The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Around the tourney field, elevated stages had been set up for bards, and for the pie musicians, and there were platforms for dancing. To the delight and astonishment of the dancers, their feet skimmed the wooden boards like soap bubbles blowing across water.

  Throughout the feasting many a song was sung, many a speech orated, many a cup raised in honour of Erith’s new sovereign, and the Faêran King from under the hill, and his bride-to-be. Following the orations and toasts for the two Kings, True Thomas jumped to his feet and made a speech in praise of Ashalind. Without divulging the complexities of her past, he expounded upon her travails in the wilderness in such eulogistic frames that, listening with amusement, she began to wonder whether it were she he was talking about, or some stranger. Sianadh was lauded as the champion who had helped on her first journey, while Viviana and Caitri were extolled for their loyalty and resourcefulness on later treks. The roles Diarmid and Muirne had also played were not forgotten.

  Ercildoune courteously concluded his speech with a mention of having once danced with Ashalind at Court, and how honoured he felt to have partnered the next Queen of Faêrie.

  It was only then that Ashalind fully comprehended the enormity of the step she was about to take. The excitement of the past few months had kept her from seeing it. In being wed to Angavar-Thorn she would become the Queen of the Fair Realm itself. It seemed improbable, a wild dream—exhilarating yet terrifying. Her gaze rested upon her handsome lover. He was of the Faêran—the terrible, beautiful race that loved and hurt her own kind. And unions between these two kinships had always been doomed … yet such tragedies all lay in the past. For certain, matters could be different now!

  Beyond the barriers and gyves of difference, her love for Thorn was strong and steadfast—as it were, the steely shaft of a pin that could clasp together two halves of a brooch, the one made of diamond, the other of glass.

  There were toasts to Sianadh, and to Viviana and Caitri. Then, from a table set a little apart from the rest, a man stood up. He bowed in the direction of the high table and the company fell silent.

  ‘Speak,’ commanded Edward in a clear voice. ‘You must know, all sealfolk are welcome amongst us. Your fealty is sworn and the sea-gifts you have brought are deemed most worthy.’

  By the grey sheen of his shaggy head, Ashalind now comprehended that the standing man was in fact Galan Arrowsmith. On his right sat a girl-woman. Her smile was enigmatic, her hair the colour of the ocean illumined by lunar reflection. To his left were seated Betony and Sorrel, now joyously reunited with their brother.

  Arrowsmith said, ‘Our Sovereign of Erith is generous. Long may he reign.’ A murmur of approval ran through the gathering. He resumed: ‘We have heard how the Bear of Finvarna has performed many services for Lady Ashalind. This may be so, but once, not so long ago, I too accompanied her along her perilous way. My lady, had I known to whom you were betrothed—’

  She interrupted, ‘Galan Arrowsmith—to you, my friends and I owe much.’

  He bowed.

  ‘You gave us the shelter of your village and more,’ she continued. ‘You lent us your steeds and your strength. Such kindness shall ever be remembered.’

  ‘Yet methinks that for all I did ’twas not enough,’ said Arrowsmith. He added wryly, with a momentary glance at Ercildoune, ‘And I never danced with thee, my lady.’

  A sudden, tense silence fell across the audience. The speaker had dared to imply that he, a mere half-silkie, wished to take in his arms the promised bride of the Faêran High King. Moments later a ripple of laughter spread through the assembly. Ashalind glanced at Angavar and saw that he was smiling. Perched on his chair-back, Errantry roused his feathers fiercely.

  ‘Well then, get up on the floor,’ Ashalind challenged Arrowsmith, and she left her seat.

  He strode up to the dancing-floor, where Ashalind met him. He kissed her hand, the musicians struck up, and the two danced a few steps to the accompaniment of cheers and applause. When the music stopped, Arrowsmith bent over her hand once more.

  ‘Methinks it will take me a good while to soothe the hammering of my pulse,’ he said loudly, but only half in jest. Flicking his gaze towards a table dominated by Ertishfolk, where Sianadh sat, he added with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Kavanagh, devour your red heart!’

  Sianadh, drunk as a lord, roared a jovial but unintelligible reply and saluted Arrowsmith with a brimming tankard raised aloft, spilling ale on all and sundry.

  ‘I never danced with him either,’ said Ashalind.

