The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Dedicated to Jacinta,

  for being vivacious, unpretentious, enthusiastic, funny, talented,

  and all things wonderful.

  Cecilia

  Dart-Thornton

  To all the readers of the Bitterbynde Trilogy

  who loved the world of Aia,

  here is its sister, Tir.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  I - Flowers

  II - Encounter

  III - The Amulet

  IV - The Tale

  V - The Jewel

  VI - The Child

  VII - Madness

  VIII - Betrayal

  Epilogue

  GLOSSARY

  Also by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  REFERENCES

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  I, Adiuvo Constanto Clementer, am the chronicler of this tale. Most of the people concerned are unknown to me, but when I learned of their story I felt drawn to delve into their history, to reconstruct and record the details in narrative form so that others might be apprised of their great struggles and sacrifices, and the triumph that came of it all. In this, I hope I have been successful, and I trust that readers will look favorably upon my efforts to fashion a complete and proper account from such fragments of truth as I have been able to discover.

  For it is a chronicle of jealousy and revenge, of wickedness and justice, and of love. It is an extraordinary tale, extraordinary and tragic, yet there is no tragedy from which some goodness doth not arise, as the green shoot doth sprout from the cold ashes of the wildfire. This is the history of Lilith and Jarred, who found one another and fought against terrible odds. At the last they passed out of life, but not before they gave life to another, for whose sake they sacrificed themselves. Their lives were not yielded up in vain—their cause was successful, and in that their triumph lies. They are gone now, Lilith and Jarred. Side by side they lie in the ground, and from their mounded graves have sprung two rare trees, the likes of which have never been seen in the Four Kingdoms of Tir. The slender boles lean toward one another, intertwining their boughs, and in Springtime the blossom of one tree is the color of sapphires and tranquillity and all things blue, while the flowers of the other are as red as passion. And when in Winter the winds thread through the leafless boughs, a wondrous music is made, like the dim singing of flutes and bells, and the deep sigh of the ocean; and when Autumn unfolds, the trees bear sweet fruit, and it is said that to eat of that fruit is to know joy and to dwell in happiness forever.

  They are gone now, these two, but their story remains.

  I

  Flowers

  The sun was rolling westward on a hot and heavy afternoon. Beyond the village’s cradle of rocky hills, acres of arid wilderness stretched in every direction, and the land was shimmering in the heat-haze, compressed beneath a hard and dazzling sky. A distant smudge—perhaps smoke from the glass furnaces of Jhallavad—hung on the horizon.

  In the village, the irritable clacking of foraging hens and the yelling of youths overrode the quiet percussions of desert insects and the sighing of the wind across the dunes. Everything in the place had been either bleached or toasted by the scorching skies. It was a bread-dough village, cooked by the sun and sprinkled with baker’s flour. The cream-colored adobe shells of the buildings were windowless and very thick, the inner walls pierced only by arched portals draped with woven hangings that served as doorways. Hanging above all, the afternoon sky was a lustrous haze of mauve gauze, as if a cheap purple scarf had faded in the sunlight.

  Few people were on the streets. Twelve barefoot lads occupied the main thoroughfare, refusing to surrender their youthful exuberance and let it melt in the furnace of the desert heat. They were playing a game, kicking a missile up and down the street. The object was a football made from scraps of uncured goat hide stitched together in a roughly spherical shape and stuffed with fibrous material. Roaming fowls, as well as the occasional dust devil or dry tangle of tumbling pigweed, hampered the players’ efforts.

  Without prelude, every dog in the village began to bark. The boys paused in their game, letting the much-buffeted ball lumber down a short incline until it came to rest in a pothole. Intrigued, they scanned their surroundings but could see nothing amiss. The streets, the low roofs, the spindly windmills on their long legs, the vegetation, showed no evidence of anything untoward. Yet the dogs had been known to raise such alarms before, and a sense of foreboding surged like a fever in the veins of those who heard.

  A thunderous roaring arose from the cores of the hills and echoed from the firmament. The houses began to shake. Drystone walls that ran along the borders of the cultivated fields undulated like serpents. A deep, smoking crack unseamed itself along the main street, rapidly zigzagging between the boys as they ran in panic or stood frozen in their playing positions. The village was abruptly riven in two, marooning the boys on either side of a newborn gulf. The largest of the youths teetered on the crevice’s very brink, off balance, flailing his arms in desperation, staring aghast at a prospect in which he had no future but death.

  The village shuddered. There came crashing thuds, as if some gigantic, weighty monster were charging at high speed through some hitherto undiscovered vault under the street. The land trembled. Tiles flew from roofs. People rushed out of their palsied abodes. Babies wailed, onagers brayed, and horses squealed. The boy at the ravine’s edge lost his battle for equipoise and began to fall just as the crack mercifully, preposterously, snapped shut. Suddenly he was safe, sprawling in the dirt.

  Then the shuddering, which had come out of the south, ran away. It passed north, into the Wight Hills. After the noise galloped over the horizon, the landscape stood still.

  Dust billowed. The street smoked as if smoldering in an unseen fire.

