The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “There will be no more storytelling this eve in any of the kitchens—no, nor any eve until the day of the weddin’ and the days of feastin’ thereafter.”

  Dolvach Trenchwhistle, the Head Housekeeper, banged an oak-root of a fist on the wooden tabletop for emphasis. In the ensuing silence, her small black eyes darted like flies around the kitchen, scrutinizing the faces of all those present. Satisfied that all due heed had been taken, she stood up, hands on hips.

  “Larks’ tongues in aspic, pheasant under crystal, quails’ eggs, pigeon pies, venison, truffles, oysters, hulkin’ great puddin’s, syrups and spices, seedcakes, honest-to-goodness Sugar sweets and jellies from the Confect’ry House in the city, salmon and big blue squid and trout, not to mention wine, stout, mead, and cider by the barrelful, smoked eels, pickled tongue, fresh forest fruits and foods flown in specially, yellow and red cheeses, and pitchers of cream. Not in that order.”

  She paused for effect.

  “And that’s only the start of it.”

  “And a snoutfish in a pear-tree,” shouted Dain Pennyrigg.

  Conversations buzzed. Dolvach Trenchwhistle held up a meaty, work-chafed hand and received silence in the palm of it.

  “We all have work to do, and there be no mistake. Every spare room must be cleaned and aired for the ’portant guests. And fresh bed-linen, perfumed, and towels and oils provided. There must not be a speck o’ dust to blacken my name. And decorations. The Greayte Hall is to be decked out in the colors of the two joinin’ Houses and weddin’ white. White satin everywhere, and silver lace by the yard, and bows of pale blue silk.”

  “Fig’s end! Sounds like a weaver’s market. Will there be any room for the guests?” Pennyrigg inquired.

  “Flowers everywhere, gathered fresh on the day,” Trenchwhistle continued, “and the road from the sea-docks to the main gate strewn with petals, all bedorned with silver and sky-blue and white buntin’, and every courtyard like a flower garden. No guest will have any reason to criticize. It will be done proper, and it will be done on time. Else heads will roll. You will all have a job to do—many jobs. And you will do them as best you can. Better.”

  The servants nodded, mumbling tired assent.

  “Porter and metheglin for us all, at the end. And odds bods, we’re goin’ to enjoy them leftovers,” muttered the Head Housekeeper, grimly hitching up her apron and departing in majesty.

  “Shan’t be real larks’ tongues,” said the spit-boy. “Ain’t got no hawk-mews; ain’t got no merlins to catch larks.”

  “Prob’ly be the nasty bits off billy-goats or somethin’,” his friend rejoined luridly. “No tellin’ what Rennet Thighbone puts in when ’e’s cooking.”

  Eyes gleamed in the stuffy darkness beneath the benches. The unnoticed listener there tried to work out how he could escape the forthcoming extra workload. Soon he was to hear words that would make him fervent for a greater escape.

  The roan gelding cantered through the air, mane and tail streaming, wings pumping, muscles flexing and stretching beneath a glossy hide. Its young rider shook the stirrups from his boots, leaned forward, and then with a shout launched himself sideways off his steed, beneath the pinions.

  By means of a rope attached at one end to his sildron flying-belt and at the other to the saddle, he was dragged along, rotating rapidly and flopping like a fish on a hook, half-strangled by his own taltry. It soon became obvious that he could neither pull himself toward the horse nor free himself from the safety-rope. Gasping, he bellowed a command.

  The eotaur halted.

  “Most elegant, my lord,” commented the Master at Riding, who was standing on a circular wooden platform six feet above the sawdust floor of a lunging yard, on a level with the eotaur and the student trying to drag himself onto its back. His assistant held the training horse on a long lunge-rein.

  “One can perceive,” he continued, “that if your steed threw you, startled by some bird of prey or jolted by some unexpectedly rough terrain, you would have no trouble in regaining your seat.”

  “The rope was twisted. It spun me.”

  “You coiled it yourself. You checked your own equipment, did you not, as part of your routine before riding? One of the first rules. And mark you—riders who cling with their knees are wont to pop off, like a peg on an apple. Enough of this for now. Come, let us to the hattocking circuits.”

