The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  The stories, too, marked the passing of days and provided vicarious journeys from the sequestered Tower. They were the only way of finding out what it was like in Aia, the world, beyond the demesnes—lifelines to something Beyond.

  He wondered: Will I escape someday, or are the demesnes of the Tower to be my graveyard?

  All the talk was of the wedding to be held at the Tower in Teinemis, the Firemonth. The Lady Persefonae, daughter of Lord Voltasus and Lady Artemisia, was to be married to the young heir of the Fifth House, and the ceremony was to take place only forty-two days after Greatsun Day. The word on the floors below the dock was that the wedding cake was to be decorated with real Sugar shipped from the Turnagain Islands and that a Confectioner was to be flown from Caermelor, the Royal City, specially for the job.

  In response to the servants’ complaints about the burden of extra work imposed by the forthcoming celebrations, Brand Brinkworth increased the quality and quantity of his evening tales.

  He related a cheery account of the lucky and extremely virtuous farmer’s wife who would rise up in the morning and find that all her work had been completed for her overnight, finished to perfection—the cows already milked, the hens fed, the butter churned, the house cleaned from top to bottom, and a fire twinkling brightly in the hearth, with a pot of porridge bubbling merrily over it.

  “Life went on like this for some time,” said the Storyteller, “but then the goodwife became curious to see who was being so kind and helpful. One night she rose from her bed, opened the kitchen door a crack, and peeped through. You can imagine her astonishment when she saw a crowd of busy little bruneys with green caps, sweeping and polishing, making everything spick-and-span. But she noticed that their clothes were rather plain and ragged, and she felt sorry for them, so she spent the next week sewing until she had made splendid new outfits for them all. These she laid out in the kitchen one evening, and that night she rose again from her bed and peeped through the door. Well, those little bruneys were delighted with their new clothes. They put them on at once and danced about with glee, but then with a shout they vanished clean away and the farmer’s wife never saw them again.”

  “Addle-pated woman!” exclaimed a scullery maid. “The first thing any fool knows about seelie wights is that they mislike being thanked for their good turns. Thanking them with gifts or compliments is taken by them as an insult!”

  “Not so,” another disagreed. “I’ll warrant they vanished because they thought they were too fine, in their new clothes, to do lowly work anymore.”

  “Now there,” said Brinkworth, stroking his beard, “is a matter about which many folk disagree. A bone, one might say, of contention. To thank or not to thank. My own opinion is that by the thanking-gifts, the bruneys knew they had been spied upon. They detest spying as much as any eldritch wight, seelie or otherwise, and that is why they went away.”

  “Body o’ me! If any of them helping-wights ever come here to the Tower, I’ll thrash anyone what spies on them or thanks them,” declared Rennet Thighbone. “I never get no thanks, and I don’t see why tricksy wights should. Anyway, I never seen one in me life, and I reckon it’s all just cock-and-bull.”

  “So ringed is the Tower with rowan, iron, and wizardry,” commented Brand Brinkworth, “there’s never a minor wight of seelie or unseelie could invade us. That is why you have never seen one, Rennet.”

  “What I say be no cock-and-bull,” said Teron Hoad the ostler, licking his lips. “This be truth.”

  The kitchen’s occupants nervously gathered closer together. Hoad’s accounts were famed for their gruesomeness, and they did not want to miss a word. It seemed he felt it his duty to darken the mood if it chanced to become too cheery; for this he had unwittingly acquired the name “Hoad the Toad.” Two of his fingers were, inexplicably, missing. He kept them pickled, in a jar—a foible that added to his sinister reputation.

  “I speak of the Beulach Beast what used to haunt the Ailagh Pass in Finvarna,” the aforesaid ostler began with relish.

  “Used to haunt it?”

  “Aye. It went away after its blood-search was successful. Only during the night hours it used to be heard, uttering shrieks and howls that chilled the blood of those who heard and made them flee in horror and set them to locking their doors and shutters.”

  “How was it formed?”

  “Sometimes like a man with one leg, sometimes like an ordinary man, sometimes like a greyhound or a fell beast of foul description. Folk dared not venture out after dark in those parts, for the Beast would be always on the prowl. Finally it got what it was after.”

