The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

For Caitri there was an armazine kirtle the colour of a robin’s egg, a houppelande of blue velvet stitched with white nightingales, a girdle of pearls, a cloak lined with rich taffeta and a headdress of silver lace sporting ibis feathers stuck all over with pearls. For Ashalind, a kirtle of patterned baudekyn with narrow sleeves long enough to cover, in part, the backs of her hands, and a tight-bodiced overgown of velvet the colour of the Summer seas, richly fretted with gold. The sleeves of the gown, cut in the bag pattern, were buttoned closely around the elbows. There was also a black velvet cloak powdered with golden lilies, lined with blue satin and fastened with a gem-crusted band upon two sapphire-studded morses. Her costume was completed with a jewelled torque, an elaborate girdle wrought like a chain of lilies, a crespine headdress of gold wire, and a long veil of silver gauze to flutter over her ink-dyed hair, down her back.

  The two damsels examined the garments and accoutrements but did not don them.

  ‘I do not care for bathing or dressing in this place,’ said Caitri. ‘I feel as if eyes are watching.’

  Discreetly, they laved their hands and feet in the wall-fountain. The white enamelled bird on Ashalind’s gold bracelet seemed to flutter helplessly.

  ‘How I kept my father’s gift with me over all the long leagues, I do not know,’ she sighed. ‘It is the one token left to me that I wear blithely. I’ll not wear Faêran gifts,’ she added, but as soon as she had spoken, a flock of crows flew out of the oaks and set upon her, pecking and scratching at her clothes. The travel-stained garb of Appleton Thorn began to fray and unravel. Squawking, the birds flew off.

  ‘Not only are eyes watching, but ears are listening,’ fumed Caitri, struggling to help Ashalind into the gold-threaded kirtle before the rags fell from her back. ‘Alas you have no tilhal, and mine was torn from my throat by the wicked abductors of the Hunt. Did those birds harm you sorely just now?’

  ‘Oddly, I remain unscathed,’ answered Ashalind. ‘But alas, that we are subject to such indignities.’

  ‘Shall you soon recall the location of this Gate, that we may go free?’

  ‘Even should I recall it,’ said Ashalind, pushing her arms through the bag-sleeves of the gown, ‘the Faêran have issued no guarantee that they would free us. No promise has been given—only an impression. Equivocation is a specialty of that race. If anyone has been tutored on that subject, it is I.’

  ‘It is of no use to look for escape, I suppose.’

  ‘None at all. There is potent gramarye at work here and Morragan is the master of it.’

  ‘Poor Via. I wonder where she is,’ mused Caitri. ‘Will Tiggy take good care of her?’

  ‘If he has learned to cease hiding in pools.’

  ‘Where will he take her?’

  ‘Maybe across the Landbridge, to where the Royal Legions are encamped …’

  ‘I still cannot credit that the King-Emperor is in truth the Faêran High King disguised,’ muttered Caitri, fastening the sapphire buttons at Ashalind’s elbows.

  ‘Aye, ’tis a bitter cup to quaff, Cait. I find it hard to swallow. I pictured Morragan’s elder brother as a greybeard of middle years. I was forgetting that the Faêran show no sign of age unless they wish it. Both brethren have lived for centuries.’

  It struck home to Ashalind now, for the first time fully, and the recognition of it was like a dousing with ice water. Thorn was indeed the King, the High King of the Fair Realm, the mightiest of the most mighty race was he, and powerful beyond the reach of Men. The winds, the seas, the rain, the thunder and lightning, all were subject to the governance of Thorn-Angavar. The birds and beasts, the insects, the trees and flowers, the very rocks must heed his command. All wights must give him obeisance, even the most feared and unseelie. In the entirety of Aia, he was matchless. Only his brother came close. The High King of the Faêran himself had once, long ago it seemed, stood looking down at the face of a deformed damsel, on the road to White Down Rory, and he had said—

  ‘… what would you truly ask of me?’

  The thought flashed, unbidden: A kiss. She hoped he had not read it on her countenance. In her confusion, her hands faltered, bungling the signs.

  <>

  He nodded and stood a moment as if pondering. Then swiftly, before she understood what was happening, he stepped forward, placed one hand gently under her chin and the other behind her head, and kissed her full on the mouth.

