The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘Ye ken not o’ whom ye speak,’ said the urisk, glancing over his shoulder as though fearful of listeners.

  ‘Behold, I am confirmed. Even the gentlest of wights fears their wrath,’ Tahquil said with a sigh.

  Shaking his head warningly, the nygel resumed his narrative.

  Long ago the six greatest unseelie wights, sometimes called the Lords of Wickedness or the Nightmare Princes, had formed an Unseelie Attriod, with the formidable Waelghast at its head. Eventually they had been deprived of their leader, without whom the structure of their collective was rent asunder, and the Unseelie Attriod was dispersed.

  Locked out of Faêrie at the Closing, these Nightmare Princes had scattered, to wander Erith through the long years, bereft of purpose. When the Raven Prince returned to wakefulness and emerged from Raven’s Howe, the Unseelie Attriod reformed around him. The Lords of Wickedness claimed him as their chieftain, and while he hardly acknowledged their claim, neither did he gainsay it. Grouped in this structure, they once again became a powerful force in Erith. Whiling away their immortal spans, they amused themselves with numerous sports and depredations, including predatory forays against Men. Yet in these Hunts, the Faêran themselves did not take part, being more inclined to chase Faêran deer, a quarry more elusive and worthy of their prowess.

  Then the nygel recounted how in Autumn of 1089, in the month of Gaothmis, an intruder had been detected in Huntingtowers, the stronghold of the Antlered One. The spy had escaped, been hunted down and, as it was believed, had perished beneath a cave-in of the old mines. In wrath, Morragan demanded to know how such a mortal intruder had penetrated Huon’s fortress. This was not revealed, until months later a certain duergar was discovered furtively making his way towards the mountains. In his possession was a swatch of golden hair, which had been partially plaited into a whip. In his terror of Huon and hope of deflecting punishment, the hapless duergar loosened his tongue and told all, explaining that he had received the hair in exchange for a foolish mortal’s clandestine entry to Huntingtowers. He had taken the precaution of rendering mute the potential spy, merely out of malice, but he had augured that the wench would not long remain undetected in the fortress of Huon.

  Despite his confession, no mercy was shown him. His fate at the hands of Huon’s servants had been most terrible, as was Huon’s way with all those who angered him. Throughout the length and breadth of Erith the word went out from Prince Morragan and from the Unseelie Attriod to all creatures of eldritch—find the yellow-haired spy.

  ‘Therefarr,’ concluded the nygel, ‘I’ll warrant the Prince is after ye tae take reprisal because ye were eavesdrapping an him. That is a crime utterly candemned by the Faêran. He will nat farrget ye.’

  At this point the nygel’s story ended, for he had passed into remote regions and heard no further tidings. Having deserted Millbeck Tarn after his capture there, he had gone looking for another pool to inhabit. He found himself moving northward, impelled by the strange and continuous Call that made all things eldritch lift up their eyes and hearken, and one by one to leave their haunts and respond: the Summoning Call issued by the Raven Prince.

  ‘Och, but we owe no allegiance tae the great lords,’ interjected the urisk, ‘and although I lo’e the Faêran weel, I’ll not dance to Prince Morragan’s tune gin he’s hand in glove wi’ those who would do ye harm, lass.’

  ‘You are very kind,’ said Tahquil.

  ‘Ye’re the make o’ a lassie I once kenned. One o’ the Arbalisters. I hav’nae dwelt wi’ a family for some centuries.’

  ‘Myself also.’

  ‘Among them I kept an un-name, a kenning. “Tully” they ca’ed me.’

  ‘May I address you by that kenning?’

  ‘Aye.’ The urisk’s eyes shone. He was, after all, a domestic wight and although a Solitary, he belonged at the fringes of company, the outer edges of firelit circles. The wilderness was not his preferred haunt.

  Again, Tahquil raised her eyes to the sky, as though she feared a presence there.

  ‘If Morragan is able to hold converse with the morthadu,’ she said, ‘which I doubt not, then the beasts of Black Bridge might already have sped to him with tidings of three wandering damsels—a notable trio in the wilderness.’

  ‘Even so,’ agreed the urisk, nodding his cornuted head solemnly, ‘even so.’

