The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  The red glow expanded. Jagged shapes became discernible, looming on all sides. Indeed, this was a cavern within rock. Stalactites of solid limestone hung from its ceiling, stretching down towards their dwarfish counterparts growing up from below. Boulders of all sizes strewed the uneven floor. Between the boulders lay bones. Long and smooth were the bones, or small and knobbed, domed or socketed, hinged, splayed, jointed, crenellated, chewed. Weapons and pieces of armour rusted among these relics. Hot to the touch was the metal, and it had been eaten away by airborne acids. None of it was use-able. Scorpions threatened from chinks. Aiodes with leathery hides of stone lay cracked open like eggs, revealing glorious agate linings. Over all, the blood-hued light’s lurid ambience was thrown like frayed gauze.

  Perhaps this red opening led to another chamber—to a maze of chambers like the mines of Doundelding. For, surely this grave-cave must be underground. Who would hew an above-ground structure like this, with dismal furnishings such as these?

  A hot, scarlet wind rushed towards Tahquil, bearing on its back a reek both alarming and sickening, a stench she knew well but could not immediately identify. It was not the rotted-meat smell roiling in the guts of the cave. Pulling herself upright, she lurched forward with as much haste as she could rally. The wind’s furnace breath blasted stronger. The light strengthened and at length, trembling with synesthesia, Tahquil stepped from the cave mouth into the open air of a surreal landscape.

  What the world would have seen, had it possessed an eye and that eye turned upon the girl standing framed by the stone orifice, was this: a figure as tall and slender as a lotus stem, clad in wind-plucked rags. Matted hair, the colour of mud and as filthy, surrounding a smeared face so flawlessly beautiful that the eye, this invented eye of the world, must travel over it again and again in disbelief, searching for the tiny fault which must surely exist but did not. So fair was this countenance, so exquisite the proportions, that it seemed not flesh and bone but a painting come to life, or a sculpture fashioned from the finest-grained and purest marble, by the hands of the most expert artisan.

  What the green eyes in that face beheld was this: a wasteland of a new kind. No vegetation grew anywhere. Dark was the sky and low pressed the clouds, underlit with the sullen glare. These were not the fleecy clouds of Spring showers, nor yet the moisture-heavy thunderheads of storms—this was a layer of smoke and steam slathered thickly across the firmament. Sunlight filtered through weakly, the day’s eye showing as a noxious yellow stain in one corner.

  Near at hand, pools of water nestled in pockets of barren rock, each one attended by its rising mass of steam. Around these pools, the rocks were coated with a glittering substance like crystallised ice or snow.

  Small craters pockmarked the ground. Some gulped emptiness, like fossilised mouths, while others jetted gouts of heated gas to mingle with the smokes and other vapours. At the rims of these vents clustered spiky growths of sulphur crystals, golden-yellow. Strung between them were webs of fine, glassy strands like hair.

  Grotesque formations towered up like giant versions of the burned toffee scrapings thrown out by the Royal Confectioner in Caermelor. Gaps between these preposterous twists of rock afforded glimpses of a glutinous river, bright orange in hue. Slow-moving, it glistened gold at the edges. Dark flakes tessellated its surface. Further off reared terraced cliffs of ash, marching away into a louring obscurity. In one place, torrents of amber honey cascaded slowly down their walls like a ponderous waterfall.

  Tahquil knew, then, that she had reached Namarre. She had been brought here by a scavenger, a huge, slow-witted entity whose sole intention at any time was to collect provisions for its larder, its preferred fare being the flesh of humankind. Some instinct or habit prompted these creatures to choose victims with enough life left in them that they might keep fresh for a short while, yet with not enough spark that they might offer serious resistance to the scavenger’s culinary arrangements. These sick or wounded creatures they would take to their lairs, there to devour them sooner or later. This one kept his larder in Namarre, in that region abhorred by men which they called Tapthartharath.

  From histories taught her in childhood, Tahquil-Ashalind had some knowledge of Tapthartharath. Even after a thousand years, the ground was still restless. Unimaginable fires surged and swelled beneath it. The reek of brimstone was the same odour that had heralded the last days of the Isle of Tamhania. Yet, restless though Tapthartharath was, it was not as dangerous as Tamhania. Its subterranean forces seeped, releasing gradually, never building up to a major explosion.

