The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  For Fionnuala, who was acquainted with the knowledge of Jarred’s invulnerability, his death was a mystery. Her great-uncle, Ruairc McGabhann, had never bothered to mention the sorcerer’s bane in her hearing, nor had she ever thought to ask before the old villain died. Seeking clues to the one weakness that proved Jarred’s undoing, she bribed and interviewed a soldier of the Household Cavalry, a member of the Royal Slievmordhu Dragoons. He had been amongst those who entered the marsh and found Jarred’s body on that fateful Otember day.

  Soon she learned exactly where Jarred’s mortal remains had been discovered, and in what condition.

  A band of traveling players came to sojourn at the marsh. The watchmen were initially loath to let them in, for they had not encountered this troupe before, and knew not whether their performance would be entertaining, nor whether they could be trusted. Yet they carried no weapons and seemed harmless enough; besides, their prices were surprisingly low and one of their jugglers showed off some amazing tricks for nothing. The players camped for a single night near the cruinniú, where they enacted their comedic routine. On that evening, unnoticed by any marsh-dweller, one member of the troupe made a surreptitious journey.

  The swift, sharp breeze racing along Lizardback Ridge chased the woman walking up the slope from the marsh, tugging at her skirts, making the gray-green grass-stems caress her stout boots and the hem of her woad-blue cloak. Her pale eyes darted from side to side, as if she looked for pursuers or watchers lurking in the shadows of early evening.

  Yet no watchers were to be seen, only the grasses bending in waves to show the silvery undersides of their blades, and bright yellow splashes of late blooming rock-roses, and the dagged stars of maiden pinks and the purple wings of crowthistle.

  When she reached the top, she paused.

  At her feet lay the wide, undulating grasslands of southern Slievmordhu, tapestried with their leafy copses and belts of beech and ash, sprinkled in the near distance by the whitish blotches of grazing sheep and goats.

  The woman displayed no interest in the view. On the cliff-face below, the three stunted ash trees, adorned with their swaying bunches of sage-green foliage, reached into chasms of wind. The woman knelt. She leaned forward. Perhaps she climbed down a short distance, then returned. Her sharp eyes darted, and she noted many things.

  She did not stay long on the ridge-top. After she left, darkness gathered. The wind continued to hound the grasses and chivvy the nodding heads of crowthistle. And on the cliff-face something fluttered, snagged on the end of a dry mistletoe twig: a tiny scrap of fabric, woad-blue.

  The Autumn Fair at Cathair Rua was to begin on 14th Sevember. Arran and Jewel had decided to attend it, in company with a group of weathermaster friends. There were purchases to be made on behalf of Rowan Green; besides, Jewel seized every opportunity to revisit Earnán and her friends of the marsh, who customarily set up their stalls at the Fair. Unwilling to take ten-year-old Astăriel away from her studies, they left her in the care of Avalloc, her governess, and her old nanny.

  The four sky-balloons being engaged in far-off weathermastery missions, the company made their journey by carriage and on horseback. As they traveled along their way Jewel declared the Autumn colors of the equinoctial landscapes had never been more brilliant. Indeed this was probable, for during the past few weeks dry, sunny days and cool, dry nights had held sway throughout the southern regions of Tir, breaking down the green chlorophyll of the leaves and enhancing their production of red and purple anthocyanins.

  The cortege from High Darioneth passed through a beech-wood in the morning. Early sunlight was shining through the leaves. Amongst the dark stems of the trees floated great drifts and bowers and spangled clouds of color, points and splashes of rich bronze and cinnibar, poignant green, fabulous gold, shimmering in sun and air, fair as some enchanted realm.

  “I should fall on my knees and weep, at such a sight,” said Jewel, gazing out of the carriage window, “a spectacle gorgeous beyond description, so glorious it breaks my heart. For with every moment it is all fading; another leaf falls, the sun rides to a different angle, and all this fleeting loveliness is ours to behold for only the briefest while. Yet I ache with love for this splendor.”

  “The trees will be bare in Winter,” said Ettare, who was seated at her side, “but Spring will bring renewal, and next Autumn this spectacle will be repeated.”

