The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘So be it,’ said Tahquil, smiling wryly at the courtier’s determination. ‘During my journeys in the wilderness I too have been taught somewhat of the art of rope-descent. Caitri, watch and learn. Viviana, should you spy danger, shout loudly and we will try to haul you up, although I fear there’s not much leverage on this thin shelf.’

  Viviana took the rope in both hands. Cordage made from the silk-smooth beards of autarken blossom did not burn the skin. She let it slip slowly through her fists. Nervously she set her boots against the trunk, gritted her teeth and leaned back with a display of confidence she scarcely recognised in herself. Pushing from the ball of her foot she walked backwards down the tree into the dreariness of everdusk. Her shoulders felt almost wrenched from their sockets. Her tensed forearms suffered a dull, sustained pain as though bruised; they trembled and threatened to lose all sensation, all power. At the last they betrayed her. The rope shot skywards through her fingers and she fell into a great drift of leaves which sprayed up like water.

  Scanning the depths, her companions could see nothing.

  ‘I am hale!’ Viviana called, spitting out a leaf. ‘Haul away!’

  Tahquil and Caitri pulled up the rope. It occurred to Viviana that the bank of dead leaves in which she was sitting might be home to things with which she would prefer to avoid close contact. Hastily she waded out of it, thigh-deep. Tahquil came swinging down, then Caitri. By the leaf-ring’s glow they looked at each other.

  ‘Should we simply leave the rope dangling?’ wondered Tahquil. ‘Fain would I withhold from ground-dwellers access to the highroads of the Folk of the Trees.’

  They tried tossing the rope’s end back up to its hook, to no avail.

  ‘We beg pardon,’ Tahquil called softly skywards. ‘We cannot close your gate.’ Mindful of not thanking their benefactors in case, like wights, they took offence, she added, ‘Your kindness is gratefully acknowledged. May your trees be forever fruitful.’

  From the jade demi-dusk came no answer.

  ‘Let us move on,’ said Tahquil, shaking leaves from her hair. ‘We can do no more, and must flee before the coming of night.’

  They set off. Thick shadows were fastened like webs in the hollows between the ancient trees. All that could be seen was the light of the leaf-ring shining on their three faces. The companions could not know where they were going—only intuition guided them, a sense that they should continue to progress in the direction they had been shown by the Tree-Dwellers.

  Now that they were down on the ground their sense of unease quickly turned to dread. All around, the pit of Khazathdaur festered with unclean things. The whispers of the mortals fell dead on the dank compost underfoot. As they blundered forward their feet dragged as though weighted with stones, and they became certain some sightless horror came in pursuit, reaching out to seize them.

  Viviana held the chatelaine fast, folded in her cloak, so that it would not clash and ring. Their boots sank to the ankles in the top layers of leaves. Underneath, decomposed mold had compacted to form a springy firmness. They waded through piles and mounds built up by the steady sibilant showers cascading gently from a canopy now so far above it was lost to view. Tiny spores of apprehension came clinging over them and took root and grew into a clammy terror which burdened their limbs until it seemed they could no longer go forward but must sink down on the forest floor, doomed to perish in the damning weald.

  Then from afar, a call. It was the winding of a horn.

  At once, as though at a signal, the air stirred. A light breeze had entered the forest. Down this new airstream it came again—the long, clear note that seemed to come sweeping over open hills under wide skies.

  A third time it sounded. The travellers pushed on with renewed hope and vigour.

  At last, grey light filtered through a thinning of the trees. Undergrowth sprouted in the wider spaces between the boles. Harpoons of red-gold light pierced the leaf canopy and strayed down to the murky floors, here and there picking out a quill of copper, a nib of russet, a sickle of mellow gold among the fallen leaves. Clumps of juniper bushes and crepe myrtle added a dense dark green. The travellers’ morale lifted at the thought of reaching the outskirts of Khazathdaur, of being able to look up and see the clear sky again and feel the wind combing their hair. Faster went they, eagerly. Now through the trees streamed the long, amber light of sunfall. Joyousness seized them—they had almost made it to the far edge of the forest!

  Tahquil’s hand flew up. A shock went through the ring, and a ‘ping!’ as though a sharp blow had struck it. Almost simultaneously, Viviana jumped sideways with a shouted exclamation, losing her grip on the implements hanging from her belt.

