The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘Your warning is well received. I presume by “Swarth Force” you mean “Black Force”,’ said Tahquil coolly. ‘Yet you did not warn us earlier of the approach of wood-goblins.’

  ‘Ho-iss!’ The bird-girl raised her narrow arms, the feather cloak fanning from them in jagged folds like wings. ‘Shift-swan slave hoped wingless ones were wiser.’

  ‘In unfamiliar waters even fowl queens may become ensnared,’ said Tahquil, unable to resist a hint of sarcasm. ‘Warn us of everything. Do not fail us another time.’

  ‘Hearken,’ hissed the swanmaiden, leaning one degree closer. ‘Sweet-speaking handsome one woos where sprigs hang heavy with fruit. Fair face, fair words, sinister intent. She who falls for shadows shall soon weave her shroud.’

  ‘You speak of dangers in Cinnarine, which lies far ahead, if we ever reach it. But more immediately, what awaits us in Lallillir?’

  ‘Water wights haunt shores of Swarth Force—seelie, harmless. Fair or foul, sweet wench of shining hair or wizened hag, slender, well-favoured stalwart or strange, hairy fellow. Speak well. Wet wights wish for fire’s heat. Show hospitality. Say “welcome”.’

  ‘Gruagachs? You speak of gruagachs?’

  ‘Sooth,’ said the swanmaiden, or perhaps it was the wind that spoke, for she was no longer there.

  Out of sight to the west, far beyond Swarth Fell and Bleak Fell, several thousand tons of water approached rapidly. High above the sea they rolled, driven by powerful atmospheric pressures. Part of the ocean had once again risen, distilled, into the welkin; another quarter-turn of the wheel that forever rotated, pumping the pure and colourless heart’s blood of Aia.

  On the fell-sides of Lallillir a poignant wail drew itself out like spun flax and wound itself on night’s spindle—an eldritch storm-harbinger’s alert. The moon like a thin smile stretched itself behind the imminence of rain and was intermittently obscured. Sporadically moonless and starless, the night concealed stumbling blocks, rude fountains and other obstacles. The three who endeavoured to hasten downhill on the southern shore of Black Force had only the tilt of the land to guide them, and brief glimmers of nocturnal radiance, and the shouting waters and a sense of the cold stream-bed at their right hands, steep deep, rugged as broken teeth. Soon this wicked, chuckling, innocent gush would be fed from the skies. The fell-tops, the fell-sides would deliver to it the excess of the saturated air’s bounty in long strands, in shallow blowing sheets, in beaded chains and spatters of glassy globules mirroring the night. Then, Black Force would transform. A brimming, thundering engine, it would grow mighty enough to bruise the bones of Erith, to break trees, to crush those who dared to step across the stones strewn across its terminus.

  Before then, would-be traversers must reach the crossing place.

  Down alongside Black Force they clambered in a hurry. Fallen logs lay across their way, bright with dinner plates of orange fungus. Here, tiny siofra frolicked. The wights themselves were reminiscent of red-capped mushrooms. They swaggered, slyly peeping and snickering—until Viviana, in a temper, cast a stone at them and they seemed to go up in smoke, leaving only a hollow, heartless emptiness of roaring water that was somehow worse than the petty harassment, and accompanied by the awareness of being studied by antipathetic eyes.

  Again, clouds shrouded the stars.

  Slipping, staggering, they went blindly in the darkness, crawling sometimes, feeling with their hands for purchase. In this domain of unseelie watchers, Tahquil had no inclination to draw attention by removing her glove to exploit the ring’s illuminative qualities. Hampered by obstacles of rocky outcroppings, cliffs, thickset rearing tree-roots whose soil had been washed from their arches in past times of spate, and deep brakes of fern across their route, the travellers wondered in dread whether it would take the entire night to reach the river.

  Thunder gonged the sky in the distance, pushing Tahquil and her companions forward with greater urgency. Progress, however, was protracted; for while speed was paramount, care must be exercised. A turned ankle, a fractured limb would ultimately prove fatal.

  Above the dinning of approaching thunder and the cacophony of water could be heard a rattling of shells, a chorus of shrill laughter, an argument of nasty tongues in some unfamiliar patois—yet this might have been imaginary, a hallucination of hearing, brought about by continual high-level noise. Tahquil even considered she could hear an orchestra of violins. The uncanny melody revolved continuously in her head, playing throughout the inmost halls of her brain.