  Arrowsmith turned his fey sea-eyes on her. All at once the company grew silent again, hearkening, watching both Angavar and the couple on the dance floor. Those assembled were fully and horribly cognisant of what the jealousy of the Faêran, if aroused, could mean.

  ‘Ah, what he missed!’ Ashalind’s dance partner audaciously pronounced.

  At the high table, one corner of Angavar’s mouth twitched.

  A sigh fled through the gathering.

  Gallantly, Arrowsmith conducted Ashalind back to the high table and dropped to one knee before Angavar.

  ‘Your pardon, Majesty, if I have offended you.’

  ‘My betrothed dances with whomsoever she wishes,’ said Angavar, clearly untroubled. ‘That she has chosen you is a panegyric, for the lady knows how to choose well.’

  He was merely amused at the seal-man’s bold praise of his betrothed. Jealousy was far from him—he knew Ashalind too well to doubt her, and besides, he was Faêran and had every reason to be complacent.

  A murmur of laughter came from all sides. All tension broke like an eggshell, and relief flooded over the guests. The festivities resumed.

  By day, the field was cleared for sports and games, jousts and tournaments. The Faêran knights eagerly took the field for a hurling match, that being a favourite game of theirs. Following its conclusion, where the vanquished team had stood, suddenly they stood no more, and a horde of flying beetles went up over the tourney field, darkening the skies. The price they must pay for defeat was to fly across Eldaraigne in this form, but they took no harm from it and good-naturedly endured the penance, which they would have inflicted on their opponents had their fortunes been reversed.

  But eventually the day was over, and all festivities came to an end. Soon a Seaship—the Royal D’Armancourt—would depart from Caermelor. Escorted by six Dainnan cruisers she would set sail for Arcdur’s stony, lichened wastes, carrying Ashalind and Angavar, Ercildoune, Roxburgh and the other survivors of the Royal Attriod. They would be accompanied by the Faêran knights and ladies of Eagle’s Howe, all of them desperately keen to find the Gate. Such a mighty entourage must prove invincible against any lingering dangers that might be encountered along the way. Yet their foes had been conquered; what could possibly threaten?

  Ashalind’s parting from Edward had been painful.

  ‘You must go,’ he had insisted, at a private moment. ‘You must simply leave, the sooner the better.’ He could not hide the fact that he fought against tears.

  ‘But we shall not be apart for long,’ she reassured him. ‘When my lord and I find the Gate, all Gates will be opened once more! Time will no longer run awry between the worlds, for my lord has promised that when we return to Faêrie he will match the time-stream of the Realm with Erith’s continuum. Everything shall return to the way it was before the Closing, save that the inconsistent passing of years in one realm and hours in the other will be annulled. There will be open exchange between the worlds, and you and I shall be able to visit one another at any time.’

  ‘That is not what I mean,’ he said, and she finally understood how blind she had been.

  ‘Besides,’ he stammered, ‘somehow, in my heart I fear the parting will be longer than you surmise. I fear …’ He could not go on.

  ‘Have no fear. How can there be harm, when I am beside him?’

  Immediately she regretted this statement. He threw her a look of anguish.

  ‘Yes. He can give you anything,’ he said. ‘Ever
ything. I love you both. I wish you both every happiness. Of all mortals I have ever seen,’ he added earnestly, ‘I have never beheld such exquisite beauty. When you use the looking-glass, think of me.’

  In sudden confusion, she could only nod, tight-throated. Thus they took their leave of each other.

  From Caermelor’s estuarine docklands the Arcdur expedition departed by Seaship in the morning. The masts of the clipper Royal D’Armancourt pierced a pale blue sky. A light, fresh breeze was blowing. The passengers looked back at the pier and the numerous docks and jetties where ships and boats of all sizes were moored, rocking gently, their masts and rigging seeming to knit and unravel like some crazy spider’s web. Southward, past the stem, the crag of the Old Castle thrust up out of the water. The tide was high, wavelets covering the causeway. Facing this gaunt sentinel of rock stood the hill of Caermelor, its skirts laced with foam. The palace, at the summit, loomed dark against the sky. Its roofs, towers and turrets were alive with flags which snapped and flapped like hundreds of wings. A sudden spear of golden light glanced off the armour of a guard moving high on the battlements. Pennants flew also from the roofs of many of the buildings perched on the hillside, in celebration of the coronation.

