The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Carelessly, he threw the ball into the air and let it fall. With a harsh clangour that forced a squeal from Caitri, it smashed to brittle diamonds on the floor.

  ‘But the men of the Empire have a protector,’ Ashalind challenged tremulously.

  ‘Dost thou believe that Royalty would use gramarye against Royalty? That Angavar would use it to oppose his brother? True, the High King and the Crown Prince have drawn lightswords against each other before the Gate at the Hour of Closing, but no more than that.’ His voice roughened. ‘Should the Royal brethren unleash upon one another the fullness of their powers, why, then the forces of nature would be waked to a struggle which must shake the very roots of the mountains, and cause the seas to boil and overbrim. They would darken the skies with wild storms to lash the cities of men with terrible winds and cast down living things with utmost violence. Nay—lords of the Realm have no desire to be the destroyers of Erith. Full well do we love the land of mortals despite its several shortcomings and uncouth inhabitants.’

  ‘Uncouth!’ cried Caitri, her vexation again breaking its bonds. ‘How can you so miscall mortalkind? Is it couth to keep us here against our will?’

  ‘The nightingale’s throat has lost its sweetness,’ said a masculine voice.

  A darker figure shaped itself out of the pastel haze, moving with the gracefulness of vitality, emerging and sharpening into the form of a tall warrior, staggeringly handsome. He was clad in the close-fitting buckled leather harness usually worn beneath armour. At his back, nebulous others seethed and waited.

  Here stood Prince Morragan, of that there could be no doubt. Snowflakes did not dare to touch him, or maybe they melted if they did.

  The mortals curtsied low, fixing their gaze on the floor, for there was that about the Prince which hurt their eyes when they tried to look directly at him. Words rose like dust in Ashalind’s throat, stuck there and disintegrated. Inside the icy shell of her flesh she burned like a cresset.

  ‘Fly away,’ said the Prince. At the caress of his hand, a bird flew up from where Caitri had been standing. It circled once, twice, thrice, then, with a piercing cry, winged its way towards a high, dim window and disappeared.

  Aghast, Ashalind stared into the swirl and mist.

  ‘No! ’Tis too cruel. What will become of her?’

  Without replying, Morragan stripped the cowl from Ashalind’s head. Snowflakes nipped and brushed her ears, the smooth white dome of her skull, her bare neck. She stood silent while he studied her intently. His features remained without expression, betraying no sign of any passion. Presently, at his signal, his cup-bearer came forward. After pouring some wine, he presented the goblet to the Prince with a bow.

  ‘Drink.’ Uttering this command, Morragan held the rim to Ashalind’s mouth with his own hand. She could not help but sip and swallow.

  Instantly, the liquid raced through her blood, like molten gold from a crucible. This was not like any wine she had known. It drove through her veins, branching and rebranching as wildfire races along the limbs of a tree to its outermost extremities. She choked, spluttered, caught her breath, and now the wine’s intolerable potency rushed into her fingertips, her toes; it fountained upward into her skull and filled it, pushed through the scalp into the roots of the hair and exploded there with a great lifting and a bursting forth. The blood roared in her temples. She squeezed shut her eyes, tottered and fell, was caught by lightning and let down, crumpled, to the floor.

  Her lids lifted.

  Ashalind kneeled within an arbour curtained with gold filaments, through which streamed primrose light. Gold rained down past her shoulders and waist to her knees, in a falaise of hair thicker and more luxuriant then ever before. With her hands she parted the curtains and shook back the heavy tresses, opening her view.

  The snow had ceased to fall in the elegant, white room.

  With a look which might have been anger and tenderness mingled, Morragan spoke her name.

  ‘Recall the Geata Poeg na Déanainn,’ said he, ‘or consider thyself the destroyer of the Legions.’

  Rising to her feet Ashalind recalled instead, something Tully had once told her.

  ‘For the Fair Ones to take arms against mortals, there is no honour in that.’

  ‘You would not use your power to smite mortal men, who are without gramarye with which to defend themselves,’ she said, rallying her resources. ‘You are more chivalrous than that, sir. Your threats are merely implications.’

  ‘In sooth I would not treat them so, lhiannan, nor would my knights. Howbeit, there are many here who joy in bloody work amongst mortalkind and would fain be hard at it. With one recollection can thou restrain them.’

