The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  It was maintained (and indeed it was set down thus in the annals of Erith) that the bride of Edward, King-Emperor, was a damsel of great beauty, although her ways were strange, quiet and remote, and the marriage was childless. She outlived her husband by many years. When he died, a distant relation of the House of D’Armancourt came to the throne and Edward’s widow retired to a country estate, where she lived for an extraordinary length of time. Her beauty, though it faded in the end, faded slowly.

  But others added a fanciful twist.

  They avowed that she who became the wife of Edward, King-Emperor of Erith, was not his heart’s choice but a substitute, and that he never loved her as deeply. According to their version, his first bride was stolen away in the very hour they were to be married. On the day of the Royal Wedding, into the midst of the ceremony walked a tall stranger, more beautiful than the night, and a white owl flew above his shoulder, and no man could touch either of them. Before the marriage vows were exchanged, the stranger demanded a boon of Edward, and to the amazement of all those present, it was granted. Whereupon the stranger took the bride in his arms and kissed her.

  Then the whole Court stood back, staring in astonishment. For where the visitor had stood, a great eagle rose up. By its side flew a white seabird, and the two were linked by a golden chain. The roof opened like a flower to let them pass.

  They flew away and were never seen more in Erith.

  The End

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ON THE OPTIONAL CHAPTER FOR THE BATTLE OF EVERNIGHT:

  So many readers were upset when they interpreted the story’s ending as being sorrowful, that I felt prompted to write a clarifying chapter.

  That chapter follows. You may choose to read it or not. Alternatively, you may choose to read only the introduction.

  ‘I was devastated,’ wrote one reader, ‘when I first finished the Bitterbynde series, so I read the extra chapter straight away, but then realized I actually liked the ambiguous ending more.’

  I have been asked whether I prefer people to read the optional chapter or to close the book after the epilogue.

  My own preference is for the original ending which, for me, is not ambiguous at all but the happiest of all possible outcomes.

  Sain thee,

  Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  CHAPTER 13

  INTRODUCTION

  The glamour of the Faêran us beguiles;

  How they amaze our senses with their wiles!

  Fine clothes or rags? Gold thread or common straw?

  Ah! Who knows what the truth is any more?

  Retelling tales would seem, at first, to be

  Safe bet to save them for posterity,

  Yet stories change while passing door to door,

  And who knows what the truth is, any more?

  In domed mind-vaults we archive history

  To keep it sound, in perpetuity.

  Yet when retrieved, ’tis altered from before,

  And who knows what the truth is, any more?

  When sleep’s false dreams our waking visions cloud

  And fractured memories the past enshroud,

  What chance have we to know what came before?

  Who can know what the truth is, any more?

  It was those who were disparaged as being ‘fanciful’ who really understood the truth. The rest of the population were sadly deceived. How could it be, that this ‘fanciful twist’ had remained in the minds of some of the citizens of Erith, while contrasting opinions had taken hold in everyone else? The answers lie in the workings of human minds, and in the influence of the Faêran illusions that so adeptly confound the senses of mortal creatures.

  Throughout history, different interpretations of the same event commonly evolve. In some cases, the natural effects of time and erratic memories are accentuated by clever bewilderments worked by the Faêran.

  It was Rosamonde whom Edward eventually married; she who had always loved him. The daughter of Tamlain Conmor was indeed a damsel of great beauty, whose ways were strange, quiet and remote. The life of Rosamonde had been unusual and tinged with gramarye. This was the reason for her distant manner—doubtless she often dwelled on the wonders of days gone by. While her father was a captive in Faerie she had been conceived among the roses of Carterhaugh. Furthermore, she had mingled with immortal beings; by these influences, her lifespan was greatly lengthened. She was content in her marriage, even happy, this gentle, gracious queen.

  To understand the power and the reach of Faêran guile, one need only recall what happened in the years that followed the Battle of Evernight:

  Since the return to Caermelor, Angavar laid aside the lion of D’Armancourt and openly displayed his own eagle escutcheon, the sigil of Faêran Royalty. The couriers and everyone in the kingdom who knew him by sight, were fully apprised of the truth—King James had asked the Faêran High King to rule in his place until Edward came of age.