  To starboard the land rolled back into an Autumn haze, the shoreline curving around to a headland, the Cape of Winds. To port, the open sea sparkled like a polished goblet of crystal filled with blue-green wine, clear and cool. The water flashed as though strewn with diamond chips. Far off in the waves, sleek shapes dived. Sometimes they surfaced near the ship, calling greetings, waving to the Faêran and mortals on board.

  The ship was steering northwest, hugging the coast. She kept on that heading until she rounded the Cape of Winds. From there, the captain turned her north to cross the mouth of the Gulf of Mara. In the days that followed, her great keel passed over the place where once the fair isle of Tamhania had risen from the ocean. There was no sign that an island had ever existed. The sea rolled bland and innocent over Tamhania’s sunken tomb, and the Autumn sun shone upon it softly, a yellow pearl. At one point, the ship hove to and the voyagers paused while songs of remembering were sung, and flowers were strewn over the water.

  Angavar summoned a brisk southerly airstream which sent them on their way again. The clipper heeled over and now she began to plough the waves, slicing through them, keen as a honed blade. She plunged in up to the hawse pipes and bounded up, water pouring off her hull like ribbons of molten glass. A curling wave, foam-ridden, opened out in a long chevron from her bows. Tier upon tier, the great crescents of her heraldic sails snapped taut and hard, brimming with the power of the wind.

  Those aboard could see, away to the east, the low grey line of the coast. It drew nearer as they approached the Cape of Tides. Soon the cliffs of the promontory loomed on the starboard side and the ship was passing through a narrow sea lane between the mainland and the islands of the Chain of Chimneys.

  After that, the shoreline retreated once more. They turned northeast, the wind obligingly swinging with them. Remaining parallel with the coast they sailed on at a rapid pace, retracing the journey Ashalind had once made in a fishing boat. A sense of unease grew on her as they neared Arcdur. Too many memories came crowding in. As she stood at the rail watching the approaching shore, a line of dark birds rose flapping from the trees and flew away inland. High in the rigging, Errantry opened his hooked beak and screamed. It seemed some sort of omen.

  A shock jolted through her. She looked up to see Angavar—he had joined her, unnoted, and placed his arm lightly around her waist. Together they stood, looking out across the intervening water towards the land.

  ‘Why did the Raven’s knights betray their King?’

  ‘Thou hast set eyes on him, Goldhair. Thou hast been subject to his influence. Almost, thou didst allow thyself to be lured.’

  Ashalind cast her mind back, to Hob’s Hill in Avlantia, and a traverse which passed beneath it—a long green tunnel of overarching trees beyond which shone the hills of Erith in the saffron morning. Larks were singing, and a merlin hovered in the sky, and the hedges were bare and black along the fallow fields, and blue smoke stencilled the distant skies. Somewhere, bells were tolling.

  There had been a clear and compelling voice, like dark metal, and that voice saying,

  ‘Bide here now, and I swear no harm shall come to thee under my protection. I can take thee through fire as through castles of glass. I can take thee through water as through air, and into the sky as through water, untrammelled by saddle or steed or sildron. Flight thou shalt have, and more. Thou bast never known the true wonder of the favour of the Faêran.’

  That voice had pronounced her name, and she had stumbled. But the warm, hay-scented breath of her pony had recalled her to Erith, and the sound of children’s footsteps pattered through her brain, bringing visions of her lost brother.

  ‘Ashalind.’

  This time she fell to her knees and could not arise. The children hurried by. To look over her shoulder, to see one who governed gramarye standing there with the whole of the Fair Realm at his back and that world promised to her—it would be so easy. So sweet it would be, to watch him pivot on his heel and walk away, and to follow. Slowly she clambered to her feet. Despite her desire, she neither looked back nor turned around. She pressed on, her feet and legs heavy, as though she waded through honey.

  How could this Prince have nursed such bitter hatred against humankind? How could she have allowed such a one to twist the strings of her heart? That he no longer lived, except as a kind of abstraction, suspended her between relief and sorrow. The tugging of the opposing forces was perplexing, tearing open a wound with no comprehensible source.

