The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  In single file, the men followed the mazy paths of the marsh from islet to islet, pontoon to pontoon. Their route was so higgledy-piggledy, the surrounding foliage so luxuriant, the pools and channels so various and yet so similar, that soon the travelers had lost all sense of direction. They had no idea of the path their feet had trodden. Without their guides, they would have been lost. This was precisely why the marsh had provided security for its inhabitants for many generations.

  At every turn, new vistas opened out before the eyes of the travelers: wide stretches of water fathomed by the long reflections of corkscrew willows and swamp cypress; water meadows filled with flowering kingcups as bright as faerie goblets of gold; dim backwaters clogged with the spinach green medallions of water-lily pads; silent pools overhung with black alders, fringed with rushes. Small toadlets, lost in soft green mists of maidenhair ferns, called with short, grating ark-arks, or pulsing whistles, shrill and harsh.

  As they penetrated toward the heart of the marsh, the newcomers began to spy reed-thatched stilt houses. These edifices seemed to stalk through the marsh on their spindly legs like strange, gawky birds. There were people too: some poling punts among the reeds, others paddling coracles fashioned from basketwork and stretched goat hide, yet others bearing various burdens across the spidery bridges.

  The horses were stabled in an empty goat pen on one of the inner islets. Willowfoil and Frognewton waited while their guests unsaddled the beasts, fed and watered them, and groomed the dried sweat and crusts of dust from their hides.

  Yaadosh took indignant note of the marshmen’s interested stares.

  “These are valuable animals,” he began, but Jarred silenced him with a glare.

  Tsafrir murmured wryly in Jarred’s ear. “Yaadosh’s loose tongue will land us in trouble someday.”

  As nightfall drew on, the flaming cloud rack across the western sky smoldered out. Stars pinned the blue twilight, and flocks of ibis glided silently overhead, seeking their roosting places.

  Tsafrir and his comrades were taken to a group of houses clustered beside a reedy lagoon. Word of the arrival of strangers had preceded them, and a hot meal was being prepared in the largest house, the home of Maghnus Butterwort Stillwater, the Marsh-Chieftain. There the wounded were tended by the carlin Eolacha, who had been summoned from Mosswell’s cottage. Nasim’s arm was washed and re-bound firmly with clean bandages. The wound had not festered: already it was starting to heal.

  Near the houses a wide, wooden staithe led down to the water’s edge. Just offshore, several large pontoons were anchored, abutting each other. All were enclosed by low fences of open wickerwork, roofed with light coverings of thatch, and strewn with sweet rushes. Marshmen maneuvered floating bridges into position so that the guests could walk from the shore to the buoyant platforms. These central pontoons, collectively known as the cruinniú, were the marshfolk’s equivalent of a village green: the meeting places for the community. Atop tall poles looming out of the mere, torches flared scarlet, like hyaline blossoms. Their images burned deep beneath the water. It being Salt’s Day, to the cruinniú this evening the Marsh-Chieftain’s family and many other households bore covered platters of food and crocks of drink. Because the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu was situated far from Tir’s main trade routes, its inhabitants, mundanely insulated from the wider world, were inquisitive about outsiders. A kind of impromptu feast evolved, for it was not often they played host to visitors who might entertain them with stories from other realms.

  Thus it came about that the travelers from Ashqalêth found themselves seated cross-legged within a circle of men, sharing their food and the bitter beer they called swampwater. Their brightly colored costumes and ornate boots contrasted sharply with the green and brown homespun of their hosts; they felt as conspicuous as peacocks among wood pigeons.

  At first the marshfolk were reticent, being habitually suspicious of foreigners. As the beer flowed, however, conviviality awakened. Feasting began in earnest; the gathering became jovial.

  “What’s bringing you from the south kingdom?” the marshmen wanted to know.

  “We are men of desert villages,” Tsafrir replied, “with a desire to traverse foreign lands. We wish to trade, to learn more about the known lands of Tir, to find adventure and perhaps fortune. Our desire is to travel as far abroad as King’s Winterbourne.”

  The idea was approved by the younger marshfolk, privately disparaged by some of the old. Many questions were asked about the homeland of the newcomers, after which the Ashqalêthans expressed an interest in the marsh, its people, and its inhuman denizens.

