The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘I’d rather an unstorm than this,’ grumbled Viviana, shouting to be heard above the downpour. ‘This rain bites. It stings.’

  ‘Hush,’ warned Rohain-Tahquil. ‘Something might hear us.’

  As the sun dipped behind their backs, the shower eased. The land had begun to rise steeply. Emerging from a belt of oaks they saw the great sheared-off cone rising ahead of them; the caldera of Huntingtowers, its lower versants leprous with stunted vegetation, pimpled with the low mounds of old, forsaken diggings.

  It seemed desolate. Nothing stirred. The ancient caldera lay silent and still. In its mouth where once deadly fires had raged, the waters of the lake stood deep, dark and cold.

  Now that they stood on its slopes, breathless apprehension laid hold of the damsels. The feeling was so strong it was almost intolerable.

  The light was fading. In the east, long clouds ripped themselves to black ribbons. No moon came up behind the summit of the blunted cone.

  ‘I shouldn’t like to be any closer to that place at night,’ said Rohain-Tahquil.

  They found shelter in a mossy stone ruin that had once, in ages long past, conceivably been a byre. Honeysuckle and traveller’s joy formed a roof over the few remaining, slug-haunted walls. Against these they piled dry bracken to serve as a bed. Not daring to light a fire, they unwrapped the last slabs of cold porridge from their dock leaves and dined in silence. Rohain-Tahquil offered a sip of nathrach deirge all around. Warmed, but wet and cheerless, they huddled together.

  ‘I did not know it would be like this,’ complained Viviana. ‘I hate slugs.’

  ‘They like you,’ said Caitri, subtracting one from Viviana’s sleeve. ‘Anyway, you said you wanted to come,’ she added primly.

  ‘I said I wanted to come, but I never said I would not grumble.’

  The malachite oval of the sun strayed into a magnificent post-eruption sunset, a drifting flowerscape in a profusion of marigold, carnation, primrose, gentian, and lilac—colours that would bleed softly into the air and hang there in frayed, cymophanous striations like shang-reflections for hours after the sun had wasted away.

  ‘We have been fortunate to discover this niche,’ said Rohain-Tahquil with a new sense of authority born of her limited knowledge of survival. ‘Sometimes farmers inscribed runes into the walls of these animal pens—charms to ward off unseelie wights. See here—’ With a loose rock she scraped away a thick nap of moss. ‘Some symbols are cut into the stones. They are worn shallow now and hard to see. Still, they may yet hold some efficacy.’

  ‘Of course, all the lesser wights have spied us already,’ said Caitri fatalistically. ‘It is to be hoped that they will be deterred by our iron blades and tilhals and salt, and by these great bunches of hypericum.’

  ‘And it is to be hoped they will not go telling their greaters,’ said Viviana, using a silver needle from her chatelaine to punch holes in a stalk of deadnettle.

  ‘I have been told that eldritch beings do not cooperate like that, not in the way of our kind,’ said Rohain-Tahquil, who was crushing yet more thyme leaves to release their penetrating aroma. Not unless they’re forced, by threat or bribe.’

  ‘Some have their own leaders,’ said Caitri. ‘The siofra bow to their Queen Mab, for example; their little queen no bigger than a man’s thumb.’

  ‘Even so,’ replied Rohain-Tahquil, ‘but fortunately the siofra are given more to glamourish trickery than to war. Their tiny spears would prick mortal flesh no more than a thistle would. Once I travelled with a road-caravan which was dispersed and ravaged by unseelie wights, but I surmise it was not the result of a planned and concerted effort on their part. Many of them happened to be crossing the Road at that time and by ill chance we moved in their way.’

  It came to her again that perhaps Huon had planned the devastation of the caravan. But no—hindsight and reason told her there were significant differences in the method of attack. The Wild Hunt had mounted a full-scale, coordinated assault directly on the Tower, while the wights of the Road had appeared at random, following their own hostile instincts rather than obeying a leader.