  Only twice before had there been direct contact between them. Now, bolts like the Beithir’s, only sweet as ecstasy, went through and through from head to toe, over and over, until she thought she must die; then he released her quickly and strode away up the hill, and she fled, stumbling, weeping, through the trees.

  It had been Angavar himself who had placed his hand upon her throat, upon her mute and mutilated throat, once rendered voiceless by the lash of the duergar’s eldritch whip. He had put his mouth fiercely and gently upon hers, with a kiss of piercing sweetness so agonising that it seared every nerve—a kiss scarcely to be borne, almost death to mortals. By this kiss he had bestowed the gift for which she had expressed desire—the healing of her face. It had been he, not the carlin, who had restored her former beauty—and more. The restoration had also enhanced her natural excellence, infusing it with a symmetry distilled from gramarye.

  She knew at last that hers was a beauty only a Faêran King could bestow.

  And the kiss of the Faêran sovereign was potent as all the forces of nature. Its healing virtues left an unlooked-for legacy, and from that day forth, dreams had returned to Rohain-Ashalind—memory beginning its long awakening. Thorn had intended to make her face and voice whole once more, yet being no less than a sovereign remedy, his power had flowed on, finally overcoming the greater part of the geas of the Geata Poeg na Déanainn.

  How the winds had unseasonably raged, after Thorn’s men had failed to discover Ashalind at White Down Rory! Disguised by altered countenance and persona, she had fled on foot and by carriage, to dwell at the Palace. The cutlery had rattled, the corridors had howled, the doors had crashed off their hinges in the turbulence of his fury—the Faêran King’s intent was foiled, he having lost her. In their beauty, their power and arrogance, the Faêran were unaccustomed to being denied. With storms, he had given vent to his ire.

  For he could govern the storms.

  It was the essential nature of the Faêran to wield elemental powers. Their sovereign was intrinsically the Lord of all Weather-Lords. In hindsight it was easy to recall how he had worked the weather when it suited him, bringing days of idyllic sunshine when they went hawking in the Forest of Glincuith. When out riding, she would laugh up at him, flushed from the exertion, and a wine-gold breeze would fan her face, catching up his Faêran hair of black fire. Once, she had praised the loveliness of rain-showers, only to hear droplets beginning to tap like the hooves of tiny goats dancing on the roofs. In those days the weather had pleased her, had responded blithely to her whims.

  During their first journey together, the signs had been plain to read, if only she had noted them. It had been Angavar-Thorn who summoned the Vector-dispersing winds in Mirrinor, who had healed Diarmid’s hurts in Rosedale, who had inspired open admiration in the habitually shy trows dancing under the moon near Emmyn Vale.

  If only she had revealed her entire story to him he might have returned to her all that she had lost, then and there—face, voice, complete memory, release from the latent Langothe. But then—what? She would have recalled the Gate’s location and shown Angavar-Thorn the way to return to his Realm. He might have left his mortal playthings in Erith, and never would those days of sharp joyousness at Caermelor have come to pass; those rare, incomparable days she clung to in memory.

  It was clear to Ashalind that he had known nothing of who she was, during t
hat period. Even to the hour of their final parting and beyond, he had suspected naught. Had he learned her history, he would certainly have seized the earliest opportunity to quiz her.

  How much had he now discovered? Did he believe Morragan pursued her merely to punish her for the crime of eavesdropping, or was he aware she had passed through a Gate from the Realm and might possibly find a way back?

  Yet for all his might, Thorn-Angavar had been sundered from Ashalind a second time. Morragan had sent the Crows of War to breach the barriers of Tamhania and stir its submarine forces to explosive rage. After the destruction of the Isle of Mists, what then for the King of the Fair Realm? Why had he not sought high and low for his betrothed, employing his dominion over land, sea and sky to reach her? Was her subterfuge so effective, or was it that he cared no longer?

  Caitri sat at a marquetry dressing-table laden with pots of jewelled hairpins. She gazed into the looking-glass while Ashalind combed out her malt-brown hair. Raking and untangling the little girl’s knotted locks, Ashalind began to uncoil her memories of Thorn—the words which had been spoken and the words left unsaid.

  My Dainnan name is Thorn, he had stated at their first meeting, in the forest of Tiriendor. Never had he claimed the name of James D’Armancourt. His amazing looks and magnetism, his hunting prowess, his skill in every field, the way the goshawk and indeed all birds and beasts bent to his will—these attributes had once, long ago in the wetlands of Mirrinor, led Ashalind to suspect Thorn of possessing Faêran blood. Using the handspeak she had communicated this conjecture to Diarmid, who had rejected it.

