The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  The late sun was turning towards dusk and mauve vapours coagulated in the still air. The distant hills took on shades of lilac and purple. Clouds kissed their tops. A small owl out hunting early was perched in the fork of a silver birch looking for mice and shrews in the long grass. It flew away as the riders disturbed it.

  Tortuously the path began to wind, ascending a long fell-side out of the dales. Here the trees crouched, stunted. Higher up, they disappeared altogether. Wildflowers were overtaken by thick, tufted grasses. Swift, wild gills tumbled recklessly down narrow sluices.

  By evenfall they had almost reached the top of Mallorstang Edge on the outer marches of Lallillir. Rising from the hill’s brow, a twisted tree leaned stark against an arch of pale cloud flaring across deepening twilight. Beneath its roots a couple of shallow cave-openings bored into the rock face, overhung with ivy and ferns. Nearby, white-flowered enchanter’s nightshade sprang in the grasses. A black fox loped past and uttered its rusty bark, so unlike a dog’s, so strange it seemed more like the cry the moon would make, had it a voice.

  There they halted to rest, kindling their fire just inside one of the caves in case it rained. They sat around its glassy blaze and ate some of their provisions: bannocks and dried fish, cheese, salty dulse and red carrageen from the firth. The treble pip of an insect chipped away at the upper edges of hearing. Caitri idly piped a few notes on Viviana’s whistle of white dead-nettle, until Arrowsmith hushed her with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Soft,’ he advised. ‘Wights may be moving up there on the edge-top, on the high land above the rising of the rills.’

  The horses at their pickets seemed to sense the whiff of danger. They pricked up their ears but remained quiet. Only an occasional shuffling in the grasses indicated their presence.

  Overhead, the sky deepened. The stars appeared, so huge and close that Tahquil fancied she might reach out and touch them. Disrupted from its swarm by a passing star, a frozen nucleus of ice in a coma of nebulous gases hurtled along its sky track. Pushed by the sun’s wind the comet’s tail streamed out a hundred million miles long.

  ‘Turn back,’ said Arrowsmith.

  Perhaps he said it to the comet. If so, futilely.

  Tahquil shook her head.

  ‘A war is brewing,’ she said. ‘I can stop it.’

  She thought he might laugh, but he did not. He merely looked down at his elbows, which rested on his knees.

  ‘A young lad was lost out towards Mallorstang not two weeks ago,’ he said. ‘Seven rode out, six returned. Lallillir is a mighty perilous land. You will not survive there without aid, clever though you are, possessed of a ring of gramarye though you may be. You would not have made it as far as you have, except that many wights have departed from hereabouts and vanished eastwards. For good or ill, fewer remain here now than ever in living memory.’

  Said Tahquil, ‘As you have suspected, we make our journey alone. The ring I wear is protection enough.’

  Arrowsmith stilled then, suddenly; every line of his body drawn taut.

  Without glancing around he took the last bannock from the stone on which it had been warming beside the fire, and placed it beyond the circle of light. Then he resumed his position. Taking their cue from him, Tahquil and her companions continued as though nothing were afoot, though they strained their senses for signs of peril.

  ‘Not enough,’ Arrowsmith went on, ‘for you were all tired and hungry and ragged when you came to Appleton Thorn. Why so unguarded on an enterprise which you say is of gravest importance to every kingdom?’

  ‘For secrecy.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Galan,’ Tahquil said, ‘only three people know the truth—myself and these two who accompany me. Too many know already. The knowledge in itself may be dangerous to the bearer of it.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Think you that I cannot withstand a peril flouted by three girls? Very well, if you will not tell me, so be it. I will accompany you nonetheless. In Lallillir you will be in need of more than mortal strength.’

  ‘Aye, and that is the truth,’ hooted a voice. ‘That is the truth indeed, Galan Siune’s son.’

  Beyond the globe of firelight the speaker propped himself against the twisted tree, flicking bannock crumbs from his hairy flanks. His deft hooves balanced on roots which were tangled like skeins of hair, caging the ground with an intricate, interlocking design like the embellished borders of manuscripts.

  ‘Urisk,’ said Arrowsmith, ‘have you come back, then?’

  ‘Och,’ said the urisk drily. ‘Ye mun be dreaming.’

  ‘A welcome sight you are, sir,’ chimed Viviana.

  ‘Friend urisk!’ exclaimed Caitri.