  A road, or what seemed a road, passed near the cave mouth and led away among the fused-Sugar formations. Its surface was billowy and undulating, with a texture like sharkskin, finely detailed with miniature spines. In places this skin was wrinkled, as though formed from skeins and coils of rope, or like the tightly massed roots of a great tree which had turned to stone.

  Goaded by an urgent need to get away from the cave of death, Tahquil-Ashalind set out along this way. Heat rose through her boots. She kicked against a scatter of brilliant zeolite crystals. Sweat trickled in runnels down her skin and her throat was scorched with every indrawn breath. At her neck, the iron belt-buckle seared her flesh. Further along, out of sight of the cave, she came to a portion of the road which had collapsed inwards. Tiptoeing warily to the edge of this window, Tahquil looked down upon a red glaze flowing only three or four feet below, moving along a tunnel beneath the surface. The road itself had been formed from the cooling skin of this lava tube as it congealed. In places it might still be only inches thick. Tahquil resumed her journey, keeping to the road’s more solid edges.

  Lava lakes lay like mirrors of polished ruby at the feet of slopes where fumes billowed upward in tall plumes, angled against the land like a forest of smoke-trees. Pillow lavas were piled everywhere like flattened balls. A myriad white bubbles of pumice stones spilled from smoky pits. Here and there, treacherous rubbles of scoria underfoot made each step uncertain. Tongues of flame spurted unexpectedly from fumaroles whenever the underground heat built up enough to boil the rocks to froth, releasing their flammable gases. As tall as Mooring Masts these flames leaped, white at the cores, deepening to dazzling colours. Abruptly they would flare out, leaving images burned on Tahquil’s watering eyes.

  An angry thirst now plagued her. All about, water lay in sunken jars of stone, but none cool enough or fit to drink. Toxic steams rose from them. All day she walked along the rough flank of the lava flow, because of a need to distance herself from the scavenger’s cave, because no other course of action had offered itself, and because to give up and cease moving would be to admit defeat and lose all hope. She journeyed at right angles to the sun, heading north.

  As the smudged sun was blotted up by the western smokes, she found an ashy couch beneath an overhang which, seen from one angle, resembled a shipwreck and, from another, three broken lutes. There, she slept.

  At morning, a gas jet ignited, flaring from a fumarole. Its light struck daffodil rays from the facets of sulphur crystals burgeoning like strange, spiky flowers along the rim of a basin. It struck silver glints from shards of black obsidian, and carbuncle glitter from red chunks of hematite. Through eyelets in pylons and tines of rock, thin gases streamed. Waking with a thirst that trammelled her with visions of the cool, clear lakes of Mirrinor and the saturated valleys of Lallillir, Tahquil steadied herself against the broken lutes before journeying on.

  The lava flow directed her through an area of bubbling pots in which domes of gas formed up through brilliantly coloured muds, to burst flabbily with flumping, flupping sounds, like simmering porridge. Splats of mud were thrown up and down like paint—vibrant blue-grey, scalding yellow or vivid red.

  Amongst this garishness, one aqueous pond of tranquillity attracted her. Parched cravings led her to its brink. As she stood undecided, watching steam scoot across the water’s unblemished surface, a low rumbling noise started up beneath her feet. The pond gurgled. The girl dashed fo
r cover. A violent explosion spewed a gush of water and steam high into the air. Taller grew the geyser, its head vanishing into the clouded air. A plump, hot rain splashed down.

  When it was over, she took to the road again. By now, the tiny spines on the epidermis of the pahoehoe flow had wreaked a spiteful damage on the soles of her boots. The flow was veering to the right—ahead, the rounded grey-blue shoulders of ash dunes reared up. To save what remained of her footwear, Tahquil left the lava path and began to climb.

  A dust of powdery ash-snow puffed from each footstep. Ankle-deep, she waded uphill. Below, a lake of lava gleamed like a shield of burnished bronze through swathes of dull vapour. Mirages shimmered on the dunes; alluring lagoons. When the sun dangled above her head like a withered dandelion, Tahquil seated herself on the lee side of a formation shaped like a dancing, six-headed bear. Ash and mud streaked her face, mixed with perspiration. Her hair hung rank with airborne particles, plastered down by condensing steam.

