The Bitterbynde Trilogy
Page 16
“Time to go, chehrna. ’Tis not wise to stay in one place for too long.”
They climbed down the whispering weather beech. Not far away, a freshet sprang from sphagnum mosses. There they drank and bathed discreetly, tending their various hurts. The Ertishman rummaged in his pack and produced food.
“Pah! This mutton’s rotten. The heat has sent it off. I took it but yesterday morning from the ship’s galley, even before Poison had tampered with it—this other provender, the dry stuff, I have had stowed in readiness since before I boarded the Witch. No matter, there be plenty.”
After eating, Sianadh brought out a battered compass.
“Needle’s swinging all over the place. These things be never reliable when eldritch creatures be close by. Never mind, I can find the way. We continue to follow the line of this ridge. Wights and wild beasts may be about, but we both wear tilhals, and what’s better, I have the skian. I never miss when I throw a knife. Still, ’twere prudent to go quietlike.”
He bounded ahead like a firecracker, twigs snapping and bending before his broad shoulders and flailing back in the face of his follower. After they had walked for a time, a white hare started up and ran beside them. When it loped ahead they saw a woman in white moving before them among the trees, but when they came up to her she was gone, having been no true woman.
“Doch shape-shifters,” grumbled Sianadh. “Not a mortal man or woman for miles about, yet with these shifters I feel crowded!”
Here, the forest canopy was thinner and the travelers could look out through the parallel stripes of tree-boles, through a tapestry of nodding foliage and long cascades of leaves, a green-gold cochineal flickering embroidery; across steep-walled valleys to where layer upon layer of ridges marched into the distance in ever-deepening shades of blue. The long folds of the mountains’ mantles rolled against a sky scratched by the wind’s fingernails—a blue sky paling to silver at the horizon.
It was hard going, but in the middle of the morning they came upon a faint trail of sorts, leading in the right direction. Now that they could proceed more easily, Sianadh began to talk.
“And now ye most likely want to ask me some questions. Why did I jump overboard with ye, and where are we going? Truth be known, I b’ain’t no pirate. I be a trader, see, a traveler and a trader. I have turned my hand to many things—crewed on merchant ships, sold wares in city stalls, labored in the fields and byres—but I be my own man. There’s some as envied me my successes, some with power who brought it against me. I have been hounded and harried across most countries for one thing or another, never my fault. I’ve had a wife. Two children I have in Finvarna, but I cannot go back there now. They be grown and flown anyhow, older than I reckon ye to be.
“I never lifted steel against your shipmates, believe me or not, as ye will. I b’ain’t never been a pirate, never killed a man, though I could do it easy, and I have fought enough fights and beat them all within an inch of their lives. See, chehrna … Imrhien, there was this guardhouse, and I was inside it. Locked me up they did, the black-hearted skeerdas, and I was in there with a man who was dying. I did what I could to ease him. I be not a heartless man. Gave him part of my water ration and covered him with my jacket … he gave me this here map before he faded.”
From an inner pocket he drew out the crumpled parchment he had been looking at on the mess deck of the Windwitch.
“Do not laugh.” He smoothed it out. “In tales, pirates always have these. ’Tis a map to find buried treasure. He said it was the location of a sildron mine.” He looked sideways at her, and she merely nodded.
“Funny thing about ye, Imrhien. Ye do not seem surprised by that. Most folks would have stopped in their tracks and swooned. A sildron mine! Do ye ken what untold wealth would be buried there? A man could be a King. A man could be many Kings.”
She repeated the nod. He refolded the parchment and replaced it meticulously.
“A long-abandoned, sealed, and forgotten mine, he said, still loaded with ore. Loded! Ha ha! Anyhow, I suppose the stuff must be layered with andalum or else stashed high in a mountainside. Else it would not be a mine at all but a doch great chunk of ore blundering about the sky. I wanted to search for it alone—there are few who can be trusted these days, and those who can are too precious to be risked on a venture that might prove worthless. So I paid the last of me savings to a wizard to put extra wards of protection on my tilhal so that I could go alone. How to reach it was a riddle, for it was stuck in the wildness of these inaccessible Lofties.