  ‘Something hit me! It hit my knapsack!’

  An agitation whipped the bushes all around. Like vengeful wasps, invisible projectiles shrilled through the air. Puffs and eddies of leaves showed where they were hitting the ground. Disturbing the undergrowth, red caps like tall mushrooms poked up. Beneath them grimaced the sly faces of tiny archers.

  The travellers bolted. Sharp points whizzed past their ears. Unseen darts struck their thick cloaks, and deflected off Tahquil’s ring. One ricocheted off Caitri’s belt and another off Viviana’s chatelaine. The soft mulch hampered their running feet like sludge, weighed down their boots, stuck to their leggings. It seemed certain, after all, that they would never get out of Khazathdaur, when abruptly the tree stems diverged and fell back on either side. They burst forth into the open.

  Caitri uttered a sharp cry and fell sprawling.

  ‘Get up! Come!’ her companions urged, endeavouring to drag her to her feet. Ælf-shot whistled all around. Caitri writhed on the ground, clutching her shin. Tahquil threw off her pack, heedless of scattering foodstuffs. She hoisted the little girl under the armpits and dragged her away. Viviana snatched the knapsack and followed, using both packs as a shield against the darts that zoomed out of the forest.

  Down a grassy slope they struggled. Caitri now hung limp in Tahquil’s arms, a dead weight. The shooting decreased as the targets drew out of range, and finally, when for the space of about fifty yards there had been no more thumps of eldritch arrows hitting bundles, Tahquil heard Viviana cry, ‘Hola! The attack is over. Stop, so that I may help you.’

  Beside dense low clusters of yellow-flowered gorse Tahquil gently laid Caitri down on the grey-green grass and leaned over her.

  ‘She has taken a stroke!’ wailed Viviana. ‘She will be paralysed!’

  ‘Cait, can you hear me?’ Tahquil said tenderly.

  Caitri’s eyelids fluttered open. Her face was grey and drawn.

  ‘I am hale,’ she whispered thickly. She tried to rise, but collapsed with a groan. ‘There is no feeling in my leg, my arm …’

  ‘Bide,’ said Tahquil. ‘We shall lift and bear you.’

  She did not mention that one side of the little girl’s face was dragged down and half her mouth remained slack when she spoke. The child looked like a doll fashioned half of porcelain and half of rags, limp down one side. Tahquil knew they must bear her away from the dangers of the forest. But where could they go?

  Against the slanting, nasturtium-tinted rays of the westering sun Tahquil stood, shading her eyes with her hand. A light, fresh breeze raced across the grassy hillside. Rank upon rank of silvery grass blades bent their backs to it in waves tumbling down to a wide vista below.

  Tahquil looked to the north. From her feet the land ran down in a gentle slope towards a long, narrow inlet. Here, the sea sliced into the land from miles away on the western coast, cutting a deep valley filled with still waters the colour of steel. Half tinged gold in the fallow afternoon, clean flinty rock-cliffs fell steep and stark from the heights into the firth. Seabirds glided on outstretched wings, in the shape of margran, the M-rune. Low hills rose to the east and west and also across the firth to the north. At the head of the inlet the land rose gently to a marshy vale watered by rills which fed a fast-flowing brook chattering down out of the hills to the ocean.<
br />
  Near at hand, towards this vale, the countryside was chequered with little verdant meadows. They were bordered by blossoming hawthorn hedges, screened by sallows and alders. Clotted with the flowers of late Spring were they, and so lush that already the grass stood high. Down along the inlet’s edge a few thatched roofs peeped from dark-smudged lines of trees. Smoke issued from chimneys like wisps of wool, and were teased out by the breeze.

  ‘A village,’ croaked Tahquil, hoarse with relief. ‘An abode of Men in the wilderness. We must go and knock at their doors—I’ll warrant they have a healer—a carlin or a dyn-cynnil.’ She glanced back and up at the tall, sinister eaves of the forest from whose dominions they had so narrowly escaped. The trees leaned forward.

  ‘Via, we must cross our hands over and grasp each other’s wrists, in this manner, to form a seat. We must hold Caitri’s poor arms about our shoulders and thus we may bear her down the hill.’

  Just then the sun sank into the dyed ocean far beyond the hills and a deep, throaty voice said, ‘Stay!’