  ‘There’s one av the white kine as dwells in yon green tarrn,’ interjected the nygel, changing the subject unexpectedly—it appeared his equine mind was erratic and seldom able to remain focused. ‘She is av the Gwartheg Illyn and will allow harrself to be milked, this night.’

  ‘We have no pail.’

  ‘Suck’t fram her dugs.’

  ‘’Tis not our way.’

  ‘Marr’s the pity for ye.’

  ‘For almost two years,’ Tahquil resumed, directing her discourse at the urisk, ‘Prince Morragan has been toying with the armies of Erith—why, I can only surmise. Possibly, his disdain of mortal men grows and he wishes to set us at each other’s throats, leading to our eventual destruction. Or perhaps the Prince’s brother, Angavar High King, has woken and these two Lords of Gramarye use us as pawns in their war games, to while away the tedious years of Erith.

  ‘For, who would Morragan wish to harass, if not his brother who exiled him? Of course, one who sleeps dreamlessly beneath a hill is hardly a worthy adversary. I would warrant that, like the Raven Prince himself, Angavar High King of the Fair Realm is indeed awake and walks the lands of Erith or holds Faêran Court with his followers in some remote fastness—even in the leafy bowers of some light-dappled greenwood such as this!’ She paused reflectively. ‘Yet surely there would be some hint of his presence in Erith, some flavour? How could Aia’s greatest potency of gramarye reawaken and it not be sensed in every blade of grass, known in every stone, sung in the wind, borne on the water, shouted in thunder, whispered in the leaves? Does he yet sleep, the High King of the Faêran, or has he woken?’

  ‘To my knowing,’ said the urisk with a shrug, ‘the Righ Ard sleeps yet. But I ken little o’ the ways o’ the warld. I hae kept tae mesel’ these past decades. Mickle a drap o’ water has passed beneath mony a bridge since Tully last heard fresh tidings.’

  There was a short silence, filled with apprehension.

  ‘Via,’ Tahquil turned to the courtier, ‘it appears Morragan and the Unseelie Attriod and untold numbers of wights hunt yet for a yellow-haired girl wandering in the wilderness. With your bleached locks, in my company, you are in danger. Dark dye for your hair must be found!’

  Viviana scowled. Her hair, unkempt, was a tangle of dry yellow straw. Close to the scalp it resembled brown silk threads.

  ‘And for my own pale regrowth as well!’ Tahquil added. ‘We shall look out for dyestuffs as we travel,’ she promised, rising to her feet. ‘For the nonce, it is urgent that we continue on our way. Sir Waterhorse, if you truly mean to aid me, I shall not discharge you. Accompany us if you will. Your help may prove invaluable during our journey north.’

  The nygel bared his square teeth in a horse-smile.

  ‘I will join ye.’

  ‘Och, and mesel’ also,’ said the urisk.

  ‘Oh, fither,’ snapped Viviana, recidivating into broken slingua. ‘Now we must contend with yet another uncouthant half-beast that minces its vowels and otherwise butchers the Common Tongue. Storfable, Es raith-na?’

  ‘Ignore her—she is half-spelled,’ said Tahquil quietly.

  ‘I am uneasy with this creature,’ Caitri murmured in Tahquil’s ear. ‘It is one thing to travel in the company of an urisk, a domestic wight, but quite another to journey with a waterhorse.’

  ‘A waterhorse indeed, but one of the most harmless type of all, and he says he owes me a favour.’

  ‘Owes you, m’lady.’

  ‘Depend on it, I shall ensure the favour extends to my friends.’

  Faint and far off, a long, eerie stridor issued from the southeast, scraping down the night breeze like a fingernail o
n slate, and trailing into silence. It was not the voice of a howler predicting storms, nor yet a weeper grieving for a fatality to come, nor yet one of the morthadu yowling. It was a multiple baying and yelping, as from the throats of a pack of hounds.

  ‘The Hunt is out somewhere tonight!’ said the urisk, glancing up. ‘They havnae been about these parts for many a lang nicht.’

  ‘Might aerial riders see us through the trees?’

  ‘Not unless they ride directly over us, or mighty close to’t.’

  ‘Maybe they have picked up a trail,’ said Tahquil, shuddering in every limb, glad of the shelter of the trees. ‘All the more reason for haste.’

