The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  A company of noble lords and ladies occupied the table with William. Their voices were clear and melodious as mountain waters; their faces were fairer far than those of mortalkind, and they were dressed in the richest costumes of gold and green and silver, glittering with gems. Glamoured as they were by the power of Angavar that clung about the interloper, even the greatest among them did not know William for a mortal man, and perhaps this was also a jest on the part of the Faêran High King.

  Thus William ruled as High King in the Fair Realm, and so greatly did he relish that year that it fleeted past like a stag before the hunt.

  The day for his encounter with the Unseelie Lord drew nigh, and the entire Fair Realm began to seethe in a state of excitement.

  The duel was to take place at a river crossing. There, the Faêran companies met the Unseelie Host, and in front of this mighty gathering, one of Angavar’s knights cried loudly, ‘This is no quarrel between kindreds, but between our leaders. Hence, let an oath be sworn amongst us that we shall not offer battle to one another. Instead we shall accept the result of their combat and acknowledge the one who conquers as the stronger.’

  A thundering shout of accord arose from both camps, and the Waelghast and William made ready to fight. As Angavar had foretold, the unseelie adversary appeared as a young knight of noble face and graceful bearing. His sword was buckled on his right side and his lance rest was on his left—in the nature of wights, he could choose to lead with either hand, and preferred to mirror his opponent.

  Clad in elegantly sculpted armour, the opponents faced one another from opposite banks of the river and closed their visors. A horn sang loudly. At this signal, they lowered and levelled their lances, braced them firmly in the metal niches under their arms, and urged their horses forward. Glittering jets of water sprayed up from the hooves of their chargers as they pounded towards the middle of the ford. They met with a shock that drove down to the roots of William’s heels, but his aim was true and he held steady. His weapon shattered the boss of the Waelghast’s shield and perforated his body-armour. The tip of the lance entered just below the heart of the unseelie warrior, if such a creature could be said to possess a heart. No doubt the lance of Angavar, wielded by William, was saturated with certain qualities of gramarye, since it could inflict a wound on an eldritch entity of such essential power.

  The youthful knight fell from his steed into the shallow river, and his blood mingled with the waters. William leaped from his own charger and stood over him, drawing his sword.

  In evident agony the comely youth gazed up at him and cried, ‘Angavar King, I conjure you by all that you hold most dear in the Realm of Faêrie to put me out of my pain. Finish your task. Smite me a second time, and more mightily than before.’

  As he gazed upon the young knight, the mortal king was reminded of the vigour, impetuousness and enthusiasm of his own recent years. He recalled many an occasion when he had stumbled at the feet of his fencing-master, or been thrown down by his comrades during a wrestling bout. For an instant he seemed to see himself lying there, reaching out his open palm to ask for help, and pity threatened to stir within his mortal breast.

  The instant passed, as William recollected that his defeated opponent was not human but an eldritch wight, who had pleaded with him in the name of everything he loved in the Fair Realm.

  He did not allow his stern countenance to betray his wry amusement, mingled with his natural compassion, triumph and horror. Bidding his heart petrify to frozen stone, he thought, Had I been, in truth, the sovereign of this realm, he would have snared me easily with this sad petition. There is nothing here I hold dear. All things that I truly love are in my own mortal world of Erith.

  He lowered his blade.

  ‘Your request,’ he replied levelly, ‘is refused. I will not strike you again.’

  Perceiving the steel lacing the King’s eyes, the Unseelie Lord called to his followers and bade them carry him from the ford, for he knew that before sunset all his power would fade and he would thereafter be but a shadow of his former self, a ragged, flapping, almost mindless thing, no greater than the least of eldritch wights.

  Thus, with one blow, did William of Erith defeat the Waelghast, fulfilling his promise to Angavar and bringing peace back to the Kingdom of the Faêran. The Unseelie Host knelt before him to pay homage, and celebration blossomed throughout the realm. William, however, did not tarry longer than was necessary. He had kept his word and now his sojourn was at an end; he was eager to return to home and hearth. Excellent beyond description was the Fair Realm; yet it was not home to him.

