The weapon was torn from his grasp.
The guttering lambency from his tinderbox extinguished itself.
Something tripped Eoin and he fell flat on his back. A heavy blow sent him rolling down a slope. He felt himself crash into a thorny hedge at the foot of the incline; then two prongs of burning agony lifted him and he was thrown over the hedge on the horns of the goat-simulacrum. After that it was as though an unnaturally violent wind manifested, tossing and spinning him as if he were no more than a speck of dust, dashing him against rocks and briars, stripping the clothing from his back and the flesh from his ribs.
There was no lull, until at last he lay broken and insensible at the foot of a great rock. After a long while, consciousness returned briefly to him. He looked up at the sky, which was now visible, since the mists and cloud had cleared. He was alone. The stars shone kindly down on him, and all pain receded.
Thus it comes to pass, he understood, that the forecast of the eldritch pallbearers is validated. I am departing from this world.
The idea made him forlorn.
I am leaving Jewel. I am abandoning her to an uncertain fate, she whom I love more than anyone alive. It is I who am the cause of all her past sorrows, and probably her future suffering as well. What tribulations will tomorrow bring for my lost little one? My heart bleeds for her. Oh, if only I had not acted out of spite, if only I had never . . .
The dying man sensed a drawing back, a departure. Oddly enough, no more was he afflicted with wretchedness; instead he became flooded with a sublime peacefulness. He believed himself to be floating, as if his point of view had flown from his body and he gazed from a distance at his own person lying bloodied on the ground. Detachedly he thought, I have suffered for my mistakes, but suffering is now at an end. May the child find protection, for I can be her guardian no longer.
Suddenly his physical eyes opened wide, as if he were staring at some wonderful, unexpected sight, or someone he had fervently longed to behold, and a look of joy illuminated his features.
“Is it thee, at last?” In tranquillity, his lids closed. That final whisper condensed into a puff of steam and wafted away.
The night went on and on.
Far away beneath the rowan tree, worn out from calling vainly for her step-uncle, Jewel was fast asleep.
Deliverance
A half-moon rode the dawn sky.
Its mountains looked as if sketched and blocked in with raw chalk, while its meres had captured the same ineffable gray-blue as the skies. Thus, it appeared translucent, a glass bowl, haphazardly frosted.
Jewel woke, alone beneath the rowan tree.
She cried out a name, and then she called a second time, but the only reply was the wind breathing through the rowan-leaves, the distant chint! chint! of bellbirds, and a scattered flurry of airborne dandelion seeds, pirouetting like miniature ballerinas.
The mists had dissipated. The clouds had shredded and rolled away to reveal a clear, bright day. Beneath a sky of pale azure, trees let fall leaves tinged with the poppy-hues of Autumn. Weed-studded grasses dipped and waved under the combing of the breeze. All morning, Jewel called and searched, to no avail. Kneeling beside a trickle of a brook, she drank, then rose and searched the forsaken fields again.
Her efforts were useless. Eoin had vanished.
After noon, she wandered through a gap in a cypress hedge, where one of the trees had died, withering to a blackened stump. On the other side stood a convocation of partially collapsed walls jumbled with piled rubble—perhaps the remnants of some ancient Oratorium or watchtower. The stones were dark with age and slime. Velvety mosses probed at their seams. Bindweed roped them.
Not far away was a circle of turf that, in places, had been trampled. Beyond stood a clump of buddleia shrubs, from whose tiny cone-shaped flower-clusters the last magenta florets were dropping. Under the buddleias, half-hidden by tussocks of gold-sprinkled ragwort and groundsel, lay Eoin’s pack. As she rushed toward it, Jewel stumbled over his blackthorn staff. She sprawled headlong in the weeds, crawled to the bundle, and threw her arms around it.
There she sat.
A swift, solitary breeze rustled the groundsel’s dagged foliage. Small furry bumblebees droned in and out of the overhanging buddleias, whose purple-red petals rained down sporadically, like fragments of torn tissue. Sparrows perched on top of the ruins, quarreled, and flew off. In the tranquil morning, only the wind and wild things moved.