  ‘Long before that time,’ she went on, ‘I learned something of the ways of wights from a fellow traveller. Like all creatures of eldritch, the fell things of unseelie are amoral. Left to their own devices they are arbitrary in their choice of victims, neither punishing the bad nor letting alone the good. Spriggans are trooping wights, to be sure, and they have a chieftain—nominally, at any rate—but most unseelie wights are solitary by nature. They do not hold meetings or discussions, they simply act in accordance with the antipathy that drives them. As such, they are the more terrible, being an ungoverned—I will not say lawless, for they are subject to the rigorous laws of their kind—an ungoverned battalion of man-slayers, a division without a major-general, a corps without a head. Yes, a headless horseman would be an apt symbol. But I have said enough, enough to give you nightmares. Sleep now. I shall take the first watch. Caitri, did you want to tell me something?’

  Caitri drew breath and looked at her mistress. Then she shook her head and turned away with a sigh.

  There being no moon, and the stars being hidden by the last aerial memories of Tamhania, the night waxed as thick as pitch. The wind had dropped. Strangely hushed was the landscape, and devoid of movement. Time dragged on, with no way to mark the hours. A dark melancholia seeped up from the ground.

  The thoughts of Rohain-Tahquil strayed to Thorn, encamped in the north with his men. This night he would speak and laugh, but not with her.

  Not with her.

  Tears welled at the inner corners of her eyes. They were tears for Thorn, and for the young Prince and the others who had been subjected to the wrath of Tamhania because of her inexcusable stubbornness. Could her culpability ever be absolved? She thought not.

  Slugs meandered across her skin. She flicked at them. Toward what she guessed to be midnight, a sound came through the gloom. Something was coming, brush, brush, brush.

  It stopped.

  She ceased to breathe.

  It came again, brush, brush, brush, and this time she thought it was accompanied by a dull clanking as of several links of a heavy chain striking together. She strained into the darkness until she fancied her eyes must be bulging from their sockets. Nothing was visible. Groping for the sharp knives she had brought from the cottage, she held them ready in both hands. Brush, brush, brush, something approached, until it stopped right at the doorstep of the ruined shelter.

  A sudden wind blasted Rohain’s face. In the sky, clouds of vapor and ash parted momentarily. Dimly the stars shone out. Standing silently in front of the hideaway of crumbling stone was a black dog, huge and shaggy, the size of a calf. It stared with great saucer-eyes as bright as coals of fire.

  Tahquil-Rohain’s hand groped for the tilhal of jade-carved hypericum leaves that hung beside the vial at her neck. She gripped it tightly. Her thoughts flew to Viviana and Caitri, asleep and innocent at her back.

  Let them not wake now, or they will cry out.

  There must be no sound, nor sign of fear. This Black Dog might be benign or malign. With luck, it might be a Guardian Black Dog, one of those that had been known to protect travellers. Yet again, it might be one of the unseelie morthadu. In that case, one must not speak or try to strike it, for the morthadu had the power to blast mortals.

  She stared at the apparition and it stared back at her. Her body ached with the tension of keeping perfectly still.

  It was said that to see one of the morthadu was a presage of death. Whether the thing now before Tahquil-Rohain represented succor or calamity, there was no way of finding out. She sat, rigid as steel, avoiding the burning scarlet gaze, using every ounce of her strength to prevent herself from betraying her fear by the slightest twitch and thus yielding power to the creature.

  Toward midnight, the Black Dog was not there anymore.

  She kept watch until dawn.

  At first light, Tahquil-Rohain roused Viviana to take
her turn at the watch. She did not mention their night visitor. No paw marks remained in the sifting ash layer to betray what had come and gone in the night. Tahquil-Rohain surmised there were two possibilities—that the Black Dog was seelie, and had guarded them against some unimaginable menace, or that it was one of the morthadu and had, hopefully, been warded off by one or more of the charms they carried. Either way, she and her friends were safe, for now. She warmed her stiff sinews with a sip of nathrach deirge, rolled herself in her cloak, and slept.

  When she awoke a third possibility came to her—that the Dog had been unseelie, and had made sure they stayed put all night before going off to spread the news of their whereabouts to others who might be interested.

  Quickly they departed from the ruin.

