The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Up here, it is another world.

  Acreages of black velvet roads spread around. A conglomeration of shapes like the structure of a city thrust up like cut-outs on the sky. It was a city whose arboreal buildings were bizarre and nonfunctional, whose roadside gutters were carved lethally deep.

  And not a herbaceous rooster, not a foliate wishing-well, not a verdurate urn in sight. ’Tis most unlike the topiary gardens of the palace.

  To call Tahquil’s stilted progress across the hedge-roofs ‘travelling’, would be a description less than complete. She shuffled like a child wearing its father’s boots, or like an old man crippled beneath the burden of decades. Her thoughts at this time were few—purposefully she shut them out. Creatures of the night fluttered around the wedges, overhangs, blocks, cubes, stairs, archways, cones, ramparts, pyramids and spirals of the hedge-city. There were owls and bats and the sweet-singing nightnoon northmoths sung of in ballads, making tiny melodies with the resonance of their arabesqued and azure wings. Also there fluttered, at odd intervals, a black swan. In her swan-form she—unlike the nygel—could not speak the Common Tongue. Throughout the night Tahquil received no tidings from her, but the presence of the flying wight, despite her overtones of hostility, was reassuring to the mortal damsel as she trod the black roads.

  Magenta-flowering vines pleached themselves among the evergreens, their perfume a harmony. Red berries ripened festively on the junipers, and these were not bitter at all, but sweet fare. At midnight and again at uhta the swan fluttered down. Tahquil handed it the waterskin, tied on a string. The bird brought it back clenched in her strong beak, filled with water from the canals below, and the damsel drank deeply.

  At daybreak, Tahquil chose a comfortable topiary-helix and lay down on the lee side of it to rest. The hedge-eaters, which had retired into the foliage overnight, now surfaced. She watched them as they mowed across the dewy aerial lawns, their jaws scissoring like shears. They troubled her not, only trimming the shoots around her reclining form before obsessively proceeding on their way.

  For seven nights Tahquil trudged, or waddled. She seemed alone, but she had company aplenty. There were the stars and the moon, and the whims of the swanmaiden, and the menace of the Hunt which passing back and forth unseen overhead, left the imprint of its clamour on the wind. And there was the unrelenting pain of the Langothe, and dreams of Thorn so vivid she feared she had already succumbed to madness. Now that the ring no longer encompassed her finger, the agony of loss pierced more deeply.

  Gradually her strength was failing.

  One evening she woke to see her avian guide, manifested in humanlike form, perched on a leafy trapezium.

  ‘Slow-walker has succeeded, fairly scoring the centre of Firzenholt,’ said the swanmaiden. ‘From here a floor-way follows hedges as far as the verges—a winding floor-way. Swan shall steer helpless human.’

  ‘Helpless human hears helpful swan and is grateful,’ replied Tahquil.

  Grasping a handful of hedge, she began to slide to the ground. Descent was simpler than ascent. Gravity pulled her, sprigs broke her fall. Between the two forces, she landed, not unscathed, but only slightly so, to be met by the urisk and the nygel.

  ‘How now, loyal friends.’ Tahquil greeted them with a smile. Her hair was full of twigs—that very hair whose prodigal filaments held open the last Erith Gate leading to Faêrie. ‘Are you hale?’

  The calls of hunting night-birds were muffled now by the fur of the great cypress collars standing erect all around, towering into the sky, but the noise of water hurrying along the channels bubbled up from the hedge’s foundations.

  ‘Hale and hearty,’ replied the urisk cheerfully.

  They walked on, now guided by the swan who made low passes overhead to indicate which direction they must take. Once, curious as to the source of sounds of merriment in the hedges, Tahquil drew aside a curtain of fragrant leaves and peered inside. A party of siofra was picnicking inanely on the banks of a channel, and rowing in leaf-boats on the water. They did not notice she who momentarily spied on them. The onlooker was intrigued at their unglamoured feast: the horns of butterflies, the pith of rushes, emits’ eggs and the beards of mice, bloated earwigs and red-capped worms, mandrakes’ ears and stewed thigh of newt, washed down with pearls of dew cupped in magenta flowers.

  Later, the whirr of spinning wheels permeated the night, intensifying as the travellers passed beneath an overhang of thick foliage, and dying away at their backs. Once or twice, grinning faces like those of wizened old men poked out at the passers-by.