  Alone, he rode away to the Forest of Glincuith, seeking the glade wherein he had first set eyes on the High King of the Faêran. There, beneath the nodding boughs heavy with foliage, a horseman silently waited for him; Angavar, in his true form. Glancing down, William discovered that his own shape was already on him once more.

  Their second meeting was in striking contrast to the first. This time the two Kings hailed one another in a spirit of joyous camaraderie. There was no need for Angavar to ask how William had fared in the duel; he was aware of all that had passed in the Fair Realm during his absence. Nevertheless, he listened with delight as William recounted his story, and he laughed, congratulating Erith’s King-Emperor on his success.

  ‘For my part, I have ensured your kingdom’s prosperity and freedom from strife these past four seasons,’ said Angavar. ‘You may be assured that your subjects have not suffered during your absence.’

  ‘Sir, I doubt you not!’ said William earnestly. ‘On my life,’ he added, with a grin, ‘I never had such remarkable adventures as I have enjoyed this past year in your domain. I am forever grateful, and I swear friendship to you for as long as I live.’

  ‘And I to you!’ replied Angavar. ‘Rarely have I encountered a man so worthy of honour. Now we must part, but there is something I must do first, if you are to live contentedly from this hour.’

  Placing his hand upon the head of William, he said softly, ‘Forget. Forget desire and delight in the land beyond the stars.’

  With that they bade farewell to one another, and William rode with haste to Caermelor. When he arrived his guards saluted him, and his household welcomed him back as though he had only departed that very morning. He exulted at the sight of his people and his home, but he was heedful also, and concealed his happiness.

  On the following day he called his advisers together and asked them to tell him how they had liked his rule during the past year. They were silent for a moment, pondering why he should ask such a question, then the most venerable among them said, ‘My liege, since you succeeded to the throne you have ruled justly and effectively, but in the year just past you have displayed greater statesmanship and discretion in all affairs of government than ever before. Not until this year have you hearkened so intently to the wishes of the people, and never to my knowledge have the known lands flourished as well as they do now. Appropriately have your subjects named you William the Wise.’ Bending into a deep bow, he subjoined, ‘May it please Your Majesty to continue to govern as you have governed this past twelvemonth.’

  ‘I shall honour your request,’ said William. ‘Glad indeed am I to hear your report.’ He looked at the honest faces of the councillors before him and noted the faint signs of perplexity written there. Merriment welled up in him until he could contain and hide it no longer. William was not a man who loved deception, and he had had his fill of it that year. ‘No more secrets,’ said he, laughing aloud, and to the amazement of his advisors he proceeded to recount the tale of his prolonged visit to the Fair Realm, concluding with the wonderful tidings of his alliance with Angavar, High King.

  His audience rejoiced, yet they kept it a secret amongst themselves, and it was not revealed until after the King-Emperor’s death many years later. For the rest of his long life, William retained his fast friendship with Angavar. It became their custom to meet from time to time and together hunt the Faêran stag in the Forest of Glincuith
. Occasionally they would give presents to one another.

  William the Wise did not die until after the great Closing of the Gates between the Fair Realm and Erith. Before the Closing, Angavar gave his mortal friend the Faêran-wrought gift of sildron, and advised him how to manage the shang winds which would be released by the rupturing of the borders between the worlds. After the Closing, Angavar in exile knew that some day he would enter the Pendur Sleep, the more easily to let the centuries roll past. Therefore he gave to William the Coirnéad, a hunting-horn of Faêran craftsmanship, promising his help to him and the sons of the House of D’Armancourt, should they ever sound the horn in sore need.

  A silver-clasped hunting-horn, white as milk …

  Ashalind’s fingertips disturbed the water’s surface. Where two Kings had stood, one old and frail, receiving a gift from the other, young and straight and strong, now there flickered only a dazzle and a haze. The vision dissipated.

  ‘Thorn,’ she murmured. Time had not scathed him. He was, then, as she knew him now.

  A silver and ivory fish leaped from the pool and flopped among the flowers. Caitri touched it, but it was merely a leaf.

