Astonished, the elder wagoners proceeded animatedly to discuss this bizarre news among themselves. The children, however, dismissed the matter after scant deliberation and requested another story.
Far away in the night, golden-eyed frogs were performing creaky refrains.
Nine days later, on a Moon’s Day, as the sun began yet again to fall from its apogee, the convoy of wagons passed a fork in the road called “Blacksmith’s Corner.” While the wagons continued their journey south, the branch to the right turned away west, leading to the mountain ring. Up to the gates of High Darioneth it climbed, zigzagging steeply up the mountainside through tall forests of eucalypt and fern.
Clouds had cleared from the skies above the high country, and the after-noon was bright. In Long Gables, the Great Hall of the Weathermasters, the tables and settles had been pushed back against the walls. Cold and dark gaped the fireplaces. They had been swept clean of cinders, and kindling had been laid in readiness for the next blaze. The chandeliers on their hoops of marigold brass remained unlit. Daylight streamed in at the windows, laving the hall’s spacious interior with ripples of light distorted by flawed glass panes.
The swordmaster’s apprentice lolled at one end of the chamber. In the center of the floor of polished boards stood Asrthiel, dressed in the usual costume of the heavy-weapon duelist; gloves, boots, light helm, cuirass, gorget and mask. Her sleeveless doublet, close-fitting her whiplash waist, reached to mid-thigh. At each flank it was slit from hem to belt. The loosely flowing sleeves of the drop-shouldered shirt were gathered at the cuffs, and the trousers were tucked into supple knee-boots. She had laced a cuirass of thick leather over these garments. Her hair, spun strands of shadow, had been bundled up with pins and thrust beneath the fencing-cap. Her legs too were armored, and a swordbelt girded her narrow hips. From it hung a scabbard intricately carven with intertwining foliate patterns. A small shield, carried on her left forearm, completed the set of equipment.
The swordmaster stood facing her, on guard and similarly armored. His lean features, visible before he lowered his mask, were furrowed and scarred, indicating middle age, wiry strength and much combat practice. He was neither tall nor stout, but he exuded the poise of a fighter with many years’ experience, and balanced on the balls of his feet as if prepared to spring into the air or leap in any direction without notice.
He nodded.
Simultaneously, he and the damsel reached their right hands across their bodies, grasped the hilts of their weapons and withdrew them from the sheaths. A subtle shift took place in the demeanor of the swordmaster’s apprentice. His stance altered from relaxation to vigilance. Loudly he shouted, “Lay on!” and the lesson commenced.
The swords were made of wood; this was, after all, a practice session. For a few moments student and tutor circled one another warily, their weapons held at the ready, each scrutinizing the other for evidence of some weakness, trying to estimate the timing of the other’s intention to strike so that it might be preempted, and advantage thereby gained. Losing patience, Asrthiel decided to attack. She drove a thrust forward. Her opponent stepped aside, pivoted on his heel and struck a glancing blow off her shoulder.
“One!” he called out, even as she danced out of his reach. “I have severed the sinews in your left arm.”
Asrthiel pursed her lips in an expression of combined resolution and de-liberation. The duelists held each other at bay for another instant, before the swordmaster feinted to mislead her, following the feint with a straight thrust. She parried and counterattacked; he took her blade in a circular movement and swept it aside, but before he could profit from her vulnerability she ducked, dodged and jumped backwards.
“There is no use playing by the rules,” said the swordmaster. “When you are fighting for your life, there are no rules.”
“I would not know,” his opponent replied, between arrogance and bitterness. It was unclear whether the swordmaster understood the strange truth about her; that she was immortal and invulnerable. Perhaps Avalloc had informed him.
“Make believe,” said the swordmaster, and suddenly he attacked with great speed and ferocity, lunging again and again, driving her back. The shields and wooden palings clattered against each other. Asrthiel fought with strength and determination, focusing her mental energies, endeavoring moment by moment to foresee his moves and counter them.