  After a time the sameness of high avenues roofed by stars began to foster the illusion that they were journeying pointlessly, in circles.

  ‘We’re doubling back,’ said Tahquil. ‘I know it!’

  ‘Sooth, lass,’ said Tully. ‘But hae ye never walked the tricks and tracks o’ a maze? Ye mun gae backwards tae gae forwards.’

  ‘This is no proper maze,’ said Tahquil, ‘’tis a random affair. There’s no logic to it. Yet I can do no less than to credit the swan with finding a path out of here. Tighnacomaire … Tiggy—will you bear me again, for the sake of swiftness?’

  The waterhorse granted her wish. Five more nights she rode between the hedges then. Only down long boulevards could the nygel speed up to a canter—he must trot along the short lanes and walk around the sharp turns.

  Sixteen nights have passed since Viviana and Caitri were taken …

  What had happened to them? It did not bear thinking about.

  One eve Tahqil and her companions arrived at a place where the flowering vines twined thicker than ever. Here, between the grassy path and the lower stems of the hedges, lay five long canoes of bark.

  ‘The canals,’ said Tahquil. ‘Do they flow straight to the eastern edge of this place?’

  ‘Almost straight,’ said the faithful urisk. ‘So says the queen o’ birds.’

  ‘And do you think the owners of these canoes will become severely enraged if I take one?’

  ‘That I cannae say. I’ve not set eyes on craft like these. There’s no knowing who made them.’

  ‘Have you not lived since the world began?’

  ‘Aye, but I’ve not travelled much. It’s a hame-body I am.’

  The nygel was absent-mindedly ripping vines off the hedges and eating them. Their floral scent dizzied the air.

  ‘Well,’ said Tahquil, ‘I’ve a mind to ride on the water. It will be a route more direct. But how to get to the canal flowing beneath the hedges is a dilemma—there is little space between the lower boughs and the ground. Tiggy, how did you do it?’

  In answer, the nygel turned around and with his hindhooves vigorously kicked at the lower portions of the hedge. Broken branches flew in every direction. In a short while he had opened a gap high and wide enough for Tahquil to pass through, stooping. She dragged a canoe with her and slid it into the waterway. Four feet wide, the channel coursed along its low tunnel directly below the hedge wall.

  ‘Prithee, hold this vessel still for me, Tully.’

  The damsel lay down on her back in the vessel of bark. With a splash the nygel sprang into the water downstream and swam away. The urisk pushed the boat. It began to move.

  Recumbent, Tahquil glided under the arched trunks supporting the hedge, gazing up into the hollow ribcage of the wall, the secret halls of the hedge worlds. The eyes of the dwellers therein blinked as they stared down at her; voices chattered, and they flung down flowers from the vines. Covered with a blanket of magenta petals she drifted along the waterway, a horse’s head gliding on before, with its weedy mane flowing into the ripples of its wake.

  Another night, mauve and languid, floated past like a spent blossom.

  At uhta, when many things happen, the nygel blocked the channel with his wide shoulders. The boat bumped against him.

  ‘We have reached the edge.’

  Tahquil opened her eyes—she had been dozing. Instead of the cavernous, ribbed grey vaults of hedge-hulls overhead, there op
ened a sky as delicately pink as a camellia petal, bedewed with a single star. She climbed from the canoe.

  Instantly, a horizontal wind threaded strong fingers through her hair. Atop a soaring cliff she stood beside the waterhorse, beyond the last bastions of the hedges. The canal had indeed brought them to the edge. Now, in company with other waterways flowing out of the maze, it plunged over the jutting brink to tumble seven hundred feet down a sheer precipice. At the foot of the precipice some of the falls splashed into rocky basins which drained into underground systems, while others joined a river thinly meandering across a bleak plain towards the dimly shimmering line of a distant shore.

  Pre-dawn light laved the landscape. Up there in the open, it was impossible not to immediately become intensely aware of the sky, which throughout Cinnarine and Firzenholt had merely been a frame for a picture. Now the heavens unrolled to every horizon, becoming the picture itself, a moving portrayal of the moods of the climate roiling across the countryside in a paling, indigo vastness so clear and pure that you could drink it, so wide and dizzying that it seemed strange that the whole world was not spinning up into it.