  <> She had no sign for ‘Faêran’. <>

  ‘The Fair Folk? Ha! Such immortals passed into legend long ago. Besides, like wights, they could not stand the touch of cold iron. Sir Thorn wields a steel blade, steel-barbed arrows—his belt buckle too, I’ll warrant, is of the same metal. Nay, I’ve no doubt he is a mortal man, but such a man—one of no ordinary ilk. A man for men to follow. Perhaps a wizard, I know not. But ’tis not couch to speak of him this way, behind his back, as it were—I will not discuss this further.’

  Therein lay the conundrum—if cold iron was anathema to the Faêran, how might Faêran royalty be immune to it? Was their power mighty enough to thwart their own nature?

  ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ petitioned Caitri.

  ‘Oh. I was thinking about the Faêran. About Thorn—that is, the King-Emperor.’

  ‘Never berate yourself for your love of him,’ said Caitri. ‘Methinks you had little choice in the matter. All the Strangers are beautiful beyond description. My mother used to tell me stories of them. Their effect upon humankind is that we are bound to love them. The more they choose to reveal of themselves, the more we must love them. Ever have our kind been drawn to theirs. And sometimes it is the other way around.’

  Each mental vision of Thorn was a spark, touching off a conflagration of joy and pain. He lives! But he is Faêran—my love, my sorrow, my enemy.

  ‘All unions between mortal and immortal are doomed to end in tragedy,’ Ashalind murmured aloud. A tear dropped, glistening, from her eye.

  Before it touched Caitri’s hair it had been captured, and lay on an open palm.

  On Morragan’s hand, the tear hardened to diamond. He closed his fist then tossed the jewel into the air, whereupon a white seabird opened its wings and flew away.

  ‘A tear for Angavar,’ softly said the Raven Prince, revealed in the mirror like a flame of darkness. ‘Prey for the Eagle.’

  Caitri jumped to her feet, upsetting the stool.

  The dressing-table now stood in a glade of an oak wood by moonlight. Gone were the chests, the stands, the cabinets. Gone were the walls. The ceiling had soared skyward to become the fantastic vault of Evernight. Vanished, too, was the gushing wall-spout, yet its music remained in the songs of nightingales hidden among the leaves.

  The stars overhead shone so brilliantly that their radiance fell from the sky like the dilute rays of a silver sun. In long spindle-shafts it struck through the pavilions of the oak wood. The mists which braided themselves like twine among the tree-stems filled each shaft with slowly uncurling smokes.

  Carpets of nodding bluebells hazed the ground between the knotted roots, and from them seemed to emanate a dim, supernal ringing, as of miniature bells. Under the scalloped layers of foliage a sweet wind breathed upon the wild thyme cushioning the banks. Ox-lips and violets nodded there, lushly overhung with woodbine and perfumed musk roses. A company of lords and ladies reclined on these flowery banks or strolled beneath the boughs. Some wore gorgeous raiment, others were clad only in nakedness, adorned by the beauty of their bodies, ornamented by flowing hair pleached with flowers. Many were Faêran—to these, a soft glimmer clung, like candlelight on crystal. The rest were otherwise.

  Ashalind and Caitri stared.

  Yallery Brown was present, and Gull, the Spriggan Chieftain, once glimpsed long ago by Ashalind in the marketplace at Gilvaris Tarv. Bigger than the rest of his kind was he, a full three and a half feet in height. His child’s size belied his strength, for he wielded a long-bow almost twice as tall as himself, drawing it without effort to shoot at small songbirds amongst the branches. Present also was the malignant Each Uisge in mail like the delicate silver scales of fish, and a mantle the colour of seaweed. A fillet of pearls adorned the sleek horse-hair mane which framed the frigid and charming face, as pale as death, as cold as the underbelly of a lamprey.

  Flanking the Prince of Waterhorses, two dour and doughty men in ragged plaid and thick calf-hide each held a pike twined with dripping red filaments of spirogyra. Water streamed from their garments. Their eyes were blank as stones. Ashalind recognised them as two of the Each Uisge’s mortal slaves, sons of tragedy, Iainh and Caelinh Maghrain. Another waterhorse she also recognised at once, a dark-haired young fellow with fine, pointed ears half hidden by his dark curls. Noting her eyes upon him, the Glastyn bowed, unsmiling. This unseelie wight had failed to identify Morragan’s quarry when he intruded with malevolent intent upon the cottage of Silken Janet at Rosedale, for her golden hair had been hidden from his sight. On that night, he had knocked at the door …

  Instinctively she drew her taltry over her head, pulling it forward so that her appalling visage was blotted out under a cowl of shadow.