  Daylight dribbled through clouds and fog. Breakfastless, the travellers climbed among the overgrown mullock heaps of the redundant mines that pocked the foot and heath-covered skirts of the mountain. All the while, the desire to hide pressed on them until it became almost overpowering. Eldritch gramarye seemed to crackle in the air, although nothing untoward could be seen or heard. Nothing was audible at all, in fact, save the wind soughing in their ears. Continually they glanced at the skies and to right and left, every nerve stretched, poised to dive for cover or run for their lives at the first sign of any living thing.

  Over their heads, the rim of the caldera hung halfway up the sky. It blocked from view everything within its black walls, including the mysterious architecture of complex towers that, as legend had it, was the stronghold of Huon and his ghastly following. From here the Wild Hunt would put forth on the three nights of every full moon, to sweep out across the countryside and fall upon the unwary, doing to them what harm they chose.

  Or not.

  Messages received during the sojourn on Tamhania indicated that since the attack on Isse Tower, the Hunt had not been seen to ride …

  Viviana said, ‘My la—Tahquil, there are too many of these slag-heaps—so many pitfalls and potholes. We must be wary. One false step might see one of us toppling down some hidden shaft. The very ground is treacherous. Many places have subsided, while others look to be in danger of collapsing.’

  ‘Wisely spoken, Via. You and Caitri must sit here in the shelter of this scrubby brake. I will wander alone awhile.’

  ‘It is so perilous, ma’am! What do you seek, exactly?’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘Every bush and twig hides something that is ardent to harm us, I am certain. Can we not now go back?’

  ‘I have no choice. I am driven to wander here until I find some clue or key, or perish. There is no life for me in the world if I do not find an answer.’

  ‘And maybe if you do,’ said Viviana.

  ‘My—’ Caitri twisted her fingers together.

  ‘What is it, Caitri? If you have something of importance to impart to me, say it now.’

  ‘No. No, it is nothing.’

  ‘Stay here.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the very gates of Huntingtowers. I forbid you to follow. Wait for me. If I am not back by nightfall, leave with all speed.’

  Tahquil left them sitting with their arms about each other; a pathetic picture, like a charcoal sketch of two orphaned waifs. She walked on, stumbling on clods, rocks, and freshly turned dirt, making sure she walked sunwise—for luck and protection—around the eroded mullock heaps. She recalled from descriptions given to her at Isse Tower that somewhere to the right lay a loop of the Ringroad; a section that was dreaded by road-caravans. But this did not concern her. It did not lie in her path. A low cliff did—she changed direction to walk parallel to it, under its briar-tangled overhang.

  A creeper trailed across the ground. Its five-pointed leaves were glossy and dark green. Between them sprouted tiny inflorescences, pale green like the phosphorescence on rotting corpses. The plant attracted her attention. When her ankle brushed against it, fire ripped through her flesh. She jerked away.

  Paradox ivy! You cursed leaf.

  She avoided it. In doing so, she missed seeing a mineshaft farther along, teetered on the edge of inviolate darkness, and overbalanced, but in the last instant she was able to throw herself backward. To break her fall she flung out her arms, but stones met her as she landed. She lay winded, her hands scrabbling at rubble and weeds.

  Rising to her feet painfully, awkwardly, she noticed a scintilla of gold that winked, once, in the corner of her left eye. Where her hands had clutched the ground, something lay uncovered. She picked it up, brushing away the caked dirt.

  And something like a memory spun before her eyes.

  The ground emptied from beneath its feet. It hurtled downward, to be brought up on a spear-point of agony. A band around its arm had snagged on a projection. The scrawny thing dangled against the cliff face, slowly swinging like bait on a hook.

  Then slowly, with great effort, it lifted its other arm. Bird-boned fingers found the catch and released it. The band sprang open and the creature fell.

  The band. A bracelet, gold, with a white bird enameled on it. This she held in her hand.

  And knew it belonged to her.

  The world faded.

  Another took its place.

  8

  AVLANTIA

  Quest and Questions

  ’Tis rumored that the Piper will come soon

  And lead us all to Reason with his tune.

  New day shall dawn for those who wait, no doubt—

  And through the forests, laughter will ring out.

  TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG

  In ancient times, when the Ways between the Fair Realm and Erith were still open, of all the races of Men the Talith were most favoured by the Faêran—or so it was said. The people of that northern race were tall and golden-haired, eloquent, ardent in scholarship, delighting in poetry, music, and theater, skilled in the sports of field and track, valorous in war. Avlantia was their country, and this sun-beloved land was split into two regions—in the west, Auralonde of the Red Leaves; in the east, Ysteris of the Flowers.

  The eringl trees of Auralonde grew nowhere else in Erith. Unlike the thorn bushes shipped from the cooler south to be planted in rows for hedges, their boughs were never bare, for they could not know the touch of snow in these warm climes. Their newly budded leaves glowed briefly green-gold. Unfurling, they swiftly deepened to red-gold, bronze, amber, and scarlet. The roofs of the eringl forests burned deep wine-crimson, and the glossy brown pillars supporting them were wound about with trails of a yellow-leaved vine. Fallen leaves mingled in a bright embroidery on the forest floors, buttoned with fire-bright hemispheres of mushrooms, forming a richly patterned carpet fit for royalty.

  Branwyddan, King of the Talith, kept court in Auralonde at Hythe Mellyn, a mighty city built of the golden stone called mellil, which gleamed in the sunlight like pale honey. Tier upon tier, the city’s shining roofs, spires, and belfries rose upon the hillside, crowned by the King’s palace. Neat shops and taverns bordered the side-streets. Tall and imposing houses flanked the city square, which was overlooked also by the domed Law Courts and the gracious columns of the Council Chambers. In stone horse-troughs, white doves flurried on the water like fallen blossoms.

  Below the city sprawled a green and fertile river valley, well-tilled, festooned with orchards, and on the other side of this valley the land climbed suddenly to the steep hills of the Dardenon Ranges, well-clad with the flame-coloured eringls of Auralonde. Hythe Mellyn prospered, as did all of Avlantia.

  A plague of rats came to Hythe Mellyn, but though they poured into the city like liquid shadow in a nightmare, it was not their predations that emptied it. The rats were merely the heralds of its doom; many other matters were to come into play before the fate of Hythe Mellyn would be sealed.

  At first, when they were few, the needle-eyed, yellow-fanged visitors seemed to be no more than a nuisance. After all, Hythe Mellyn until then had endured no plagues and few vermin. A squeaking and rustling in th
e night, a chewing of the corners of flour sacks and a depositing of filth in the pantries—these offenses were annoying but could be borne. Traps and baits were laid. It was thought these would eradicate the pests, but the rats’ numbers grew steadily despite the efforts of the citizens to destroy them, and they grew bolder. In the hours of darkness they ran across the bedcovers of the citizens. With their septic teeth, they bit people’s faces as they lay sleeping, the pain waking them to stare into a mask of horror.

  Soon, not only at night were the rats abroad, but also during the hours of daylight. They were to be seen in the street-gutters and on the roofs of houses, scuttling across courtyards, poisoning the carved fountains with their waste. From every cleft and shadow stabbed the knife-point glint of their eyes, and the cold, thin whistling of their squeaks shrilled like spiteful giggling. Never was a pantry door opened without a rain of wriggling black bodies falling from the shelves and scurrying into the corners. Never was the once-sweet air free of the stench of decay and foulness. With sudden bustles of teeth, tails, and spines, the rodents clustered in the cellars like bunches of fat pears. They killed the songbirds in their cages and gnawed unwatched babes in their cradles.

  Every countermeasure was tried. More traps and baits were laid, cats were brought in—but for every rodent that was destroyed, two more took its place. In desperation the Lord Mayor posted a reward to whomsoever should rid the city of this scourge—five bags of gold. As the news travelled, it brought in many adventurers from other countries eager to win their fortunes in such an easy way. But it was not easy—in fact, it proved impossible, and the reward grew from five bags to ten, and then to fifteen, as the plague intensified. Rogues and ruffians, itinerants, wizards and conjurers; all turned up with their bags of tricks, each more bizarre than the last, which they claimed would dispel this curse. None succeeded. The citizens now lived in a state of siege, with every cranny in every house sealed. Many people were too frightened to venture abroad at all, and the city was seized by paralysis, juddering to a standstill.