  He paused for dramatic effect.

  “What, Hoad? What?” bleated the listeners. Hoad deliberately looked over his shoulder and lowered his tone confidentially.

  “One morning,” he said, “a traveler was found dead by the side of the road—pierced by two deep wounds, one in his side and one in his leg. He had a hand pressed to each hurt. It was said that these injuries were too frightful and strange to have been made by a man, and indeed the Beulach Beast must have done it, for it was not seen or heard again at the Ailagh Pass.”

  “They might have got rid of it, but it will just go somewhere else,” commented Thighbone, scraping his callused fingers with a paring-knife. “They’ll never get rid of the Buggane what haunts that Great Waterfall near Glyn Rushen.”

  “That is a water-bull, is it not?” the stoker interjected dubiously.

  “Aye. Not a seelie one, my friend, not at all, but a water-bull just the same. It is particularly dangerous and vicious. It lives in the pool right under where the Waterfall drops. Sometimes it is a man, but usually it takes the form of a big black calf what crosses the road and jumps down into the pool with a sound like the rattling of chains.”

  A lackey shook the chains of the cast-iron stew-pot, and everyone jumped.

  “I’ll box yer ears for yer, ribald clown!” Thighbone yelled indignantly.

  The servants soothed the cook, and eventually he went on with his contribution.

  “I heard a story of the Buggane not long ago, from a peddler in the last road-caravan. Seems a girl was working outside her house in Glyn Rushen, which is not far from the Great Waterfall—she was cutting up turnips for the pot, when the Buggane came roaring along in a man’s shape, picked her up, slung her over its back, and made off with her toward its home under the pool before anyone had time to save her. But the lass was lucky—she still held in her hand the knife what she had been slicing turnips with. Just as they reached the pool she cut through her apron strings and was able to get free and run home like the wind, all the while in terror thinking the thing was coming behind her.”

  “That be not unlike one of the tales of the Each Uisge,” mused an understeward. “Seems a good idea to wear an apron around the haunts of these water wights.”

  “You’d look a right gowk in a pinafore,” snorted the buttery-maid.

  A half-deaf cellarman with crow’s-feet engraved at the corners of his eyes now roused himself.

  “What about the old Trathley Kow what haunts the village of Trathley, in middle Eldaraigne?” he shouted. “He’s a bogie more mischievous than bad, but they’ll never see him leave.”

  “On my troth! I hope he never does go,” said the understeward. “He’s always good for a fine story, the prankster that he is. Always he finishes his jokes with a laugh like a horse’s whinny, at the expense of his dupes!”

  “I heard a good tale of the Trathley Kow,” offered a dimpled chambermaid, “which happened to two young men from a village near Trathley. It being a holiday, they had arranged to meet their sweethearts one afternoon at a stile by Cowslip Lane, but lo and behold, when the lads arrived there they saw their sweethearts across the meadow, walking away. They called out, but the lasses seemed not to hear, so the lads ran after them. On they went, for two or three miles, but although they went as fast as they could the young men could not catch up! They were so mindful of watching their quarry, they did not m
uch look where they were going, and to their dismay they found themselves up to their knees in a muddy bog. At that moment their sweethearts vanished with a loud ‘Ha ha!’ and there was the Trathley Kow instead. Well, as you can imagine, the lads got themselves free of the muck in a trice and took to their heels at once. That waggish wight pursued them over hill and dale, hooting and mocking them. They had to cross the Shillingswater to get back home, but in their fright they both fell in! They came up covered with weeds and mud, and of course, each took a look at the other and immediately mistook him for the Trathley Kow!”

  The chambermaid’s audience fought to contain its merriment.

  “Go on, go on,” begged the stoker, red in the face, his eyes watering.

  “Bawling with terror, they fought each other off and ran to their separate homes, each telling a story of having been chased by the Trathley Kow and almost drowned in the Shillingswater!”

  The listeners stuffed their fists in their mouths, from whence burst sounds like escaping steam.

  “Well,” Hoad the Toad interjected darkly, “those foolish lads are fortunate they did not live closer to the mountains.”

  The mood dampened.

  “Why?” piped up a spit-boy dutifully.