  There was no stopping for rest or refreshment. Fat raindrops began to fall desultorily, patting the cheeks of the travellers like fond mothers. The damsels licked their moisture from their lips. No one spoke. No one emitted any sound save an indrawn breath when balance was momentarily forfeited, an involuntary yelp when an unseen rock or twig scored flesh, a muffled exclamation at unexpected eccentricities of the terrain. All night they battled on, the gravid rainclouds pressing lower over their heads, the thunder pounding its premonitory drums ever closer. Static charges were building in the ether. Towards the bleak morning, an eldritch singing started up from all directions—a joining of reedy and croaking and pure, high voices structured in a weird progression and relationship of chords, raising the hair of the listeners.

  At uhta, they reached the ford.

  For a moment, a rift in the clouds allowed a sidereal gleam to splinter down. The mouth of Black Force smiled wide and shallow. Flat stones spanned it, as promised by the swanmaiden. Dark as polished jet, the torrent ran rapidly between these spray-spattered slabs. The opposite bank of the Force was hidden in an undergrowth of umbellifers—wild angelica, lesser water parsnip, hemlock—their flat-topped blossoms nodding like meringues of white lace.

  In that very pre-dawn hour, the heavens unleashed their pent-up tears at last. Rain sprang down in diagonal spars. As though they were aware of the impending increase in their strength, the waters of Black Force noisily poured themselves with greater exuberance around the flat, irregular stones. They spurled in cascades of black sheened with silver, in whirlpools like spiral nebulae, in whale spouts and tiny fountains, all dimpled by the impact of raindrops whose craters were ringed with leaping droplets of displaced water like tiny, split-second coronets. Wet and shiny the flagstones lay, in a lengthy disjointed line. Some low-lying ones were already water-filmed.

  ‘Too soon the waters rise!’ Cairn’s shouts filtered through the tumult of rain, through the crashing and booming of air rapidly expanding along the paths of lightning. ‘Sorrow take the swan’s foul and paltry advice—we are too late to make the crossing!’

  Tahquil turned a rain-lashed face towards the little girl.

  ‘No. If we do not cross now it might be many days before the Force subsides enough. It is perilous to wait for long in one place—because of what lies ahead, no less than what comes from behind. I dare not waste any more time.’

  She pulled a rope from her pack and tied one end about her waist. After paying out a few lengths, she attached Caitri similarly. The other end of the rope she offered to Viviana.

  ‘Crossing now is folly,’ shrieked the courtier. ‘I remain here.’

  ‘Solitude in Lallillir is a worse folly,’ bawled Tahquil, securing the straps on her pack. ‘And each moment we stand here in argument, the waters rise a little further. Come!’

  She strode to the stony verge of the watercourse. From this point, the distance to the nearest stepping stone was a daunting five feet or more across boiling glass. Stepping back a couple of yards, she ran up and launched herself out over the water, landing jarringly on the barren islet. From there she leaped to the second step.

  ‘Caitri?’

  Presently, the young girl followed. Looking back, Tahquil saw Viviana gaining the first stepping stone. Rain sluiced down in blinding sheets, in drowning torrents, in liquid walls. The air was solid rain. It hammered on their heads, their shoulders and packs. It dragged down their clothing, filled their boots, their eyes, their mouths and ears and o
verbrimmed the cups of their skulls. Down, down, down, it sang, and down, down, down sang the surging Force meeting the swarming river. Another quarter-turn of the wheel—what rises must fall.

  Like improbable frogs, the travellers bounded from one stone to another, and now each landing place was skimmed with the newborn flood. The water was a silver dragon, its surface laminated with scales formed by pelting raindrops. The dragon clashed and steamed.

  There was no turning back—the ford’s centre point had been achieved. Now, as much distance divided them from the northern shore as from the southern, and both were invisible. They imagined themselves marooned in a vitreous chamber, close-walled. Tahquil leaped to the next islet. Her foot splashed into the two inches of water racing over it. The vigorous current tugged and she leaned against its drag, leaned on billowing robes of fluidity.