  “I am reckoning,” said Tsafrir slowly, “that the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu is filled with eldritch wights. It seems to me this is a place to which many would be attracted, fair as it is, and abounding with water. Do I have the right of it?”

  He was answered by a nod from Maghnus Stillwater. Deep furrows creased the face of the Marsh-Chieftain, plowed in by worry, weather, and laughter. Deep-set were his eyes. His beard, once the color of malt, was now powdered with the frosts of many Winters. He had the implacability and profundity of a mountain lake, deep and cold.

  “Pray, tell us of the marsh wights,” Jarred requested. “Tell us of the waterhorses. Are they as sly and murderous as the tales would have us believe?”

  The marshmen were pleased by the young man’s enthusiasm. “’Tis many types there are,” said a wiry old man with a bitten-off nose who had introduced himself as Ottersworth, “mostly malevolent. All can be taking two shapes on themselves, one a horse and the other a man, both comely.

  “Unseelie waterhorses are after appearing as handsome steeds, luring folk to ride on their backs. When the victims have mounted, the creature bolts. ’Tis then the riders find they cannot jump off—waterhorses can make their hides sticky. Helpless, the riders are borne into the marsh, or a freshwater lake, or even, so it is said in Grïmnørsland, the salt sea. After the waters close over their heads, they are not seen again, although sometimes their livers and lights are found cast up on the shore.”

  “Some waterhorses,” added Maghnus Stillwater, “are between seelie and unseelie. They are mischievous tricksters, always after playing pranks—vexing, but not perilous. Only one type is full seelie—that is the nygel. But nygels have never been sighted in the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu. As a rule, beware of waterhorses.”

  “How can they be recognized?” Yaadosh said thickly, as if his mouth were lined with fur. His eyes were red rimmed; he had consumed vast quantities of beer already, and was continually signaling for his tankard to be refilled.

  The marshman Ottersworth scratched the remains of his nose ponderingly. “You cannot be knowing the difference between a waterhorse and a real horse. You can only avoid mounting any seemingly friendly beast which is unknown to you. Show no fear and walk away. As for their man-shape, why, everyone knows the rule: any wight in humanlike form will always be marked by some flaw by which they can be discovered, if a man looks closely enough—a hoof, perhaps, or a tail, pointed ears, or claws where fingernails should grow.”

  “Also,” put in Frognewton, his foxlike countenance dyed russet by torchlight, “you might glimpse the leaves of hornwort or water thyme, which, pleached in the mane of a waterhorse, remain in its hair when it takes its man-shape.”

  A youth who had hitherto kept silent said to the travelers, “’Tis waterhorses we have in the marsh, but we have gruagachs too.”

  “These terms ring unfamiliar in our ears,” said Yaadosh unsteadily, spilling his tankard as he reached for the last honey cake on a platter. “Tastes like chicken,” he said through a mouthful.

  The marshmen looked askance at him.

  Michaiah rolled his eyes. “My cousin always says that,” he offered with an apologetic smile.

  “But what of these gruagachs?” asked Jarred, wiping Yaadosh’s beer off his tunic. “What are they?”

  “Seelie are the gruagachs,” said a burly marshman called Fishbourne, seated to the left o
f Stillwater, “and ’tis the guardians of the goats they are. The males among them are of two types—some are slender, comely youths dressed in green and red, but most are naked and shaggy, low of stature, broad shouldered and strong. There are green-clad ladies with long, golden hair who appear sometimes beautiful, sometimes pale and haggard. Natives of marsh and stream, they can never get dry. Water drips constantly from their limbs and locks, forming puddles wherever they stand. I know this, for some of their kind asked to warm themselves by my cookfire one night last Summer as I was minding the goats on Woody Isle. They can never get dry, but it seems they do not know it. The ways of wights are strange.”

  “How can you live amongst the wicked ones?” Yaadosh slurred, cradling his tankard in his big hands.

  “We are not dwelling hard by unseelie things. Instead we avoid their known haunts,” said Chieftain Stillwater. Shadows flickered in his deep-set eyes. “As for the seelie kind, they are seldom seen, for they are after keeping aloof from the races of men.”

