The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘What does it mean, the term “cochal”?’ she idly asked the urisk.

  ‘Cochal? ’Tis a husk—a glume or a shell, an outer structure.’

  ‘Why should a wight accuse me of being a cochal-eater?’

  ‘Only some windy-wa’ blusterer wad scauld like that, lass. Mortals a’, and wights also when dining, eat baith the toradh o’ the fairin’, which is the essential guidness, and the cochal as weel. The cochal is only the appearance, the container, gin ye will, but the toradh’s the prie and the smell and the life-giving powers.’

  ‘Good sir—Tully—were you to be a little less, ah, parochial in your speech, I should understand you better.’

  ‘Och, then I mun give feater currency tae my jandering, lass!’

  ‘How is it possible to consume the one and not the other? To dine upon the taste and goodness of victuals, without eating the unnourishing substance?’

  ‘It is not possible, for yoursel’ or mysel’. Only the Lords of Gramarye, the Faêran, can take the toradh and not the cochal, leaving the fare to appear untouched.’

  ‘But food left without toradh must look hollow within—’

  ‘Not so. Ye mun understand the nature o’ toradh. It cannae be seen, nor touched, but it imbues e’en a pickle o’ wheat, a drap o’ milk.’

  ‘What would betide, were you or I to eat seemingly whole food from which the toradh had been stolen?’

  ‘We wouldnae thrive on’t. We might feast forever and niver gain an ounce o’ flesh, a doit o’ strength. In the transports of gluttony we would shrivel.’

  ‘Would we not notice a difference in the food?’

  ‘Nay. Though the true taste is removed with the toradh, a semblance remains—enough tae trick the palates o’ sich as you and I. Only the Faêran could tell the difference, and that at the verra crack, at the instant.’

  ‘Therefore the Faêran eat to live, in the same manner as mortals and wights, is it not so?’

  A bird soared silently over the treetops: a swan. The urisk did not reply immediately. He seemed agitated, glancing about at the thick shadows woven by the trees, which his nocturnal eyes could pierce.

  ‘Nay,’ he said eventually. ‘The Faêran dine for pleasure alone. They hae no need for meat or drink tae support them. Tae sich as they, food is not a source o’ life but a source o’ entertainment. Often wad they come tae feast by night in Erith’s groves before the Closing, but their feast tables were laid with toradh clothed in illusion, or else true fare which in the morning wad lie scattered on the ground.’

  The leaves rustled. Drifting into a half-dream, Tahquil invented a scene in which Thorn was lounging idly on the grass close by, and she had only to reach out and she might touch him.

  The urisk turned his curly head again, scanning the grove of cherries.

  ‘I’m waur’t Mistress Wellesley may be tint. She has been gane too lang,’ he muttered, ‘and something unket and kittle roams close by.’

  The leaf-ring stung. Tahquil jumped up. Simultaneously, a willowy feminine form materialised out of the trees leading to the brook.

  ‘Sweet-speaking handsome one haunts here,’ hissed the swanmaiden urgently. ‘Heedless hussie hearkens. She stumbles. She who falls for shadows shall soon weave her shroud!’

  Sickness punched Tahquil in the stomach. Her blood drained to her feet.

  ‘We must find her immediately!’ she cried. ‘Come, Cait! Ho, nygel, now’s the time to render assistance! Obban tesh, I should have known better than to let her from my sight.’ She grasped Caitri’s hand. ‘Stay with me, Caitri. Tully, prithee do not leave us. Against a ganconer we are as sparrows to a hawk.’

  ‘This way, I ween,’ honked the urisk, leading the way. Into the darkling woods they plunged.

  A very faint, faraway music drifted through the arbours of Cinnarine, such tinkling music as might be produced by diminutive needles, delicately tuned, hung and struck with tiny drumsticks of iridium. A light breath of shang wind, only the edge of a greater unstorm rolling towards the east, briefly flicked over Cinnarine in passing. By its fires and velvet darknesses the companions made their way. They passed through colonnades of dark electrum, where silver branches dipped, picked out with mercurial leaves, along fructuous avenues arched over with trees of solid gold and then through silvan palaces upheld with pillars of diamond and emerald, coronalled with flickering lights. Hooded were the mortals—not so the wights. This was their element and would not mock them by replication. The thin sound of singing came threading through the trees. Following it, the searchers found Viviana.

