The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘First, tell me how many stars shine in the skies of Erith. Next, tell me what I am thinking. Last, thou must consider two of the Doors which lead from the chamber below this hall, and tell me which one leads to Erith.’

  The final hour was come. She would be separated forever from her father, Pryderi, Meganwy, Oswyn, and her home. She would fall prey to the unseelie, unspeakable thing called Yallery Brown. Imagining what sport he might have with her, she quailed, hesitating. Should she go back, knowing she would fail? What if she never returned to those legendary halls—would they pursue her? Would they hunt her to the fences of Erith, or would they merely laugh at her impotency and faint-heartedness, turning their backs on her forever? She had promised to return. Honor your word, her father always said. Honor your word. She must keep her promise to return to the Faêran hall. And, though it should be pointless, she must also honor the condition not to speak, scribe, or show sign. No farewell could be spoken, no letter could be left for her father.

  She might vanish without clue and spend eternity in the rose garden with Rhys, or in the clutches of Yallery Brown, but in her perverse and willful heart, despite her misgivings, sorrow was mingled with excitement. Since her first glimpse of the Realm the white-hot Longing had begun to excoriate her mind more stringently than ever. That land was the vision of her waking hours and filled all her dreaming, and the pull of it was like the moon to the ocean. The Piper’s tune had told all. It was indeed the world wherein lay all the hidden forests of fable, the soaring peaks of dreams, sudden chasms of weird adventure; a land at once dangerous and wild, yet filled with joy and wonders unguessed.

  She muffled Peri’s hooves, tying on rags. When she ran her fingers through his mane, one or two coarse hairs slid free to cling to her sleeve. One or two more would grow to replace them. The pony swung his head around to look at her. His brown eyes seemed full of wisdom, and as she gazed into them the answer came to her and she knew what to do. From the nearby tack room she fetched a sharp knife and hacked clumps of hair from the mane in several places, letting them fall into the straw. Haltering the now unlovely pony, she led him from the stall.

  Beneath the silver penny of the moon went the cloaked damsel and the white horse, among the outbuildings to the overgrown apple orchard. For there was only one way Ashalind could be certain of finding the doors under Hob’s Hill once again. She lay down under the ymp-tree.

  Middle-night approached. Gnarled lichen-covered trunks leaned, their leafless boughs reaching out to cast shadow-nets on weedy aisles. Feeling the spell of drowsiness coming over her, Ashalind clutched a clump of thistles. Needles of pain shot up her arm, awakening her to the sound of sweetly tinkling bells. The Faêrie Rade passed through the trees like shimmering ghosts. Peri whickered softly and pricked up his ears. Climbing on his back, Ashalind followed.

  As before, the Doors of Hob’s Hill opened and the light from within revealed a paved way. Lagging several paces behind the end of the procession, Ashalind rode in. The Doors rumbled to, and she slid down to stand beside her steed, who strained toward the far archway. Beyond it now lay a landscape of purple night bejeweled with giant stars of every hue. The everdawn day of Faêrie had altered to soft silver-blue, a sonata in moonlight.

  Would Rhys now be sleeping in a bower of blossom somewhere in the Fair Realm? Or would he and the other children still be playing their enchanted games in the rose garden under the canopy of stars? With a rush of tenderness a picture of his face came to mind; his skin soft as a ripe peach, his eyes wide and trusting. Always he had looked to Ashalind as a mother, since their own mother, Niamh, had died giving him birth.

  The two spriggan sentries appeared and, complaining, commenced to escort the visitor away.

  ‘Garfarbelserk, Scrimscratcherer,’ remarked one, hefting his pike in a knobble-jointed hand.

  ‘Untervoderfort, Spiderstalkenhen,’ agreed the other with a nod and a scowl.

  Peri snorted and tried to kick the wights, at which they struck at him with the butts of their pikes, screeching. Ashalindas-Peasant-Lad shouldered her way between the weapons and the pony.

  ‘Stay away from my steed! Hush, hush, Peri. You must come with me.’

  His mistress took the tilhal from around her neck and tied it to his halter for protection. This time the sentries led her by a divergent route with no stairs up or down.

  Gathering force as she approached, the presence of the Faêran broke over her like a wave.