“There be a river running out of these parts to Gilvaris Tarv, but I could not get aboard a boat, could not afford passage, and besides, there be not one river-boat captain trapping in and out of Tarv I would trust as far as he could toss me, which be not an inch. Even if I got a boat, the map was not clear on which tributary to follow—there be many unnamed and unmapped streams in those parts.
“So I found out through means too twisted and tangled to describe that the outlaw Winch planned for to sail these remote areas in the Summer, and by further devious means I got aboard as crew. I sailed with ’em and put up with ’em and their foul methods, all the while waiting until the ship should come over the right spot. A few words in the captain’s shell-like ear about the best course to take did not go astray, I might add. We were almost there, lass, almost there, when ye were discovered. I had some king’s-biscuit, that is, sildron—the stuff has many names—which I had managed to get hold of. A small piece. I had planned to go overboard in the night, quietlike, but when I saw ye trapped by the rail I just upped on the mainsheet and swung over like a capuchin on a vine. Chariots o’ fire! Ye clawed me like a gray malkin as we fell! So here we be, a day or two’s journey from the mine. I can see ye be brimming with asks. Let me teach ye the hand-signs what, why, how, who, when, and where. Also yes and no for good measure.”
He taught her. She had to be shown only once. She signed, <
“Why do I bring ye? Ye can help me carry the treasure, of course, strawgirl!” He chuckled.
A bolt of excitement went through her—not because of this supposed wealth waiting around the corner, but because she had spoken with her hands and made herself understood! The greater treasure apparently lay already in her hands, waiting to be brought to light.
<
“How what? How shall we find it, carry it?… No? Peace, chehrna, I cannot read your thoughts. How to handspeak? Aye. I will show ye more as we go along. Ye learn quick. Wait—where has our talk taken us?”
He halted. The trail had led them under ancient trees clasping oddly dark places between them, shuffling with their ropy roots in the mosses. Beneath, silent rainpools lay in the wide angles of their toes. Their boughs spread wide, rich with scalloped leaves. Young saplings had sprung from the trunks of felled trees, and the coppice floor was misted with hooded flowers, blue as sapphires.
“A bluebell wood! Imrhien, we must away from here at once!”
Leaving the path, he plunged down the slope to the left, the trees hemming them in. Seeing the Ertishman begin to run, the girl did likewise, seized by unreasoning panic. Roots tripped them up; branches billowed around their ears.
Suddenly Sianadh’s boots left the ground. His eyes bulged. An intermittent snorting left his mouth, followed by no sound at all. His tongue lolled out, purple, like the protruding head of some internal worm.
A branch of holly had whipped around his neck, and he was being hanged. As he dangled, strangling, hacking at the branch with his skian, another prickly bough swung lazily out at the girl’s neck; she ducked under it and danced away. Sianadh’s blade sliced through. He fell heavily to the ground. The girl seized the skian from his limp hand and slashed at the wicked branches. Thorny leaves sewed her skin with fine red embroideries. With a shuddering gasp, the Ertishman heaved himself up and rolled out of reach of the holly-tree.
Laughter rose on one side, then another. Queer voices called out mockingly in wor
ds that could not be understood. Unseen things came on behind the travelers on silent feet, only their squalling and guffaws indicating their proximity. Sianadh staggered to his feet and stumbled on, clearing a path for his companion, but as fast as they sped, they could not shake off these pursuers. At last the Ertishman balked before a thicket of interlocking thorns. He flung the knapsack into the girl’s arms and snatched the skian out of her hand.
“Imrhien, delve out the salt—’tis in a wooden box. And the bells, Imrhien—rattle them!”
She obeyed. The brace of bells jingled, a jarring sound here. Other sounds ceased.
“Ahoy!” Sianadh bellowed hoarsely, his flaming auburn mane plastered to his sweating brow. “We have cold iron. And salt! Hypericum, salt, and bread, iron cold and berries red, by the power of rowan-wood—harm us, and we’ll burn ye good! A plague on ye skeerdas. If ye come near us, we will make ye suffer!”
With a jerk of his head he indicated that his companion should follow him. Warily they walked along the edge of the thorn thicket, she ringing the festive-sounding bells, he with a clump of salt in one hand, the dagger in the other. He was whistling. Something small and gnarled hooted, grabbing for his boot—he dashed salt on it, and it fled, shrieking. Sudden spears of hoots and howls stabbed out from every direction. Once, she thought she glimpsed a grinning face, a grotesque caricature of humanity.