  ‘Will you sit with us?’ Tahquil asked. ‘By the fire?’

  ‘Dinnae mind if I do.’

  Graciously the wight squatted down on his haunches. The ruddy glow played across his features: the pointed ears, the snub nose, the slanted eyes with vertical slits of pupils narrowing in the firelight. Neat, he looked, and dignified—artistic in the way that an agile woodland creature or a gnarled, wind-wrung tree is a work of art. It seemed he remained part of the landscape against which their group huddled. Although he was inside the circle of light, he belonged outside it.

  ‘You have been long away,’ said Arrowsmith, and somehow the listeners understood that he was speaking of years, not days.

  ‘Aye. Syne the sons o’ the Arbalisters left their hame on the Churrachan and sailed across the Great Salt where sich as I couldnae follow.’

  ‘The old cot is naught but broken stones now,’ said Arrowsmith, ‘and bindweed clambers over the remains of the walls.’

  ‘The hame I used tae keep fine for them, and all,’ the urisk replied regretfully. ‘Still, that’s the way o’t. The forest reaches oot, the village dwindles, folk take their leave.’

  ‘You would have been welcome at any house in Appleton Thorn.’

  ‘Now dinna be tellin’ me ye don’t understand the way of it, Galan Siune’s son,’ chided the wight. ‘’Tis the place that’s the thing. The Churrachan’s my ain stream o’ water. ‘’Tis in me bluid and ’tis mighty hard tae leave it.’

  ‘But you cannot cross it, can you?’ asked Caitri. ‘A running stream? How did you reach this side?’

  ‘Lassie, there be a mindful o’ matters ye ken nowt of, I see!’ chuckled the urisk. ‘There be more than one way tae get tae t’ither side o’ a running water. I went around by the springhead, up where the stream rises out o’ the hills. The mightiest barrier agin our crossing be the south-running water. Churrachan flows tae the west, otherwise Siune’s son wouldnae be here the noo. Saw ye how his horse fashed itsel’ against crossing the Grassrill, and baulked at goin’ over the Churrachan Bridge? It felt the current flowin’ aslant its rider. But there be an affinity there too, with the water, and the bluid that’s half mortal is insensitive. So you ride over it, Siune’s son, but ye feel it sorely, do ye no’?’

  ‘’Tis naught,’ said Arrowsmith curtly.

  ‘Oh aye, ’tis naught by comparison tae Lallillir,’ said the urisk. ‘Lallillir be the Land of Running Waters.’

  ‘What can you tell us of this land, this Lallilir that lies ahead of us?’ asked Tahquil.

  ‘Much,’ said the urisk, and he proceeded to do so.

  He told them about the four long ridges running parallel, south to north. Swarth Fell, the highest, bordered the coast and attracted rain to the three sharp valleys: the Vales of Wood, Water and Stone. Elfinwoodsdale was the westernmost, Blackwatervale lay in the centre, and to the east delved Ravenstonedale. The early tributaries of the river Elfinwater rose on Mallorstang Ridge and rushed away down between Swarth Fell and Bleak Fell, until at the northern marches of Lallillir the river turned west through the last foothills of Swarth Fell and ran to the sea. The middle waterway, the Blackwater, began in the same heights and was fed by the thousands of springs on the eastern side of Bleak Fell and the western slopes of Wold Fell. Where Bleak Fell sank in the north, th
e Blackwater curved to meet the Elfinwater on its journey oceanwards and at that point the names of both the rivers changed, for though mighty, they became but feudatories to the thundering Ravenswater gushing down from the east.

  The Ravenswater flowed furthest inland. Its valley clove between Wold Fell and Scarrow Fell. Like its siblings it received tribute from the myriad brooks, streams, waterfalls and fountains gushing from the hillsides and cliffs. The entire rain-drenched landscape of Lallillir was threaded with silver and electrum and faceted with sheets of platinum where water curtained down great rock shields. It was diamonded with the brilliant necklaces of sudden jets spurting from subterranean chambers. Bleak and gaunt were the heights of the Fells, but the vales were rich with ferns, thick with moss-crusted trees dripping with epiphytes, hung with permanent rainbows in a crystal mist.