  “The symbols over your doorways …”

  The Marsh-Chieftain nodded again. “They provide some measure of protection. And like all mortals of sound mind, we carry amulets.”

  “Amulets!” exclaimed Yaadosh. “There is one amongst us who carries an amulet such as the world has never known!”

  Stillwater raised his eyebrows. “What can you be meaning, my friend?”

  Yaadosh leaned forward conspiratorially, breathing beer and garlic over his neighbors. By his pose, everyone expected him to lower his voice, but he suddenly bellowed, “Ha!”

  His audience jumped.

  “When it comes to danger, my young friend Jarred is the lucky one. Just seven days ago he was crushed to pieces before our very eyes, and yet he lives! And all because—”

  Nasim uttered an explosive groan. The assembled men stared at him in amazement. “Ach, but the wound pains me,” he explained lamely, holding out his tankard. “Pray fill up my cup, that the fiery brew may dull the hurt.”

  As Ottersworth poured more beer, Jarred nodded discreetly at Nasim. Nasim returned the gesture almost imperceptibly. Only one man noticed the exchange—Eoin Mosswell. Darting a glance at the token strung about Jarred’s neck, he raised his eyebrows but made no comment.

  “Yaadosh was speaking of the Marauders’ ambush,” said Tsafrir smoothly, and he proceeded to recount the story of their encounter on the Slievmordhu borders, omitting only the miraculous escape of Jarred.

  “Two you slew,” said Stillwater, “and you lost none of your own. ’Twas well done. Did you outnumber them?”

  “We matched their numbers, man for man,” replied Nasim.

  “Yet they were more experienced than we,” slurred Yaadosh happily. “If it had not been for Jarred’s onslaught—”

  “Where we hail from, all youths are trained in the arts of self-defense,” interrupted Nasim.

  “Training which has stood you in good stead,” replied the Marsh-Chieftain, “and will doubtless continue to do so while you are traveling the lawless lands. Marauders are everywhere. King Maolmórdha sends troops from Cathair Rua to patrol the eastern borders, but too few to disappoint their raids. It seems the king’s advisers consider it a waste of manpower to be sending more.”

  Yaadosh was too deep in his cups to remember the previous topic of conversation, yet not deep enough to numb his tongue. Eventually he collected his wits sufficiently to remark, “These druids! Everyone knows they grind their heels upon your sov—”

  Jarred sprang to his feet. The pontoon rocked with the abrupt change in distribution of its load. The young man seemed to lose his balance and fell backward into Yaadosh’s shoulder, knocking him overboard through a gap in the wickerwork fence.

  The cruinniú platform heaved and bucked violently. Tsafrir and Jarred rushed to the edge, leaned over, and hauled in the big man with help from the marshmen. He lay on his back on the grass matting, a dazed expression spreading across his thick features, water spreading from his clothing.

  Spitting out slime, he mumbled, “What happened?”

  “’Tis my fault,” apologized Jarred cheerily. “That swampwater is stronger than I reckoned. I must have had a drop too much and stumbled over the top of you, my friend, though how I could have missed seeing such a great ox is a mystery.”

  Yaadosh blinked and sat up. His hair, plastered to his skull, was decorated with pondweed, as was his new beard.

  Behind his back, some of the marshmen were laughing in their sleeves.

  “’Tis dry clothes there are at your disposal within my house,” Stillwater offered courteously, suppressing a smile.

  Oblivious of the general hilarity, Yaadosh waved the offer away. “Gramercie, Chieftain Stillwater, but the night is not chill, or mayhap it is your good beer that warms me. I would fain stay here where the talk is.” He picked up his empty tankard and looked around for a full jug.

  Jarred filled the vessel for him. As he poured, Tsafrir smilingly leaned to mutter in the ear of Yaadosh, after which the big man spoke not a word for the rest of the evening.

  Then it was the turn of the marshmen to reveal what they knew about the Marauders, and many grim sagas they recited.

  “They seem not of humankind, these Marauders,” growled Tsafrir, glancing at his brother’s wounded arm. “They fight like beasts, without mercy, and prey on their fellow men.”