  ‘The founding of this friendship between royal houses occurred before my birth,’ said Ashalind. ‘I have never heard it told at Court or anywhere else. A thousand years on, the story has been lost to mortal-kind.’

  ‘Save for a pocketful of learned bards,’ amended Tully.

  ‘Is the tale true?’ wondered Ashalind.

  ‘Even so,’ Morragan affirmed sharply.

  ‘Mistress,’ said Caitri, who had been watching in silence, ‘it seems that the Faêran King was too merciful to refuse the last stroke to his enemy.’

  ‘Do not make me impatient, little one,’ Morragan said gently to her, and there was that in his tone which struck Caitri dumb. Far off, a cry went up from the heart of the wood and, rising penetrating and high-pitched to the stars, faded and died on the wind. The nightingales abruptly ceased their melodies. The courtiers of the Prince murmured amongst themselves like a breeze through fields of barley, and in this solemn quietude, the Each Uisge broke into a horse-laugh, coarse and savage.

  ‘There is more,’ continued the Raven Prince, unmoved. ‘Less than a dozen years ago, a time of sore of need arrived for the House of D’Armancourt, provoking the winding of the Coirnéad. Fortunately, my brother must have considered awakening to be a pleasant diversion. Even the Pendur Sleep grows wearisome at last. View the glass anew, gulled bird, and be apprised.’

  The depths of the looking-pool swirled and cleared.

  They revealed a seascape on a clear night. Waves rolled shorewards, long lines of luminous lace. Two human figures, richly dressed and silhouetted in starlight, were strolling along a slender tongue of land that ran between a freshwater loch and the sea. At the nobleman’s side the Coirnéad swung, yet it was not Thorn who walked along the strand. Here was a strapping young Feohrkind monarch, well favoured, walnut-haired—the prototype, in fact, of young Edward, the son of his body. This then, was the true D’Armancourt heir, King-Emperor James XVI, of mortal blood, and beside him his bonny queen.

  The scene unfolded …

  When sojourning at Castle Taviscot by the sea, it was the wont of the King-Emperor James XVI and his Queen-Empress to bid their guards and courtiers to leave them, that together they might savour each other’s company in privacy. On this night, as they walked beneath the stars, in love and with no presentiment of danger, they became aware of something coming towards them. Its monstrous shape struck fear into them, but with water on both sides they could deviate neither to the right nor the left, and they knew it was unwise to run from supernatural creatures. A glint of hope lay in putting on a bold face and not showing fear in any way, so the royal couple took courage from one another and went unfalteringly, if not swiftly, forward. As the thing approached, they recognised it with horror. It was Nuckelavee.

  The lower part of this unseelie incarnation was like a huge horse with flappers like fish’s fins about his legs. His single eye was red as a dying star. Where the horse’s neck should have arisen, there grew instead the torso of a huge man, with arms that almost reached to the ground. Grossly three feet in diameter was his head, and it kept rolling from one shoulder to the other as if it meant to topple from the neck. The mouth was as wide as a shark’s, and from it issued breath like steam from a boiling kettle. But what to mortals appeared most revolting of all was that not a shred of hide or skin covered the monster’s naked body. Hideously, he was flayed all over. The whole surface of him was red, raw flesh, in which blood, black as tar, ran through yellow veins, and great white sinews, thick as hawsers, twisted, stretched and contracted as the monster moved.

  The King-Emperor placed himself before his Queen, shielding her from Nuckelavee. The couple walked slowly, in utter terror, their hair on end, a cold sensation like a film of ice between their scalps and their skulls, and a cold sweat bursting from every pore. But they knew it was useless to flee, and they murmured to one another that if they had to die, then they would rather die together, facing what slew them, than die with their backs to the foe.

  As they pressed on, fear threw their thoughts into confusion, tearing from them the ability to reason soundly. Precisely when it was most needed, they gave no thought to the familiar Coirnéad swinging at the King-Emperor’s side, and its power of summoning help. The King-Emperor recalled only what he had heard of Nuckelavee’s aversion to fresh water, and therefore, led his wife to that side of the road nearest the loch. The appalling moment arrived when the lower part of the head of the monster came abreast of them. Its mouth stretched open like an abyss. Its breath was a forge blast on their faces, the long arms stretched out to seize the mortals. To avoid, if possible, the monster’s clutch, they swerved as near as they could to the freshwater loch.