  “Aye, but not the same. Never exactly the same. And there will come an Autumn when we are not here to see it, when this glory shall be denied us and we shall forever be parted from it. I should fall to my knees and weep.”

  “You are passionate, Jewel, to a fault.”

  “Perhaps you are right. For I love Autumn’s beauty so dearly that it gives me what I can only describe as pain. Does that seem foolish, to you?”

  Arran, riding behind the equipage, had chanced to overhear this exchange. He closed his eyes and turned his head aside, as if dodging a blow, or as if he suddenly felt a need to avoid seeing some particularly magnificent tracery of leaves against the sky.

  Within the carriage a moment elapsed before Ettare replied to Jewel’s question, and her tones seemed strained: “Be assured, it does not seem foolish at all.”

  The reddish sandstone and blood-slate roofs of the Red City gleamed warmly in the rich-tinted daylight of the season. Mists were rising from the street-gutters and wells, and from the head of the Rushy Water. Cathair Rua’s conglomerate of rooftops and gables, towers and turrets, spires and belfries appeared to hover, free of footings, above the machicolations and crenellations of its battlemented walls. Atop the palace roofs, flocks of flags flapped against a sheer blue sky, each proudly bearing the fiery device of Slievmordhu: the Burning Brand. From that direction, staccato shouts and the regulated martial crunching of hundreds of boots on gravel indicated that a regiment of the Household Guards was performing a drill in the palace forecourt.

  Set a little apart from the city, the Fair Field spread out beneath the high walls. The market that straggled across the field was a tangle of tents, booths, and stands. Man-powered pushcarts trundled back and forth, their wooden wheels groaning. Acrobats and jokesters bent their bodies into outlandish shapes in an effort to coax pennies from generous onlookers, rich or poor. Children hawked their parents’ wares or played in the dust. An ancient dancing-bear in an iron collar, nose ring, and chain shambled hopelessly in the wake of his master. Fluid seeped from the bear’s eyes, as if he were weeping. Weary nags pulling carts clip-clopped between the stalls, while dogs fought over scraps. A haze of dust, cooking-fire smoke, and mist veiled the scene, softening it and lending it a dream-like quality to contrast with the prosaic odors of fried onions and boiled cabbage.

  Agents of the palace, the Sanctorum, and the higher echelons of the aristocracy were passing amongst the stalls, examining the goods and deciding which vendors would be commanded to present themselves at the palace or some majestic house, there to display their merchandise in privacy.

  The entourage of Jewel and Arran moved through the small enclave, close to the city gates, which was always set aside for the vendors of high-quality or rare goods. They occupied a pleasant hour examining bolts of silk, damask, muslin, baldachin, velvet, linen, and fine woolen cloth, furs, crocodile skins, spices and ornaments, silver and bronze jewelry, glassware and perfumes, distilled liquors, ornate ceramic ware, musical instruments, and mechanical toys.

  After leaving the guarded precinct of the upper-crust vendors, they strolled out into the main areas of the Fair Field. Here a wider variety of wares could be found: livestock and deadstock, sacks of nut-flour and corn-flour, preserved meats, eels and fish, dried vegetables, fruits, and herbs, waxed cheeses, barrels of beverages, candlesticks, cauldrons, lanterns, arrowheads, knives, saddles, harness, boots, bolts of cheap textiles, barrels of wine, candles, honey, glass beads, glassware, rope, chains, axes, bells, baskets, jugs, bowls, purses and belts, jars of oil, and sundry other articles. Jewel bought some penny-farthing gridd
le-cakes from a woman and her mother who toasted them on a griddle-iron over a fire. As traditional at seasonal fairs, entertainment was provided in the form of archery competitions, games of dice, jugglers, storytellers, musicians, fire-eaters, puppet-shows, and stilt-walkers.

  They visited the marshfolk at their customary station on the southwest corner of the field, not far from the river-landings. Little had altered over the years since Jewel had first visited the fair as a child. There were the pyramidal piles of firkins stuffed with pickled eels, the goat-hides hung on display, the poles from which braces of smoked fish were suspended, the haberdashery.

  Much conversation and purchasing having taken place, it was late in the afternoon by the time the travelers from the north decided to depart from the Fair Field and make for the house of Calogrenant Lumenspar, Ambassador for High Darioneth in Cathair Rua. There they would spend the night, before leaving for the mountain ring next morning.

