The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  He slung the bow over his shoulder. Diarmid found courage to speak again.

  “Shall I retrieve the arrows?”

  “Leave them.”

  They moved off together, Imrhien glancing over her shoulder at one long wing tip of the tyrax, devoid of feathers.

  “Is the bow, then, the chief weapon of the Dainnan?” Diarmid asked, intrigued.

  “No.”

  “The sword, then, is it the sword?”

  “It is not the sword.”

  Diarmid fell silent, at a loss.

  “The finest weapon of a Dainnan is his own being,” said Thorn. “His mind and body, wit and brawn. When deprived of all other weapons, he is yet able to survive and carry out his duty to the King-Emperor. Had I not been armed, I would have found another way to confound the assailant.”

  They moved beneath tall golden poplars standing straight as candle-flames and as radiant.

  “When threatened,” the Dainnan said, “a Dainnan must look to see if there is anything lying around that he may use as a weapon, such as a stone or a stick. If an attacker carries arms, he may be relieved of his weapons in many ways.”

  “An unarmed man against a knife-wielder? ’Tis hard to credit.…”

  Impatiently Thorn halted and sloughed his equipment. “Draw your skian.”

  Readily Diarmid obliged. The two stood facing one another, poised, watchful. Around them, sun-colored leaves rained down like torn silk, a radiance burning from within.

  “Now, try to use it.”

  The mercenary’s knife arm moved a fraction of an inch. That was all the time permitted it. Thorn’s left hand grabbed it by the wrist, striking its owner on the chin with his right elbow. Diarmid’s head fell back.

  This happened within the space of three heartbeats. Instantly the Dainnan pushed the knife hand back and away from him, forcing his adversary to bend forward, whereupon he reached over Diarmid’s shoulder and, controlling the mercenary’s elbow with his chest, applied a reverse bent arm-lock, all the time pushing the knife up and away from him. A strong nudge with the knee in the pit of the stomach caused Diarmid to double over farther. Thorn pushed down on his shoulder, using the arm-lock to throw him forward and off balance, simultaneously stepping across to block Diarmid’s left foot. The mercenary fell forward onto his face and left hand. Mounting pressure on his right wrist forced his fingers open—he dropped the skian. Thorn picked it up, released him, and stepped back. Diarmid stood up, breathing hard.

  Five slow heartbeats passed. The Dainnan offered Diarmid the weapon.

  Sheathing it, the Ertishman grimaced.

  “I should like to learn that trick.”

  Thorn nodded. He said to Imrhien, “Women may learn also. Even those possessing no great strength may be trained to defeat an assailant using Dainnan techniques. The method turns an adversary’s own strength against him.”

  As they traveled on together, the Ertishman’s resentment gradually dissipated. He listened with close attention to the Dainnan’s words. At odd moments, Thorn taught him some of the precepts of the Dainnan Brotherhood and showed him basic methods of weaponless fighting: holds and blocks, kicks, throws, and locks.

  In reply to Diarmid’s petitions for use of the bow, Thorn said, “No man can shoot with another’s bow, any more than he can fight with another’s sword. Besides, mine is made for a left-handed archer. Howbeit, if you are so zealous, I will teach you a little, and you shall practice and mayhap there will be some gain in it for you.”

  The Ertishman took every opportunity to accustom himself to the bow.

  So near to each other were these three voyagers of different peoples—so near in presence, yet vast gulfs separated them. He was rare, this warrior of the wilderness—extraordinary. That, Imrhien knew well. Oh yes, he was of the finest.

  A thought took shape.

  <> Imrhien signed, <>

  She and Diarmid, upon the sixth evening in Mirrinor, were alone together. They were helping each other to set up at an island encampment, the one to whom she alluded having disappeared on one of his forays.

  Diarmid looked startled.

  “Powers? I see no reason to think so. He is skilled, yea, more than any man I have met in the flesh—hut not more skilled than a man may be. Yet”—he scratched his chin thoughtfully—“it might be so. Mayhap he has studied somewhat of the Nine Arts. Wizards, or part-wizards, may become Dainnan as well as any.”