  The rope cinching her waist jerked her painfully to her knees. Taut as a gittern-string it dragged at her, stretching like a rod away into the massed armies of rain lances. Caitri, one moment ago a shadowy figure melting through layers of water, had vanished. She had been taken by the waters, and Black Force was rising.

  Tilting her weight back, Tahquil braced herself against the submerged rock, contrary to the determined pressure of this tide. She drew hard on the rope. Her sinews cracked. At vision’s edge, the form of Viviana crouched and did the same. The river boiled. Its flow banked up powerfully against the form of Caitri downstream, held against it by the ropes. The driving waters curled like surf over the little girl’s head. When they dragged her in she was conscious, but Black Force had whisked her pack away and the waters were still rising.

  Tahquil held Caitri in her arms, putting her mouth to the child’s ear.

  ‘I have not the strength to support you. Should we jump together and our timing fail, we should both fall. You must do it alone.’

  ‘Cut the rope,’ gasped Caitri. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘No.’

  Tahquil left her, then, and sprang away through dark curtains. Her only hope lay in desperation. She willed Caitri to follow, and in a moment the antics of the rope indicated hope fulfilled.

  The current’s pressure grew. Soon the rising tide would become irresistible and sweep the feet of the travellers from under them, tossing them into the flood like dolls, filling not only their eyes but their lungs, their stomachs, the last moments of their awareness. Squinting through the vertical gloom, Tahquil perceived a ragged, linear darkness—the opposite shore. Breathing water, choking on fire, gasping for breath, they gained it at last.

  There in drenched debilitation they lay and allowed panic to drain from them in pools on the ground, letting the rain rinse it from them and course down to suffuse the Blackwater along with the raging waters that had induced that terror.

  Fear ebbed and light waxed, but the silver flails of the rain did not let up their scourging. The pewter and grisaille radiance of the day revealed drowning forests on the northern shore of Black Force, and now the travellers were shivering. Beneath a half-fallen tree they sipped the glistening red syrup of nathrach deirge. Somewhat revived, they struggled to their feet and tramped off in search of a dry place to eke out the day in repose.

  Nothing remained unwet. Not a leaf, not a sprig nor raceme nor shard did not drip and run with moisture. Not a stick touted itself as fit for kindling.

  It rained all day, a shimmering rain. The black bread which was all that remained of their provisions had softened in their packs and turned into black mud. Kept warm by dragon’s blood, the travellers tried futilely to shelter in the lee of fallen logs. Sleep was impossible. The heavy sounds of pouring gallons thundered blankly in the skulls of the three companions. When taking their turn at the watch, they instinctively listened for untoward resonances, notes out of key, any signal of peril approaching. But the water’s roar rose up like a wall all around and would allow no other sound to penetrate. They were forcibly deaf to all save the water’s utterance.

  That evening the deluge petered out. In the last light of the day Tahquil haunted the willows, watching for more spheres of Fairbread. Perhaps her eyes were obfuscated with the sands of sleep deprivation. Perhaps the elusive mistletoe did not grow on the sallies to the north of Black Force. In any event, she discovered none.

  Caitri found a tree trunk which had fallen across another. So rotten was its underside that she was able to punch right through the cortex. Inside was a mass of fibrous debris, the desiccated pith of the tree, still arid within its rind. Soon the travellers had it piled up in a heap and blazing. Their clothes began to dry.

  As night endured, Tahquil stared deeply into the fire. The flames burned themselves into the backs of her eyes. When the ring unexpectedly constricted her finger she looked away, accustoming her vision to the shadows, murmuring a warning to her friends: ‘Wights are nearby.’

  A swatch of bullion gleamed. Some marsh flower—a tall, luteous lily perhaps—stood at the brink of darkness. Tahquil’s eyes widened. She held her breath.

  Could this be a Talith woman?

  The lady in green glided forward. Her hair was the yellow of daffodils, marsh marigolds and buttercups. It draped in silken folds over her shoulders and down past her slight waist, which was girdled with waterlilies. Small green-white blossoms entwined themselves, or conceivably were rooted in that hair. Strikingly attractive was the face, and clearly not human. Sparkles of reflected firelight ran up and down the filaments of her butter-lemon tresses. They coursed along the water runnels which streamed from it, and from the leaf-green gown with the dagged sleeves flowing to the ground where her two bare feet stood in a puddle, like twin fishes.