  Not far from the stalls of the marshfolk an itinerant jongleur had seated himself on a three-legged stool. He was playing a battered lute, accompanying himself while he sang. His instrument, although decrepit, was loud. The wistful melody caught the attentions of the weathermasters and they paused to listen:

  “The fires of anger and passion, the daggers of envy and spite,

  The acid of cruel sarcasm, or jealousy’s viperous bite,

  The arrows of humiliation, the glacial freezing of scorn,

  The sweet warmth of gladness and rapture, the anguish of weepers who mourn,

  No sentiment, or thought can stir me; nay, nothing can touch me at all.

  For mine is no longer the soaring, mine neither the heights nor the fall.

  I walk on a plain that is barren; no mountain or vale marks my way.

  No sunlight or darkness enfolds me—just limitless shadows of gray.

  I long for the fires to burn me; I yearn for the ice and the knives,

  I wish I could once more be roused by the passions that quicken our lives,

  Yet only when I am beside you can I feel some emotion again—

  ’Tis only your presence that moves me, restoring both pleasure and pain.”

  With a flourish of his fingers the minstrel ceased his crooning. He rose to his feet and bowed. “You fortunate lord and ladies have been regaled by the music of one who once sang at the court of King Uabhar Ó Maoldúin himself. The lyrics are mine alone, yet the melody is not, for, growing weary on my journey homeward one evening, I fell asleep upon a lonely hill, and when I awoke I heard a lilting pipe-tune of the Fridean coming from beneath the ground, which I memorized.”

  “Which explains why the melody is passing pleasing to the ear, while the words grate depressingly on the same organ,” said Ryence Darglistel. “Why sing sorrowful love songs on a jolly afternoon? Would you have us bawling into our gravy by dinnertime?”

  The musician bowed a second time. “Alas. Forgive me if I have displeased you, lord.”

  But Ettare, who had been loitering at the edge of the group, put her hand on Jewel’s sleeve. “Did you hear it?”

  “The song? Of course.”

  “Not the song. I scarcely paid heed to the ditty. There was another sound, dimmer, as if coming from far off. Yet keener and more disturbing, by far.”

  “What sound?”

  “The sound of weeping. . . .”

  Now that Ettare had mentioned it, Jewel recalled, in hindsight, hearing a low accompaniment to the song of the minstrel, an eerie lamenting and sobbing.

  An eldritch weeper was forecasting someone’s death.

  “Best not to mention it,” Jewel advised her friend. “There is no knowing for whom the weepers cry. It might be anyone at all in this vast city.”

  Arran gave two silver threepences to the troubadour, who prostrated himself in gratitude, and the company moved on.

  Through the busy streets of Cathair Rua they walked. As usual the doors and windows of every house, shop, and inn were decorated with assortments of devices to ward off unseelie manifestations—horseshoes, sprigs of rowan or hypericum, strings of small bells, cast-iron roosters, daisies and ivy leaves carved in relief on timbers of ash-wood, rare river-stones worn hollow by the natural action of water, and cheerful bundles of red ribbons.

  Within the more privileged quarters the streets were bordered by tall houses built of gray granite, with a cobbled and grated drain down the center of every road. The fragrant boughs of citrus trees nodded over the walls of courtyards where fountains played tunefully. Well-dressed personages strolled the footpaths taking the evening air, or rode in their carriages on their way to formal dinners.

  The uppermost tiers of the Sanctorum peered over the walls of the Royal Citadel. It was the only city edifice constructed of white sandstone; however, the chastity of its masonry had long been corrupted by red dirt. The walls were smeared, and from each sill, gutter, and drainpipe dripped a long black-red blemish, as if the buildings were bleeding. Staring serpents of marble twined about fluted columns. The crests on their heads and backs proclaimed them to be cockatrices. More of their ilk glared from the bell-shaped roofs atop the square towers and turrets and belfries. Splinters of broken glass jutted along the lofty tops of the walls, and sentinels patrolled the wall-walks.