  Relieved, the youths whooped and laughed, sprinting up and down the street to release pent-up energy. As the land quivered with aftershocks, all the villagers had gathered at the central crossroads, inquiring anxiously after each other’s health. They embraced one another, shrieking in amazement that the world should split in half right along the main street of their hamlet and then seal itself up as if nothing had occurred. Minor quakes were not unusual in these parts, but the startling effects of this one were unprecedented. Fortunately, no one had been injured. The tremor had shaken the village of R’shael, in the kingdom of Ashqalêth, without causing damage any more serious than the breakage of a few earthenware amphorae and the toppling of a water-pumping windmill. Groups of children counted aloud, making a game of timing the aftershocks.

  The mother of one of the ballplayers appeared at her son’s side, gazing searchingly into his face. The youth was dark eyed and handsome, tall and strong. His long back, perfectly symmetrical, tapered to a taut waist. His limbs were as firm as polished walnut, every line of his musculature cleanly defined. He was apprenticed to the village blacksmith, and the work was physically demanding. It was the second trade he had learned during his boyhood and youth; the first had been carpentry. Wood, however, was scarce in the desert, and besides, the master carpenter had since departed from R’shael.

  “Are you hale, Jarred?” his mother questioned anxiously, breathlessly.

  The young man nodded and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “Of course! And you? And Aunt Shahla?”

  “Both of us unscathed.”

  “You know it is never necessary to worry on my account,” said Jarred. He tugged at a thin leather band he wore around his neck. A disk, attached to the band, emerged from beneath his clothing, and he held
it up so that his mother might inspect it. “You see? I still wear the talisman. You should not vex yourself. I promised.”

  “That you did, but I cannot help it. I am concerned always with your safety.”

  “Foolish mother,” he scolded gently, leaning down to kiss the top of her head with utmost tenderness. His love for this careworn, fragile woman swelled suddenly in his heart as he looked at her. She was wearing the traditional draperies of the desert women, dyed with hues of saffron and ochre. Her long gown, embroidered with colored silks, was belted with a wide sash at the waist. Brass rings glinted, bright yellow, at her fingers and ears. Dark, mild eyes were set in a fine-boned countenance, and her hair, like that of her son, was the color of cardamom.

  “I cannot help it,” she repeated. “It is a mother’s lot, to be forever concerned about the welfare of her children. I would give anything to ensure your security.”

  “But I am secure,” said Jarred, giving her a smile of reassurance and tucking the talisman away beneath his raiment.

  Sudden disturbances of the land were common occurrences in that region of the desert. Perhaps once in every cycle of the moon there would come a vibration so slight it would engender merely a few ripples in a bowl of kumiss. Perhaps three or four times in a year, a stronger tremor would rattle the crockery on the shelves. Once or twice a year, a more violent quake would convulse through the hills and plains, causing the fences to undulate, the house walls to crack, and crazy crevices to zigzag across the ground. Such evidence of the unimaginable forces of nature could not fail to produce temporary unease and some fear in the villagers; however, they were never amazed at such commonplace events, for familiarity had bred equanimity. Village life soon settled down to normal.

  When the shadows lengthened at sunset, Jarred, his mother, and his mother’s sister sat cross-legged on the mat in their breezy house, sharing a cumin-flavored stew of barley, gourds, and beans. The chamber they occupied was sparsely furnished with a low table and a few shelves. A lyre hung from two nails on one whitewashed wall, while a crossbow and a sheathed scimitar were pegged to the wall opposite. Curtained doorways led off to the sleeping quarters. A second, smaller edifice built close to the dwelling housed the small kitchen that was Shahla’s domain, and the pottery workshop of Jarred’s mother. Beyond the buildings lay the chicken coop, a small stable for the onager and Jarred’s mare, Bathsheva, the coal cellar, and a vegetable plot. The plot was kept moist by one of the village’s many irrigation channels. These flumes carried water pumped from subterranean cooling cisterns. If not for the intermediary tanks, the underground water would kill the vegetation, for it emerged from deep bores at a temperature near boiling.

  If the desert days were dusty and hot, nights were dusty and bitterly cold. Huddled around a brazier of glowing coals, Jarred and his family concluded their meal with a dessert of figs stewed in sweet sorghum syrup.

  “How astonishing, that the street should crack in half today,” mused Jarred’s aunt, Shahla, not for the first time that evening. “Yaadosh almost fell down into the nethers of the world. He seesawed on the very brink! I thought I would faint at the sight.” She licked honey from her fingers. “And then that crack snapped shut like some monstrous unseelie mouth. If anyone had fallen in, they would have been instantly crushed. Not you, of course, Jarred,” she said, turning to her nephew. “You have the talisman.” As a sudden thought struck her, her brow furrowed. “But what would happen to you? You would be imprisoned in the ground beneath the street forever, until we shoveled you out—but how dreadful!”

  Jarred’s mother laid calm fingers upon the arm of her sister. “Shah, pray do not extrapolate further. Your words distress me.”

  In consternation, Shahla clapped her hand to her mouth. “Forgive me Sayareh!” she said contritely, hanging her head. “I did not intend to cause distress.”