  The assistant, whose crippled face belied the agility of his body, leaped lightly down from the platform as the rider remounted.

  “I will not be led like a child, six feet above the ground!” the trainee Relayer said brusquely, “and I in my second year. Throw me the lead-rope.”

  The Master at Riding nodded to the helper, who did so; the student, a heavy-jawed husky fellow, jabbed his heels and galloped dangerously over the helper’s head and out of the yard.

  “And may fate preserve us from young idiot hot-heads who know it all,” muttered the Master at Riding, glancing at the skies. He spoke to himself—not to the awkward figure who stood waiting on the sawdust floor, whose aid had been thrust upon him by Keat Featherstone and accepted with reluctant martyrdom.

  Greatsun Day and the Lugnais Festival were well past, giving way to Grianmis, the second month of Summer, warm and welcoming. A brass cup of a sun poured golden benevolence over the red-roofed stables and the training yards. The foundling followed the Master, becoming part of the dance that was the daily running of the busy demesne. The greensward was smooth. Sildron-shod hooves could not scar the ground.

  The concentric hattocking tracks were graded in order of difficulty; piled and stepped with rocks, boulders, and monoliths in imitation of shrunken mountains. The wings of eotaurs had once been vestigial. Breeding had developed them, but sildron flying-girths and sildron hoof-crescents were necessary to compensate for the weight of the horses. Without sildron they could not fly.

  Sildron repelled the ground only when directly opposed to it. Rough, rock-strewn landscape was no obstacle if the ground was relatively flat and the rocks relatively small. Moreover, the higher the altitude, the less the flight was affected by terrain. However, an eotaur, traveling above a plain and arriving at a sheer cliff face whose top was higher than the traveling altitude, would not be able to scale the cliff and would have to skirt it. Sudden upthrusts of landscape disrupted an eotaur’s progress; steep-graded ground-slopes rising at an angle of more than twenty-nine degrees were unridable. For these reasons, hattocking circuits were designed to allow practice. The Skyroads were plotted to fit the land’s contours—although jagged patches and unforeseen deviations were inevitable and had to be taken into account.

  The student Relayer, who had not yet earned his first star, wore the usual black. His linen riding shirt, open at the neck, was belted and tucked into jodhpurs, which in turn were stuffed into boots. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. A taltry flapped loosely down his back, revealing long brown hair tied fashionably in a club. The lunge-rein had been removed from the Skyhorse, and the Son of the House guided it with the reins, picking a way above the dirty jumble of rocks on the intermediate circuit to find the most even and scalable path.

  “Of course, Star King would know these circuits in his sleep,” the Master at Riding remarked to the Second Master at Riding, who had just joined him. “He could hattock them unridden, blindfold, after all these years. The real test comes on training-forays in the field.”

  Something shaped like a miniature dinghy with a rapidly revolving apparatus on the back suddenly shot past alongside the fence, two feet off the ground, raising a cumulus cloud of dirt. It was silent, save for a slight squeak and grating sounds at various pitches. Its driver was a white-robed, stripe-bearded man wearing gloves.

  “Zimmuth and his evil engines,” muttered the Master at Riding, spitting dust.

  The highly unstable sildron-powered skimboat grated to a stop, barely missing a lopsided outbuilding that was used to house the wizard’s experiments. While a henchman chained the vehicle to a post,
the wizard disappeared indoors.

  The Master at Riding and his companion turned their attention back to their protégé, who was negotiating the terrain circuit with surprising prowess, and regarded him critically, bestowing advice occasionally. Meanwhile, nine landhorses wearing curiously fashioned saddles were led into fenced yards beside the circuits. Sunlight slivers danced off buckles and stirrups. Their riders, eager young stablehands, urged them into a fast and furious gallop around the arena. They vaulted, somersaulted, and jumped on and off the horses’ backs—sometimes riding backward or standing up, or balancing on their hands, or riding three-tiered on one another’s shoulders.

  “How fare the other entertainments for the wedding celebrations?” inquired the Master at Riding of his second, who gazed in open delight.