At last her tutor performed an expert prise de fer. Asrthiel’s weapon flew from her grasp, skidded across the floor and rattled to a stop against a table. Momentarily disconcerted, she lost her balance and stumbled. The sword-master executed a flying fleche, the point of his sword arriving on her ribs well before his feet touched the floor.
Asrthiel glanced down. The sword was a sharpened stake pointing at her heart.
“Two,” said her tutor.
He paused for effect, before withdrawing his blade and holding it vertically in front of his face, to salute his defeated opponent.
They bowed to one another, and then he sheathed his weapon while Asrthiel ran across the floor to retrieve hers.
“You fought well,” the swordmaster complimented her.
“Not well enough,” she said.
They spent the remainder of the afternoon hard at work, he demonstrating how she might improve her technique, she relentlessly practicing until she knew she had mastered each maneuver, then continuing to practice, as though she strived for nothing less than perfection.
At the close of the day, after they had ceased their drill and parted company, Asrthiel returned to the House of Maelstronnar. Just before sunset, the never-sleeping wind of the highlands began to blow harder. Having bathed, the damsel took herself to the covered and colonnaded ambulatory that ran along the walls of the courtyard. In the center of the court a stone lion spouted water into the basin of a fountain. Nearby, five carved pedestals supported ceramic urns, from which spilled filigrees of foliage. She seated herself upon a wooden bench, drying her hair in the wind, resting after the bout of exercise and untangling the smoky abundance of her locks with her silver comb.
Dusk intensified. Thick layers of cloud swarmed across the stars, obliterating them. The air was chill but Asrthiel, although barefoot, felt no discomfort. In the shelter of the court the fountain chimed glassy notes, its droplets sparkling in the mellow radiance spilling from the lamp-lit windows, while outside the walls the cries of birds returning to their roosts tore through the moaning of the wind. The air was redolent with the thick aromas of baking and stewing that wafted from the kitchen.
As she combed her hair, the damsel pondered on her training session that day. Having made mental notes to herself about her performance, she turned her attention to the fact that her claim to the estate of the Sorcerer of Strang had recently been published through the correct channels in both Cathair Rua and King’s Winterbourne, and so far nobody had gainsaid the declaration. It appeared she was to officially inherit the site of the old Dome in Orielthir. The thought pleased her, although she could not explain why. Anticipating success, she had already informed the prentices and journey-men of Rowan Green that they might travel to Orielthir whenever they had the time and the inclination, to fossick amongst the ruins. Dristan had promised his children he would take them to Strang so that they could see the remains of the famous fortress for themselves. Asrthiel intended to journey there eventually, after she had finished her studies, celebrated her nineteenth birthday and precociously received the title “Weathermage.”
At length her mind drifted on other pathways, wandering to meditations about the goat-legged wight, with which she had not exchanged words for some weeks. It would be a pity, were it to permanently shun her company. The creature was a type of heirloom, and she would resent being deprived of it. She had spied it, now and then, lurking in various locations not far from the Maelstronnar house; near the Tower of the Winds, or by the entrance to the underground storehouses and smithy, or upon the leafy margins of the launching place.
Through the shining cu
rtain of her tresses, as she raked them, she caught sight of an alteration amongst the low shrubs of lavender bordering the cloisters. A transition shivered through the leaves, and the urisk, coincidentally, was manifest.
“Oh, ‘tis you,” Asrthiel commented. Disguising her smugness she resumed her combing. “How are the frighteners these days?”
“There’s no knowing,” said the urisk in the lavender. “You might ask them.”
Rich lamplight bloomed in more windows of the house. The odor of roast beef pervaded the courtyard.
“Faugh!” snorted the urisk. “The stench of charred flesh is offensive.”
“We call it ‘cooking,’ ” Asrthiel said dryly. She shook her head. Droplets flew. “Yet I agree, the smell of meat is distasteful. I never eat flesh.” Sensing the customary discontent of the shaggy-haunched manikin, she tacked on a casual effort to mollify him. “The cook, however, prepares delicious recipes of vegetables, and the most splendid puddings. Come with me into the kitchen. I shall find you a dish to your taste.”