  ‘Should you set all the wights of unseelie upon the men of Erith, still Angavar would force them back!’

  Thorn’s true name tasted strange on her tongue.

  ‘Shouldst thou desire to make a test of it?’ mocked Thorn’s brother.

  Visions of large-scale slaughter unfurled across Ashalind’s mind. At once she could no longer meet the challenging gaze of the Prince, whose piercing grey eyes seemed to penetrate her very thoughts, almost to unlock that final memory. Averting her face she let the new-sprung hair swing across for concealment. After a moment she said, ‘No. Let me search for the Gate once more. I will try to find it.’

  Another mineral bubble was placed into her hands, cool and hard. Distantly, Ashalind wondered at the fact that her blood ran warm, even in the wintry room. Then the oracular pearl seized her concentration.

  Scarcely had the search begun when it was interrupted. The new-budded images of Arcdur clouded. She looked up. A messenger had been conducted into the room and was bowing on one knee at the Prince’s feet.

  He was a mortal warrior, a doughty Dainnan captain—none other than Sir Tor of the Fifth Thriesnun. Leather armour covered him and his buckles were of bronze. He bore no iron—as an emissary he was bound to come unarmed and unshielded to the stronghold of the enemy. Beneath his walnut-brown beard, his visage was the colour of ashes. No comely man was he, yet she looked long and lovingly upon him, as the first mortal—other than Caitri, Viviana and the supernaturally preserved Maghrain brothers—she had seen since leaving Appleton Thorn.

  ‘Disgorge thy tidings,’ languorously bade the Raven Prince.

  ‘Your Highness, I bring word from the King-Emperor.’

  Immediately, a dullness clung about Ashalind’s head as if wadding had been applied to her ears. The Dainnan captain spoke, yet his words were muffled, unclear, as though spoken under water. When he ceased, Prince Morragan’s voice cut through the wadding like a glaive.

  ‘Bold mortal, to enter these walls. Brave servant of Angavar, thy false sovereign. Hasten not to return to him, for other harbingers shall expedite my answer forthwith.’ A net of fire, the cold hue of lightning, rippled over the Prince and dispersed. ‘Get thee hence, lout, get from my sight.’

  With that, the frozen walls clarified to transparency. From high in the battlements a chilling cry came sliding like a steel rasp grating ice. Sir Tor, backing away, shuddered and grabbed a rooster tilhal at his breast.

  A storm of flapping ashes swept down from above, with the clamour of mad dogs. The Wild Hunt, led by Huon the Antlered One, catapulted forth from Annath Gothallamor like a swift thundercloud. But the Hunt was not unaccompanied. Like distorted reflections in an ill-made mirror, the Nightmare Princes of the Unseelie Attriod rode with them—the Each Uisge mailed in his cold malignancy; Gull, Chieftain of Spriggans, the pitiless Cearb, the Killing One who had caused the cave-in at the mines of Huntingtowers, Cuachag, the most terrible of fuaths; and the Athach, apotheosis of shape-shifters.

  Westwards the mounted Host sped, until they reached the winking fires of the encampment. Blacker than the night sky, smoke against the stars, the Unseelie Host swirled and spiralled, swooped down on the Legions of Erith. And although the attack was taking place at least a mile off, it seemed to Ashalind that she heard the blood-baying of hounds, the snap
of jaws, the twang of bowstrings, the whirr and smack of arrows and the clash of blades, the sizzle of sparks as swords smote armour, the yelling of men, the shrilling of horses, the hideous clangour of riven metal, the long, desperate pumping of mortal blood. Her heart was bursting with terror.

  ‘I pray thee, put an end to this slaughter,’ she begged, but she might as well have pleaded with a stone. Morragan turned his shoulder and paid her no heed. He remained watching the scene of the attack, the elegant fingers of his right hand resting upon the jewelled pommel of his sword. The Raven Prince was not to be approached.

  A dirty ice-carving in a corner now proved quick. Thin cracks zigzagged across its surface. Sloughing jagged fragments, Yallery Brown took to capering hideously, his elbows and knees akimbo, delighting at the devastation wreaked on the men of Erith, which was clearly visible from the tower.