  The shadow of a bird fled again between the stars and the ground. Following it, clouds rubbed out the moon. The black ruby of night held all things captive within its prism. Through it, five travellers passed swiftly through the woodlands of Cinnarine until morning brushed the east with colours. At uhta, some boughs dipped and swayed though no wind blew, the waters of a lonely pool stirred and the mortals found themselves walking alone.

  In the mornings, the world was the bowl of a crystal goblet, its rim the horizon, pinging with pure resonant notes as though struck by tiny hammers. Birds in their gorgeous livery ushered in the day.

  The coillduine flitted through the orchards between sunrise and sunset, lightly clad in opalescent radiance, through which their pale forms were dimly discernible.

  ‘Peacock feathers brush my eyes,’ murmured Caitri, loath to close her lids against these sights and sleep each morning, but too weary to do otherwise. Despite and because of their seelie escort, the little band must continue its nocturnal existence, remaining alert in the most perilous hours, resting only under the sun.

  Northward they traipsed through Cinnarine by night. The urisk Tully openly trotted by their sides, the nygel slithered, a vague shadow in the trees horsing around with things he met along his way, betrayed now and then by a splash, or a mischievous whicker of a laugh that the urisk called ‘nichering’. When narrow brooks crossed their path, the urisk would disappear to skirt them by some mysterious means. After a night or two the mortals became less uncomfortable with the ways and manners of their eldritch companions.

  And so it has come about, thought Tahquil, that we three are now six. One escorts us by choice, one by design and, she tilted her head to the dark skies, perhaps another, by obligation …

  But it was all she could do to keep going, with the chains of desperate longing dragging behind.

  Viviana raged alone among the trees at dusk, bitterness eating out the apple of her heart like codling larvae. A pear dangled like a drop of gilded jade. She plucked it. Could this be fruit of a goblin tree? Her teeth met in its flesh. She spat and flung the spoiled thing away. Thin fluids trickled from her snarling lips.

  ‘Everything here is so fair and preciously ornamented,’ she cried to no one but the trees, ‘and as dependable as stairs of sand.’ Tearing sprigs from the pear tree, she trampled them underfoot.

  Alone she was, having left her companions in a grove of cherry trees, where they broke their fast on fruit and cold water. Unassuaged, stung by restlessness, the courtier had flounced away, as was her wont from time to time, to roam the woods in the lingering heat which was all that remained of the Summer’s day, searching for wood-goblin fare. Hurtful as her wightinduced pining was, she could not guess at the depths of the greater anguish that was about to afflict her. Sometimes, moodily, she sang nonsensical ditties, spontaneously composed—for a kind of madness had taken root in her.

  ‘Oh, the blue-faced cat is merry when she moos,

  With wings of grass to fly on.

  And the hog is shod with dainty little shoes

  That I should like to try on.

  And the fruit-bat spins a web of many grins

  That men must hang and die on!’

  A stranger’s voice said—

  ‘Might a nightingale endeavour to sing thus?’

  The trees sighed beneath a sudden wind. A thrush ceased its singing and Viviana snapped her mouth shut on her own. The question had risen, with a tendril of mist, from a thicket of close-growing, antique apple trees, whose semirecumbent boughs had surrendered to weariness. It was not the abruptness of the sound nor the surprise at finding herself not alone as she had supposed, nor yet the unmistakable masculinity of the tones which deprived her of movement and speech—it was the thrilling music of the voice, to which she leaned and hearkened without hearing the words.

  ‘Might it dare, were it audience to superior accomplishment?’ murmured the slender young knight who pushed aside foliage and stepped out of the thicket.

  The blood pounded into Viviana’s face.

  ‘The King,’ she gasped, stretching out a hand to steady herself against a mossy column. She flinched, once, then resumed her stillness. Only a slight quiver scurried back and forth through her, like ripples in a cup—only that. Beneath the apparent stasis, her blood had ignited. She was aflame, she was assailed by dizziness, she was drunk. Her eyes drank him in but already her fever burned unquenchable.

  He was clad in bleached linen, buckled over with half-armour in the soft grey tones and pure white highlights of silver; chain mail and plate which lent him the air of a dire machine of metal, or a carapaced insect or a cold-blooded sea-creature, yet within this casing, his excellence was obviously superlative.

