Winter crossed the year’s doorstep, beautiful and stark. In the realm of Ashqalêth, where seasons had scant power to touch the rolling acres of dunes, parched and baking, a pear tree leaned over a splashing fountain. Its green leaves, crisp against skies of dazzling blue, stirred in the breeze. Both tree and fountain were sheltered from the desiccating winds of the desert within the high-walled grounds of King Chohrab’s palace in Jhallavad, amongst olive groves and shady fig trees and statuesque palms.
Inside the galleries and chambers of the palace itself, columns of porphyry, colored marble and veined serpentine soared, like fantastic versions of the palms, from the richly colored flower-gardens of mosaic pavements. Enamel-work, cloisonne, sumptuous fabrics and long cycles of frescoes covered all walls and vaults. The frescoes, on backgrounds of lapis lazuli, illustrated historic episodes; magnificently dressed kings winning victories at the battle-front or excelling at the chase; famous warriors on horseback engaged in combat, or noblemen driving chariots, against landscapes of trees and flowers or architectural backgrounds. The personified Fates frequently appeared, aiding or rewarding the kings. Creatures of eldritch abounded, and dancing girls, musicians, and circuses of lions, eagles, phoenixes, unicorns and griffins painted with brilliant colors.
In the palace grounds, however, the leaves of the pear tree overhung the sparkling diamante arcs of the fountain. A short distance away, sun-bronzed workmen in white turbans and loincloths had finished pouring wet concrete into a circular metal form on the ground, and were smoothing it with trowels. They were laying the base of a new oratorium that King Chohrab had seen fit to commission for his parks and gardens, in spite of the fact that five similar structures existed there already. Of late, the king had been unusually attentive to the Sanctorum, and particularly eager to propitiate the Fates.
From their vantage point beside the newly poured floor base, in which they had been investing a considerable amount of interest, Princesses Shahzadeh—the eldest—and Pouri—the youngest—saw their potbellied father staggering across the lawns, partially supported by Uncle Rahim. It seemed that since King Chohrab’s last return from Cathair Rua, he had not enjoyed a moment’s happiness. More and more frequently he “took refuge at the bottom of a goblet” as the saying went; yet he complained incessantly that the wine sent from Slievmordhu was “not right, there was something not right about it.” Semaphore messages of complaint on this distressing topic had ricocheted back and forth between the two realms. King Uabhar, initially mystified as to the cause of the beverage’s alteration, had eventually suggested that perhaps his special wine “did not travel well,” and “the road must have plundered it of some of its virtues.” Close to despair, Chohrab had sought ways to distract himself from his misery.
As she watched her father, Shahzadeh in her patterned silks, graceful as the pear tree, lively as the fountain, heard her little sister observe, “I would very much like to draw a happy face in that concrete. May I?” Pouri’s ephemeral attention had returned to the more interesting job in hand, and the child crouched at the rim of the unblemished surface, brandishing a short twig of pear wood.
The eldest princess, intrigued by architecture, alchemy and the application of mathematical principles to practical ends, had spent many of her leisure hours studying the way craftsmen created mosaic floors, in defiance of the convention that such study was unsuitable for women. She judged that the thick paste of tile cement to be applied after the concrete hardened would compensate for a few shallow scratches in the base. The workmen, however, might fear retribution from their masters if the smooth finish was marred. As Shahzadeh meticulously formulated a reply for her little sister, her father came up and stood beside her, panting and red-faced. His smile was that of an inebriate. His robes and beard reeked of smoke; in particular, smoke from a blend of herbs and weeds called “calea reveries,” which these days he was wont to inhale from a special pipe apparently fashioned from some mysterious clay combined with volcanic ash, rare sands and distilled rainwater.
“Father, may I make a happy smiling face?” beseeched Pouri.
“Mmm, yes, yes,” Chohrab slurred.