Jewel called out again. Her voice in her own ears sounded small and weak, but the corrupted walls seemed to lean forward and listen. All of a sudden the child took a strong and unaccountable dislike to this place. After scrambling to her feet, lugging the pack and the staff, she moved off with as much pace as she could muster. She left behind the decomposing edifice, the grinning cypress hedge with its rotten tooth. By the gaudily ornamented rowan she passed, and beyond. She must keep the falling sun to her left. She must keep moving northward.
For she knew there was no chance, now, that she would find Eoin alive. There was no doubt in her mind that he was gone, and that wights of unseelie had proved his undoing. Following so closely on the deaths of her parents, this loss seemed too much to endure. Almost everyone and everything Jewel had ever loved had been stolen from her: her mother and father, Eolacha and Earnán, her friends and pet, the marsh itself, and now her beloved uncle. All that remained of her past life were memories, a white jewel, and a small bundle of objects. Her body ached, as if her viscera had been scooped out and her hide had become a hollow, clenching thing, curling like a dead leaf around the emptiness of its own misery. Pain was unfamiliar to her—this was no flesh-and-blood hurt, however, but the agony of the inner spirit.
As she walked on, Jewel’s thoughts tumbled in tumult. These catastrophes had sprung largely from a single source—the inescapable fact that a sorcerer’s blood coursed through her veins. For this reason she had been exiled. Combined with her anguish, she felt a terrible rage against Jaravhor of Strang and all his works. Picturing the famous fortress in Orielthir, of which so many tales were told, she imagined it broken open, and ardently wished that all its secrets could be laid bare for her to plunder at whim.
For there was, after all, something else left to her among the ruins of her life—her rightful legacy, the Dome of Strang.
She did not weep. She had crossed the desolate boundary beyond tears, the border that is only reached in the direst of extremes. As a child who is hurt restrains his crying until he has reached the haven of his mother’s arms, as an injured beast does not permit itself to die until it has dragged itself to refuge, she did not weep. Her cornflower eyes remained arid, and blank as a snow-bound Winter sky.
Onward she went.
The desire for food induced a dull ache beneath Jewel’s ribs. In the late afternoon she rested in a fair meadow of fescue and daisies, where sheep grazed, although there was no shepherd in sight. After sorting through the leather pack, she ate the last of the goodwife’s cheese and some leftover chestnuts Eoin had roasted. Then she extracted the pack’s contents and laid them out on the grass around her knees. The tinderbox, she noted, was missing. There would be no way of making fire. Everything else appeared to be present—the bronze snare-wire, the fishing-line, rope, fish-hooks, soap, a small whetstone, a wooden plate, and a diminutive saucepan. Even on such short notice, her father had planned well. Jewel herself had packed a comb, the book of stories Eolacha had given her, and the clockwork serinette that had been a present from Eoin. Her father’s white gem hung at her throat. What did she carry that had been gifted by her mother? Nothing. The notion distressed her intensely, and she sought wildly for some reassuring answer. Finally, looking down at herself, she concluded, I have myself. She nurtured me. Life is her gift, and this will always be mine.
In spite of this self-reassurance she had been so deeply hurt by all the losses she had suffered that she felt as if she were trapped at the bottom of a plunging pit of despair, whose walls were unscaleable, and into which
no light could enter from above. A dimness had drawn across her vision, so that she viewed the world as through a curtain of gray glass. Each heartbeat was a hammer blow knocking painfully against raw flesh. Everything had been taken from her, and there seemed to be little reason to keep going. Indeed, when she walked forward she felt as if some invisible hand against her forehead were pushing her back. Nothing appeared real; it was as if she moved within some ghastly dream. Panic ensued as an inconsolable feeling of loss and loneliness rushed upon her, and when the terror subsided, she wept.