  Surprisingly, or perhaps predictably, this truth did not affect history as it existed in the minds of the soldiery and the majority of the citizens of Erith, who recognised the face of their sovereign only from crudely stamped images on coins. The King-Emperor had come to be regarded as a sovereign without parallel, a paragon, the most popular ruler in history. The people would have followed him into any manner of danger. They found it difficult—nay, impossible to accept the idea that the entire Empire had been under glamour’s illusion for so many years, that this monarch they loved was in fact not of their race. Popularly, the obvious explanation was that the King-Emperor had been slain at the Battle of Darke, and his ally the Faêran High King had subsequently arrived to stamp out those of his enemies who remained alive …

  The scattered remnants of the Talith race had gathered at Court to meet the Lady Ashalind, she whose hair glimmered with a golden sheen to match their own. If the Talith wondered at this newcomer in their midst, they put aside their questions. It may be that their natural curiosity was dulled by the gramarye hanging in heavy veils about the Palace, drifting like incense through the corridors and halls.

  For certain, Angavar was able to cast nets of illusion over the Talith, and over the entire populace of Erith. He had already employed such glamours to ensure that the exchange between himself and the real King-Emperor passed unnoticed. When he snatched Ashalind—who had become ‘Ash’ after her memory was taken a second time—from the scene of her wedding to Edward, and returned with her to Faerie, he left a legacy of confusion veiling the minds of most of Erith’s people.

  For he did steal her away, of that there is no doubt.

  And this is how it came to pass:

  After Ashalind exited the Gate for the final time there was a short period during which both she and Angavar actually dwelled in Erith simultaneously, before he was borne, Sleeping, from Eagle’s Howe into Faerie. Certain minor wights, and wild creatures such as birds spied Ashalind emerging from the Gate and making her way to the monument that was her own memorial. Several of these creatures slipped into the Fair Realm when the Faêran carried Angavar back to his own kingdom. After he woke, one of these informants revealed to him that his truelove still lived. Whereupon he opened the Gates immediately, and rescued her from Edward on the very wedding day.

  Angavar and Ashalind flew away to Faerie, where he restored her memories and she was reunited with her family and friends.

  13

  THE WEDDING

  An eagle and a white sea bird linked by a golden chain flew across Lake Amarach, through the mists that cling to the surface of that water night and day, coiling slowly in a dream-like dance. A steep island rises at the lake’s centre—an isle never inhabited by humankind—and it was there that the two birds passed through a Gate into to the Fair Realm.

  They went alone.

  Of the moment after they arrived in Faerie, when Angavar drew the disguises from himself and Ashalind, or the next moment when he restored her memory and they found one another again for the final time, never to be parted, nothing can b
e told, for there were none to bear witness. That interval was theirs alone, in any case, and not to be trespassed upon.

  But some time later—and it might have been seconds, or hours or days; it is hard to tell when time passes so capriciously in Faêrie—it came to Ashalind that the white plumage she had worn while in bird shape had not returned to being the dress of silk and diamonds and pearls in which she was to have married Edward. Instead, her costume now matched Angavar’s. Shades of chartreuse played through the weave of the lovers’ garments—the sunlight-through-greenery hues of golden ash trees, and golden cypress—and the edges of their trailing sleeves were as dagged as dandelion leaves.

  Angavar lifted her off her feet and swung her around in a circle, three times, both of them laughing. She had never seen him so happy; neither had she ever felt such utter joy. For the present she could think of nothing else. The ecstasy of being with her beloved, safe in his kingdom, was all that mattered.

  Angavar exulted, fired with energy. Happiness enhanced his extraordinarily good looks a thousandfold. Each time Ashalind set eyes on him the shock was as great as ever. She recalled the first occasion: In that brief glimpse, it had come to her that to describe him as ‘handsome’ would be doing him an injustice. It would be as inadequate as applying the word ‘pretty’ to a sable sky jewelled with stars, and those stars lowering their reflections like glimmering nets into a wintry sea. Lean and angular was his face, the features chiselled, high-boned. Beneath straight eyebrows his dark eyes seemed to burn with a cold fire, piercing. His jaw was strong and clean-shaven, although brushed with rough shadow. Young he seemed, yet as old as Spring, and all in that flash she had noted he was tall and broad of shoulder, with the hard-thewed look of a warrior. There had been no defect. Quite the reverse.