She clutched the heavy knapsack, hoping the charms would prove ward enough. The prickly bushes thinned and dwindled on one hand, the oaks on the other. After what seemed a year, the wights’ quarry burst out from the coppice’s precincts to find themselves amid stands of beech. The sounds of pursuit could no longer be heard. Stilling the bells, the girl cocked her head and stood listening. Silence ruled, heavy and thick as paste.
“Make haste,” Sianadh said grimly. Like the juice of ripe plums, blood ran from deep scratches on his neck and arms. He sheathed the skian and shouldered the knapsack, striding forward with a determined look. As they marched beneath the beeches, birds began again their arias.
When a safe distance stretched between themselves and the oaks, Sianadh stopped.
“Time to rest.” Soberly he began to shrug off his burden. “The Barren Holly,” he said. “A murderous tree. Yet when hollies grow in pairs they bring good luck! What were the wights that hunted us, I wonder? Not oakmen—they be guardians of wild animals. I haven’t killed any beasts lately. Spriggans, maybe. Ach, it matters not. Imrhien, we must both watch out for fey places.”
<
Exasperatedly he hurled the pack to the ground.
“Eldritch sites! Obban tesh, girl. Fey places, I said. What be the matter with ye? Do ye do this to harass me, or do ye not know anything?”
<
He grasped her by the shoulders. She returned his stare unfailingly.
“What mean ye?”
His puzzled gaze flicked over the ruined face, trying to read something from its lumpish landscape.
“No? Ye do not know anything? Ye be new to Eldaraigne, then, a foreigner?”
<
“Obban tesh,” he exclaimed again. “I wish to the Stars that ye could parley the handspeak. It is impossible that nobody taught ye signing—how did ye get along? Ye learn so quicklike, how could ye have … forgotten?”
<
His eyes widened in realization. He released her.
“Forgotten, eh? Forgotten, is it? Ceileinh’s spear!” He groaned, sat down, covered his face with his bloody hands. “No voice, no doch memory. I have saddled myself with a right mor scathach here.” He continued to curse, softly, in Ertish.
She stood watching him. Here was her rescuer—large, grimy, and bedraggled, his left boot torn. Many things he had risked—his life, a treasure—many things he had given: freedom of sorts, a name, language. And somehow she had let him down. Sinking to her knees, she held out her hands, palms up. She waited, motionless. Eventually he raised his shaggy head and sighed.
“No, it is this.” He made a fist, the thumb sticking out, and rubbed his hand over his heart in a circular motion, “Atka, the thorn, pierces the heart with sorrow. Meaning, ye be sorry. And,” he added feelingly, “if ye be sorry, how d’ye think I feel?”
Later he said, “There be benefits in your loss. Many try to lose it at the bottom of a winecup or by other means. Memory be the mother of grief.”
They drank some water, there under the pale green-haired dancers of beeches, and made a frugal repast supplemented with creamy, frill-petticoated fungi discovered by Sianadh. He examined his boot, thanking the hand of fate that the thing that had clutched him had not pierced his skin with some fungoid poison. He then reminisced about the way his grandmother used to cook black-ear fungus, smothered in lard with a pinch of salt and pepper, as a sauce over a juicy slab of tripe and bacon with a rind of fat this thick. And there were the fried onions, the crispy chicken’s feet, the sheep’s eyeballs in batter, the gravy.…
“She be still living, my grandmother. A century old. Goes to watch the chariot races twice a month. Now if I am not mistaken, I believe we have somewhat lost our way by courtesy of those cursed spriggans or whatever they were.”
He consulted his map, squinted up to where the leaves hid any suggestion of the sun’s location, and after much muttering and casting about decided on a direction and set off again.
For the remainder of the day they tramped upward through open forest, crossing steep, fern-fringed gullies stitched with water-threads, ascending rocky inclines. The lands of Erith had always been sparsely peopled and this was one of many places as yet never trod by mortal feet. Treetops on the opposite slopes caught flecks of sunlight here and there. A breeze sprang up. When it got caught in the blowing hair of the trees, it roared like the ocean. Once, they saw smoke coming out of the ground—doubtless an eldritch phenomenon.