  After bypassing the Sanctorum the company entered the streets leading up to the house of Lumenspar. Their course took them across a public square at a crossroads. Here, enclosed by a striking edifice of blushing sandstone—a high, colonnaded, beehive-roofed structure reached by flights of stone stairs—a speaker was holding forth. Five young boys supported oil lamps on tall poles, which illuminated the speech-maker with their radiance. Dressed in the raiment of a King’s Druids’ Scribes’ Hand, the orator stood high on the rubicund platform of the Oratorium. His voluminous, deeply hooded robes were made of fustian, dyed red with the roots of madder. A scarf of etiolated linen enfolded his neck and shoulders, and the insignia of the White Cockatrice was embroidered on his sleeve beneath the sigil of the Burning Brand. At the Hand’s back two henchmen stood like rough-hewn statues. A little aside stood a nervous youth all in ruddled fustian, a small cockatrice sigil gleaming on his shoulder. This attendant stepped forward and called to the crowd, “Be silent for Tertius Malandria!”

  The weathermasters hastened past, making all efforts to remain as inconspicuous as possible so that they would not be expected to halt and listen to the Oration. As they rounded a corner at the far end of the street, they could hear, at their backs, the opening words of the Tertius’s speech, “threading up the road,” as Ryence described it, “like an intestinal worm.”

  “Hear now the Word of the King’s Druids,” he warbled, as if trying to enunciate around a gall in his throat, “and as the druids prophesy, so shall it be. For it shall come to pass that the white unicorn shall drink from the silver chalice, and the crimson star shall shine upon the cradle in the valley. . . .”

  “Hasten!” Arran muttered under his breath. “Without doubt, bloodsuckers will be nearby. I have no wish to contribute to the swelling of their over-stuffed coffers.”

  None of his companions needed urging. All were well acquainted with the intercessionary collectors and their inevitable bodyguards, whose habit was to go amongst crowds that gathered in uneasy neediness whenever a representative of the druidhood expounded at an Oratorium. The collectors would ask for the names of the audience members, so that the druids might intercede with the Fates on their particular behalf. Citizens need only cross the Scribes’ Hand’s Assistant’s Intercessionary Collector’s palm with silver or gold coinage and later, at the Sanctorum, a druid would speak directly to the Fates, asking that the donor receive Good Fortune and avoid Ill Luck.

  The weathermasters were not the only folk endeavoring to distance themselves from the Oratorium. They merged with the flow of a moving crowd. To be hurrying, almost running, up a street amidst a throng of people, all feigning nonchalance in case the druids should suspect deception by stratagem, struck several members of the
group as hilarious. Jewel, Ettare, and Ryence had to stifle their laughter as they went. Arran hid his grin behind his hand. It was as if they were children again, trying to avoid the attention of their elders after some misdeed.

  Bliant, who strode at the front of the group, called out, “The house of Lumenspar is close by!”

  After all those years of living in safety their vigilance had decreased. When no danger seems to threaten, it is difficult to be constantly on one’s guard; it is easy to slip into the tranquillity of peace when no war is apparent. To post bodyguards and watchers around Jewel at every moment would seem to be an over-reaction. It was more pleasant to relax and enjoy life’s adventures.

  Therefore, as they hastened, laughing breathlessly, they did not notice—nobody in that scurrying crowd noticed—that, flanked by two shabby mercenaries, a stringy figure stepped from around a corner of a building. This archer raised a crossbow—already loaded and cocked—waited for a gap to appear in the crowd, took careful aim, and fired.

  A sound like a zing ripped the air.

  As Jewel fell, pierced by the quarrel of mistletoe, Fionnuala lowered her weapon, slipped it to a lurking hireling, and darted out of sight. Her agent disappeared in the opposite direction. Fionnuala passed swiftly away into the maze of Rua’s back-alleys, toward the streets where she had been born, raised, and taught the meaning of “survival.” She became just another face in the crowd, just another fair-goer, another rat in the slums.

  Cries and gasps rippled through the crowd when they witnessed Jewel’s fall. Many took to their heels and fled, fearing to be caught up in a random eruption of street warfare. Others fanned out, searching for the assassin. The swiftest amongst the weathermasters ran in search of a carlin, while the rest formed a protective shield around Jewel.