  <> She had no sign for “Faêran.” <>

  “The Fair Folk? Ha! The Lords of Gramarye passed into legend long ago. Besides, like wights, they could not stand the touch of cold iron. Sir Thorn wields a steel blade, steel-barbed arrows—his belt buckle, too, I’ll warrant, is of the same metal. Nay, I’ve no doubt he is a mortal man, but such a man—one of no ordinary ilk. A man for men to follow. Perhaps a wizard, I know not. But ’tis not couth to speak of him this way, behind his back, as it were—I will not discuss this further.”

  Later that same evening, the mercenary took Thorn’s longbow, slung the baldric and quiver over his shoulder, and went hunting. While he was away, Imrhien remained beside the fire with the Dainnan, who had asked her to teach him more handspeak. He coaxed her to smile with his satirical portrayal of the upper classes—including his peers—by feigning to guess the signs for “duchess,” “wizard,” “Relayer,” “Storm Chieftain,” “Dainnan.” If she could have laughed aloud, she would have done so. He inspired her to devise lampoons of her own—she could not remember when she had felt so free of spirit as now, delighting in his company, except for the angst of knowing it would not last.

  Diarmid was long away and still had not appeared by the time Errantry flew down to his master’s shoulder and interrupted the game. Early darkness had closed in. Imrhien was struck with sudden concern.

  <>

  <> the Dainnan signed. He rose to his feet. <>

  <>

  He threw her a quizzical glance, then gave a quick nod and snatched up a flaming brand from the fire to use as a torch.

  By its light, Diarmid walked unlooked-for from the outer darkness.

  “Good morrow, cirean mi coileach,” said Thorn. “We are glad you could join us.”

  “Ah—good morning.” The Ertishman stared blankly. His face looked as pale as the night mist that now coiled up from the waters. “I was lost, for a time. I found my way back again,” he added unnecessarily, handing the longbow and quiver to Thorn.

  <>

  “Aye.”

  He would say no more, and soon they lay down to sleep.

  Magpies glorified the sunrise with their crystalline warblings. Imrhien opened her eyes in the misty morning to see Thorn standing guard by the sleeping mercenary. Diarmid lay in a twisted position, with arms outflung, as though he had met with violent death. His face was still drained of color; only the rise and fall of his chest betrayed vitality.

  “In the dark hours he walked,” said Thorn. “I brought him back, with some force. He would not come of his own accord. Wait by him. If he should wake and escape, sound the yellow horn, which is here at hand, unstoppered. I go now to stock the boat with provisions.”

  He made the hand-sign for “I return soon” and departed silently.

  Diarmid slept as if he had breathed of the fumes of poppies that had lulled him into blissful unwariness. When he did awaken, it was so abruptly and noiselessly that he was gone before Imrhien noticed. Too late, a rustle of leaves alerted her. Holding the brass-mounted horn to her lips, she blew as hard as she could. A single, brazen note sounded, warm and warning, as penetrating as strong wine. As the note seeped away into the mist, she cast the instrument to the ground and ran in pursuit of Diarmid.

  Following the direction in which he had headed, she soon found herself running along a shoreline bordered with anc
ient alders. Streamers of vapor curled slowly over the lake and twined through the black tree-stems. She saw the Ertishman standing a little way off, knee-deep in the shallow margins of the lake where slim rushes trembled. He was not alone. He was speaking earnestly to one who stood in the water before him, and that one was the essence of all Mirrinor’s fairness fashioned into feminine form. Slender as reeds, pale as mist, lovely and delicate as waterlilies, was she. Emerald hair dripped down the length of her body. Her clinging gown of lettuce green was convoluted and scalloped as if it were made of watercress and eel-grass and duckweed, which perhaps it was. Slyly, shyly, she reached out to the young man, took hold of his hand and began to step backward, drawing him into the lake. The frail tissues of her emerald gown spread out and floated on the water. Without taking his eyes from her, Diarmid followed meekly. Imrhien’s feet flew across the strand and splashed through the lake toward him. She closed her arms about his waist and hauled hard. It made no difference—he was too strong for her, or the watermaiden was too potent, or both. In an effort to bring him to his senses, she tugged his hair, slapped his cheek—but it seemed he was in a trance, oblivious of all she inflicted upon him.