  The unseelie creatures that had been assembled on the Plain now flooded down towards the encampment. Yet the battle was not one-sided, for the Lords of the Royal Attriod were everywhere, protected by powerful tilhals bestowed on them by their sovereign. Even Thomas Rhymer, the gentle Bard, rode with the light of battle-lust shining from his eyes. It drove him on. Perhaps he was shielded by some gramarye lent by the High King of the Faeran. Indeed, an aura surrounded the seven chosen comrades of Angavar; a soft, quivering light which gave them the appearance of warriors from ancient sagas, cast in the mold of the Faêran, and it might have been by this power they were able to withstand the onslaught of the dire and unseelie manifestations which sought their heart’s blood.

  The page boy from Caermelor Palace who had once been a cabin boy was now a standard-bearer. He hoisted high the King-Emperor’s oriflamme, tied to a lance. Of bright red samite, with three tails and with gold silk tassels between, the flag was as conspicuous as befitted a rallying point in the confusion of combat. From the boy’s open mouth issued the battle cry of the King-Emperor’s Battalion. Tall black figures against the flames, men strove against the forces of the uncanny with blows that rang by stone and wood.

  Overhead the Host soared and dived, eluding the ponderous Windships with their aerial manoeuvres, outracing the Stormriders as the falcon overtakes the blackbird. Where Cuachag and the Cearb stooped, men fell. Where Gull and the Athach plunged, tents collapsed and went up in flames. The Each Uisge galloped in horse-form through the encampment, cutting a trail of blood and slaughter.

  Ever at the head of the airborne fray charged the rider with the terrible branches rooted in the bone of his skull: Huon the Hunter, his longbow bent in his brawny arms. He was an engine of slaughter, continually drawing and firing with uncanny accuracy, until a rider like a comet flew against him and Huon plummeted from the skies, the great racks of his antlers hacked from his severed head by the sword in the left hand of Angavar. For it was indeed Angavar who fought in the thick of the engagement. Power and assurance declared themselves in his every movement.

  Then, from far away, arose the clarion call of a Faeran horn. In Annath Gothallamor, an infinitesimal ripple murmured among the audience of Faêran chivalry and courtiers. They appeared instantly charged with expectation, or perhaps amazement. They leaned towards the source of the call, strained towards it, poised, riveted.

  Faint in the southwest a fragile membrane of light opened and began to grow, and it was like the pellucid light of dawn, where dawn could never be. Described by its radiance, a company of riders. Tiny brilliants glittered from their arms and armour. Their trumpets sang out a paean of challenge. Pale wings of radiance streamed from their hair.

  ‘The Awakened!’ cried a voice Ashalind knew as her own, and it seemed that a multitude of other voices cried out simultaneously.

  The watchers stirred at the sight.

  Tall, terrible and beautiful were the approaching riders. Their swords flamed and spangled, their spears glistened. Their hair was a total eclipse woven with stars.

  Against the Unseelie Host rode the Faêran knights of Angavar, newly roused from their slumber beneath Eagle’s Howe. In the formation of a spearhead, the avengers rammed through the black helix, broke it apart, scattered the unseelie hunters, hewed them out of the skies with bright Faêran blades. The Unseelie Attriod and those eldritch horsemen who escaped the shock assault fled in disarray through the sky, while on the ground below, the unseelie flood retreated into the forest, or sank beneath pools or rocky crevices under the ground, vanishing from sight. Dimly, there arose across the Plain a mighty cheering from the throats of thousands of men.

  Ashalind’s joy at this turn of events was short-lived.

  The stirring within the fortress had become tumult. At a word from their Prince, Morragan’s knights armed themselves and sprang upon their fretting horses, eager for action. Some feral wind, spawned in gramarye, raged in gusts through the Winter chamber. It shattered the ice walls, darkening their translucency, transmuting them to ruined stone. Through crumbling rifts the Faêran chivalry launched their steeds, leaped out and away from the fortress.

  Yet already the Knights of Eagle’s Howe were careering towards the plateau. Having vanquished the Hunt, they drove its remnants before them. Over the rim of the High Plain they came flying, at the same moment as Morragan’s retinue descended from the heights. Unseelie things scattered from beneath the hooves of the Faêran horses when they landed on the Plain in faultless formation. The two companies reined in, wheeled and surveyed one another without engaging. They held their long lances upright, starlight glinting off the points as it glittered off their harnesses of gold. The streamers decorating these shafts fluttered out horizontally over the nodding plumage of the knights’ helmets, the gently blowing lambrequins of gold and silver tissue attached to the backs of their helms, mantling their shoulders.

