The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  The swanmaiden’s words jolted Tahquil’s memory. What was it that covered her and kept her warm, even now, as she lay on the cool lawns of Darke? She looked down at herself. The feather-cloak spread glistening like polished coals over her body. It had warmed her as she slept—maybe it had guarded her from the probing senses of the eldritch night-things that roamed throughout Darke. Swan-cloaks could not be swapped easily from one wearer to another for, like the law by which wights might not step over a threshold unless invited, the use of such a numinous garment required the permission, freely given, of the original owner. What an honour the swan had bestowed upon Tahquil, that she, a mortal, should not only be sheltered by the wight’s most treasured possession, but should be offered the full use of it, with all the powers it could bestow! Gratefulness welled in Tahquil like spring water after a storm. Her eyes burned. She searched for words. Thickly, she said, ‘Whithiue is gracious …’

  ‘Swan fragrance shall smother human stink,’ interrupted Whithiue, and indeed a certain aviary odour arose from the feather-cloak, reminiscent of the Skyhorse stable-mews. ‘When swan has found feather-cloak afresh, secure and flawless,’ the swanmaiden subjoined sharply, ‘fetters shall shatter.’

  ‘Yes. After this deed is done, no longer shall you be obliged to me in any way. Never shall I ask anything from you again. This I swear. Rather, I shall be in your debt.’

  But not for long, Tahquil thought bleakly, for I sense my life-thread unravelling. Thorn, soon I shall be with thee.

  Whithiue fixed her alien eyes on Tahquil. Far off, a wordless ululation of Darke from some unhuman throat rose like mist from a river, like a waterbird from the marshes. The swanmaiden nodded—an odd, abrupt gesture, akin to the darting head of a bird scanning for danger, or hunting the waters for bright, swift fish.

  Indeed, for all their appearance, swanmaidens are not human. This must not be overlooked.

  Reverently, Whithiue lifted the cloak from Tahquil’s body. The damsel stood up. A thrill of fear shot through her at what she was about to assay.

  ‘How must this feat be accomplished?’ Her voice cracked.

  Whithiue hugged the cascade of feathers in her arms as though it were a cherished child.

  ‘Celebrate! Have faith!’ she hissed, her eyes alight with anger, or grief, or fear, or maybe some eldritch emotion foreign to mortals. ‘Fly forthwith!’

  She tossed the cloak around Tahquil’s shoulders. It settled there.

  It settled snugly, warmly—conforming.

  Screaming with outrage and shock, Tahquil felt every nerve of her body stretch into the bud of every quill, felt the breeze lifting the outer pinions, already suggesting lightness and flight. The scream became distorted, terminating in a whistling hoot. Unbalanced, Tahquil staggered, waddled. The wind enticed, plucked at her feathers. Except for sensing her connection to living feathers, she felt unchanged.

  But the world had changed.

  It had changed utterly.

  From each eye she perceived one half of this novel universe. Her awareness altered drastically.

  On the ground, Darke’s eternal night had turned into a dim green day, as seen through viridian glass. The horizon was an iron band. Everywhere, water lay seductively. Before, she had not noticed so much water. Its glimmer jumped through the grasses and trees. Frogs gave off delicious sounds, like the noises of a kitchen.

  Three figures stood nearby. All were very tall. Two seemed indistinct and the third was Whithiue, gorgeous, clad in a gown of stars. Like the beings of Cinnarine’s orchards, these three were auraed by soft, spurling colours.

  Tahquil turned her long neck up to the sky, and it was an unknown sky. With another sense, which her humanity translated as sight, she viewed a flow of energies netting the heavens and the ground; force-fields made up of infinitesimal particles threaded screwlike along common lines, like beads on wires. These currents curved from horizon to horizon, forming patterns over and under and through everything. They were of no colour she had ever seen—a new colour, indescribable—and they shimmered, seemingly sentient. In addition to their intrinsic motion they drifted slowly, circling the world anticlockwise. Sometimes they altered slightly, as though adjusting. In places, silent storms and substorms disturbed the patterns with violent discharges.