  Not so the drowner.

  She bent her jade gaze on Imrhien, and her pale hand shot out, imprisoning the girl’s wrist in a grip like the jaws of a steel trap. With Diarmid, Imrhien was drawn irresistibly down. She struggled and splashed, beating at the wight with her free hand, but the water rose to their waists, to their shoulders. Long grasses sprouting from the deep mud tangled their feet, pulling them farther into the depths. Before the water closed over her head, the last sights Imrhien saw were the slanted, unblinking eyes of the drowner and her verdant tresses spreading gracefully on the surface, a cloud of fine silk threads.

  Underwater, Imrhien tried vainly to kick away the gulping grasses, to wrest free of the inhuman grasp. All the while her last life’s breath, and Diarmid’s, bubbled up in front of their eyes like an ascent of tiny pearls. Thin strands tightened themselves about her neck. A terrible pounding began in her head, and a pain spilled like molten metal in her chest. Her own hand waved before her eyes, pale and thin like the drowner’s, nerveless now as vigor failed.

  Then a blade glittered, cold and bright. With a mighty heave and a gut-wrenching surge of propulsion, Imrhien felt herself being thrust up into the air and the sunlight, gasping and choking. All was confusion for a time, until her head cleared and she found herself outstretched on the shore. Beside her lay Diarmid, his body racked by spasms of coughing and retching. Kneeling on one knee close by, the Dainnan wiped his dagger clean. Water streamed from his clothes and dripped from his occult hair.

  “When you have both rid yourselves of your lungs,” he said, “perhaps we may resume our voyage.”

  Diarmid’s wits returned in full immediately after this ordeal. He and Imrhien were left with no other legacy of the encounter but aching purple bruises around their wrists—the imprint of the Fideal’s fingers—and thin weals about their throats. For it had been the Fideal herself, none other, who had tried to lure the man toward his doom. Of all ancient eldritch things that dwelled in water, and were the bane of men, she was among the most feared.

  “I was too easily gulled,” Diarmid berated himself.

  “She is powerful, the Fideal,” said Thorn.

  “Yet I should have known. When I first sighted her she was sitting on the surface of the lake, combing her hair. I thought her one of the Gwragedd Annwn, then doubted and came away. But I could not forget.…”

  “Forget now.”

  The Ertishman looked at the Dainnan with a mixture of respect, dread, and wonder. “To slay such a wight is beyond the power of mortal men, Longbow.”

  “The Fideal lives.”

  “You did not slay her?” Diarmid was taken aback.

  “Only did I sever the waterweeds that held you both submerged. With the dagger I slashed them. The Fideal is of the weeds, the weeds are of the Fideal. But she lives on, to bide in Mirrinor or perhaps to travel along the secret subterranean waterways that flow beneath Eldaraigne until she finds some other pool or tarn to haunt. During untold lives of Kings she has bided in her sequestered retreats of ooze. Mayhap she will leave them soon and, like the rest, be drawn by the Call from the North. Who knows?”

  For five days more, the Waterleaper clove the meres of Mirrinor. Many strange sights and sounds came to the voyagers, but they avoided further peril until they reached the farthest shore. Leaving the trusty vessel beached among crab-apples and firethorns, they stepped ashore on marshy ground.

  Brilliant yellow flowers peeped from acid-green turf. Ahead of them, to the west, lay a tumble of low hills that curved around in the south but dwindled in the north. The sky was softly veiled from the brink of the horizon right back across Mirrinor. A soft breeze sprang up and ran naked among the grasses.

  “Mirrinor’s edge,” said Thorn. “From here the land begins to rise. A day’s walk shall take us well into Doundelding. Once through that region, we shall be almost at the gates of Caermelor.”

  The sound of the city’s name rang like a death knell in Imrhien’s skull. Thorn would be claimed by the city, and rightfully so. He was a King-Emperor’s man, one of Roxburgh’s warriors. For Imrhien, then, Caermelor would mean the termination of color, passion, and light, and no matter what else it offered, their journey’s end must bring days as desolate as wastelands, doomed to be scoured eternally by hungering winds.