  Louder this time—three blows landed on the door. Imrhien drew the bolts and opened it.

  Only the thickness of a taltry had intervened between freedom and capture, for certainly the Glastyn would have reported at once to the Crown Prince, had he spied the Talith glint of her locks.

  Additional ill-met acquaintances loitered with this eldritch company in the oak wood, including a slender young knight clad in white linen buckled over with silver plate and chain mail. Milky streamers of mist issued languorously from the short clay pipe he was smoking. As dark as depravity streamed his hair, and his eyes were the shade of blackthorn fruits. The comely face of this knight was stamped with the look of a brilliant poet doomed to an early grave. The bane of mortal women was he—Young Vallentyne, who had condemned Viviana to a lingering death.

  Succulent damsels lolled among the bluebells. None appeared to be above the age of seventeen. Some played a game, tossing a golden ball. Here were some of the feminine counterparts of ganconers—the lhiannan-shee, customarily invisible to all except the mortal men they ensorcelled, and the seductive baobhansith, less subtle and more voracious in their lethal arts. They all passed for human women, if one did not scrutinise them too closely. At first sight they appeared lovely, clad in gorgeous raiment—gowns made from a fabric of living leaves, or from the skeletons of leaves laced together; bodices fashioned of cobwebs laid like silver lace over dark grey mole fur, feathered hats inhabited by owls, leather cloaks clasped at the shoulder by silver cockroaches and beetles with clicking mandibles, chinking ankle-chains and bracelets made from the tiny, gilded skulls of mice or frogs with per
idots for eyes, plated earwigs swinging from ear lobes. Neat were the waists of these lovesome girls, graceful their necks and dainty their hands, but now and then, the swish of a hem would reveal a talon or paw where one would have expected a slim white ankle; or the toss of a pretty head would show, beneath the richly coiffed hair, the tufted points of fox’s ears. A raising of lids might uncover the slit-pupilled eyes of a basilisk or a cat. A tasselled girdle trailing from beneath a petticoat might suddenly twitch, betraying itself as a tail.

  As part of this assembly, pointy-eared spriggans and hobyahs crouched like toadstools. And, deep in the grey shadows of the wood, a horseman of massive stature, with an antlered head, rode down an aisle between the trees.

  Half the members, at least, of the Unseelie Attriod are gathered here with Morragan. Has he become the leader of this Elite Septet of Unseelie, in the same fashion as his brother leads the Royal Attriod, the Chosen Heptad of mighty mortals? Only three of the Nightmare Princes are absent—the Cearb, who is named the Killing One, Cuachag of the Fuathan and the monstrous Athach. Mayhap these wicked lords, too, bide not far away.

  Behind Prince Morragan’s shoulder stood his cup-bearer and his bard. At the bard’s neck a slender, diamond-patterned python stared with garnet eyes, and at his belt hung a set of wooden pipes. As soon as she set eyes on the quaint instruments, Ashalind knew them to be those which had once belonged to Cierndanel, Royal Bard to the Faêran. They were the Pipes Leantainn, the very pipes which had first brought grief to Hythe Mellyn and later bestowed power upon the sire of the wizard Korguth in Gilvaris Tarv. Memories of childhood twisted her belly, and a cry escaped her.

  A swan-girl lay at the feet of the Prince. Three other swan-maidens mingled with the gathering—one of them, Ashalind noted with astonishment, was Whithiue, crowned with a circlet woven of eglantine. As Morragan’s glance flicked over her, Whithiue curtsied deeply and gave a secretive smile.

  Yallery Brown spoke up.

  ‘My liege,’ he offered, ‘only give me leave and I will wring the recollection of the Gate from the skull of the cochal-eater. When her creamy flesh encounters fire and blade and rope, perhaps her memory may be jolted.’ He threw a rat into Caitri’s lap. It bit her, and she flung it into the banks of thyme. Startled deer jumped from the shadows but did not flee. A silver fox pounced on the hapless rat and ran away with the rodent dangling from its jaws.