In wary murmurs Sianadh informed the girl about fey places—bluebell woods, mushroom rings, especially under moonlight, rings of standing stones, mushroom-circuses known as “gallitraps” and the grassy circles folk called “Faêran Dances”; the turf-covered hills known as raths or knowes or sitheans; oak woods, wells, especially those overhung by trees; rings of hawthorn and certain trees such as holly, elder, willow, apple, birch, hazel, and ash; bushes of broom and thorn.
“Eldritch wights, both seelie and otherwise, gather in these places.”
He taught her more of the handspeak. “For my own safety,” he said.
They had climbed high among the mountains, leaving the forest-lands below. Trees were sparse here and stunted by lofty winds. As evening drew in, without warning the weather turned. A gray, chill wind sharpened itself on the rocks, and the travelers tied their taltries on tightly to keep it from snipping at their ears.
“Unseasonable weather,” Sianadh grumbled suspiciously.
The ground steadily became treacherous. Quagmires and bogs appeared suddenly in hollow places between the rocks. Darkness made it impossible to see these traps until the travelers were almost upon them.
“This country be not safe for those what are not familiar with the territory,” muttered the Ertishman. “If I was not an outdoorsman, I’d be afraid of losing our way or perishing in the cold. Best look for somewhere to shelter until the morning.”
The night became bitter, but all that they could find was a rock to crawl under—until they spied a faint light in the distance. Cautiously they moved toward it and found, much to their joy, a small hut such as foresters used when traveling. A fire was burning brightly inside, with a large gray stone on each side of it.
“Flay me! A woodmen’s hut of all things!” Sianadh said enthusiastically. “If this be what it seems, we shall be spared the discomfort and peril of a night in the cold. The axemen build these huts from rowan-wood. Not a wigh
t will go near them.” Yet he examined the place warily before he set foot inside.
“Nobody’s here, but surely the bloke what made this fire cannot begrudge us a little warmth. Come in, chehrna. We’ll toast ourselves while we wait for him to return.”
Trusting her mentor’s good judgment, the girl sat beside him on the stone to the right of the fire to warm herself. Both travelers rubbed their chilled arms, stamped their feet, and kept their taltries tied on. In front of their feet was a pile of kindling, and on the other side of the fire lay two big logs. Sianadh added a little of the kindling to the fire, and as the warmth began to creep into their bones they became drowsy, sitting there on the stone. They woke with a start when the door burst open and a strange figure came stamping into the room. He was a swart dwarf, no higher than the travelers’ knees, but broad and strong. A coat of lambskin covered his back, and he wore breeches and shoes of moleskin. Upon his head was a hat fashioned from ferns and peat moss, adorned with the plume of a ptarmigan.
“A duergar!” Sianadh hissed as the door slammed shut noisily. The Ertishman spoke not another word, and silence clamped down like a metal claw. The manifestation glowered at the visitors but did not speak, either, and sat himself down on the other stone.
The girl knew that duergars were of the race of black dwarves. They hated Men. In the Tower, stories of their bitter cruelties had been rife. She trembled but was determined to brave it out alongside Sianadh. To show fear or run would be to invite attack—the Ertishman had assured her that was one of the rules with wights.
So there they sat, staring at one another. After a time the flames began to die and an unbearable chill came back into the room, so, greatly daring, Sianadh leaned over and put the last of the kindling on the fire. Then the duergar, in his turn, bent and picked up one of the two huge logs lying to the left of the fire. It was twice as long as the dwarf was high and thicker than his waist, but he broke it over his knee as if it had been a twig and cast it on the flames. The duergar looked at the man scornfully and tilted his head with a sneer as if to challenge him to do the same with the other log. Sianadh steadily returned the look but did not budge—the girl knew that he suspected some trick. The fire flared up once more and gave out great heat for a while, but again it began to dwindle. The duergar’s expression mocked the Ertishman, inviting him to pick up the last log, but Sianadh would not be tempted, even when the glowing fire ebbed so low that the bones of the two mortals felt turned to ice and darkness pressed in. So they sat on in silence, like three statues in the gloom.