of the snow-lace orchard the trees became sparser. The spaces between them allowed glimpses of a sky the pastel blue of a wild bird’s egg, striped with wind-raked ribbons of cloud. The orchard dwindled and dropped away altogether, giving way to rolling grasslands pricked with soft colours like a sprinkle of dyed sugar crystals.

  These borderland tracts were like wild gardens, bursting with colour at the height of their flowering. The hard rain of Tamhania’s destruction had scarcely touched them. Deep bosks of rhododendrons filled them, and callistemons thrusting forth their startling scarlet bottlebrushes, and mauve magnolias, and brightbaubled hakeas. Towards the middle, the flower meadows were drowned in cataracts of wisteria, a profusion of purple tassels rich with heady scent, a rain of delicate flowerets hanging in chains and dripping with petals and bees.

  The travellers gazed out across the meadows. To the north, a dark ribbon crossed the horizon from east to west. From this distance, it looked to be a sheer cliff wall or escarpment, or a front line of giant warriors standing elbow to elbow.

  ‘Ahead of us lies the mighty forest of Timbrilfin,’ said Tahquil, forcing her thoughts away from Thorn to recall the lessons in mapping she had learned as a child. ‘I have never come close to it, but in my time I learned of it and once, from a boat, I glimpsed the final reaches of its western arm. We are come to the Arven Meadows in the Marches of Timbrilfin.’

  ‘I have heard of a vast forest in these parts,’ said Viviana, ‘but I have not heard the name you call it by. I do not remember what I have heard it called; however, I think ’twas not so pleasant to the ear.’

  ‘Perhaps the name has changed over the years,’ suggested Caitri.

  ‘Many things alter, over time,’ said Tahquil. The forest itself may not be the same.’

  ‘I do not want to enter it,’ said Viviana. ‘It looks dark and eldritch, even at this distance.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ replied Tahquil, ‘nevertheless we must go through, for there is no way around. Or if there is, it would take us many leagues out of our way, for the forest stretches right across the west to the rocky cliffs of the coast, and equally afar into the east.’

  ‘In your time perhaps,’ said Viviana, ‘yet its mightiness may well have dwindled these thousand years.’

  ‘Think you?’ asked Tahquil. ‘I see no end to it at either side.’

  After carefully scanning the dark line across the horizon, the courtier had to agree.

  Lumpy with bundles, the travellers made their way through the flowers. To a casual observer they might have looked like three taltried peasants in stout boots, the leader tall and slender with greasy brown locks overshadowing the face, the second shorter and plumper with straw-coloured curls straggling from beneath the hood, the last small and slight with hair combed neatly back from a clean-boned child’s face. Thigh-deep they waded in a rainbow of tulip goblets, silk-petticoated peony and ranunculus, long perfumed trumpets of daffodils and bonnets of freesia, hyacinth’s grapes and bells, the earnest blue lace of love-in-the-mist, the innocent faces of primula and the filaments of crocuses dusted with saffron powders. Knee-deep the travellers splashed through little boggy streams or wandered amid armies of flag-lilies waving like proudly borne standards—a blaze of amethyst banners tongued with yellow flame. At nights they looked for islets or forks in these rivulets, sleeping between two arms of running water so as to be safe, at least from minor wights.

  For this land was riddled with eldritch manifestations.

  When the evenings drew in, humpbacked, small, bogle-like mannikins with beady eyes and snouty, wicked faces would cavort among the flower stems. They pelted the travellers with tiny stones, hurling abuse in high-pitched voices. They turned somersaults, rolling themselves into balls, and as they rolled along they were no longer mannikins but hedgehogs which uncurled before snuffling out of sight. The flowers swished as though invisible legs stalked through the Arven Meadows.

  The urchens were annoying and their aim was accurate, the cause of painful bruising and cuts. It seemed that the more their three victims shouted, waved their arms and tried to chase them off, the more the urchens delighted in inflicting torment. Guffawing with derision, they pitched more stones and wheeled away.

  ‘Leave off,’ Tahquil said to her friends at last. ‘Attention only encourages them. Ignore their pranks and perhaps they’ll grow bored.’

  Eventually the wights moved off.

  ‘Beastly urchens, giving hedgehogs a bad name,’ said Caitri, wiping blood from her cheek where a sharp stone had gashed it. ‘It must be centuries since mortals have passed this way for them to harass.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they have much else to think about,’ said Viviana.

  ‘I don’t suppose they have much to think with,’ said Caitri scornfully.

  The urchens returned on one or two other occasions, in case the travellers should languish for spiteful company.

  ‘Where do they find all those pebbles?’ pondered Viviana.

  Stars hung overhead like burning snowflakes.

  One sunfall, while gathering dead twigs of rhododendron for kindling, Viviana screamed. Gibbering with terror, she came splashing across a beck to the island campsite. Snatching up knives and sticks, Tahquil and Caitri stood back to back with Viviana folded between, preparing to defend themselves.

  ‘Should something powerful come, we have no chance,’ murmured Caitri to Tahquil beneath Viviana’s hysterical, unintelligible gasps.

  ‘I know.’

  They scrutinised the meadows. The flower heads nodded, skimmed by a zephyr and the enchanting flute-like calls of a pied butcherbird. The great, wild garden appeared guileless.

  ‘What saw you, Via?’ Tahquil asked without turning her head. Ever
y nerve hummed like ship’s rigging in a sea storm.

  ‘It came at me. It had a face, like a man’s but shaggy, horned. It was naked from the waist up, ten feet tall with goats’ legs …’

  ‘Goats’ legs? Are you certain it was ten feet tall?’

  ‘Well, perhaps nine. Maybe eight. No less than five or four—’

  ‘An urisk.’

  ‘But you should have seen it! It was horrid!’

  ‘It sounds like an urisk, Via. Did it look like the marble figures supporting the Duke of Roxburgh’s mantelshelf in Caermelor Palace?’

  ‘Why yes indeed, it did resemble those, only—’

  ‘If it is an urisk you saw, we have nothing to fear.’

  ‘Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. But ’twas most fearsome.’

  The Arven Meadows now lacked any sign of wights. As the travellers kindled their little fire, the book of night opened, upon whose dark pages were printed the runes of constellations spelling out a huge, slow language as old as evolution.

  ‘There are trows about,’ said Tahquil next day as they picked their way across the confetti-stippled uplands. ‘Each night I see them, moving under the starlight.’

  ‘The Grey Neighbours,’ said Viviana. ‘Harmless mostly, but vengeful if offended.’

  ‘In the Tower we never saw any wights at all,’ said Caitri. ‘Only if we returned late from gathering in the forest beyond the domains, someone might glimpse movement or the flash of eyes in the darkling, but not often. I heard only the tales.’

  ‘We had a bruney at Wytham,’ said Viviana. ‘He was called Billy Blind—a very reliable little domestic who kept the house spick and span. And I recall with pleasure my lady’s household wight at Arcune, which used to sing with us and swing on the pot-hook. But I’d never seen unseelie wights except from a distance,’ she shuddered, ‘until I met with hobyahs on the road to your Tower, Cait. That was a meeting I could well have done without.’