  “Well enough, sir. The performing capuchins will be a great success, I am told.”

  “Ho there, our young Lord Ariades has finished the circuit.”

  As the two Masters, followed by the assistant, strode toward the circuit-exit to meet him, a ball of flame erupted from one of the grilled fenestrations of the wizard-hall, accompanied by a thunderous roar.

  Shouting, two men came running from the arched doorway, trailing smoke. They threw themselves to the ground and beat at their clothes with their hands. Others ran to their aid. Acrid vapors belched from orifices in the outbuilding, veiling the scene.

  “Another of the wizard’s failed experiments,” Ariades observed blandly from his saddle high above. “I believe he is working on a more sophisticated mechanism for the operation of the lifts, amongst other things. Behold!”

  He pointed to where some dark specks of escaped sildron hung high above a gaping hole in the wizard-hall roof.

  “He accidentally shot down a whole flock of wood-pigeons once,” remarked the Master at Riding. “I’m told they made a delicious pie.”

  “I trust his wizardly achievements are good enough to redeem the skins of his roasted henchmen,” mused his second. “The House needs every servant fit to work during the forthcoming nuptial celebrations.”

  The mention of servants reminded the Master at Riding of the flunkey waiting in the shadows. He eyed him distastefully.

  “Good my lord Ariades, your circuit work has improved. Go now to the dismounting platform and then we shall take refreshment before the afternoon’s onhebbing lessons. You—servant—follow and tend the eotaur.”

  “And what manner of servant is this?” asked the Second Master at Riding, noticing the youth for the first time.

  Lord Ariades, his eyes straying to the appalling aftermath of the wizard’s fiasco, interjected:

  “Even those of us who dwell in the higher regions have heard of the Beauteous One. Indeed, its face is worse than had been described—quite a monstrosity. I think it ought to be exhibited as a curiosity, as part of the wedding entertainments.”

  “Nay, ’twould disgust the guests from their feasting,” protested the Master at Riding. “’Tis a shameful eyesore. I have never seen such a bad case of paradox ivy poisoning, Can it not be cured?”

  “I have heard that it can,” said the second, scratching a stubbled chin.

  The youth froze.

  “A fingertip poisoned yesterday, perhaps,” said Ariades. “But an entire face poisoned for—how long? Years?” He shook his head.

  “They say,” persisted the second, creasing his brow, “that there is something the city wizards know of—is it drinking toadwater? Or is it piercing with hot needles to open the boils, followed by the application of a certain herbal paste?… I don’t rightly recall.”

  “In any case, cures would be too expensive to waste on a fly-struck scoundrel of a servant,” Lord Ariades said, kicking Star King into motion.

  The youth stared at the trainee Relayer’s retreating back for several moments, before a similar kick from the Second Master broke his reverie and sent him hurrying.

  The shadows in the goat-caves could play tricks, especially when outside daylight was so bright. The mute one moved uncertainly. No goats jostled therein; they were grazing at the forest’s fringe, under the herd-boys’ care. Their smell was there. patiently waiting for their return; some old straw and dung kept it company. Farther into the hollow places there was a hole in the wall, smaller and darker than the rest. It was toward this that the lad moved. He held a brass bougie-box by its handle, a wax taper coiled inside its drum-shaped interior like a pale, parasitic worm. The lighted end projected through the lid, breathing a weak flame, transparent.

  “You! You followed me. Don’t tell anyone … don’t show anyone this place. What do you want?” wheezed a voice.

  Clubfoot Pod’s pale face leaned out of the gloom. The intruder stood immobile. He put down the taper-box and slowly lowered the burden he had carried on his shoulder. Pod stared suspiciously.

  “Don’t tell anyone that this is where I hide, will you? You won’t, will you? You cannot?”

  The youth shook his head and held his hand out in a gesture of friendship, from which Pod shrank back.

  “Go away, go away. Someone might have seen you come here.”

  The youth shook his head again, pointed to Pod, and put a hand behind one ear as if listening. Pod nodded, watching the signals.

  “Aye, but only if you make it quick.”