  Comparably with fuaths and the hair of sea-folk, gruagachs could never get dry, though their inherent wetness never stopped them from testing the ignorance of mortalkind.

  The gruagach parted the petals of her river-rose mouth.

  ‘May I dry myself at your fire?’

  A husky tone, sumptuous, rich with verdancy and fruitfulness. Tahquil recalled the swanmaiden’s rede—‘Speak well.’

  ‘You are welcome,’ she said formally, concealing her apprehension.

  Viviana and Caitri edged nervously away from the eldritch visitor, who observed them from beneath heavy lids and stretched out long-fingered hands towards the blaze. Water trickled down the slim arms and dripped from the wrists.

  ‘Star save me,’ whispered Caitri, round-eyed. She clutched at the ragged folds of her garments as a drowning mortal might clutch at floating twigs.

  Viviana fingered the knife at her belt. Catching her eye, Tahquil shook her head.

  Throughout the night other gruagachs came. They asked the same question, receiving the same answer. The second to come out of the darkness was a manlike wight, naked and shaggy. The third was a comely, slender youth clad in lettuce-green and poppy-red.

  ‘We ought to be on our way by now,’ Viviana muttered to Tahquil behind her hand. ‘You said we must not tarry.’

  ‘Do you suggest that we turn our backs on our visitors and walk away?’ asked Tahquil in a low tone. ‘That we take our eyes off them and simultaneously give them offence? Nay. While they remain, we must remain also. Take advantage of this lull. Sleep.’

  Ignoring the intriguing phenomenon of wightish masculinity uncovered, Caitri was already slumbering, curled up like a kitten. When Tahquil glanced again at the girlgruagach she saw a crone, wan and haggard, stretching out bony fingers towards the blaze. Water flowed down her skinny arms and drizzled off her wrists. Shuddering, Viviana made as if to rise.

  ‘Bide!’ Tahquil pleaded, clutching Viviana by the elbow. It was curiously easy to restrain the courtier. Perhaps she had not been so keen to depart after all, or else she could not resist the grip of the ring-hand.

  ‘Since your hands touched the goblin fruit you have not been the same,’ said Tahquil.

  ‘It is you who has altered,’ sneered Viviana, yet she made no further move.

  Tahquil looked at the crone. She was a fair damsel again,
with long, golden hair like Summer sunlight on water. A frog of jade perched on her shoulder.

  ‘Cows’ milk is sweet,’ suddenly stated the naked, hairy fellow. His skin was slick, his curly brown hair and beard wringing wet as though he had just that instant climbed from a bath. Hirsute mats covered his chest and back. Nests of it clustered under his armpits and at his groin. Hair thickly thatched his arms and sprouted on the backs of his hands.

  ‘If we had any milk we would share it gladly,’ said Tahquil. ‘Alas, we have none.’

  Under bushy brows the gruagach’s eyes scintillated; chips of emerald, like the eyes of drowners. He turned that green gaze back to the fire, stretching out his big, rough hands. Water sputtered and sizzled, going up in tendrils of steam.

  The ground canted slightly towards the gruagachs, otherwise the mortals would presently have found themselves sitting in an expanding pool upon which tiny green-white blossoms floated.

  ‘Shilava shillava, sonsirrilon delahirrina.’ The voice of the handsome youth in grass-green and holly-berry red was a rippling of water over stones, a sighing of shaken reeds.

  ‘Immerse,’ enigmatically responded the golden maiden.

  That was all the conversation there was to be had with the gruagachs pointlessly drying themselves at the fire, and of that fact Tahquil was glad. Seduced, sedated by warmth, it was all she could do to remain vigilant. She noticed that the belle again appeared as a hag, and a most decrepit one.

  Make up your mind …

  By dawn the water wights had, inevitably, disappeared.

  A trail of puddles and miniature green-white flowers led to a backwater down by a loop in the river. The companions followed it to the water’s marge and stood beneath the willows, looking out across the glimmering surface. On slim green stalks, the dart-shaped leaves of arrowhead poked up from the shallows. The plant bore three-petalled blooms, white with a purple blotch at the centre, short-stemmed whorls on long fingers.

  ‘The tubers of arrowhead are starchy. They are edible,’ said Tahquil.