  Darkness, when it snuffed out the guttering and jaundiced candle of the sun, discovered her there still, curled on her side in the listlessly shifting powders. A breeze blew cinders and dust from seemingly manmade walls protruding from the dunes—high, thin, long dykes formed of black stone blocks, manufactured by volcanic forces.

  Dreams or hallucinations acted out plays on the final stage of Tahquil’s thirst-induced trance. Thorn rode at a gallop through a rain-drenched forest, pearls of water being flung from his wet hair. Dripping gruagachs offered overflowing bowls of water in their outstretched hands. A transparent pool opened at her feet, its sheer surface marked only by a sprinkling of sparkles and petals of apple blossom in fragile flotillas. A fountain tinkled into a cool, marble cistern. A vision with hair of moonrays shored her up and brought to her cracked lips a cup containing rain, green with new-minted reflections. She gulped. Coughing, choking, she grabbed the cup, swallowing all its contents.

  ‘Easy, mistress!’ said the moonray visitation.

  ‘More. I must have more.’ Mine eyes, let this be no deception.

  Brimming, the cup was returned to her. Again she emptied it and demanded further dividends. Repeatedly the cup returned, filled from a gourd by a second manifestation.

  ‘The swan has been quartering the skies without rest, these two nights and days,’ remarked Tully as he poured.

  ‘May the fruits of joy be heaped upon you, all three,’ answered Tahquil weakly. She gripped the green cup. It was the half-husk of a seed the size of her fist. She lay a while against the curve of Tighnacomaire’s man-shoulder, her dust-clogged hair falling in tangled locks across her face. Beyond their shelter, the coloured smokes and obfuscating vapours of Tapthartharath glided by in the night. No speech passed between her two eldritch companions. Silence was as natural to their kind as poetry. With the patience of eternity they bided, while her body rehydrated.

  Later, between love and madness, Tahquil said, ‘The swan—has she discovered tidings of the King Emperor?’

  ‘Aye, that she has,’ said Tighnacomaire. ‘And mair. But whatever it may be, she has nat telled us.’

  ‘I must speak with her. Is she near?’

  ‘Who can say?’ said the urisk with a shrug. ‘She comes, she goes.’

  ‘And I go, too. It is high time I left this fried bower. Yet, the night is dark—the fogs hide moon and stars. I cannot see two paces in front of me.’

  ‘Ye shall nat need yarr eyes,’ said Tighnacomaire. ‘I shall bear ye.’

  ‘Oh? And shall you drown me again? I believe the mud in the pools here is good for the skin, if one does not object to being cooked.’

  Shamefaced, Tighnacomaire ballooned his cheeks and snorted.

  ‘I’ll nat be diving in these sizzle-pots, nay, nor any mair springs av water neither, with ye an my back, mistress. ’Tis sarry I am.’

  ‘’Tis feckless ye be,’ added Tully.

  ‘And if I ride,’ said Tahquil, ‘where shall you take me? Do you know the way?’

  ‘The way to where?’ vaguely said the pale-skinned, rawboned horse-man.

  ‘To the fortress, the headquarters of the Hunt, where my friends were taken.’

  He slid away. With one fluid movement he left the shelter and trotted around the back of the six-headed bear. Tahquil had scarcely time to draw breath before he dashed back, in horse-form, kicking up swirls of ash.

  ‘He kens the way,’ said Tully. The nygel stamped a foreleg, switched his tail. Awkwardly, he lowered himself to the ground. Tahquil stepped astride his back. He stood again and away they cantered.

  The incendiary landscape of Tapthartharath unfurled beneath the flying hooves of the waterhorse, and on all sides. Over the ash dunes they sped, and hills of coal-coloured pumice, and by the serpentine dykes, tall as cliffs, thin as coffins and black as hearses. The ragged edges of Tahquil’s garments streamed out along the wind of their passing, like sombre flames.

  Far away, a river of lava as thick and stiff as honey, moved like an incandescent crocodile. A side flow was diverging in a gout of tangerine syrup, carrying chunks of dark rock. At the head of the branching flow, a wall of burning rocks rolled forward by degrees, panting from thousands of dragon-nostrils. Little fires and spurts of steam and smoke were puffing off it. Parts of its sides tore away, revealing glimpses into the golden flesh beneath the dark crimson and orange scales. The scabby crust pulsated sluggishly, like boiling tallow.