  9

  DOUNDELDING

  Secrets Under Stone

  Precious stones, buried bones, roots and rivers, caverns cold.

  Clay and sand beneath the land, silver, tin, and shining gold.

  Dig and sweat—don’t forget—danger lies in sunless halls.

  Miner brave dig your grave, far below the mountain’s walls.

  “WIGHT WARNING”

  A long and winding path of stepping-stones led the travelers across the boggy ground to the foot of a hill, where it petered out among groves of stunted walnuts, ten or twelve feet tall. Through the leaves a dark fleck could be seen high above, circling. The goshawk Errantry was never far away. The ground underfoot became rough and stony.

  After a time they reached the top of the hill. Round pouches of green velvet hung from the boughs of the walnuts; some had split into segments at the lower part, releasing the stone-like fruit within. Peering out through the gnarled trunks, the travelers could see across the folds and valleys of a gray and rocky region, rather barren. It was scattered with piled boulders like crouching monsters and misshapen mounds and indistinct forms resembling pointing fingers, which might have been towers. Yet it was not an unlovely land.

  Its slopes rolled away toward a jumble of low hills, mauve-hazed, among which one mountain stood out higher than the rest. Steep was its peak, gaunt and sharply pointed like the tooth of a predator.

  “There rises Thunder Mountain,” said Thorn, “and its utmost pinnacle, Burnt Crag. A perilous place, especially when storms gather about the heads of the hills.”

  On the hilltop they stooped to gather walnuts from the ground, which they cracked with stones, stowing some in the pouches for later. Diarmid raided some of the sticky outer casings for any contents that had not yet been spilled.

  “Whence came this?” He stared in surprise at the dark brown juices staining his fingers.

  “The green purses of the walnut render a dye that is well-nigh indelible,” Thorn explained.

  Halfway down the slope a spring ran out of the hillside. They drank from it, Thorn refilled the water-bottle, and the Ertishman pointlessly washed his hands.

  “I have heard tell that mining men dwell in the far west of this land,” he said, shaking dry his stained fingers, “and only in the far west, for in all other regions, Doundelding is empty of human life. But it is said that the whole length of this land is riddled with hollow galleries and caves from one end to the other.”

  “Then it is said truly.”

  “It is als
o told that these underground tunnels and chambers are the province of many strange creatures. Should we not strike north for the Road?”

  “We walk aboveground, not below it, at least, for now. At this time, the Road is most perilous of all. With the passing of unseelie forces toward the north or northeast, many more than usual are crossing it. Since the Road is a traffic-way for Man, their ancient enemy, it has become a focus for their malevolence. My knowledge is that few caravans are getting through unscathed. Here, we are south of the Road. Already many things that would wreak mischief and harm will have departed from this place.”

  “What summons them, sir?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Might we not entrap one and make it tell us—one of the petty wights?”

  “That I have done—aye, and the not so petty also. Yet they themselves do not know what calls, only that they are beckoned northeast, out of their caves and pools and ruined keeps, and they must go, in troops or alone, causing harm to any Men they encounter along the way. If the migration continues, in a few months the southern lands will he empty of all but the most witless or stubborn or puny of unseelie wights.”

  “Then Men shall walk free of fear at last!”

  “Until the malevolent tide now mustering in Namarre finally bursts its banks and spews forth, united, led by a commander.”

  “But surely no wights have ever submitted themselves to a leader?” questioned Diarmid. “To my knowledge, they have never, as a race, formed an alliance. The trooping wights obey the orders of their own Chieftains, the Hounds hearken to their Huntsmen—but eldritch allegiance extends no farther than that.”

  “Yet once it did,” replied Thorn, “but that erstwhile Lord of Unseelie is now no more than a shade and can never rise again. It seems that another has arisen who has mastered the wicked ones, whether they will or no. Whether wight or wizard I cannot say, but he must be a mighty one indeed.”

  By evening the travelers had reached a grassy dell. A silver fox ran across, paused and looked at them for an instant, then raced on into the darkness. Birches pressed in, patterning a black lacework against pale sky. Here they made camp. Lacquered beetles medallioned the ropy roots and trunks, reflecting in amber the glow of the campfire. Some way off, a crow croaked harshly.