  The admonition issued from a large, hairy creature that looked like an oversized bruney. About five feet tall he was dressed raggedly, like a household wight, but deep-chested and massive across the shoulders. His superb physique indicated enormous strength.

  ‘Run!’ contradicted Viviana. Starting forward she began to drag Caitri along the ground, a helpless burden. Without appearing to move, the wight barred their path.

  ‘They call me seelie,’ he said. ‘Down by Ishkiliath, they do. I can cure the ælf-stroke, I can. Give me the girl.’ He grinned a gaping, thick-lipped grin.

  ‘Set her down, Via,’ said Tahquil, deliberately avoiding the use of her friend’s full name. She did not take her eyes from the wight as Viviana lowered Caitri to the grass.

  To him she said, ‘Can you in truth do as you say?’

  ‘Aye, that I can.’

  ‘Do not let him touch her,’ hissed Viviana.

  Tahquil hesitated. ‘What else do they call you, down there in the village?’

  The uncouth fellow bowed.

  ‘Finoderee at your service, miss. I plough, I sow, I reap, I mow. I herd cattle and sheep, I thresh and rake and carry, I build stacks. I can clear a daymath in an hour and want nothing better than a crockful of bithag afterwards. I work all night, but at the top of Glen Rushen, above the curraghs, that’s where I curl me up in my hiding place each day. I can heal a weal and cure an ill too, and I can cure this mortal girl.’

  ‘Well, sir, you give a thorough account of yourself and no mistake,’ said Tahquil guardedly. ‘A strong fellow I see you be, with a kindly feeling towards humanity. If I let you cure her, what will you ask in return for your pains?’

  Finoderee’s chunky jaw dropped open, his eyes widened in shock.

  ‘Alas, poor Finoderee, don’t send him away! He only wants to help!’

  ‘No reward, then,’ said Tahquil quickly, alarmed at his unpredictable distress. ‘Howbeit, if you can cure her and not harm her in the process …’

  ‘I’d like a word wi’ ye if I may, lassie,’ politely said the urisk, who was sitting beneath a gorse bush. Tahquil, taken aback at the unexpected appearance of their friend, approached him while Viviana stood guard over Caitri, glaring at Finoderee, who was shuffling his huge, hairy feet in the grass.

  ‘Och, the cure is simple,’ murmured the urisk confidentially. ‘Ye mun find the piece o’ ælf-shot that struck the lassie and gie it her, and she’ll jump up as sonsie as ever. They dinnae lodge in the flesh, those bits o’ shot. It’ll be lying aboot somewhere. Dinnae let Finoderee find it first—that is my rede. He cured Dan Broome’s red cow all reet but carried it off afterwards.

  ‘But yon linkin’ birkie’s mightier in thew than in brain, ye ken? He will do your biding gin he is able, and a mollymawk the likes o’ he might be easily gulled.’

  Tahquil nodded gratefully to the urisk.

  ‘Finoderee,’ she said clearly, ‘we do need your help. Please take this,’ she unhooked the silver spike-leaf strainer from Viviana’s chatelaine while its owner spluttered indignantly, ‘and fill it with water from that stream and bring it back.’

  Energetically, Finoderee loped off across the hillside with the chatelette in his hand.

  ‘My silver sieve!’

  ‘Quickly, Viviana—we must find the arrowhead that gave Caitri the stroke.’

  Backtracking up the hill, they crawled about on the long tussocks. The urisk joined the search.

  ‘What should it look like?’ asked Tahquil, on all fours, fossicking among the turf.

  ‘Bother, I cannot see anything anyway, ’tis too dark,’ said Viviana. ‘And you’ve sent that Finoderee fellow on a fool’s errand. When he realises the task is impossible he will return in wrath!’

  ‘Not he,’ rejoined the urisk. ‘T’ only thing that gets him of a pother is criticism of his wark. If that happens ye must look to yourself, for he can be spiteful. If ye’ve put him tae summat he can no’ do then it can be no’ criticised, eh?’

  ‘Here’s something,’ said Viviana. ‘Ouch, ’tis a gorse prickle. Nay, I have it, I think!’ She held up a triangular shard of flint, its edges dighted as thin and sharp as any metal blade.

  ‘Weel done,’ approved the urisk. Viviana ran down the slope and handed her find to Caitri, who received it in her sound hand and touched it to her paralysed leg. Hope changed to despair on her face and a dewdrop tear squeezed from the corner of her eye, catching mercurial reflections of the first stars.