Shahzadeh greeted her father and uncle with due courtesy. The three engaged in shallow discussion about the progress of the work, while Pouri tentatively stroked the concrete with her twig. Presently Chohrab took half a step towards the spongy floor base, stubbed his sandaled foot on a stray chunk of broken stone and lost his balance. On the edge of the pool of soft concrete he teetered, bent forward almost at right angles with arms flailing, for an agonizing instant, until miraculously he righted himself and tottered backwards into the arms of Rahim. The turbaned workmen groveled in terror at having witnessed such near humiliation of their ruler.
The Princess Royal sighed. She leaned down to Pouri, who was poised, immobile, between horror and hilarity. “That would indeed have made a happy face,” she whispered. The child brightened like sunrise and continued to sketch in the matrix, while Shahzadeh, having bidden the workmen to depart as if nothing had occurred, found it prudent to kneel beside her sister and become absorbed in the child’s play. She could not help overhearing what passed between the two men, once her father had recovered his compo-sure. Evidently they were discussing their earlier burning topic, in which the princess had been taking a keen though discreetly concealed interest.
“I repeat, there can be no doubt,” insisted Rahim. “My own spies have confirmed it. We must preempt their attacks by striking first.”
“Mmm, yes, yes,” Chohrab said. “Yes, you are right. We must join him and make ready to fight. We must drink many toasts to victory!”
On clear evenings in Narngalis vermilion sunsets flared, painting gorgeous backdrops behind fretworks of leafless boughs. Morning hoarfrost transformed trees into ornaments cast from solid silver, each twig defined with elaborate precision.
Tenember was a wet and stormy month in the northern latitudes of Tir, bringing flooding and strong winds. The chilly weather and scarcity of food in field and hedgerow drove an abundance of wild creatures into the parks and gardens of King’s Winterbourne. Black-headed gulls and cormorants flew inland to roost by night on the sheltered waters of the river. The grounds of The Laurels were alive with birds and insects. Mistress Draycott Parslow scattered bread crumbs on wooden bird-tables in her garden, and at nights she left tidbits for the foxes and badgers. A robin frequented the well-yard, often sitting on the gatepost and surveying the surroundings with eyes as round and shiny as jet buttons.
Throughout the first weeks of the season Asrthiel came to enjoy her new tenure as she grew more familiar with the city and its surrounding regions, and became acquainted with a wider circle of friends. There was, also, the ongoing company of the urisk. The goat-legged wight’s presence made The Laurels seem a brighter, more welcoming residence, despite that he never stirred so much as a finger to help with the chores. As a weatherwitch I seem to have acquired a familiar, Asrthiel joked to herself; but she did not share the jest with the urisk, temperamental creature that he was, in case he took it as an insult.
His temper could fluctuate without warning. On several occasions in the past she had seen him as blithesome and happy-go-lucky as a reaper celebrating the end of harvest; so clownish and irresponsible that the damsel wondered—as of old—whether this was, in fact, the same urisk. This merry humor was on him more often these days, and she was glad of it. He could be mightily entertaining, if he chose. He loitered so often about The Laurels in the evenings that she surmised he must have moved in after all, presumably having found some cozy sleeping-nook for daytime use.
When Mrs. Draycott Parslow’s gardener noted some signs of disturbance in the hayloft above the empty stables, Asrthiel guessed the wight had made his bed there. She instructed the groundskeeper and hands to leave the loft alone, and mulch the garden-beds with straw from the shed instead. When the occasional Winter vegetable went missing from the kitchen garden, and the bread she left out by the doorstep had always dis
appeared by morning, she smiled to herself.
A few days before Midwinter’s Eve it came to Asrthiel’s attention that the urisk had not been making his bed in the hayloft as she had believed. Mrs. Draycott Parslow’s coachman had discovered an old tramp sleeping there. He had spied the vagrant climbing down the loft’s ladder in the morning, crossing the yard and slipping through a hole in the wall next to the gnarled oak, to go begging in the streets.
“The loft stinks,” said the coachman, “pardon my bluntness, m’lady. He is a dirty old gaberlunzie. Best to get him out of there.”
Asrthiel ordered that the tramp be given a nourishing meal, as well as a warm coat and trousers to replace his threadbare rags.