  Darker than wickedness was his hair, falling unbound past his shoulders. As compelling as forbidden pleasure was his countenance, but ‘Nay, I am mistaken …’ she said, and now she saw clearly that surprise had confused her. This champion whose looks and voice stirred the very marrow of her bones was not the King-Emperor. Slighter of build and somewhat less in height, paler of skin was the one who stood looking down at her from eyes not the hue of storms but black as sloes, eyes as alight with passion as her own—a passion matching in intensity, but very different, had she but known it.

  And to Viviana now, any man not possessed of this exact stature, this frame, this hair and skin and eyes, was insufficient. The attractiveness of all good-looking men she had known was like candles to the sun. Never had she beheld anything more desirable, and she willed the moment to last for all time, that he might never leave her sight.

  ‘What maiden wanders here?’ he said, or sang, and she did not think to ask his name, nor why he cast no shadow. He did not smile; his look was sorrowful, like that of a brilliant poet precociously doomed—a sadness which, if it affected his comeliness at all, enhanced it.

  Then he began to speak again, this time in rhyme—rhyme and metre being as natural to the speech of wights as prose, or more so. In fact, ‘ganconer’ was a word the Common Tongue had derived from the original; ‘gean-cannah’, which meant ‘Love Talker’. The words of ganconers were enchantment in its true meaning: snares to the senses. A sonnet was the form his wooing took, that traditional pattern of love’s eloquence. Hearkening to the puissance of his syllables, Viviana did not notice the skew of the narrative or its menace, its obscenity.

  ‘What maiden wanders here? Whose locks of gold

  Frame youth’s fresh looks? What mortal paradigm?

  Pulchritude sweet as this ought ne’er grow old

  And suffer from the ravages of time.

  With such hot passion do I burn for thee

  That I would ward thee from that odious fate.

  All other joys in life shall worthless be

  When once our union is consummate.

  The act of love reflects a violent death:

  The piercing of the sword, the gasping cry,

  Th’expense of spirit and th’expense of breath—

  Close, ecstasy and agony do lie.

  Now, hearken to the hungers of thine heart—

  Let’s lovers be, whom death alone shall part.’

  His tragic appearance was concupiscently romantic. Inside Viviana a bird sang shrilly, its beak perforating her heart.

  ‘You shall find me,’ added this vision of male al
lure, ‘breathtaking.’

  He drew closer and she felt a chill like the utter coldness of a marble tombstone. A phantasmal mist rose out of the trees and twined about them, shutting out the world.

  ‘Silken of flesh,’ he said, provocatively brushing her cheek with a long finger, ‘hazel of eye and rose of mouth.’ His fingertip trailed across her lips. She trembled frenetically, distracted unbearably by his ardency, his nearness. The potent outline of his face was carved in alabaster against the spilled ink of his hair. Sloe eyes looked into her wide pupils, through her vulnerability to the wellspring of her psyche, and where they looked a wound opened and began to bleed.

  ‘But why so thirsty,’ he concluded softly, drawing away a finger on whose tip stood out a cloudy bead of pear juice, ‘beloved?’

  All senses abandoned Viviana, consumed by obsession. She reached out. His arms closed around her. He filled her embrace with his passion, her mouth with his kisses, her eyes with his blinding hair, her thoughts with chaos, her lungs with his breath.

  And that breath was as icy as a comet’s heart.

  Tahquil sat with Caitri and the urisk in the grove of cherry trees while evening thickened. It was an unspoken fact that tension always eased with these brief absences of Viviana, who took her ill temper and sarcasm and fidgetiness away with her.

  Tahquil’s fingers twirled a closed daisy plucked from the long grasses. She had just seen the nygel in horse-form, kicking up his heels and chasing a bevy of small, white pigs. Now he was feeding down by the nearby brook. From his muzzle trailed long, green ribbons that might have been water-weed or the feathers of a parrot.

  Are nygels herbivorous like lorraly horses, or carnivorous like that prince of their breed, the cruel Each Uisge, devourer of mortalkind?

  Recollecting her meeting with the Each Uisge under Hob’s Hill, she fell to brooding about her experiences at the Hall of Carnconnor, a thousand years since. ‘Cochal-eater’, the sadistic Yallery Brown had called her.