  “Yet ’tis human they are,” said Stillwater. He lowered his voice. “But ’tis said that some terrible evil lies under the mountains to the east of Slievmordhu where they dwell, and from whose heights they sweep down to raid the lowlands. Some say the evil has seeped upward, like a black smoke, into the bones of the swarm-tribes.”

  Tsafrir nodded. “The same is rumored in our homeland.”

  A solemn mood descended on the gathering. To disperse it, Michaiah rose to his feet and began to perform some of his sleight-of-hand tricks. He was well practiced and quick; his stunts soon attracted a crowd of men, women, and children from all over the cruinniú. Indeed, many of the women had been hoping for an opportunity to observe the strangers from closer quarters; particularly they looked from beneath their lids at the broad shoulders and dark, flashing eyes of Jarred.

  The wide pontoon rode low in the water as Michaiah—the most gaudily dressed of all the Ashqalêthans—entranced his audience with miraculous appearances of coins and scarves, astonishing feats of memory with playing cards, disappearances of peppercorns in thimbles or acorns in eggcups, and astounding discoveries of surprising objects behind the ears of various people, most of whom were pretty young women.

  Amidst the laughter and applause, Jarred turned to make a comment to Tsafrir and froze as if struck senseless, the unspoken words evaporating in his mouth.

  From amongst the crowd, a girl was watching him.

  Tsafrir followed the direction of Jarred’s gaze. He too paused as though shocked, then with a light laugh looked away.

  “Beware of beautiful strangers, my friend,” he murmured knowingly.

  Jarred did not hear him. He stood up and pushed through the assembly until he reached the damsel’s side.

  Never once did he take his gaze from her. He did not know—or care—if it was something in the way she studied him, or if it was a trick of starlight and flame on water, or even an effect of the beer, but the sight of her was like sunrise to a man who had dwelled forever in twilight without being aware of it. A pale, finely sculpted face emerged from the dark sunburst of her hair. Her eyes startled him: they were saturated with a blueness of unnerving vibrancy.

  “Lady, pardon me,” he said breathlessly. “I saw you looking, and I wondered—that is, are you perhaps thinking we have met before?”

  She made as if to speak, hesitated, then said, “We have not met before.”

  “Are you perhaps thinking I am someone else?”

  “I am not thinking you are someone else. Pray excuse me for staring; you must be considering me discourteous.”

  “Never could I believe
ill of one so fair. By all that’s wonderful, you are the loveliest thing I have ever set eyes on.”

  She smiled. His pulse surged like lava. Instantly, he wanted to seize her in his arms, but he restrained himself.

  He said, “What is your name?”

  “Lilith.”

  “And I am Jarred, son of Jovan.”

  But Tsafrir’s watchful eye was upon them. “Jarred!” he called genially, beckoning. “Join us! Come, we need your advice.”

  Oblivious of Tsafrir’s summons, Jarred spoke again to the damsel. “Methinks your hands are trembling. Are you cold?”

  “Oh no, ’tis warm I am.”

  “I too,” he murmured, stepping closer. Indeed, he felt as if he were on fire. She did not draw away; on the contrary, she might have leaned nearer. Dazed by this assault to his senses, the young man found himself unable to judge whether it was dismay he glimpsed in her face, or wonder, or delight, or even fear. The moment itself grasped him and filled him, making all else incomprehensible. He was close enough to discern every detail of the satin-fine skin, the midnight lashes, the tempting twin petals of the mouth. Almost, he thought he could hear her heart beating.

  “Jarred!” The summons rolled out again.

  Jarred did not move. He repeated the girl’s name, his voice caressing the lilt of each syllable as though it were a gift, a fine ribbon of silk that allowed him to bind himself to her.

  “Will you be staying here for long?” she asked.

  “I would stay forever, if I could,” he returned, the words spilling from his mouth before he understood what he was saying.

  “Oh,” she said, but then a large hand descended on Jarred’s shoulder and Tsafrir was standing there. He bowed slightly to the girl. “Come, Jarred,” he said. “We must not neglect our host.”

  Lilith turned away. When Jarred called her name, she looked back over her shoulder, but Tsafrir had already hauled his comrade into the heart of the merry gathering, and the fleeting chance was lost.