“What is your name?” she inquired of the beggar when he was brought before her, a doughty stable-hand gripping each of his angular elbows in case he should make a break for it.
The vagrant blinked inflamed eyes. His cheeks were traceried with a fine netwrork of capillaries, his arms and neck encrusted with senile warts. “Cat Soup, ma’am.”
Carefully blank-faced, Asrthiel said, “If you wish, Master Soup, you may lodge in the lean-to behind the gardener’s cottage. It backs onto the fireplace-chimney, and is always snug and warm.” She offered him the job of “gardener’s assistant,” but by the following night he had made off with a bag full of gardening tools, and was not seen again.
Temperatures were particularly low for the time of year, and Asrthiel forecast that the Spring thaw would be arriving late. Concerned about the urisk’s welfare, she combed the house from top to bottom looking for his sleeping-nook. She scoured the attic, the wine cellar, the cupboards under the stairs, the still-room, the henhouse, the garden-shed and an abandoned dog-kennel. So thoroughly did she search that she discovered secret passage-ways and hiding-places behind the paneling, obviously undisturbed for years; yet she found no evidence of any wightish lair. Snow glittered hard and bright on the summits of the Northern Ramparts. At nights she lay awake listening to the rain battering on the roofs, and the wind screaming of its lust to bite flesh to the bone, and bone to splinter.
The weathermage felt it would be pleasant to set eyes on her eldritch companion again. She had taken to frequenting the well-yard after sunset in hope that he might make an appearance. To the astonishment of the servants, who pretended not to notice, the intense cold did not bother her. In an effort to avoid appearing abnormal she wrapped herself in layers of thick velvet, but sometimes she forgot to wear shoes and trod the icy flagstones barefoot.
A sevennight after Midwinter’s Eve she was wandering about the courtyard juggling the three wooden balls; a trick at which she was, by now, adept. It had rained incessantly throughout the day, but towards evening the clouds had thinned and drawn aside, like a curtain revealing a theatre of constellations. The night’s fragrance was the scent of wet soil, and its music was the chime of dripping leaves, the chortle of fast-flowing gutters.
“Oh where are you, urisk?” Asrthiel sang spontaneously, watching the balls as she spun them in the air. “Oh where might ye be? Come to me, urisk, come unto me.”
“A pretty voice, but I fear you have scared away the screech owls,” said the urisk, who was lying on top of the wall as if he had been there for hours, his elbow crooked and his head resting on his hand.
Asrthiel caught the wooden spheres in her hands and let her gaze travel over the dwarfish figure. His clothes looked even more flimsy than she recalled, and perhaps it was a trick of the starlight, but the shaggy hide on his haunches seemed traced with delicate filaments of rime. Pity stabbed her heart. How could she have overlooked his plight?
“Wight,” she said, “I daresay you are cold.”
“And if I am?”
“Since I have recently discovered that you do not inhabit my hayloft, I wish to offer you a warm place to sleep.”
A sarcastic smile played around the wight’s mouth.
“Your bed, perhaps?”
Shocked by his insolence, Asrthiel found herself at a loss for words.
“If not your bed, then where?” asked the urisk, languidly raising himself into a sitting position. “A kennel like a hound? A hearthrug like a marsh upial?”
Asrthiel struggled to frame a reply. It was tempting to throw the juggling balls at the creature and march indoors without a backward glance. Was he intending to make some lewd insinuation, or was he merely being flippant? Was it simply her own train of thought that offended her sense of propriety, or was it his purpose to do so? Horror and squeamishness stung her like the brief flick of a lash. With difficulty, she mastered her own temper. It came to her that she ought, by now, to have learned her lesson never to offer anything to the wight. He inevitably mistook her good intentions as patronization.
“I only wished to help.”
“How very generous of you.”
“I daresay you have your own arrangements,” she said sullenly.
“Perceptive, in addition.”