  For miles up the fields extended, further than the reach of the atmosphere, until they met a kind of fast wind coming from the sun, which could not enter the magnetosphere. In this layer of rarefied airs, trapped particles whizzed. Although the south pole could not be seen over the horizon, the brain of the swan-mortal was imprinted with the certain knowledge that at the polar cusps the solar wind plunged these energised particles into the atmosphere to create the southern aurora. Immeasurably higher, the stars gave off similar radiations to penetrate the energy streams.

  The trajectories of the currents pulsed in the sky reliably, as obvious as roads. Indeed, they were roads, or rather, signposts. They would serve as a navigational guide to fliers on their journeys anywhere in the world—over land, or over thousands of miles of ocean devoid of landmarks. Belonging to Aia itself as it revolved and rotated, these standing magnetic forces ensured that those capable of perceiving them would always find their way home.

  Then Tahquil spread her arms wide. Unconsciously, she let the wind swoop in beneath them. The cloak had changed her, or changed the world. She did not need to be taught how to fly.

  Wings beat hard.

  A black swan flew up.

  The world turned. Girding the world, the shang Ringstorm seethed; a wall separating Erith from the unknown northern half of Aia. Striping the world, shimmering flows of electromagnetic energy shifted delicately. The optics of the swan-mortal could perceive not merely the magnetic fields, but every form of radiation both visible and invisible to ordinary mortal eyes—from the long, low energy waves below red on the spectrum, through thermal infrared and dazzling ultraviolet, to the penetrating X-rays and gamma rays coming in from outer space. Yet all this extra information gave rise to order, not chaos.

  The swan’s eyes, unhumanly aligned, scanned along the frame of each of her wings. The strong feathers were working like muscles. Beneath these wings, seen from a height of two hundred feet, the High Plain jutting on its tableland was illusorily flattened against the ground. The fortress on its crag took on a curious perspective, its towers broadening towards their pinnacled crowns, tapering to slim bases among a jumble of roofs.

  To the metamorphosed bird flying above with slow, powerful down-strokes, much activity was visible. North of the fortress, armies were massing in readiness to march—battalions of mortal warriors perceived as blotches of infrared. Their numbers were small compared to the Legions of Erith encamped on the other side of the Landbridge, but on either flank of their bivouac, somehow blending with rock and bush, large numbers of other incarnations swelled the forces of Namarre and these glowed infragreen, like sombre marsh-lights. They were not drawn up in lines, nor did they inhabit booths and pavilions. Wights they were, of many descriptions, with one trait in common—their ill will towards humankind. And although their methods of destruction did not resemble those of Men, they could be more terrible.

  Some—in particular the hobyahs and spriggans—clustered in groups. For the rest of the unseelie host, there was apparently no discipline, no leader. However, this apparently lawless, motley force was governed, ultimately, by a Commander.

  The swan-mortal’s vision raked the landscape. Across the tableland towards the fortress galloped a horse. The jet-stream hair of the rider stroked the wind. Having caught hold of the horse’s tail, a two-legged runner sped along behind, miraculously keeping pace. Southward, fast bands of spriggans patrolled the vertiginous edges of the Plain. Beyond them, on the far horizon, the smokes of volcanic Tapthartharath muddied the sky in a low band, intermittently lit by a dim red glare. And far out towards the west, towards the Nenian Landbridge, a shimmer, a line, as if the sea’s edge trembled there, yet it was not the sea.

&
nbsp; It was the war-harness of armies that glistered there.

  The wind was kind, a cradle. The sky, with its guide chart, was half-known territory and liberation. Yet the swan-mortal’s wings, unaccustomed to enduring such prolonged efforts, grew tired. She turned against the wind then, preparing to descend. With cool impetus the wind restrained her—but only for a moment. Her senses slipped again into flight mode and she located the buoyant spouts of air upon which a flier could glide without labour, spiralling down towards, and then amongst, the topmost battlements of Annath Gothallamor.

  The eyes of the swan-mortal saw, without comprehending, a fantastical and licentious architecture soaring perpendicularly into the starry night. Forests of towers and crocketted pinnacles punctured the drifts of stars, stabbing up from amid decorated gables. Tall ogee arches sprouted leaf finials. Circular oriel windows projected, cantilevered from the facades. Quatrefoil windows bloomed lavishly with flowerlike traceries of stone. Square towers, round turrets and octagonal wings rose from low flocks of flying buttresses, their exteriors banded with fretwork and grotesque imagery. Dripstone molding surmounted every portal and fenestration, fashioned in curious designs both rich and elegant. Gargoyles and waterspouts leered from every roof gutter.