  Death by pining is a protracted affair. She was alive, although she had already begun to die, unaware of her condition. Untaltried, she sat alone at the edge of a glade, wearing a pair of long, red gloves. As Tahquil and Caitri approached it became apparent that Viviana’s hands were, in fact, bare. Blood glistened all over them, coating her arms to the elbows. Between her fingers she held a green pulp of nettles and thistles, which she was kneading. The prickles tore her flesh but she worked on without a sound, without complaint. No tear blurred her lily cheek and a woven circlet of willow osiers crowned her sunflower head. In a sweet voice, she sang the old folk song:

  ‘All around my hat I will wear the green willow,

  And all around my hat, for a twelve-month and a day,

  And if anyone should ask me the reason I’m wearing it,

  It’s all for my true-love who is far, far away.’

  The courtier’s shang image hovered around her like an aura. It must have been playing and replaying itself, but no change of expression flitted spectrally across the spectral copy of Viviana’s features; her air-imprinted countenance, shadow-eyed and utterly without mirth, remained stagnant.

  They tried to dash the weeds from her hands but she would not relinquish them. Neither would she speak, or look at her companions. Only she sighed deeply as though a wound bled inside her that could not heal.

  Pliable she was, and acquiescent. The spirit had been drained out of her. They raised her to her feet and led her away. She complied without demur.

  ‘She’s fa’en,’ mourned the urisk. ‘The bairn’s fa’en.’

  The unstorm fled.

  When they were far away from that place, Tahquil said gently, ‘Viviana, give the thistles to me. They are hurting you.’

  Viviana shook her head. ‘When the flesh is parted from the fibres, then shall I take the fibres and weave them.’

  ‘What will you weave, Via?’

  ‘I will weave my shroud,’ said the courtier, emotionlessly. ‘For I have met the ganconer, in a bitter hour. I thought him a human sweetheart, but his lips were cold on mine and his breath as keen as death. Too late I knew. No longer can I joy in life. He has left me now, but for love of him I must pine to my grave.’

  Then Tahquil knew the full meaning of powerlessness, futility and grief. Rage rose like magma to her eyes but streamed out as tears.

  ‘Three guardians to guide us!’ she railed loudly. ‘Three we have to protect us and not one, not one of you has prevented this. Hundreds of leagues we travelled on our own. A thousand dangers we faced without assistance and we won through. Yet now, under your so-called patronage, one of us is doomed. Tully, you I cannot fault—you gave us life in Khazathdaur, and on the slopes of Creech Hill you succoured us. But what use are you, swan, if you always come too late? And you, horse, what use are you?’

  The waterhorse bared his teeth, laying his ears flat. The swanmaiden uttered a sound like escaping steam and raised her arms wide so that her feather cloak spread out like a black-petalled flower.

  ‘Feather-wielder forgets!’ she hissed savagely. ‘Swan’s sworn fealty in Cinnarine is finished. Honour is fulfilled. Horse of Water has vowed to help freedom-spinner singly. Spelled wench, suffering, heartsick wench, she’s no fret of horse or swan—no holder of wight-service.’

  Caitri sobbed. Wringing her hands, Tahquil felt the hard lump of the ring beneath the glove. Somehow that pressure brought reassurance. T
horn’s ring. She regained her composure.

  ‘You are right,’ she said, ‘I am sorry. I spoke rashly and without thought. Forgive me.’ Putting her arm about the little girl’s shoulders she said in a low voice, ‘Peace, Caitri, be comforted. Do not lose hope. Maybe we shall find a cure.’ But even as the words left her lips, the forlornness of that hope made them clang as hollow as bells.

  Both waterhorse and swan folded themselves into the pages of night.

  ‘They are not far away,’ said the urisk. ‘Ye can be certain they’ll not abandon ye.’

  ‘The swan has fulfilled her bond. Why does she remain?’

  ‘In your ain words, tae which she agreed, she mun see ye safe at least tae Cinnarine. Ye hae her at checkmate. There’s a lingering effect o’ such an indefinite phrase. Unwittingly ye might have bound her to ye forever.’

  Taking Viviana between them, her bloody elbows hooked through theirs, Caitri and Tahquil resumed their northward journey.