About to fling back a matching retort, Asrthiel reined in the impulse. No doubt it was some arcane code that dictated the urisk’s provoking behavior; something perhaps related to the well-known and equally inexplicable brownie trait of departing forever after being given a gift of clothing. It was not for her to try to unravel the complexities of wightish precepts, and, besides, she wanted to coax him to stay awhile. He was annoying, but perversely, she generally found his company to her liking, at least by comparison to that of many people.
Perhaps, she thought, it was because she was more similar to the urisk than to her own kind. Wishing to deflect the topic but temporarily unable to conjure a substitute, she fell silent, toying with one of the juggling balls, scuffing her feet against the stone flags of the paving.
“Sulkiness fails to become you,” said the urisk at length. He yawned, staring into the distance.
Indignant at his obvious boredom, Asrthiel burst out, “I would not be morose if there were any entertainment to be had from you, jaded creature. All you do is tease. You appear dulled by surfeit of the world and incapable of merriment. Since you have traveled all the way here, can you not perform any amusing tricks?”
The wight’s eyes glinted dangerously. The damsel caught her breath; for a moment she thought she had overstepped the mark. Nonetheless her stab of fear was heightened by exhilaration. Would this supernatural entity react in anger? Common wisdom held that seelie wights were incapable of doing harm, and yet . . . One of the balls slipped from her grasp and dropped onto the paving stones. She saw it roll away, but when she looked up she could no longer see the urisk.
Spinning on her heel, she gazed about in an effort to locate him. He had apparently vanished, and she was about to murmur scornfully, “Oh, so you retreat from challenges,” when his voice issued from an unexpected quarter.
“Pery wyke is an erbe of grene colour
In tyme of Mai he bereth bio flour
His stakys ain so feynt and feye
Yet never more growyth he hay.”
The wight was holding forth from atop an urn on a pedestal. The urn contained a spray of evergreen foliage, in the middle of which he was sitting cross-legged, crushing the leaves flat, so that they splayed out around him like a circular fan.
Relieved at the release of tension, Asrthiel laughed at his impudence. Impulsively she tossed aside the remaining two balls, running to catch his hoof and pretend to pull him down, but he drew back his arm and energetically threw something across the courtyard. She turned around to see what it was he had hurled. Something was shining on the flagstones near the doorstep, but before she had dashed halfway across to reach it, the urisk’s voice was already emanating from another direction. She stopped short, darting glances all around, and spied him now reclining on the head of the stone dragon that spouted water into the basin of the operating well. In high-pitched, artificial tones he sang,
“Good druid, I have sent for you because
I would not tamper with Sanctorum laws,
And yet I kn
ow that something is amiss.
For when I see the youths and maidens kiss,
I tremble and my very knees grow weak
Until my chamber I am forced to seek
And there, with cheeks aflame, in floods of tears,
I toss, with strangely mingled hopes and fears.”
Asrthiel found herself blushing, for the verse was bawdy; but to her amusement it lampooned the druids, reducing their sanctimonious counselling sessions, at which they dictated how people should think, feel, and behave, on pain of misfortune and an early death, to the status of eavesdrop-ping on the licentious daydreams of young women. The verse hinted also that the druidry might not be as chaste as their vows decreed.
Giggling with delight at the wight’s tricks, Asrthiel ran towards the fountain and jumped up onto its coping, but a cloud sailed across the starry theatre of the sky. The courtyard was shut into semidarkness broken only by shafts of chamomile lamplight from two high dormer windows.
“Where are you?” Asrthiel called out. She dared not call too loudly lest the occupants of the house should emerge and spoil the nighttime fun. For an instant she was tempted to summon an upper atmosphere wind to broom away the clouds, but she resisted the unworthy desire.
The skies swiftly cleared of their own accord, and celestial light revealed the urisk at the far end of the courtyard. He was hanging upside down from a gargoyle that served also as a finial on a gable-end. Unperturbed, he continued to recite indecent poetry, mimicking the shrill tones of a young girl;
“And druid, strange to say throughout the night
Although my figure, as you see is slight,
I dream I have a ripe, voluptuous form,
And strong arms ’round me hold me close and warm,
Until at last, at last, I blush to say,
My very garments seem to melt away,
Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 28