  “Well, if they went out a-walking like that, the Gwithlion would have had them for sure.”

  “Ah, the Gwithlion,” said Brinkworth, nodding. “Wicked wights they are.”

  “What do they do, Master Hoad?” inquired the spit-boy.

  “Hideous hags they are,” said the ostler, “hideouser than old biddy Grethet, if your brain can invent such. They mislead and waylay travelers by night on the mountain roads. Sometimes they take the form of goats. Not content with roaming about in the dark, they even visit the houses of the mountain people, especially in stormy weather, and when the Gwithlion knock at the door, the folk within know they must be greeted hospitably for fear of the harm they might do.”

  “Yea, but draw a knife against them and they are defeated,” observed the wrinkled cellarman loudly. “They do hate the power of cold iron.”

  “In truth,” acknowledged the Toad. “But cold iron and other charms are no help against the greater ones.”

  At this grim and accurate observation, the kitchen fell silent for a time, until the spit-boy spoke up.

  “Now, Master Brinkworth, sir, I have a request for you.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Pray tell us of the time the wizard Sargoth sliced the King-Emperor’s jester in two halves and put him back together again and he living still!”

  Well aware of the man’s skill with a whip, the foundling tried to avoid the Master at Swords. Burial among the servants’ catacombs allowed little chance of encountering him. However, if he thought never to see his adversary again, he was mistaken.

  Grethet said, “You can go down to help in the stables. You are very lucky. Do you understand? They are short of a stablehand down there. They need a boy to work. You do as you are told. You do not touch the horses unless you are told. The horses are precious. More precious than you. Mind your ways.”

  So her ward minded his ways and went, for the first time, down to the stables and the eotaur training yards.

  It seemed a long age since he had first come to live with the Seventh House of the Stormriders. He did not know how long, although his hair had grown a hand’s length until it touched his shoulders. When it fell across his eyes one day, he was astonished to see that its color was gold and hated it at once for being utterly different from the shades of brown around him. From that time onward he always wore the taltry pulled up to cover his head, whether indoors or out.

  At mealtimes the fruits and berries of Autumn had given way to the dried-bean pottages of Winter.

  The Tower had celebrated the Midwinter Imbrol Festival on Littlesun Day, first day of the New Year and of Dorchamis, the Darkmonth. The New Year 1090 had been ushered in with feasts and garlands of holly, bonfires in midnight meadows, and hulking great plum puddings blazing like miniature suns, little of which the lower menials tasted. The preserved fare of Winter had in turn been replaced by green worts and herbs as the seasons revolved. During all that time, the nameless one had been within walls, above the ground, able to glimpse very little through the attenuated windows of the servants’ levels. Now, at last, he was to venture into the demesnes.

  The dominite stables adjoining the northern flank of the Tower harbored almost a hundred winged horses. Grooms, trainers, and strappers lived with them, slept with them, watched and tended them at every hour. Capacious storerooms, harness rooms, loose-boxes, exercise tracks, hattocking tracks, and lunging yards bustled daily with their noise. There was a smithy where the farrier plied his trade and workshops for the lorimer and saddler. The pungency of stables was tinged with the odor of a mews. Passing an open door, the youth glimpsed the rumps and tails of a dozen aviquine creatures standing in their stalls. Their well-groomed coats and feathers shone in shades of bay, chestnut, roan, and gray.

  That fantastic plumage surely belonged to something beaked, tendril-tongued, and hollow-boned that had hatched out of an egg: an avian creature with a cold round eye, scaled claws, and quick, sharp movements. Instead it stroked the flanks of a round-haunched, hot-breathed mammal, feathered of fetlock and streamlined, certainly, to the utmost degree, but apparently as far removed from a bird as the moon from a loaf of bread.

  The sound of steady munching was punctuated occasionally by the stamp of a hoof or the clatter of a rope. On the floor, wisps of straw mingled with horse-feathers. At the far end, a fledgling colt paced restlessly around a loose-box.

  To the southwest, the stables overlooked Isse Harbor; to the north lay the green, fenced fields where eotaurs and landhorses grazed. Westward, the orchards. Beyond the acres of fruit-trees stretched the forest, apparently without end.