  At midnight, when they halted to rest, Viviana would not help them wash the blood from her hands. She would not look at the fruits they piled in her lap.

  ‘’Tis nae use tryin’ tae reason wi’ her,’ compassionately explained the urisk. Despite his words, born of his ancient knowledge, Tahquil and Caitri tried to tempt their friend with the most succulent of fare. Of course, it availed them not.

  At early morn, when the urisk had departed and the sun’s newborn, age-old rays penetrated the canopy, making patterns through interlocking leaf ovoids, Tahquil drew off her gloves.

  ‘It has dawned on me with the day,’ she said to Caitri, ‘that this ring may have the power to heal.’

  She took it off her finger and placed it on Viviana’s. The courtier remained passive, whey-faced, vacant-eyed.

  ‘Gramercie,’ she said, as automatically as a clockwork musical box might strike its notes.

  ‘There let the ring remain,’ said Tahquil, ‘in the hope that it will do her some good.’

  ‘And here let us rest,’ said Caitri. ‘Fain would I sleep now that the night’s wickedness is behind us and the sun comes to drive away fear.’

  As they made themselves comfortable in the waving grasses, the coillduines of the plum trees appeared, their auras fanning out in ellipses of coruscating colours, crimson and gold, that rose hundreds of feet into the air. The luminous streamers that swept down to swathe the trees were tinted cochineal, outlined with rarefied gossamers of golden spangles.

  Sightless, Viviana’s eyes stared through this glory.

  At its going-down, the sun dragged night across the sky in its wake like a lambrequin stitched with baubles. As if caught up in the folds of this fandangled finery, the waterhorse and swanmaiden and urisk reappeared, an unobtrusive but persistent band of bodyguards. The swan flew or walked, scouting ahead; the urisk trotted alongside. In horse-form the nygel patrolled to the rear, irresponsibly playing leapfrog with water-leapers whenever he chanced upon a forest pool.

  Two nights had passed since the encounter with the ganconer. Weariness had carved lines into the faces of the mortals, Tahquil and Caitri having alternately watched the unsleeping Viviana through the days. She would sit, her swollen hands trying to knit together the soggy sinews of bruised nettles. The courtier herself was so weak by now she could scarcely walk.

  The urisk steered them a straight course by the stars—as straight as could be managed over the pathless, undulating country, so densely arrayed with timber. Up knoll and down brae they went, across brooks by fords or little stone bridges, through starlit glades and around thickets of old wood too dense to penetrate. All the while, Tahquil searched for the stuffs with which to concoct black or brown dye.

  ‘Look for iris or waterlily,’ she told the waterhorse. ‘Black walnut or sweet chestnut, bird-cherry or oak.’

  But only tall reeds and straight-backed rushes grew in the pools of Cinnarine.

  Soon after midnight, the nygel came bounding up in man-form, looking like a pleased puppy.

  ‘Swun is thinking she has seen a stand of aiks dane by yander cleeve.’

  ‘Not a coppice infested by unseelie wights, I trust!’

  ‘Nay,’ he neighed.

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘Aye, she said it was, and aff yarr track.’

  Tahquil looked at her companions. Viviana lay on the grass, motionless, her eyes open but blank. Caitri dozed beside her.

  ‘They are not able to travel further than is absolutely necessary. Tully, will you stay here and watch over them while I go? Whithiue,’ partially hidden in tree shadows, the lovely wight bridled as her name was spoken, ‘will you guard them also?’

  The swanmaiden gave a soft cry.

  ‘She agrees,’ the urisk translated.

  ‘Guard them well,’ admonished Tahquil warmly.

  ‘As weel as we are able,’ said the urisk. ‘That is a promise, frae the baith o’ us.’

  Tahquil nodded, gripped by reluctance.

  While she had been speaking the nygel had unexpectedly resumed his horse-shape behind her back. He trotted off and she followed after him.

  If this is some practical joke, I’ll cut off his curly tail.

  Past the lattices of trees the stars rolled slowly by. The night was clear, so very clear it was extraordinary. Every leaf and blade stood out, articulated by celestial light. Even in the bosks and brakes and coverts the shadows seemed luminous.

  ‘How much further?’ panted Tahquil pushing through the trees, hot and scratched and hasty.

  In answer, the waterhorse whickered.