“That’s unlikely.”
“Do you not need anything?”
“Perhaps.”
“You never ask for so much as a scrap.”
Apparently afflicted with ennui, the wight merely lounged against a column with his arms crossed, as he had leaned on the parapet of the stone bridge.
“And,” Asrthiel continued, “I have noted that when you are given a gift, you are wont to return it. As I have mentioned before, my mother told me the tale of the Heronswood coat of fishmail, and the Jaravhor jewel. You re-fused them both.”
“Does my failure to behave as your dependent inconvenience you, weatherwitch?”
The damsel glared at the hairy-shanked incarnation. His dreary garments flapped in the breeze. She might claim him as an heirloom, but he was only a diminutive domestic wight after all, and a useless one at that. Too frequently he overlooked his inferior station. At this moment his patronizing tone grated on her self-containment.
Placing her silver comb on the bench beside her, she said coldly, “I believe that sometimes you forget whom you are addressing! I was born with powers that can only be guessed at by the likes of you. Invulnerability runs in my blood, inherited from my ancestors. My father made me heir to the power of the bri; furthermore, I am immortal.”
It did not matter, after all, declaring this to a wight. He, too, was deathless, so he would hardly think of her as a freak. Besides, he seemed to have been aware all along that she could not die or suffer hurt, and it had made not a jot of difference to him.
The urisk, still lolling against the pillar, said provokingly, “How impressive. What’s the weather forecast, witch?”
Driven by a sudden urge to prove herself superior, Asrthiel ignored his insolence and initiated her weather-faculties, sending them probing into the mercurial gradients of pressure, temperature and humidity that surrounded her. In the courtyard the ambient air was cold—about beer-cellar temperature. Her senses roved outwards, to the snowy peaks of the storths where the atmosphere’s currents blew much colder and stronger. Further and higher, she detected a trough moving across the High Darioneth region. A band of precipitation had already developed over the ranges, and with the temperatures so low, it would almost certainly soon be falling as snow on the heights. The moderate to fresh northwesterly winds would shift toward the west following the change, and then southerly later in the night. Bitter weather would develop, with snowfalls continuing. War’s Day would again be chilly, although snowfalls would become more isolated, clearing early on King’s Day as a weak high pressure ridge moved across the region. Another front was likely to arrive on Thunder’s Day, bringing more showers, tending to more snow at higher elevations.
“The night will continue to be cloudy,” she said aloud, “with rain developing after midnight. Snow will fall on the high crags, and the northwesterly winds on the heights will blow at gale forces until midnight, when they will ease slightly but remain strong and gusty. Down here inside the mountain ring the winds will ease to moderate.” She concluded with, “Tomorrow morning, rain will be followed by an overcast day with light to moderate northwesterly winds on the lowlands, gusting up to about fifty knots in the ranges.” Asrthiel cast a look of complacency at the urisk.
The corners of the wight’s mouth twitched upwards. Was there a tinge of irony in that smile?
“Those who make your acquaintance are fortunate,” he said. “They will always know whether to bring an umbrella.”
His mocking tone was insufferable. Asrthiel’s temper flared.
“If I had an umbrella I would knock you on the head with it, you considerable fool! You make light of that which you cannot understand. The potency of weathermastery is vast beyond your reckoning.”
The eyes of the urisk darkened, as if the creature suddenly stood beneath a different sky. He pushed himself away from the pillar and poised upright on his cloven hoofs. For the first time, Asrthiel became uncomfortably conscious of the otherness of this wight, and experienced a jolt of fear. Urisks were seelie, but they were no less arcane than wicked wights. They were akin to water, wood and stone, rather than hearth and table. They belonged to the night.
“It is you who have but a slight notion of greater forces,” the wight said softly.