  In this manner they poised, motionless.

  Each party regarded the other across a wide strip of gibbous rock from which scribbled shapes vanished like the sea at low tide. Below the Plain, the Legions ranged across the lowlands of Darke roared and clashed their weapons on their shields, eager to advance and seek vengeance, though their commanders held them now in check. Around Annath Gothallamor, rearward of Morragan’s knights, unseelie wights moved within a pitchy darkness they had gathered about themselves like veils of black muslin, from which issued howls and laughter, screams and sobbing, sudden frenzied knockings and threatening silences; an orchestration realised from fevered dreams. Among Prince Morragan’s company, his knights took precedence, while the five who remained of the Unseelie Attriod must fall back into the shadows, mingling with their own kind.

  Macabre slouched the shadows, luminous gleamed the highlights on the rocky Plain beneath the vigilance of the stars. Faêran armour—etched with running vines, strapwork arabesques and double-knots—shimmered with an ethereal sheen. Its gold was tinged with cobalt amongst the knights of the Crown Prince, while those who surrounded the High King glinted with a tint of alizarin, as though sunset flowed in fluid lines of flame over their war-harness.

  For he was there at their head, of course—Angavar, mounted upon winged Hrimscathr, with the sword Arcturus now scabbarded at his side, starlight glancing off its damasked quillons. He wore no helm. The dark blaze of his hair framed the sculpted cheekbones, the eyes as keen as swords, the unsmiling mouth. The Royal Attriod flanked him, armoured cap-a-pie, their horses in full bard.

  Morragan, Fithiach of Carnconnor, looked down from the towers of the fortress upon those who stood forward in challenge and those who awaited his command. He looked upon the face of Angavar, his brother, sovereign, rival.

  ‘Iltarien,’ he said to one of the three Faêran lords who had remained at his side, ‘go thou down to the Plain and speak on my behalf. When my brother issues his challenge, tell him this.’ And he gave Lord Iltarien a message in the language of the Faêran.

  That tongue was unknown to Ashalind, who remained standing at his side, and yet familiar in some deep and inexplicable way, as the song of birds falls upon mortal ears and is almost underst
ood, as the peal of bells or the roar of the ocean calls to humankind. When Morragan ceased to speak she was left with no knowledge of his words, but a lilting melody which danced round and round in her head.

  ‘Victory is almost within my grasp,’ murmured the Prince as Iltarien’s horse launched itself from the stonework. ‘Yet a premonition assails my thought. To go down to the Plain is to go to meet my doom. There is one who shall betray me—shall it be thee?’

  ‘Master,’ said a weaselly voice, ‘should the erithbunden prove perfidious—’

  ‘Yallery Brown, this is a daughter of mortalkind. How canst thou expect other than treachery? A daughter of Men, no less … but one who might have been more.’

  Morragan bent his head towards Ashalind.

  Every particle of her lightened and drifted apart until she became part of the plenum, and the plenum invaded her existence, and her blood flowed with the currents of rivers, and the ocean surged in her skull, whose tides were the slow heartbeat of the moon. Long green leaves streamed from her scalp and sap rose in her veins with the Spring, and a soft wind like dark hair swept across an unexplored landscape. She was lifted up to a region where stars shone out from behind the panes of her eyes, and somewhere within, the deep fires of the sun ran molten.

  The Raven Prince had brushed his mouth against hers.

  ‘Wight,’ he said presently to Yallery Brown, ‘if thou shouldst harm so much as a hair of this maiden’s head, I swear I shall unseam thee from nave to chaps.’

  The Prince’s Faêran breath was as sweet as cloves.

  Far below, Iltarien’s steed came to land among the chivalry of Raven’s Howe, and Angavar held converse with him. Clearly, Angavar challenged Morragan’s tenure of the High Plain and the fortress, and demanded something more besides. Grim-faced and proud, Lord Iltarien delivered the reply his Prince had conceived with foresight, for who should foretell another’s motives better than his twin? There could be no doubt of the tone and intent of that reply. Challenge was met with challenge. Nothing was conceded; no ground was given, no hope of reconciliation.