  They emerged from an orangery to find themselves in a clearing ringed by grand oaks, just as the swanmaiden had affirmed. Tahquil began to strip bark from the nearest trunk.

  ‘This must be soaked, preferably boiled,’ she muttered, more to herself than to the waterhorse, who was nosing inquisitively in some undergrowth. ‘How shall I boil it? And dye needs salt, and a mordant of rusty iron …

  The waterhorse neighed.

  She followed the upward turn of his long head. Between the branches and far off in the starry southeastern skies, a swirl of darkness could be glimpsed, like ink stirred into clear water. Dimly echoed the baying of hounds.

  The Wild Hunt approached.

  ‘Will they be able to spy us beneath these oak leaves?’ cried Tahquil, panic-stricken.

  The horse-wight shook his head, spraying his mane like water. A seashell flew out.

  The black swirl hammered through the air, resolving itself into riders and hounds. Excited by the proximity of other eldritch steeds, the nygel caracoled, curvetted.

  ‘Do you see? Do you see where the Hunt is headed?’ screamed Tahquil, scattering strips of oak bark as she let them fall. Above the orchards and out of them, a gaseous tower arose, a white feather of steam or mist, towards which the Hunt was making rapidly.

  ‘That smoke!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is coming from precisely where we left the others. A signal! I must return to them. Hold still, if you honour me. Let me jump on your back, horse.’

  A moment later, the waterhorse dashed into the trees with the girl clinging to his back. On her neck-chain, the iron buckle and the tilhal pounded against her breastbone.

  Caitri had been sitting with willow-crowned Viviana on the grass, dozing in the warm and perfumed honey of the Summer’s night. She was aware of the swan-maiden’s vigilance in the trees and the urisk’s watchfulness by her side as he sat hugging his hairy goat-knees to his chest. She was aware of Viviana’s stillness, her pasty face, her slow, infrequent inhalations, as though she was forgetful of breathing and must try to remember, each time, just before she was about to asphyxiate.

  ‘You are so cold, Via.’ The little girl wrapped her arms around her friend. The fingers of the trees held stretched between them a starry canopy from which light trickled down. The sky was remarkably lucid, so fathomless and transparent that the world might fall, spinning, into its depths.

  Three events then occurred simultaneously. The swan exclaimed, V
iviana sat bolt upright and the urisk jumped to his hooves.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ squeaked Caitri, for nothing else seemed to have altered and she could see no reason for such unnerving behaviour.

  ‘Something unket this way comes,’ the urisk whispered.

  There was nowhere to hide.

  Presently, he added, ‘And has arrived. Stopper your lugs …’

  Stuffing her fingers in her ears, Caitri swivelled her head. A slender young knight stood watching them, with long hair like waves of grief, and the face of a libidinous prince. His eyes were hungry—two black wolves. Viviana’s gaze, fixed on him, poured adoration from her eyes like a libation.

  ‘Ask me to tear out my heart, beloved,’ she murmured, ‘and I will.’

  But it seemed he was unaware of her existence.

  ‘The wee lassies belang wi’ mysel’,’ said the urisk, who looked small and feeble compared with the tall, elegant form of the ganconer. The eyes of the predatory knight flicked over Caitri. Meeting that ardent gaze, she wondered, with a rush, what it would be like to sample that finely made mouth, and surprised herself by starting up. The urisk pulled her back, clapping a hand across her eyes.

  ‘Dinnae luik at him,’ he said crossly. ‘While I am here, he willnae come near ye, gin ye dinnae go toddling tae him like a silly hawkie tae the slaughter.’

  Obediently, Caitri looked away. The ganconer was speaking phrases of seduction to her, but she could not hear him. A tenuous mist was creeping along the ground, rising in wisps.

  ‘A ganconer cloudie,’ said the urisk, uneasily. ‘What’s he at?’

  The mist thickened, floating in rings among the trees. Through its laminae, the swanmaiden came stepping lightly like a princess from legend. Her feather cloak lay in a heap at the foot of a mulberry tree and she wore a gown of thin, snowy silk that clung to her lissom form like water.

  ‘No!’ shouted Caitri, starting up a second time, filled with concern. She whipped her fingers from her ears, gesturing wildly to emphasise her plea. ‘Swan-lady, you must not throw yourself away like this!’

  It seemed now that the swan was unaware of Caitri’s existence.