  Wights of water haunted Lallillir, but it was a land to dwell in for aeons, not to roam, for they could not leave their rivers or streams for long without fading. And wights of land could not traverse Lallillir’s surging currents, the flowing waters inimical to the eldritch of their gramarye. They must keep to the ridge tops, to the roofs of the fells, and so they did. Yet, while it was possible to reach the fell-tops from the south without crossing running water, it was also impossible to leave them in the north without crossing the Ravenswater—except in the eastern foothills of Scarrow Fell. For this reason, wights must traverse Lallillir along the top of Scarrow Fell. Ever since the land was formed, they had done so. The path they travelled came to be known as Wight’s Way.

  ‘No mortal walks Wight’s Way and survives,’ said the urisk sombrely. ‘Ye canna go that way. Ye mun go by the western slopes o’ Wold Fell, in the upper reaches o’ Blackwatervale. ’Tis directly to the north o’ us noo, if ye could but see it o’er the top o’ Mallorstang. Ye’ll hae many’s the brook tae cross, but each one shall put a fence atween ye and whatever’s got on yer tracks.’

  ‘Wights might still come upon us from the fell-top above,’ objected Viviana.

  ‘The trick be tae get between a stream’s fork, then. If any should lay siege tae ye, then move downhill till ye’ve crossed some more water and put yerselves beyond reach. But mind, the further down ye go towards the brae’s floor, the broader the streams, the swifter, the harder tae ford.’

  ‘And what shall we do,’ said Tahquil, ‘when we come to valley’s end, with the Ravenswater turning its elbow to bar our path? For surely a spate so immense might not be forded.’

  ‘Black Bridge,’ put in Arrowsmith. ‘Black Bridge spans the Ravenswater at that point. ’Tis the only bridge across it, since the old Wynch Bridge fell into the torrent downstream. The Wynch used to be part of the King’s High Way, but in these regions that road has fallen into disrepair.’

  ‘One bridge only?’ said Tahquil. ‘I mislike this. One bridge is dangerous, for, knowing that we have no choice but to cross it, that is where our enemies would look for us, and perhaps lay ambush.’

  ‘In sooth,’ said Arrowsmith. ‘And that is why you need a man’s strong arm—to smite those enemies.’

  ‘Sealman!’ the urisk said sharply, his ears flattened to his curly hair. ’Tis the salt water that loves ye, not the fresh! These fells and vales sit well above the high tide mark! How far d’ye think ye’ll get in Lallillir before the currents pull the marrow out o’ ye and weaken ye like a babe? Then ye’ll be naught but a burden to these lasses.’

  ‘Who’s to go with them then?’ Arrowsmith snapped. ‘You? You’d be worse off than I, goatfellow. You cannot even cross the Churrachan. Besides, you know nothing more than farming and housekeeping. You are no fighter.’

  ‘No fighter, aye, but is it a fighter that’s needed? ’Tis cunning that’s needed, and knowledge and maybe gramarye tae boot, if mortals are tae conquer Lallillir.’

  ‘What is your suggestion, urisk?’ asked Tahquil.

  Flames swayed like Autumn forests, bronze and cinnabar in the urisk’s peculiar eyes.

  ‘I have none.’

  Disappointment washed over the damsel. She felt at a loss.

  Viviana broke in unexpectedly, ‘Mistress, do you not recall the article which Dain Pennyrigg found in his saddlebags when we returned from the Stormriders’ Tower to the City?’

  Tahquil shook her head, wrinkling her brows in puzzlement.

  ‘The feather of the swan, mistress,’ Viviana went on. ‘You said it was a powerful talisman. Mayhap it will prove useful now.’ She gazed at Tahqil with optimistic expectancy.

  Slowly Tahquil nodded, as the possibilities sank in. ‘Gramercie, Via!’ she murmured. ‘A bright hope indeed!’

  ‘If ye have a Summoner on ye,’ the wight said eagerly, ‘use it.’

  Tahquil drew out the tattered aulmoniere, one of the few keepsakes she had salvaged from Tamhania. Within, the black feather nestled beside the vial of nathrach deirge. It looked even more dilapidated, bedraggled and bent than ever. Indeed, events had battered it into such insignificance that she had overlooked its very existence.

  ‘Och, ’tis braw and blythe, true!’ exclaimed the urisk upon beholding the plume. ‘There’s more than one way tae cross running water! Use it, lass!’

  ‘Right now?’ Tahquil asked. Arrowsmith smiled. The urisk inclined his curly head in assent. ‘How?’ she inquired.

  ‘Give it your message,’ Arrowsmith answered. ‘Cast it high.’