  Through these ramparts and keeps the swan fluttered, past arcadings of pointed lancet windows, high and narrow, ornamented with friezes of quatrefoils and other organic illustrations in stone. As she passed, she looked through the coloured glass of these windows, the lavender and indigo and violet panes. Chambers therein she spied—vast halls and small oriel rooms, long galleries and staircases. Slender colonnettes and tall furniture occupied these chambers, and sometimes there were forms moving between. Around she flew, again and again, her pinions sagging with weariness. Small, wightish archers stationed on the roofs took some note, then probably dismissed her presence as unremarkable. Against a high window with a cusped ogee arch she flapped her dark wings, straining to see inside.

  Abruptly, terror took hold of her, and she imagined a black sun rising out of the south. Wheeling through the barbs of the crocketted pinnacles she noticed three winged shapes in the sky, speeding towards the fortress, and knew them to be the Crows of War. Frantically, the swan darted around a corner, spied a rose window from whose centre the stone tracery radiated like the petals of a flower, and glanced within. Panic-stricken, she beat at the stained glass with her wings. In the chamber behind the panes the occupant looked up, but drew back. The swan sank, fell away down the tower’s flank, touched down on a canting roof-surface and folded her pinions. She came to rest, and as she did so, the feathers uprooted themselves from her nervous system, parted from her flesh and transformed once more into a cloak, which draped from her shivering shoulders. Its edges lifted slightly in the broken airs, as if it wanted to fly again.

  Two columns nearby were carved in the shape of robed men who seemed to be upholding the capitals on their shoulders. Pressed against a wall between them the mortal girl stood like the third statue while the funereal wings of the Crows swept by, their shadows as cold as forgotten sarcophagi. At their passing, even the archers on the battlements cringed. With a long and hideous cry, the birds vanished from sight.

  A sharp, black feather floated down.

  In the subfusc of the shadows Tahquil paused, frozen with indecision.

  Like scraps of black silk, serrated bats flitted in and out of remote niches. On one side of the ridge the roof tiles slanted shallowly down to a lead-lined gutter fenced by crenellated battlements. Spaced at equal intervals, every three merlons apart, stone spires, sharp-tipped, stood like erect spindles wound about with thorns. Gargoyles like winged toads lunged motionlessly overhead.

  It occurred to Tahquil that something was now approaching swiftly through the roofs, along the gutters. She scrambled back over the ridge. Here, the canting roof extended behind the tower until it met a high, steeply pitched gable running across at right angles. Stooping low, she eased her way along the tiles, hugging the cold stone of the tower wall. What she might do when she reached the pitched gable was uncertain—its gradient prohibited climbing. A precarious wall-stair had been cut into it, underneath the machicolations. But this led only to a small balcony parapeted with a row of pointed arches, which were draped with petrified ivy.

  A narrow ledge jutted from beneath the lancet windows set into the thickness of the tower’s wall. Tahquil glanced up, baulking in surprise. The stifling sense of a presence coming from behind, along the roof-walks, seized her, almost immobilising her with horror, but she reached up and took hold of a projection, stepped on the ledge and pulled herself up, with the feather-cloak swaying at her back. Clambering into the embrasure, she placed her foot on a sill and swung in through the window, whose lower segment had been standing ajar. Clumsily, she sprang down to a flagged floor and stood immobile. Above, a malignancy passed outside the window, which shuddered slightly on its hinges. A raven cawed.

  Then, stillness.

  Annath Gothallamor enclosed her.

  8

  ANNATH GOTHALLAMOR

  Part I: A Fortress Fair and Fell

  And whither have the heroes flown? Unto the bitter shore

  And onward to the tableland they call the Plain of War,

  O’ershadowed by the starry heights whereon the ravens soar,

  To stand before the fortress grim: Annath Gothallamor.