  “I do have the talisman,” affirmed Jarred. Optimistically he added, “And I am certain it could somehow save me from imprisonment beneath the ground.” Once more he dragged the amulet from its hiding place beneath his shirt. A simple disk of bone engraved with two interlocking runes lay upon his open palm. For a few moments, the young man gazed at it speculatively. “I can never understand how this thing works. It is no less efficacious in its protective qualities whether I wear it against my skin or over the top of many layers of clothing. At times I have even kept it in my pocket, or the pouch at my belt, yet steadfastly it guards me from harm. Maybe some invisible aura emanates from it.”

  “Who can hope to guess the ways and means of gramarye?” said his aunt, giving a shrug. “As long as it keeps you safe, Jarred, I for one shall never question its methods. Be glad of it and do not wonder why.”

  He smiled at her. “Gramercie. I am glad of the talisman, Aunt Shahla, but somehow its existence seems like a barrier between me and my comrades. Ever since I was old enough to understand its properties, both of you have impressed upon me the need for keeping them secret. I have obeyed you. Your advice is wise, for if the true potency of this rare object were to be revealed, trouble would surely descend upon us. Every mortal being wishes to be safe from harm. Everyone wants to protect their loved ones. The talisman would inevitably arouse jealousy, resentment, and envy. Throughout history, people have committed terrible crimes for the sake of lesser treasures than this. I have no desire to bring about strife and suffering; therefore I am happy to keep the amulet’s qualities hidden. But while hiding it, I am inclined to consider myself a fraud, for dishonesty does not come naturally to me. And sometimes I see myself as a coward, crouching behind gramarye’s shield.”

  “A promise has been made,” his mother said simply. “You must continue to wear the talisman. It is up to you whether you allow your impressions of dissimilarity and cowardice to rule your sentiments. There is no need for you to feel that way. You are no craven, no imposter.”

  “I know. These fancies that plague me are foolish, yet not easily dismissed.” Absentmindedly, Jarred traced the edge of the amulet with his fingertip. “I often wonder where my father got this thing.”

  “Where did he get it?” Shahla directed the question to her sister.

  “He always told me he picked it up somewhere, during his travels,” Jarred’s mother replied. “He could not recall where.”

  Her son continued to gaze reflectively at the charm. “I remember so very little about my father. I cannot even recall what he looked like, but when I think about him I feel echoes of a sense of security mixed with anticipation. I picture him setting off for market, and me pleading to go with him. It was always exciting, to go anywhere with him.”

  He paused, leaving his train of thought unvoiced so as not to upset his mother. One day the floors had fallen out of the world, leaving a horrifying pit and he vertiginous on the lip of the precipice. When he was ten years old, his father had gone away and never returned. The loss was a wound that would not heal.

  He used to ask his mother, “What did he look like?”

  “Like you,” she would reply.

  “Where did he go?”

  “Across the Fire Mountains to the wastelands.”

  “Why?”

  Sometimes his mother would reply, “Jo sought profit for his family, prospecting for precious metals.” Other times she would say softly, as if speaking to herself, “Perhaps he was still running away … .”

  Jarred only knew that his father had, as a youth, fled from his parents. More than that, his father had refused to divulge. He had always been a restless man and was clearly troubled by secret concerns.

  “Will he ever come back?” he pestered his mother.

  “I do not know.”

  “Your parents were born here in R’shael and lived here all their lives. Where did my father’s family come from?”

  “He would never speak of them. All I know of Jo’s kindred is that he fell out with his own sire. He ran away from home and traveled the Four Kingdoms, seeking some remote place in which to dwell, where he would not be easily
found. Eventually he found his way here. For twelve years he stayed. In the end, his old restlessness took hold of him and he departed, but he said he intended to come back. Maybe he will, someday. We can only wait and hope.”

  A football competition was to take place in three days’ time. Jarred and his comrades, who were to play against a team of lads from the other side of the village, had decided to hone their tactics and practice their maneuvers in some private spot where the opposing players would be unable to observe them. On the afternoon following the quake, when fine wisps of cirrus were evaporating on the western horizon and the boys’ tasks were over for the day, they executed their plan. One by one they mounted their sinewy desert horses and headed off in different directions—in order to trick any potential spies—before doubling back and meeting together in a remote area among the hills.

  This area, a shallow depression fenced by stony ridges, was known as the Hen’s Nest, and it boasted a tiny seasonal spring where the sportsmen might water their horses. Between the Hen’s Nest and the village lay a dry gulch, a slash in the face of the desert about two miles in length but no more than a hundred feet across at the widest point. Its sides were vertical and its depth unplumbed. This cleft plunged so far into the ground that light could not penetrate to its fundament. The narrowest span was right in the center where the gap was only fifteen feet, and it was there that a wooden suspension bridge had been thrown across, anchored at each end by stout posts driven into the ground. The bridge had once been kept in good repair, because crossing the gulch meant cutting several miles off the route to the neighboring village, fifty miles away. Six months earlier, however, the bridge had been abandoned by human traffic.

  Some travelers had been waylaid by a nameless unseelie incarnation as they attempted to cross. That, in any event, was the general opinion. None knew the truth of what had happened at the bridge. There had been no witnesses to the event; only the aftermath gave mute evidence.