Yet the day’s peaceful breezes lapped her like a lullaby. Sheep bleated lazily, shoulder deep in cream-and-green grass. Small birds squeaked, darting in and out of crevices in the dry stone walls enclosing the meadow. The sweetness of the afternoon soothed her wounded spirits and temporarily allayed the agonies of bereavement. She dried her eyes. Deliberately she forced herself to push away sorrowful reflections. With renewed courage she re-packed her bundle, then gazed at the meadows rolling away to the mountains in the north. A bird hovered high above—a kite, judging by the shape of its tail. What a view its keen eyes must command, at such an altitude! The pleats of the land must look like a gigantic swathe of parti-colored velvet, embroidered with stone walls and hedges, stitched with trees, beribboned with watercourses, threaded with roads, and appliquéd with the farming settlements of Narngalis. Here and there a piece of mirror would wink, a lake or pool flashing in the sun. Tatters of light and darkness would chase one another across the meads as clouds raced across the sky. Mile after mile, league upon league, Narngalis unraveled. Somewhere far off—so far it would not bear contemplation—resided the solid, wealthy city of King’s Winterbourne: shelter, safety—perhaps—for a wanderer.
How could a child, alone, make such a long journey? Would she be forced to seek out some of the remote villages and beg for food? And if she did so, would they guess her identity and turn her over to their watchmen?
The kite folded its wings and dived. Altering her position so that she might follow its trajectory, Jewel felt the precious stone shift on its chain. She touched a fingertip to the lump beneath her clothing. There lay the ice-like crystal, warm against her skin—her father’s parting gift. I am of sorcerous blood, she thought, watching the raptor rise with a struggling shrew clutched in its talons. I am invulnerable. But what does that signify?
By comparison with the hurts of other folk, any scratch or bruise on her flesh had always healed with astonishing speed. What, then, can harm me? she thought. I know what slew my father—Cuiva said he fell upon a sharp stick of mistletoe that pierced him to his poor heart. Mistletoe can hurt me, but what else? Surely not hunger and thirst?
She drew a deep breath. As she expelled it, she reasoned, If lack of food cannot hurt me, why am I hungry? Is it because I expect to feel this way?
Softly she chanted, “I require no food to survive. Without food, I will live. I can draw nourishment from—from nothing! From the air!” And promptly, her hunger was annulled. Through her, in its place, there welled a consciousness of strength and durability. Too astounded by this phenomenon to feel ecstatic, she merely stood up, hoisted the pack, and resumed her journey.
No thirst either. Nor weariness of the body, she reflected as she wandered on, but weariness of the mind? Fear? Loneliness? Grief? I am not immune to them. . . .
When she came upon an ancient elm, hollow and dripping with wild honey, Jewel took some of the bees’ store, simply for the pleasure of it, and in the knowledge that the insects habitually manufactured an over-abundance of their larval fare. With the innate wisdom of bees, somehow understanding she meant no harm, the creatures did not sting her. The viscid fluid lent her comfort and true vigor. Later, spying a gnarled and ancient fig tree, she plucked the fat teardrops of fruit, dark crimson. Again she consumed them for pleasure, and because it seemed fitting to do so. I can live on air, but I cannot thrive on it.
Three days later, as the afternoon waned, Jewel climbed a steep, grassy slope and came over the top of a ridge. She was greeted with a sweeping vista of undulating lawns patched with sunlight and cloud-shadows, dotted here and there with ancient aspens and hoary poplars. It fell gradually toward a sheet of metallic gray—a small lake nestled in a pocket of the land. The surface was dimpled with patterns, like a spillage of molten pewter. Near the shore, clumps of knot-headed reeds stood up out of the water. Fallen logs jutted like blackened shipwrecks.
The mountains appeared to be very close now. Their uttermost tops were dolloped with a cream of snow, while their flanks, sweeping graciously to the lowlands, were stippled with slate-blue shadows. They appeared to be steaming, as if gargantuan cauldrons boiled inside. Gray-white smokes billowed thickly from behind their peaks, curled themselves up like foaming surf, and coasted away in long, roiling cylinders. The entire sky seemed to be pouring away to the east. The sun kept breaking through for an instant, only to be swiftly obscured.