  On this occasion she was brought to a different hall, whose walls were lined with silver trees. The ceiling was high, or else there was no ceiling. Overhead gleamed the shadows and strange fires of the night sky, a fever of stars. To a wild song of fiddles the Faêran danced, clad in rustling silk or living flowers, their hair spangled with miniature lights. Many wights, both seelie and unseelie, danced among them garbed in robes of zaffre and celadon. Repulsive beings, scaled, mailed, leathered, feathered, beastlike or bizarre, mingled with the beauteous. Lace-moths drifted everywhere like bits of torn-up gauze tossed into the air. In the shadows, a pair of agates opened, watched, closed—the eyes of a great black wolf.

  When the music ceased the dancers seated themselves around the hall, laughing, conversing in their marvelous language or in the common tongue. The contemptuous sentries beckoned and Ashalind stepped forward, keeping her cloak close-wrapped around her. Instantly a hush fell on the gathering. She felt herself to be truly alien here, a gauche, awkward thing, bound to the soil, bound to ordinariness and eventual mortality. How they must despise her. From under the shadow of her hood, her eyes scanned the gathering. A frisson of excitement surprised her when she saw him. It might have been fear or it might not.

  Brighter than the rest was the soft radiance surrounding the gray-eyed lord. He stood on a dais at the far end of the hall, in the midst of a bevy of lords and ladies. Nearby, Yallery Brown sat with some ill-favoured companions of assorted shapes and sizes, some resembling cruel-faced men and others so truly goblinesque as to approximate no living creature Ashalind had ever seen.

  From somewhere to the right, a mellow voice announced her presence: ‘Elindor of Erith returns to beg audience of His Royal Highness, Morragan of Carnconnor, Crown Prince among the Faêran.’

  Whereupon Yallery Brown and his cohorts howled and hooted, prancing with glee. Ashalind waited on bended knee, her head bowed, firmly gripping Peri’s halter. Thistledown, like thousands of tiny, pale dancers on tiptoe, floated through the air.

  Morragan turned upon her cool, mocking eyes, eyes the colour of smoke. ‘Elindor!’ he said in his beautiful storm’s voice. ‘Are they in truth naming young churls after birds in Erith?’

  Her blood halted in icy veins. Could it be he saw through her disguise? Was a reply expected?

  After a moment he laughed and said:

  ‘No matter. Speak.’

  ‘Sir, I have returned with the answers to Your Royal Highness’s three questions. The first was, “How many stars are in the skies of Erith?” And I answer, that there are as many stars as there are living hairs growing on the body of my horse. See here, if it please my lord—it was necessary for me to cut some off to ensure that the total was exact. If anyone doubts this, they may count the hairs themselves and they will find that I do not lie.’

  A burst of laughter and applause greeted her words. Yallery Brown gave a shriek and his comrades yowled like cats. The Faêran lord did not smile, but Ashalind’s hopes leapt, for he said,

  ‘A clever reply, erithbunden, and amusing. So the first question is answered. What of the second? Canst thou tell me what I am thinking?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Ashalind bravely, using her own clear voice for the first time. ‘Your Royal Highness is thinking his humble petitioner is a peasant lad, Elindor of Erith. But your Royal Highness is misled. I am Ashalind na Pendran.’

  At this, in a desperate and daring gambit, she threw off her disguise. Bright locks spilled down her back. Using the discarded wimple she wiped her face clean, then stood proud
and straight before the astonished assembly, clad in her linen gown. The prince regarded her consideringly. Applause rang louder this time, and praises were shouted from all sides of the hall.

  ‘E’en so!’ some of the courtiers cried. ‘’Tis none other.’ For they knew of her, they had seen her wandering on the borders of the Realm, searching, and but for her hound Rufus, she might have been stolen years since.

  All eyes turned to the prince, but he offered not a word. Then stepped forth a lady of the Faêran, and her loveliness was a poem. Her dark hair, bound in a silver net laced with glints, reached to her ankles. Her gown was cloth-of-silver overlaid with a kirtle of green lace wrought in a pattern of leaves. Laughing, she said, ‘Ashalind, we love clever riddles and tricks—you bring us much merriment this night. We would welcome thee to dwell among us.’

  ‘The golden hair of the Talith is much to our taste,’ added another Faêran lady, smiling.