  ‘I will show thee my realm, eudail,’ he told her now, ‘the high and the deep, the greatest and the least, the tardy and the swift. Thou shalt see wonders beyond description. Would that please thee?’

  With a rush of excitement she assured him that indeed, it would. In fact she cared not what happened next, as long as nothing parted them.

  He took her by the hand.

  Together they soared higher than the highest clouds, then plummeted groundwards to alight atop a living volcano. On the scorched rim of the crater they balanced, their garments whipping madly in the heat-blast. Far below bubbled a maelstrom of magma and smoke, steam and flaming gases. Angavar raised his arm and made as if hurling some missile into the fiery soup, whereupon the mountain roared, exploding with such force that the caldera collapsed. Unscathed and whooping like exuberant children the lovers plunged into the erupting pit, passing through the superheated flows of underground as if they were no more than cool rivers of oozing raspberry syrup, amongst pillars of cloud, and exotic gardens of glassy blossoms.

  Angavar conveyed Ashalind down to the lightless abysms of an ocean, where impossible monsters lit themselves with rows of electrical lights, like weird submarine ships cruising through the gloom. From the ocean the lovers emerged, with not a drop of water wetting them. They shrank to the size of ants and entered right into the heart of a flower, walking among the stamens and anthers as if through some outlandish grove. Between the precise walls of a snowflake’s hexagonal maze they danced for a while, tiny as motes, before returning to their proper size.

  As their feet kissed the ground in a sunlit valley Ashalind, exhilarated by the sheer abandonment to pleasure and power, cried, ‘Now show me the tardy and the swift!’

  Angavar smiled. He opened his hand, and a green butterfly was standing on his palm, its wings like two triangles cut out of emerald. ‘He has stolen the colour of your eyes,’ murmured the Faêran King.

  The insect took flight, but with exquisite slowness—or so it seemed to Ashalind. Every detail of its movements was clearly discernible. Its wings rotated with a ballerina’s grace, rather than the rapid flitting usually associated with butterflies, clapping together at the apex of the backswing, but never meeting on the downstroke. The butterfly rowed hypnotically away into the rose-pink daylight of Faêrie. When Angavar unclosed his fingers a second time a furry bee flew out of his grasp, as leisurely as its predecessor, every beat of its vanes so measured as to be easily contemplated. When the bee had drifted out of sight, Angavar gave Ashalind a longbow, which she recognised as the bow he had carried when first she met him as Thorn in the wilderness, or an exact copy.

  ‘I cannot draw this hardy weapon,’ she murmured, hardly heeding her own words, for he was standing behind her shoulder with his arms about her, guiding her hands on string and grip. The contact between them was intense. She could feel the warm vitality of him up and down the length of her body, and almost dropped the bow from her nerveless fingers.

  ‘Try.’ He nocked an arrow.

  She pulled back the bowstring easily, sending the arrow up and away in a transcendent arc, but its progress was deliberate; instead of whizzing in a blur, it seemed to glide unhurriedly along its trajectory. Ashalind laughed at the incongruity of the sight.

  A moment later her hands were empty, and she stood arm in arm with her beloved on a hillside. He lifted his head and spoke to the sky, and all around, the landscape itself began changing in astounding ways at incredible speeds. The sun began to flash repeatedly across the sky, accelerating until it eventually vanished.

  Twilight reigned. Lit by its wan glow, tall cliffs weathered away, dwindling in height until they existed no more. Rivers rapidly gouged out deep ravines Mountains stood up and thrust their heads skywards. The jagged mouths of earthquakes snapped open and shut in the ground, and a glacier raced down the valley. Forests spread out in great waves, seethed like stormy oceans of foliage, then appeared to dry up like puddles on a Summer afternoon.