  “You’ll be the lad they sent!” called a gruff voice. Keat Featherstone, the second groom, looked him over, nodding his closely shaven head. Light stubble dusted the jawline of a bluff face.

  “You be a sorry sight, as they told me. Still, I suppose it be not your fault, and horses don’t take fright at ugly faces, thank the Star, or I’d be out of a job by now. They said you don’t talk, neither, but that makes you all right by me so long as I don’t have to look at you overmuch. I suppose you can polish tack?”

  The youth nodded eagerly, willing to please any person who offered a way out of the servants’ quarters if only for a few hours, but particularly willing to please the first man who had not spontaneously displayed active hostility toward him.

  “Aye. Well, here’s the tack room, so go to it. And keep your taltry tied on tight.” The second groom rolled his eyes.

  The tack room walls bore an interesting clutter of saddles, bridles, rope halters, and baffling contraptions of leather and iron. Benches were strewn with tools, leather skins, bits of metal, rusty horseshoes, and nails. Horse-brasses cast in the shapes of roosters, daisies, loaves, rowan-berries, and hypericum leaves hung on tanned boars’-hide strips alongside strings of little bells. Canisters and bottles of simple equine physic stood arrayed along a shelf on one wall. Crude labels had been stuck on. Pictures were drawn on them, since most of the stablehands were illiterate, but there was also painstaking lettering that proclaimed the contents to be castor oyl, tarre, magneesya, malanders-oyntmente, jinnjer, and spyryts of wyne. A couple of horn darklanterns swung from iron hooks.

  In these comfortable surroundings the lad worked hard all morning to please Keat Featherstone, rubbing in the mellow oils and pungent polishes until leather glowed; setting aside whatever needed stitching or replacing; creating order out of chaos caused by strappers who had thrown down tack and other equipment anywhere in their careless haste; picking up, hanging up, arranging, storing, always blending with shadows in case attention should bring the usual vilification. But there were unshuttered windows and an open door through which blew the sound of voices, barking dogs, hooves on the cobbles, metal on metal, se
agulls on the wing.

  Stableboys hurried in and out and past the windows. Through the doorway, the new polish-boy could see the smithy, its stone floor raised three feet above the andalum lining that spread between the building and the ground—an essential foundation for any place where sildron was worked freely. The high-chimneyed workshop, its windows barred against theft, was roofed with gray slate and shaded by antique chestnut trees, over a hundred feet high, dropping their alabaster flowers like snow. A roan eotaur mare, bronze-winged, was being ushered, unshod, up the ramp—a champion by the sleek, fine-muscled look of her.

  A brass horn blared a signal; the fanfare, the lad had learned, that heralded the arrival of a Windship and a cause for excitement. It was silver for Relayers, bold brass for Windships, the Greayte Conch for Waterships, and the drum tattoo for land approaches.

  External hubbub increased. The temporary stablehand craned his neck to get a better view out of the window and up toward the Tower.

  She came in over the treetops, her masts, yards, and rigging appearing first. Festooned with a brave display of heraldry, she flew a pennoncel at the masthead, the standard of Eldaraigne at the forecastle, four other banners aft, including the yellow ensign of the Merchant Service, and streamers, thirty yards long, charged with yellow dragons, blue lozenges, and white birds. Her gittons, the small swallow-tailed flags, waved various devices of tyraxes, dragons, and lynxes’ heads.

  A three-masted barque of the Rhyll-Desson Line, two hundred feet from bowsprit to stern, thirty feet across the beam; her mainmast rose 140 feet above deck. Her figurehead was a flowing-haired woman: the North Wind personified. Four aileroned wings jutted, two on each side of the keel. Wooden propellers whirled on their leading edges. As she neared the wharf on Floor Seven of the House, all sail was rapidly clewed up and furled, for to miscalculate velocity and hit the fortress, even though it was well buttressed, would bring a disaster beyond imagining. A Yeoman Stormrider circled, tossing mooring-lines to deckhands. Anchors were let go overboard to bite into the mooring-yard below the wharf; the tower’s dockers leaned out with pikestaffs and grapplers to push her off and pull her in, and with long springy baffles, hooked at either end, that would attach ship to wharf at a safe distance.