  Eastwards, the horizon was stained with a long crawl of brown smoke, underlit with a dull glare. At their backs the tall barricade of foliage marched north and south—the last ramparts of Firzenholt the Amazing. Before them the east wind, lifting the girl’s hair, tossing the horse’s mane and tail, came rushing up off the plain.

  Far away, armies were encamped on those wastelands: the Legions of Erith.

  Oh, how I should like to go down and enter that camp, to discover who bides there! If my love is among them, I might fall into his arms and die content … Yet I may not visit, for speed is of the essence …

  Questions tormented Tahquil: Is the Prince with them, dear Edward of the sad gaze, who was like a brother to me? Did he survive the destruction of Tamhania, or is Erith bereft of royal leadership? Who is the leader of those armies? If a King-Emperor reigns, who might it be—James XVI or Edward IV?

  Yet it makes no difference. Should Prince Morragan’s unseelie myrmidons have failed to destroy their most strategically significant target, should Thorn in fact live, I dare not approach him for fear of bringing danger upon him. Should he not, I have no reason for life other than to see my friends safe. And should they also have perished, then Morragan and his unseelie followers may do their worst to me. I shall care no longer. Ah, may cruel Morragan and all his race depart from this my home, my Erith, and never return.

  She lingered long over the scene spread out at her feet.

  Down on the plain, a cock crowed. Dawn blazed over the horizon, the sun rising from behind Namarre and striking its rays across the Nenian Landbridge, across the wastelands, casting long shadows from the thousands of tents and pavilions, the makeshift Mooring Masts, the Windships riding at anchor—finally touching their golden tips to the face of the girl with blowing hair who now stood alone on the brow of the escarpment.

  But is he there? Is he down there?

  It was a hot Summer’s day, fortunately for wanderers who would never have endured a life out of doors at another season. In the shelter of the easternmost hedge, couched in a niche at its roots, Tahquil slept, lulled by the burble and murmur of the canal as it coursed down its channel to fling itself out over the cliff into miles of air. Hawks hovered in the thermals. She did not see them. A bruised flower petal sashayed down from its vine to alight on her arm. She did not feel it. Wrens chirped from their inner bowers of cypress and privet. She heeded them not. The sun blazed on Firzenholt and Cinnarine, then submerged itself, sizzling, in the western ocean, engendering coloured steams which streamed out sideways like scarves of shot silk. Tahquil woke and filled her pockets with perfumed flowers, as camouflage against the sensitive noses of wights.

  A waxing moon saw her picking her way down the face of the escarpment, led by a goatlike creature who discovered paths and footholds where at first glance there appeared to be none. By midnight they had reached the ground below. There, thistles grew rank and weeds crawled over rubble. Patches lay bare of growth; shale or dust or hard-packed dirt. Stubby torsos of burned trees poked up like grim monuments. The wind came galloping, unchecked, from the direction of the sea. A waterhorse came galloping from the direction of the thin river. It shook itself as a dog will, drenching the urisk and girl, before rolling enthusiastically in a dust patch.

  ‘Ye’ll be bringing the Legions of Erith clamouring around our ears,’ grumbled the urisk. ‘Their patrols are sair vigilant.’

  A damsel formed of shadows and reflections came walking from a clump of mortified trees whose fingers had woven darkness between them like a cat’s cradle.

  ‘Whither?’ she questioned, laconically.

  ‘Onward as before,’ replied Tahquil. ‘If your friends the swallows have the truth of it, Viviana and Caitri have probably been taken to Namarre.’

  ‘Such happenstance is certainty. Swallows say Wild Hunt steers from fell habitation without variation—from formidable fortress on starry heights.’

  ‘Huon and his chase use a castle in Namarre as their base?’

  ‘Faithfully.’

  ‘I’ll warrant that another bides in that same stronghold,’ muttered Tahquil, ‘and he greater by far than they—as a thunderstorm outranks a spark. How does the land lie between here and there? How shall I cross the Nenian Landbridge?’

  ‘Hundreds of soldiers stay here in wastelands,’ said the swanmaiden, ‘vigilant fellows fending sallies of harassment. Savage wights violently hold slender strip separating seas.’