  Great wisdom was written in their beautiful faces. Ashalind wondered how such as they could traffic with unseelie things, but she recalled a passage from the lore-books;

  ‘The laws, ethics, customs, and manners of the Realm are in many ways unlike those of Erith and are strange to us.’

  ‘That,’ said Yallery Brown suddenly, pointing straight toward Ashalind, ‘is ours in any case. It was intended to be part of the city’s payment.’ With unnerving swiftness he crossed to her side, reached up, and spitefully tugged her hair. The pony’s eyes rolled and he shied nervously. Icy fire flowed down the damsel’s spine. She noted a dandelion flower, yellow as cowardice, peeping from the wight’s hideously knotted hair. It might have been growing there, rooted in his skull.

  From among the gathering, a Faêran lord spoke. Like the others of his kind, he was comelier than the comeliest of men. A gold-mounted emerald brooch clasped his mantle at the shoulder, and on his head was a velvet cap with a swathe of long spinach-green feathers trailing down to one side.

  ‘In order to find this way in to our country, thou hast spied upon our Rade from under the boughs of the ymp-tree. We of the Realm do not love spies. Other meddlers such as thee have paid the price.’

  ‘My fingers itch to tear out the eyes of this false-tongue mortal, my liege,’ said Yallery Brown, turning beseechingly to the prince.

  ‘Yet this smacks of Faêran help and advice,’ interjected another Faêran lord. He was garbed in a gaily striped doublet, parti-coloured hose, and versicolour cloak, his cap a rainbow of three horns. Ashalind thought she recognised him.

  ‘Even this clever deceiver,’ Three-Horn-Cap continued, ‘could not have come here without the aid of one of our own people—so there can be no forfeit to pay. The Erithan brats were taken because of the perfidy of her kind, those same Men who delved the green slopes of the sithean with iron, and scarred it. But she did not follow me, and thus she is not part of the fee.’

  He smiled, showing dazzling white teeth.

  ‘Yes, gentle maid,’ he added, ‘I am the Piper.’

  Of course Ashalind hated the Piper, and yet looking upon him she was forced to admit she loved him, as one must love all the Faêran, even while abhorring them at the same time.

  Said Prince Morragan, breaking his silence at last, ‘I desire no truck with mortals save for sport, and even that becometh tedious eventually.’

  ‘Never for me, my liege,’ whispered the rat-faced Yallery Brown. ‘Oh, never for me.’

  ‘She is not thine yet,’ replied his master. ‘Thus we come to the last question. If this erithbunden chooses aright, she and the others shall go free, and it shall be their loss. But if she chooses the wrong door, she and they will take the road to doom, Yallery Brown, and perhaps thou shalt be the architect of that doom or perhaps it shall be myself. Behold the Hall of Three Doors!’

  As he spoke, the dancers parted, and behold! they stood already in that chamber Ashalind had seen previously. A pathway opened among the crowd revealing not only the Door by which she had entered, but also two closed portals. The Doors of silver and oak faced each other from opposite sides of the hall, and beside each one waited a doughty, grim-faced young man, in ragged plaid and heavy leather, feet planted firmly apart, each holding a pike twined with the dripping red filaments of spirogyra. These door-wardens stared into the distance, looking neither to right nor left. Their raiment too was wet—indeed water streamed from it in droplets and rivulets to pool around their feet. Seaweed was tangled in their lank hair.

  ‘One of these Doors,’ said Yallery Brown, ‘leads to Erith. The other leads to your downfall.’ He played a little tune on a fiddle and added, ‘Think you that you and the brats be the only mortals in the Realm? Not so. For these pikemen of the Doors be Iainh and Caelinh Maghrain, twin sons of the Chieftain of the Western Isles, believed drowned with their comrades in the waters of Corrievreckan. Foolish and arrogant were they, to think they could ride the back of the finest steed in Aia. Now they have learned their lesson well, for they have served in the domain of the Each Uisge this many a long year. Lucky men are these, for their five comrades were torn apart and only their livers washed to shore. And although they look as alike as two peas in a pod they are as different as day from night, for one is forced to be an honest man, while the other never spoke a true word since my lord the Each Uisge became his master. Speak ye the truth, man?’