Asrthiel’s fear subsided, but she could not help feeling somewhat wary of the wight. It was as if she had picked up a familiar ornament, only to discover it had a secret catch which, when triggered, opened the item to display strange internal workings that had been there all along. The urisk’s intentions in paying visits to her were unclear and his comments were obscure—but then; it was useless to ponder on the ways of eldritch creatures. Their minds, their purpose—all were unfathomable to most human minds.
That there was some purpose, however, she was beginning to suspect.
Suddenly a loud and crashing boom reverberated through the courtyard; a cacophony like crushed brass.
Asrthiel jumped. The urisk winced.
Somewhere in the core of the house the dinner-gong had been struck.
The clamor and its echoes broke the uneasy tension. However, when the damsel looked again, the urisk was—naturally—nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared without taking his leave, as was his custom.
“Dinner!” someone called out.
In the tarnished light, the courtyard appeared to be completely devoid of wights. The creature was as absent as he was mysterious. Why he had attached himself to her family in the first place was a puzzle, and why he called on her was beyond understanding. According to received wisdom, urisks were customarily attached to certain places, rather than to families. Tribes and clans of mortalfolk might come and go, but urisks were wont to frequent age-old watery places such as wells, and shady pools, rarely con-sorting with humankind at all. Of course there were always exceptions to any rule, and this, evidently, was one such case. Asrthiel wondered why.
Slowly the damsel stood up and ran her fingers through her tousled hair. She picked up her silver comb and left the gloomy cloister, making her way indoors, where lamplight enfolded her like a saffron robe.
Philosophies
Riders of night mares, ugly and vicious,
Ruthless and wicked, fell and malicious
Lurk in the dark hours, sniffing and sneaking;
Pounce on the hapless, squealing and shrieking.
—“GOBLINS,” A RHYME
Midsummer’s Day passed, celebrated with the usual festivities throughout the Four Kingdoms. Some two weeks afterwards, a wisp of swifts in chevron formation flew over the long-deserted lake-camp of the Marauders. The birds crossed the Border Hills and winged their way toward the Mountain Ring.
It was early in the month of Jule. A caravan of itinerant peddlers from Cathair Rua arrived in High Darioneth, bringing their wares and tidings of doings in Slievmordhu. Marauders had raided the hamlet of Carrickmore, they said, with great loss of goods, and some lives. Most of the villagers had fled when the attackers st
ruck. Many of those who stayed to defend their homes had fallen to the cruel axes of the raiders. In Cathair Rua, the palace had announced that the defense levy on all households in the kingdom would be substantially increased, to pay for better fortifications and more numerous troops to protect outlying towns and villages. Poverty was on the rise, for the rustics were hard put to meet the new taxes.
The peddlers were fearful. Their wagons bristled with weapons, and they had hired their own mercenaries to strengthen their escort. They were of the optimistic opinion, however, that traveling convoys did not appear to be attacked as frequently as villages these days.
At High Darioneth the plateau-dwellers and the denizens of Rowan Green inspected the wares of the peddlers, making a few purchases and listening, grim-faced, to the news.
On a Summer dusk, another flock of birds—swallows this time—passed over the lichened roof-tiles of the houses on Rowan Green. Their calls flooded through the open windows of the library in the house of Maelstronnar. Hearkening to their stridor, Asrthiel lifted her head and focused the hyacinth lenses of her eyes, as if her gaze could pierce the ceiling and the steeply pitched roof to the skies above, and the stars on the other side of the universe.
Avalloc, Storm Lord of High Darioneth and most eminent wreathermage in all of Tir, occupied the library also. He had returned that very morning from a visit to his friend, the scholar-philosopher Almus Agnellus, who was dwelling, incognito, in a lonely and humble abode near the borders of the Wight Hills. Together, Avalloc and his granddaughter had been discussing the progress of Asrthiel’s studies in weathermastery. Having exhausted that topic for the moment, Asrthiel turned to another.
Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 11