  James stepped into the shallows, kicking up a splash onto the foreleg of the flayed centaur, whereat it gave a snort like the rumble of a landslide, and shied over to the other side of the road. Seizing their opportunity they ran with all their might. The wind of Nuckelavee’s swipe whipped the garments and hair of the mortals as they narrowly evaded the monster’s clutches. Urgent need had they to flee, for Nuckelavee had whirled about and was galloping after them, roaring like a tempest-riven ocean.

  A shallow channel meandered across the path ahead. Through it, the excess water of the loch drained into the sea. The couple were aware that if they could only cross the running water they would be secure, so they exerted every fibre to the utmost. Bravely strove the Queen, despite the heavy petticoats that hampered her progress. Her husband bore her up, half carrying her. She struggled, but royal, daintily shod feet were no match for Nuckelavee’s pounding hooves and the monster was gaining ground swiftly.

  ‘The Coirnéad!’ desperately cried Queen Katharine, knowing in her heart that already it might be too late. James reached for the horn but even now several moments were lost before he was able to grasp it, for all his effort was focused on helping his flagging wife reach the rivulet. As they reached the near bank, the long arms made another attempt to seize them. The couple made a desperate effort to spring to the safety of the other side, but they never reached it. Katharine fell.

  Seizing her, Nuckelavee bellowed his triumph, but James jammed the horn to his lips and blew upon it with all his strength, before turning to fight the monster.

  Pure and clear, piercing as water crystal the Summons of the Coirnéad rang out.

  A wondrous and terrible sound was the call of the Faêran Horn. Even Nuckelavee raised his ghastly flayed head as the full and mellow note lifted to the sky like an awakening of the first dawn. The horn’s music roused the blood of all listeners to leap like the waves of the sea. So stirring was it, it might have summoned the very trees to pull up their roots and walk, or bidden the very stones to burst up from the clay and turn over. Strong and compelling, it carried over hill and vale, water and wood, across the leagues of Erith to a certain green hill
.

  A tall hill was Eagle’s Howe, and fair, the turf growing over it, dense and green, and a crown of oak, ash and thorn at the summit. A hill guarded by gramarye. In days of yore, men had titled it King’s Howe. This was the resting place elected by Angavar and his exiled knights and ladies at the end of the Era of Glory when, growing weary of Erith, they chose to cease dwelling among men and enter the Pendur Sleep.

  Here they slept yet.

  Another Faêran hill, far off, had sheltered the followers of Morragan for some centuries—but the Crown Prince had already woken and departed forty years since. Some said that a shepherd named Cobie Will woke him, by accident and by foolishness, believing the knights of Faêrie to be warriors of legend who would lend their strength in times of need. Others would have it that those sleepers were not wakened by any mortal, that they woke of their own purpose, weary of sleeping, and that the horn Will blew was merely one of many accoutrements belonging to them and not an instrument placed there for the summoning of Faêran help by mortals in need.

  Whatever the reason, the cavities of Raven’s Howe lay empty. But it was to the vaults of Eagle’s Howe, or King’s Howe, that the urgent summons of the Coirnéad came winging like an eagle-owl on the night wind.

  Beneath the verdant swell of the Howe there existed a vast and exalted hall, vaulted with ancient tree roots as thick as saplings. Between the arches of these roots the walls shimmered along living veins of precious metals. Gems winking scarlet and leaf-green tossed back light from the fire in the centre of the chamber. In the dim radiance behind the flames a hundred of the finest horses slept, and sixty couple of hounds. Fuelless, the fire flared like a giant flower fashioned of ripped silk, coloured tangerine and opal. Its soft, red-gold luminance lapped a hundred rich couches draped with padded velvets and cloth-of-gold. Hereon lay, like peerlessly carven tomb-effigies, the sleeping forms of the Faêran nobles who had been exiled with their King on the Day of Closing.