  The guard of the silver Door said, ‘Yea.’

  ‘And speak ye also the truth?’

  ‘Yea,’ said the guard of the oaken Door.

  ‘You see, it is as I have said,’ Yallery Brown continued. ‘And this is quite curious to us, for lying is a skill possessed only by mortals. False wench, do not think that we shall tell you which man is which!’

  A very pale, exceedingly charming fellow now came forward. He wore close-fitting green armour like the shell of a sea-creature, with a fillet of pearls on his brow and a dagged mantle of brown-green like the leaves of bull-kelp, but he moved like a horse, and despite his finery an unspeakable malevolence hung about him like a ragged shadow.

  For a brief moment the mortal damsel looked into his terrible eyes. Cold and expressionless they stared at her, as devoid of emotion or pity as fathomless water, as a drowning pool, as cold rocks and waves that relentlessly smash ships to splinters. Whatever his true shape, here was a thing of horror. She thought: I am beholding the Each Uisge himself, the Prince of Water-horses. May all that is benevolent preserve me.

  He said, ‘My servants only speak two words—yea and nay. They may never say more.’ His voice, booming like waves surging in subterranean caverns, ended in the hint of a whicker.

  Then said Prince Morragan, ‘The mortal may ask one question of one pikeman only.’

  Ashalind turned as pale as the Each Uisge and clutched at her pony for support. She had hoped for more clues than this. The wights surrounding Yallery Brown screamed with laughter and leaped about, cutting the most fantastic capers, but the Faêran lady with ankle-length hair said softly:

  ‘Ashalind, fairest, there exists a question which would reveal all to you, if only you could deduce it. We may not aid you in this, but do not despair.’

  ‘When the music stops,’ said the raven-haired Fithiach, ‘thou must needs choose.’

  The dulcet melodies began again, and a whirlpool of dancers flew around Ashalind and the pony, their feet in truth scarcely touching the floor. Time passed, but how much time she could not tell—whether it was a few moments or hours or days. There must be some question she could ask one of the guards, the answer to which would tell her with certainty which was the right Door. If she could not find it out she must choose at random and take a chance, as recklessly as tossing a coin: a chance of losing all, forever—not only for herself but for Hythe Mellyn and the children, for Rhys and their father and for Pryderi. Had she come this far only to fail?

  The music and movement distracted her cogitations. She buried her face in the pony’s ruined mane and covered her ears. In the darkness her mind raced with a thousand questions, and permu
tations of what their answers would reveal.

  It is like pondering a move in a chess game, she thought. If I ask this, then if he is the truth-teller he will say that, but if he is the liar he will say the other, and how should that help me in the end?

  With a flash of inspiration she lifted her head. She saw that amid all the motion one tall figure stood and looked down at her and knew the triumph in her eyes.

  ‘Thou hast another choice, Ashalind Elindor,’ said Prince Morragan softly. ‘To go out by neither Door. I have no love for mortals and would not be grieved if thy race all should perish, but thou’rt passing fair among mortals, and faithful, and acute. Bide here now, and I swear no harm shall come to thee under my protection.’

  Beneath straight eyebrows, the smoke-gray eyes were keen and searching. Strands of black-blue hair wafted across his arresting features. This Faêran was indeed comely beyond the dreams of mortals, and he possessed terrible power. The Longing for the Realm pained Ashalind like a wound. He spoke again, more softly than ever:

  ‘I can take thee through fire as through castles of glass. I can take thee through water as through air, and into the sky as through water, untrammeled by saddle or steed or sildron. Flight thou shalt have, and more. Thou hast never known the true wonder of the favour of the Faêran.’

  For moments the damsel struggled, pinned by the piercing blade of his gaze, and then her pony blew on her neck and nuzzled her shoulder. At the sudden warmth of his hay-scented breath, she sighed and lowered her eyes.

  ‘Sir, I must take the children home.’

  Instantly the gray eyes blazed with a bleak and cold flame. The prince turned away, his cloak flaring, sweeping a shadowy swathe through the air.

  The music stopped. The dancers stood still.

  ‘Now choose!’ cried the Piper.

  Ashalind went to the guard at the oaken Door and asked her question. He replied,

  ‘Nay.’

  And she said, ‘Then I choose your Door.’