  Recalling her attention, the deck of Royal D’Armancourt rocked under her feet. Angavar was watching her, quizzically. She said to him, ‘Now I understand. The charisma of Morragan lured them to it. They loved thee first, but they loved him too. You were absent—and there was no pony, no child to remind them of their fealty.’

  ‘Few could resist his influence should he decide to make them change their path.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘That I know. He knows also, too well, and he never shall forget.’

  ‘But the power of gramarye is lost to him now!’

  ‘A bird lifts itself on the air. It stoops to kill. Is there no power in that?’

  She could find no reply.

  ‘I regret allowing him to fly forth, the Raven,’ said Angavar, turning his eyes towards the horizon. ‘I ought to have captured him, caged him. For all his lack of strength he is out in the World now, free to cleave the skies like arrows shot by some mad archer, choosing targets at random.’

  The clipper’s slim bows slid into a deep natural harbour, a rocky sound. There, between high cliffs of gaunt stone, she came about. The indigo-coloured sails lost the wind, hanging in great soft loops from the yards, their golden lion devices obscured by the folds. From the gently canting deck, crewmen clewed in the canvas, hauling hard on the lines, throwing back their heads to squint up at masts so tall they tapered like ladders into the sky. The anchor was lowered with a rattle of iron chain. Ropes were flung ashore and tied to trees and rocks. As the first mate barked orders, landhorses and baggage-laden packhorses were led down a ramp from the fo’c’sle where they had been stabled, and across the gangplank onto dry land.

  The passengers mounted their steeds. The expedition set off, winding northwards through the landscape of tall stones and natural, granite-lined wells.

  The news of the Geata Poeg na Déanainn had spread rapidly, and all creatures of eldritch were by now aware of the possibility that a way back to the Fair Realm might indeed exist. All the Faêran knew it, but only a few mortals had been made party to the knowledge. The tidings had not been broadcast among the mortal populace of Erith, for the Faêran considered it was their own business and not a matter to be bandied about by gossiping humankind.

  Thus it was that few mortals rode amongst the company. The ninet
y Faêran lords and nine Faêran ladies of Eagle’s Howe accompanied the expedition, and Thomas of Ercildoune and Roxburgh as well, and Alys beside her lusty husband, although Istoren Giltornyr had remained at Caermelor with Richard of Esgair Garthen. With such a fellowship no force of mortal wizardry or men-at-arms was required, and besides, who would stand against them now? Nonetheless the two powerful carlins Ethlinn and Maeve had come to Arcdur, and the best knights of the Dainnan. And there was Sianadh, who had lost his Windship in a card game and, undeterred, was looking for excitement; and four of Silken Janet Trenowyn’s unruly brothers, who had gained some fey qualities while under the influence of enchantment, and who sought the same goal as the Ertishman.

  Yet it seemed to Ashalind that she and Angavar were escorted only by the mortals of the retinue, for the Faêran passed noiselessly and swiftly among the monoliths, as outriders. She caught only fleeting glimpses of them riding through the landscape on either hand, and they seemed to her like beautiful images in watercolour, painted on the most fragile of tissue, so ephemeral they were already fading into the rain-washed pines, the rills that tumbled, tinkling, through jumbled stones and the moss that clambered over the rocks.

  Cradled in the interstices between the monoliths, mists nestled like teased handfuls of raw silk. Lichen, like pale blue-green forests in miniature, clung to rocks. Heat and cold had worked upon the rocks of Arcdur’s bones. Flakes of granite which had split from the parent boulders lay like tiny islands of lichenous leafage. At their old sites, clean-cut shapes remained; perfectly matched facets of pink rock.

  Arcdur’s outward appearance had not altered much since Ashalind’s last visit—save in one marked respect. Throughout all her journeys through the lands of Erith, she had been accustomed to seeing wild birds and beasts flee at the approach of humankind. Now, on the contrary, the creatures of the wilderness came eagerly to the sound of their horses’ hooves. Birds flew close and alighted on rocky ledges within arm’s reach. At whiles Angavar would bid Errantry fly far off. Then he would raise his hand and small birds would come down to perch on his wrist. Sleek foxes and untame, topaz-eyed goats emerged from crevices to watch the riders pass. Lethargic snakes uncoiled. Glittering beetles spangled the air and lost themselves in the arcane drifts of Angavar’s hair. Even nocturnal animals roused themselves and came forth from their hiding places to greet the Faêran riders and their King.