  ‘If the wastelands are held by the Legions of Erith and the Landbridge by forces of Unseelie, my only option is to skirt the bivouacs of the Legions and cross the Gulf Perilous to Namarre by boat.’

  ‘Seas of strait shelter fell wights,’ insisted Whithiue. ‘Vessels founder. Ships sink. Humans submerge and finish as fodder for ferocious sea-monsters.’

  ‘If land and sea are dismissed, what remains? Is there a tunnel under the gulf, similar to the under-mine?’

  ‘Tunnels,’ said the urisk, whose speech forms were nightly adapting to Tahquil’s, ‘are iverywhere. They run aboot like lost worms, ’neath ivery land. Ye’ll likely be standing above one as ye speak. The underground is riddled with roads—the Fridean make them, maistly, and keep them clear. But the passageway beneath the gulf is not for ye. It delves deep, sair deep, and there’s no air in’t—naught fa’ mortal bellows tae suck in.’

  ‘Air! By air, then—I’ll go by air. I shall stow away on a Windship—’

  ‘No craft of Eldaraigne will be crossing the Nenian Landbridge while Namarre holds that span.’

  Tahquil clapped her hand to her forehead. ‘Of course—you have the right of it. Methinks this diet of juniper is pickling my brain. Oh, to have wings to fly—’ She paused and turned a hard stare on Whithiue, who was preening her long hair.

  ‘Prithee, Whithiue, lend me your feather-cloak.’

  The swanmaiden’s eyes narrowed to two darts. She hissed threateningly, thrusting her long neck forward. Taking a step backwards she raised her arms from her sides, appearing to swell in size.

  ‘Am I to take it that you refuse?’ inquired Tahquil.

  ‘Vehemently!’

  ‘A swan’s cloak to her is as dear as life,’ hooted the urisk. ‘Without it she would be forever trapped in humanlike form, never to take to the skies again.’

  ‘Ah yes, that I know. I would guard it, I would return it—but no, I understand such a ban.’

  And yet, how delicious it would be, to soar unaided, untrammelled, as a bird soars—to feel the lift of invisible currents under my own vanes.

  ‘But if you will not do me that favour, perhaps you will do me another.’ Tahquil tried to conceal the catch in her voice. ‘When next you fly out across the land, will you try to discover whether he still lives, the King-Emperor of Erith? Nay—I shall be more precise to avoid confusion—’tis James XVI of whom I crave tidings, not his successor. Will
the swallows know, or perhaps the other swans?’

  ‘Swan will furnish favour. Swan will find word of sovereign.’

  Emotion surged through Tahquil like a tempest.

  ‘Swan is valiant,’ she said sincerely.

  All four of the nygel’s hooves left the ground simultaneously, their owner’s nose having been pricked by a thistle that thrust its spiny leaves and erect stem between two stones, its green head bristling with purple hair.

  ‘Have ye heard a word o’ our counsel?’ asked the urisk.

  The nygel sneezed.

  ‘I’ll bear the mistress past the fighters and acrass the bridge,’ he said, blinking as ingenuously as a newborn foal.

  ‘How so?’ demanded Tahquil.

  ‘The night I cannat outrun a larraly habby-harrse av land arr sky is the night I pat an a harrness and start palling a plough. And an the landbridge what’s wan mair waterharrse with a dinner av flesh glued tae its back?’

  Stroking his goatee contemplatively, the urisk looked a portrait of sagacity. The swanmaiden subsided. Borne on the balmy wind, men’s voices drifted, inarticulate, from the distant encampments.

  ‘Well said, Sir Nygel,’ complimented Tahquil, ‘I commend you. I believe your plan will work.’

  Crickets drilled small holes into the dark metal of night. A thousand fires glittered, a scatter of fireflies across the plain. White moonlight and orange flamelight arced off steel: razor spearheads, thorny spurs, graven helms, shiny aiguillettes adorning uniforms. The wind brought the smack of smoke and snatches of sound—the clink and clash of weapons, the whinnying of horses, the jarring keen of a blade being sharpened on a whetstone, the bark of orders being rapped out, the crystal chime of a different wind on its way.

  Two mailed sentries of the Third Luindorn Drusilliers, patrolling the outskirts of their bivouac, crossed paths and hailed one another. Both identified themselves as regulations demanded, to cancel wightish trickery:

  ‘I am mortal, and loyal to the Empire.’