  The nameless one pointed again to Pod, then to himself, then to the cavern’s entrance. He made flapping movements with his arms and shaded his eyes as if staring into the distance, then unwrapped the bundle to display a small pile of food: dried fruit, cheese, and hard bread.

  “Go from here? You must be addled—don’t you understand? Nobody can live in the forest unprotected, and the forest’s all around. It stretches for miles and miles. I don’t know how many miles. Thousands.”

  Pod’s eyes were white in their sockets, and his voice rose to a strangled squeak.

  The youth made a shape with his hands.

  “Windship? You mean, stow away on board? Kill yourself without my company. Don’t you know what happens to stowaways? Go! Go! Take your nightmares and stolen food. Don’t come near me! I’ll not have anything to do with it. You shall be discovered. You shall be punished.”

  The mute one gazed at him for a moment, then nodded, folded his bundle, picked up the bougie-box, and moved out into the sunlight.

  There is a cure for me out there. I shall go, one day, he said in his heart, I shall go Beyond the Tower and make a journey, a quest to find three things—a face to show the world without shame, my name, my past. I will not rest until I find them.

  But without company, he was afraid to leave, so for now he endured.

  “Wake up, wake up. Sunrise soon. Wake up, Lazy, you are strong now—hard work has made you grow strong, so now you must work harder.”

  The partnership of Grethet’s parrot-squawk and her boot in his ribs dissolved the mists of slumber in an instant.

  The crone’s ward no longer slept in the furnace room—she had made him move his bedding because she said the room was too bright, what with the constant opening of the furnace’s maw to feed the fires; and he must hide himself away in shadow. He now slept, washed, and dressed in a small windowless cell used to store candles, laundry soap, and beeswax—a cupboard shared with optimistic spiders that, when their roommate sat upright on his heap of rags, would spin their way down from the ceiling on their long threads to hang level with his eyes, staring, before reeling themselves up again.

  “Undress in the dark,” Grethet reminded him constantly. “Don’t let them see you. No one must see you. You are deformed. They would have you thrown out. You understand?”

  He understood. He obeyed.

  Accustomed to darkness, he poured water from the ewer into the bowl and washed, as she had taught him, and dressed, tying the taltry over thick lustrous thatch, now the length of his fingers. He completed his first duties before eating the scrag of bread euphemistically known as “breakfast,” disposing of waste, sweeping the furnace room floor, drawing water for w
ashing garments, setting fires under the laundry tubs, and vigorously rubbing a glass mushroom with a knopped handle across linen sheets to smooth them out.

  His shoulders and arms ached always. Later he would be set to checking the stores. Featherstone had taught him to count. Now the mathematical equal of most of the other servants, he would repeat, over and over in his head, Yan, tan, tethera; yan, tan, tethera, after each trio, cutting a notch on a short green stick as evidence.

  It was the twelfth of Teinemis, the Firemonth. From within the dominite walls came the screeching and thumping of sildron pumps assisting the flow of rainwater from the great roof-cisterns and drawing water from wells beneath the lowest dungeons. The sounds, as of a screaming, beating heart walled up behind stone, testified to the large number of guests occupying the upper levels on this important day, the wedding day.

  A Stormrider wedding at the Relay Tower at Isse in Eldaraigne—a momentous event. Marriages customarily took place only between and within the twelve Houses. The eldest daughter of the House, the Lady Persefonae, was to be joined with her cousin Valerix from the Fifth House, whose chief stronghold was in Finvarna. The betrothal had been pledged on the day Persefonae was born. It was a bitterbynde, the lower servants whispered at the time—a geas laid upon someone despite their own will. This was a babe too young to know the light of day, let alone whom she would choose to wed, were she of marriageable age. It was a shame, they agreed—but these alliances must be made if the glory of the Houses were to continue to wax strong. Fortunately, the pairing of these two had proved to be to the liking of both, and when the time came there was no reluctance on either part.

  From realms scattered over Erith came representatives of all Stormrider Houses and several noble and royal Houses. They came by Windship or Watership, riding sky or in guarded cavalcades along the King’s High Way, the great road that ringed Eldaraigne, to the Tower’s gate.