  The land was rising. With each stride, the bright drums of the nygel’s hooves hit the ground a little higher up. They climbed through pillars of smoke, columns of steam, and slanting gas towers. They splashed through gaudy muds, leaped over glowing melts from which heat burst forth with incinerating vehemence. Long steams came racing and roaring along the ground in thick curtains, sucked out of smoldering fissures by the wind. Gaping red-lined throats belched white smoke rings. The pall of putrid emissions thickened, darkened, drew in and around like angry lynch mobs. In this obscurity, Tahquil lost sight of Tully, who had been running nimbly alongside. Spasms of coughing wrenched her frame. Seven million pins prickled her skin. Her eyes swam, wept like the sea, combusted in caustic juices.

  ‘Tiggy, where do you take me?’ she moaned.

  He neighed a response. She thrust her face into his mane and simmered there in misery.

  All night the waterhorse galloped between smoky walls alleviated infrequently by pockets of less toxic air. He seemed tireless. Many times Tahquil reckoned it must be morning, longed for morning. But when her eldritch steed eventually swung to a halt, no light welled through the blood-panes of her swollen-shut lids, yet the air was pure, clean and sweet on her raw lungs.

  Tighnacomaire cancelled his stickiness and his rider slid off. Cold water sluiced her burning face. She drank and lay motionless, utterly exhausted. The combined torments of her recent travails and the Langothe’s savagery had smothered her life-spirit until only a spark remained. Somnolence came like a midnight thief and stole her away.

  7

  DARKE

  Evernight

  Dark is the night that blinds the sight and, moonless, hides our paths.

  Dark are the shadows of the madness gathered on our hearths.

  Dark the storm-cloud, tall, wrathful, proud, whence tears of sorrow rain

  And dark my heart that we must part. When shall we meet again?

  LAMENT OF FAREWELL

  Lie still.’ Tully’s reedy tones brooked no dissension.

  Tahquil opened her eyes.

  Suspended in the profound heights of a sky as deeply blue as pure essence of amaranth and as intoxicating, brilliant stars, layer upon layer, dwindled to a crystallised haze at inconceivable distances. Indigo, raven and iridium were the colours of the night. In every direction, long, tree-clad slopes marched rank on rank, fading into the darkness. A tingling entered Tahquil’s shoulder blades, seemingly welling up from the ground pressing into her back—black ground, stretching in the north and east to black mountains that raised their blocks along glittering horiz
ons.

  Away beyond the southern ridges, above the dimly written fish-bone points of the furthest fir trees, the stars fell short of the world’s rim, obliterated by a wide belt of impenetrable gloom. The width of two fingers, held sidelong at arm’s length, measured the height of it. Higher up, the pall dissipated, drawing back to reveal the silent constellations.

  Danger—the air vibrated with it, and other intuitions also: excitement, expectation. Tahquil, obeying the wight’s orders, remained motionless.

  After a time Tully announced, ‘They are gone.’

  ‘Who is gone?’

  ‘Unket things,’ he replied shortly. ‘But there’s no tellin’ when they’ll come by again. Cover yoursel’ with muck, lass. Smear it thick, that they may not catch the tang o’ ye. Blacken your face.’

  Raising herself on her elbow, Tahquil tore up handfuls of moist soil and living leaves the colour of basalt. She did as he bade, then drank again from the seed husk’s hull—long, refreshing draughts. Some way off, Tighnacomaire, in horse-form, was grazing.

  ‘The night is long,’ the mortal girl said softly, wonderingly, tilting her chin towards the silver magnificence of the universal vault rising, fathomless, overhead.

  ‘No,’ said Tully. ‘Elsewhere the sun shines. This is Darke, the land of Evernight.’

  ‘Is it so? Sain me! I have heard tell of this place. They say day never dawns here. But it makes no sense …’

  ‘From the bottom of a very deep well,’ said Tully with aplomb, as though accustomed to such venues, ‘when ye luik upwards ye’ll see naught but stars in a night sky, no matter gin the sun be shining up there or no. Darke is walled by a half-ring of mountains to the north, and a crescent of high smokes frae Tapthar to the south, which give the same result as a well’s wall. By some trick o’ the winds, the smokes ne’er blow intae this eye.’