  ‘Tith no uthe,’ she lisped.

  ‘Dinnae be fashed,’ said the urisk encouragingly. ‘We shall just luik wi’ a stronger e’e—that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘You have night vision,’ Tahquil said to him, ‘have you not?’

  ‘Aye, but I cannae see through thick tuffets o’ bent. I’m no’ of Faêran bluid, ye ken!’

  ‘That nuggety wight will be coming back any moment now,’ wailed Viviana, ‘and if he finds the right flint he shall carry off Caitri. If nobody finds it, Caitri shall be maimed for life!’

  Scrabbling around, the urisk came up with a handful of arrowheads. He galloped to the side of the prostrate patient.

  ‘Here ye go, lassie!’

  Caitri tried them all, again and again, to no effect.

  ‘I think I could hop down the hill, if I might lean on thomeone,’ she said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Tahquil. ‘The object must be hereabouts, somewhere.’

  She gave Caitri a sip of nathrach deirge, and in doing so touched her left hand to Caitri’s side. A pressure exerted itself on the leaf-ring. Walking up the slope, Tahquil let the pressure direct her hand, into the dry, soughing grass stems. Down among their roots her fingers met a fragment, hard and cold.

  ‘I have found another.’ she said. She placed it in Caitri’s hand.

  No moon showed on the horizon on this the last-but-one day of the month and also of Spring. From the curraghs at the head of the valley, nocturnal marsh birds hooted. More stars came out, scattering their reflections like flaws over the glassy waters of the firth below. The leaves at the eaves of Khazathdaur rustled and the trees soared, uninviting, black against the stars.

  ‘The forest wakens,’ softly said the urisk.

  Tahquil was watching Caitri intently. The little girl smiled. She stood up.

  ‘It was the one,’ she said, opening her fist to show them the piece of ælf-shot. ‘Oh—it has crumbled to sand!’

  ‘All tae the good,’ said the urisk briskly. ‘It can harm naebody else.’

  Viviana laughed with relief. She and Tahquil embraced Caitri.

  ‘Feater advice was never given,’ said Tahquil tactfully to the urisk, wanting to thank him but bearing in mind that he might be insulted by thanks, as wights apparently were.

  ‘You came in goodly time, but how came you here?’ Caitri asked the little goat-man.

  ‘I hae no head for heights. I came along byways through the forest,’ he hooted. ‘I have wandered it
lang enow that I ken it weel. Howsoever, the lands of Ishkiliath are my real hame, or they were once.’

  ‘And those who dwell in the village down there—would they be kind to three wayfarers?’

  ‘Mortal strangers hardly ever come tae Appleton Thorn by land. The only foreigners they meet are sailors coming by boat, up frae the sea. The villagers will squint at ye sideways but most o’ them be reasonable sorts of folk.’

  A couple of lights stippled the night, down amongst the lines of trees along the cliffs.

  ‘Now,’ continued the urisk, ‘get along wi’ ye. Ye’re standing on the banks o’ Creech Hill and a bullbeggar haunts here sometimes. Besides, ye’re still on the borders o’ Arda Musgarh Dubh and its tall population has lang roots.’

  ‘Yet its small archers are bad shots,’ said Viviana. ‘Fortunately.’

  Tahquil wondered about the village. Should I walk down there amongst humankind? Will there be spies sent by Prince Morragan, to recognise and betray me? Few wights dwell within human settlements—mainly domestic solitaries, usually seelie and untravelled, for they do not willingly stray from their Places. I might be safer in that village than anywhere, and yet …

  At their backs, the black curtain of the ancient forest stood silent, like an unvoiced spell. The helpful Fenodoree remained a small blob in the starlight, still kneeling beside the stream. His tuneless singing wafted across the hillside:

  ‘If ye call me imp or elf

  I rede ye look well to yourself.

  If ye call me fary,

  I’ll bait ye long and weary.

  If good neighbour ye call me,

  Then good neighbour I will be,

  But if ye call me seelie wight

  I’ll be your friend both day and night.’

  The three travellers picked up their belongings. The night wind plucked at their hair and the corners of their garments. Now four, they strode down the hill towards Appleton Thorn on the high cliffs of the Grey Glass Firth, and the slender grasses sighed at their passing.