The remnants of an old dam-wall meandered along the edge of the mere, leading to the other side of the vale. Jewel climbed a stone stair and walked along the weather-bitten road that ran along the wall’s top. The way was farther than she had imagined; dusk had drawn in by the time she reached the end and began to climb a gentle incline through a sprinkling of stunted trees. A moody wind was brewing in the west, and it bore in its dull fingers a vast curtain of cloud, which it dragged across the sky. Ragged rents tore open and closed in the curtain, through which the waxing moon peered fitfully before being swallowed up again.
North of the vale, the child found herself in open country studded by low vegetation. The sky was pressing down on these exposed hills, weighty with imminent rain. Wanting to find shelter, but unwilling to turn back, Jewel trudged forward, wrapping her cloak more closely about herself. She could kindle no light, and in the deepening gloom she could barely see her way ahead.
Her courage began to ebb. Had she not been burdened by sorrow, she would have cursed silently, asking herself why she should find herself in such miserable straits, since she had done nothing to deserve it. In the next instant, the morose thoughts cluttering her head were abruptly scissored.
Something had laughed.
A clenched fist banged and thumped inside Jewel’s ribs. By all that’s strange, she said to herself, I am not alone. She reached for the amulet hanging at her throat, but found only the icy gem.
The laugh sounded eldritch. All manner of wights were wont to laugh, yet this laugh was unfamiliar to the ears of the marsh-daughter.
’Tis merely the wind grating two boughs together, she said to herself. The moon appeared again, and heartened by its wan radiance she pushed on, looking for shelter—some hollow cliff, some leafy nook or scoop in a hillside. A gust came howling out of the atmosphere, tearing at her cloak and hair and hood, stirring up swathes of debris to swirl angrily about her. As before, the wind dragged the clouds over the moon. On the back of the wind, the rain came blowing aslant, a silvery barrier so solid it was blinding. Its noise filled her ears.
Soaking wet, violently buffeted, the child was eager to find refuge. When a gap appeared in the fence of water, she fancied she could distinguish, on the hillside ahead, a solitary tree, its boughs flailing in the squall. Wind and water slapped across her face and she lost sight of the tree, but fighting the wind, she directed her steps toward it.
When she reached the place, however, the tree was not there. Assuming she had miscalculated she peered into the storm and saw it standing farther ahead, still thrashing about in the gale. She went on pursuing the tree, but every time she thought she must certainly have reached it she discovered she had been mistaken; her judgement of distance flawed, perhaps, by the deceptions of darkness and the elemental forces lashing the hills.
Jewel had been walking after the tree for almost a mile when over the top of the storm’s wail there grated a repetition of that same queer sound that might have been a laugh, or two branches rubbing together. ’Tis branches, she perversely told herself, and she kept on f
ollowing. The wind battered, the rain drenched, and a fierce chill was endeavoring to embed itself in her unassailable bones, but she was determined to reach that tree, and finally she did.
After putting her hand on the rough bark of its trunk to assure herself she had truly attained her goal, she dropped slowly to the ground in exhaustion. The trunk sheltered her from the worst of the wind’s cruelty, although the twigs and branches were so water-laden that they did nothing to keep out the rain. Still, she snuggled into her cloak, glad enough merely to be resting.
She began to drowse.
A moment later, through her stupor, a voice creaked.
“I don’t know about you,” said the tree, “but I’m getting soaked through. I’m off home to a nice warm fire.”
And it departed.
Jewel jumped up and looked around. Crooning silkily, the wind commenced to ease. The rain’s song abated from furious drumming to a dulcet lilt. For a few moments the moon, or her ghost, appeared. Row upon row, beaded necklaces of water-drops hung from acres of clouds. Raindrops pelted into Jewel’s eyes. The nearest trees were a glaucous smudge about half a league away, along the outskirts of a neighboring hill.
The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 7