  Tahquil stood up. Recalling the words Maeve One-Eye had told her, she whispered to the swan’s feather, ‘Come, Whithiue. Aid us.’

  Lifting her arm she flicked the pinion up, expecting it to drift down immediately in the windless night. A cold-blooded draught entered from nowhere, snatched it and twirled it away out of sight. The gust swirled Tahquil’s cinnamon-dyed hair, rushing the tresses up around her face in a flare of singed fleece.

  ‘And now?’ she asked.

  ‘Wait.’

  That night the three mortals lay down to sleep with the tension of excitement stretched like a cord between them. Their two self-appointed guardians did not close their eyes.

  Towards uhta she came, in those ephemeral predawn moments on the borders of day and night when the world swings around and odd things may easily occur. They knew her first by a clap of wings and a rush of air. Presently a feminine manifestation emerged out of grey dewdrop stillness, forming as though she gathered shape to herself from the sky, the clouds, the last fading star. A startlingly scarlet band glimmered like a crescent of roses across her brow. The black cloak of feathers dripped from delicate shoulders to her bare feet. Coral-red bangles encircled the narrow ankles, matching the poppy-petal nails on the tips of her webbed toes. Like a wondrous girl she appeared, yet imbued with an inhuman wildness and a strangeness that evoked glimmering meres glimpsed through rising mist. Afar off she stood on the grass—unspeaking, remote.

  Tahquil was already awake, smudge-faced and gloved to conceal identifying features.

  ‘I called you,’ she said. ‘I need your help.’

  The swanmaiden uttered a soft, hissing whistle. Stirring restively, the horses whickered.

  The urisk trotted over to the wight-girl. He spoke in a low, soothing undertone, then returned to Tahquil’s side.

  ‘I hae informed her of your need,’ he fluted. ‘She’ll aid ye in your journey across Lallillir. She’ll see ye safe—gin ’tis possible—tae Black Bridge, nae further. She’d nae do that much, were it no’ tae honour the geas o’ the feather.’

  ‘I see,’ said Tahquil. The swanmaiden’s chill gaze struck through her like a sharpened icicle, or like a quill pen writing aversion on the air in frozen characters.

  ‘Tell her she must help us get across the river to Cinnarine, at the least, at the very least.’

  The two wights conversed again.

  ‘Ye hold the feather. She must obey ye tae the word,’ said the urisk. ‘But the swans dinnae favour mortalkind—they opine ye’re all thieves and hunters.’

  ‘And not far from the truth, I suppose,’ said Tahquil.
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  ‘The sun’s about to lift his head,’ said the urisk. ‘I’ll toddle along, and swans must fly. As ye make your journey she’ll patrol the skies. She’ll come down and tell ye if peril approaches. She’ll point out the best ways to go. Mind, she doesnae love shifting tae her woman’s form under the sun’s eye—’tis not the wont o’ her folk. She mun do it, if she be forced tae speak wi’ ye, but she’ll nae stay in that shape for lang.’

  Already the swanmaiden’s pale face was turning away, hidden by the long fall of ebony hair. Her slender form glided out of sight behind a rocky outcrop. A swan flew up with an elegant downsweep of wide wings, the serpentine neck outstretched, the red feet tucked up underneath. Wings beat hard, like sail canvas snatching at the wind. Soon she was no more than a pinprick on the sky.

  The sun opened its eye over Scarrow Fell.

  The paling of the dawn revealed a lack of urisks. In the little caves beneath the tree roots, Viviana and Caitri slept with their arms loosely woven about each other, their peaceful faces as soft and guileless as two pastel-hued peaches. Tahquil sat beside the cold embers of the fire, her hands clasped about her knees. Adrift in some sorrowful reverie, she gazed sightlessly at the ashes. The enchanter’s nightshade had closed its blooms. It hung its many-hooded heads, eschewing the day. Only Arrowsmith stood under the twisted tree that canted its limbs over the rocks and the dew-limned ferns.

  As so often, he looked to the west. A mauve breeze blew up over a powdered violet horizon, bearing with it the spine-raking whistles, the descending, burred notes and boy’s-throat calls of magpies. Arrowsmith turned his silver-grey head. He directed at Tahquil-Ashalind a gaze of burning intensity.

  That was all.

  Up and over Mallorstang Edge the travellers climbed that morning, leading their horses. At the summit a wide vista lay spread above and below them.