  VERSE FROM A NEW SONG CIRCULATING ON THE STREETS OF CAERMELOR

  The stars shone like fields of violets behind the intricate patterning of the leaded panes. Suspended from a golden chain, a filigree lamp gave off a frosty moonlight luminance which smacked of gramarye—surely no lorraly flame burned within such a device. The intruder stood upon a landing between a flight of stairs leading up and another leading down. The balustrade was ornamented with repetitive cusped lancets and a trefoil frieze. Along the inner walls of the stairwell, the stems of slender colonnettes rose up, curving gracefully, like lilies, into complex vaults supporting the stairways. Softly, Tahquil began to ascend.

  Her feet made miniature sounds upon the steps. The feather-cloak brushed them, whispering. The air exhaled the scent of gramarye. Up she toiled, and now the exhilaration and artificial strength imparted by the swan’s cloak began to fade. Tahquil was weary, as she had never been weary before. She plodded upward, and her mind could not be read, even by its very self.

  Three flights she conquered. At the top of the third, a door stood open. She paused on the threshold, peeping in through the portal.

  The interior was not large—it was the chamber of the rose window, a circular room. Large areas of the oak-panelled walls were pierced and glazed with coloured glass through which starlight fell in tides of powdered amethyst, shot through with the silver motes strewn by nine golden lamps. These lamps topped pedestals of solid gold, ten feet tall, arched, pinnacled and mouchetted. Their illuminations displayed, thirty feet above, a ceiling gorgeous with lacelike stone tracery and pendant bosses. The spaces between the stonework were stencilled with heraldic motifs.

  On the floor beneath this lofty fantasy all the furniture was of oak, ornamented with traceries and carvings of marvellous expressiveness, upon which the greatest industry had been expended. Gilt-spined books rested in stacks on an octagonal table, its base decorated with recessed lancets, its top supported by traceried brackets. Nearby stood a writing desk with linen-fold panelling, a lectern fashioned like a two-tiered tower on a baluster support, and an X-framed chair. Tall, canopied niches in each corner embraced stone urns on pedestals. Inscribed in gold lettering on a high archway, runes shone mellowly, spelling the words:

  Is Truth So Hard To Find?

  Along this wall, partly concealed by heavy velvet curtains held back by gold cords as thick as a man’s wrist, recessed rows of bookshelves reached almost to the ceiling. Books crammed each level, their spines forming palisades of delicate aurum embellishment on blue vellum. One of these tomes lay open on the lectern. Seated on the X-framed chair, the cha
mber’s occupant now ceased to study the pages.

  A pair of eyes lifted and met Tahquil’s. The intruder advanced three paces into the room, stretched her arms forward in a sad entreaty and dropped to her trembling knees on the tiles.

  ‘Caitri,’ she said, still reaching out.

  ‘Are you mortal, and loyal to the Empire?’ querulously inquired the seated girl, clutching the stiff folds of her pearl-encrusted kirtle in a white-knuckled fist.

  ‘That I am—and you?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Caitri sprang from her chair. Kneeling beside Tahquil she cradled her in her arms, murmuring reassurance over and over in soft tones, like a cooing dove.

  ‘My lady! Rohain!’ the little girl said at last, in a voice charged with emotion. ‘I can scarcely credit it, that I should find you again. What joy, to behold you. What pain, that it should be in this place.’ Hurriedly wiping away tears with the back of her hand, she led Tahquil to the chair and bade her be seated while she poured wine from a crystal decanter into a chalice oppressed by sapphires. The wine was as black as liquefied night. Silver flecks floated in it, like drowned stars.

  ‘You have the feather-cloak! Was it you,’ said Caitri, ‘the bird knocking at the window, the wild swan? I should have let you in, but I was afraid. You are ill! Do they know you are here? But of course not. I shall hide you, take care of you until you become hale. Then you shall fly away.’

  Spluttering on the wine, Tahquil shook her head. ‘No, no!’

  ‘Hush! They will hear you. In this place, there is listening done by things which you would not have believed could possess ears. Hush! Now, you must rest.’

  The starry wine, no doubt, was not unaffected by the forces redolent in the air, thrilling forces being flung from the lamps, emanating from the walls, imbuing the furnishings of Annath Gothallamor down to the very tassels of the gold silk cords and the bullion fringes on the footstools. The potency of the draught diverged through Tahquil’s veins to the very roots of her hair, to the tips of her toes, as refreshing as a fluid draught of the sidereal sky. Clear-headed, fortified, she laid aside the chalice and spoke.