  ‘Now I have seen everything,’ Ashalind said contentedly. She leaned into the arousing embrace of her lover, feeling his heart beat strongly enough to fuse with her own.

  ‘On the contrary, this is but the beginning,’ he said. Locks of his hair tumbled down across her face and arms, soft as the brush of feathers.

  ‘But what about everyone else?’ Ashalind said, turning her face up to his, but only for an instant, in case looking too long made her swoon, or die, or fasten to him in a fierce embrace and never let go. ‘Will your people not be thrown into confusion by what is occurring?’

  ‘It happened for us alone. This is Faêrie,’ Angavar whispered in her ear, ‘and all took place within a span so brief that for others it was like the passing of a thought.’ As he spoke, the contortions of the landscape slowed, and all returned to its normal state, if spectacular panoramas of haunting strangeness and splendour could be considered normal.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it is time to make ready for a wedding, and for the revelries that will follow.’

  ‘A wedding!’ Ashalind echoed softly, her heart so full she could not say more. Presently she added, ‘How long will the preparations take?’

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘I understand,’ Ashalind said ruefully. ‘The nature of the Faêran inclines them to sport rather than industry. I daresay they are not used to busying themselves with wedding preliminaries.’

  ‘Nonetheless they will be making particular efforts for you and me. Indeed, the banquets over the next days and weeks and months are likely to be quite sumptuous.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ashalind recalled the arrival of the Avlantians in Faêrie, when the newcomers perceived that a feast was laid out on the starlit lawns, beneath spreading boughs heavy with scalloped leaves. There had been pies and puddings, flans and flummeries, saffron seed-cakes, cloudy white bread and soft yellow butter, raspberries, pears, strawberries and honeyed figs, creamy curd, truffles and crystal goblets encircling dark wine. Entranced by the music of fiddle and harp, the yellow-haired people of Hythe Mellyn had danced and feasted in the warm evening. Their cares had been discarded with their belongings on the flower-starred lawns. Caught in the ecstasy of the moment, Ashalind had cast off her travelling cloak and prepa
red to join in. Yet at the last, she did not.

  ‘Never have I tasted food in the Fair Realm,’ said she.

  ‘Then a treat is in store for you,’ Angavar said gravely. ‘Porridge and gruel, perhaps, if we are fortunate; maybe even with a couple of sprigs of parsley on the side.’

  ‘Dare we expect one or two grapes?’ Ashalind enquired, suppressing a smile.

  ‘One may hope.’

  ‘Oh but I have been forgetting,’ the damsel exclaimed, ‘how could I? It is unforgivable of me. My family and friends! I have not yet seen them since my return!’

  ‘Hardly unforgivable,’ he returned. ‘You arrived but a moment ago. Besides—’ and he speared her with an intense look—‘had you not given that moment to me I would surely have fallen prey to madness.’ More light-heartedly he added, ‘Let us go to them now!’

  Ashalind, on the arm of Angavar, stepped blithesomely down through a sloping woodland of silver birch trees. Spinning swirls of thistledown showered them both, like handfuls of confetti cast in welcome. In their wake thronged the Faêran, singing and rejoicing, while hosts of eldritch wights came frolicking also. Ashalind was going to greet her loved ones for the first time since she had left them and slipped through the Gate of Oblivion’s Kiss, so long ago in Erith-time.

  Three of Ashalind’s Erithan companions discovered her immediately—the hound Rufus came bounding up, wagging his tail and spinning around in delight; the horses Peri and Satin blew their warm breath against Ashalind’s neck and nuzzled her in welcome. She lavished loving caresses upon them before they pranced away to revel again in the sweet freedom of the Land Beyond the Stars.

  For the humanfolk she had left behind it seemed that only eight days had elapsed; eight days of quiet sadness, followed by sudden, fragile hope. Despite having reached the land of Faêrie, their heart’s desire, Ashalind’s family and friends were neither feasting nor dancing on verdant lawns in forest glades, as they might have been. Anxiety had postponed their joy. Ashalind, who had brought back the stolen children and been the instrument of Hythe Mellyn’s rescue from the Langothe, was not among them to share the fruits of her labours. Her presence was acutely missed.