The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Some were garbed in fantastic armour, which had been wrought in the time since the fateful day of the Closing—harness whose lamellae gleamed with the sheen of nacre or emerald, with the polish of lamplight flaring on snow, of starlight dancing on water, of moonlight imaged in ice or sunset reflected in steel. Some wore half-armours and yet others were clad in finery that seemed stitched from leaves and shadows and stars. As for their faces, helmed or unhelmed, the beauty of all the Faêran lords blazed brighter than all the lights of the universe. Yet, one amongst them blazed more brightly than all the rest combined.

  Into the long silence of the Howe’s enchanted dome lunged a bronze spear of disruptive sound. Warm and strong, the Summons of the Coirnéad—‘Awake! Awake!’ as if in echo of the thrilling Call to Faêrie long ago, a millennium past. An instant after the sound reached the hall’s bell-shaped interior, clanging within its shining walls, the Sleepers on their couches stirred. A few raised themselves up on their elbows.

  But tardily they roused. Already the most sumptuous couch, occupied when silence ruled, lay deserted. Even before the resonances of the horn’s beseechment had faded from the changeless air, Angavar High King, was present no longer.

  Not yet fully awake, the knights of the Fair Realm lapsed into the Pendur Sleep once more.

  On a starlit beach many leagues distant from King’s Howe the silver mouthpiece of the Coirnéad was shaken from the lips of James of Erith as Nuckelavee, in the manner of a man cracking a whip, snapped the young King’s spine. The monster’s maw hung open, slavering, ready to clamp down over James and crush the last life from his mortal frame.

  Yet at the last instant, the wight was stayed.

  A voice thundered across the shore, a voice both dangerous and beautiful. A Word was uttered. A command wrote itself in letters of fire across the firmament.

  James felt himself lowered gently to the sea-rinsed sand, his wife Katharine lying beside him. He could not move, could not even turn his head, but there was no pain. The lovely face of Katharine bore no mark of savagery and her eyes remained open. They were grey-brown as driftwood, yet it was as though they had clouded over and she waited somewhere else, hidden behind those clouds. Away in the ocean Nuckelavee splashed and bellowed amid a flood of crimson, his almost-immortality on the brink of annihilation. The vengeance of the left hand of Angavar had been laid upon him.

  The Faêran King knelt beside the royal couple.

  ‘It is too late for thy lady,’ he said to James. ‘Death has taken her beyond the reach of my healing. Thee, I can still cure.’

  But James sensed the vitality ebbing from him and glimpsed the same clouds drawing in as he had seen in the eyes of his love, and he considered that he might find her if he searched behind them.

  ‘Nay, friend,’ he said to Angavar, for there existed a bond between them, although they had never before met, ‘nay, friend, I would not be sundered from my Kate. Allow me now to claim the greatest gift given to mortals. And if thou wouldst aid me for the sake of sworn friendship, promise me only this—take my place, as once you took the place of my longfather William. Remain waking, to protect my son Edward until he comes of age and is crowned King-Emperor. Let Erith believe her sovereign lives, lest she tremble on her foundations, lest war tears her apart again. Keep the Empire whole and well governed until it passes into the hands of my son.’ He gasped for breath and a thin red ribbon unrolled at the corner of his mouth. ‘Have I thy word on’t, Angavar King of Faêran?’

  ‘On this I give thee my oath, James of Erith,’ said Angavar gently, as the light bled from James’s eyes. ‘I swear it shall be so.’

  The bodies of James XVI and Queen Katharine were borne back to King’s Howe upon Faêran steeds. There they remained within the atmosphere of enchantment, untouched by decay, to this day.

  Three ripples shimmered across the face of the looking-pool and the exposition melted, subtly, into another …

  When James’s retainers came hastening at the call of the Coirnéad, which had reached their ears also, they found—as they supposed—the King-Emperor in disastrous straits. He was lying on the beach, half submerged in bloody sea-foam, the waves surging around him.

  ‘The monster has slain Kate,’ he said as they carried him from that place. But they never found her remains, only the severed arm of a man, part of a horse’s hoof and some pieces of flesh, skinless, disgusting, washed to shore on the tide.

  The best wizards were summoned. Under their auspices—presumably—the King-Emperor recovered his health and vigour. In those first days, with the glamour on him, Angavar perfectly resembled James, but while keeping his vow, Angavar desired to be seen as himself after all, and not to go about masked as another. Over the next years his appearance altered, so gradually that the changes went unnoticed by the populace. Simultaneously, the King’s Heads on the coins of the realm metamorphosed, the statues changed, and in the paintings in all the halls and galleries of Erith, the face of James became, subtly, the countenance of Angavar. It was perceived that the King-Emperor had taken to dying his hair black. Therefore the courtiers, ever followers of Royalty’s fashionable whims, emulated this inspiration.

  Only four mortals knew the true identity of the King-Emperor of Erith: the young Prince, the two Dukes, and Alys of Roxburgh.

  Edward was only five Summers old at the time of his father’s death. As he matured he was told of the fate of his parents. For a time he grieved sorely, but Angavar laid his hand upon the boy’s shoulder and the grieving was not so hard after that. As he grew, Edward grew also to love this extraordinary lord of gramarye who kept his father’s honour and kingdom intact, according to his pledge.

  In the King’s Howe, seven mortals had slept the Pendur Sleep beside Angavar after the Closing. Now he wakened them, to keep company with him during his seasons at Court.

  Long ago, before the ways to Faêrie were sealed, before the moment Ashalind had first opened her eyes on the world, Thomas Learmont of Ercildoune and Tamlain Conmor of Roxburgh had dwelled in the Fair Realm.

  The Faêran had hearkened to the harping of Thomas and they were enraptured by his bardic skill. Asrhydmai of the Harps entered Erith, to lead him along the Green Road to the Fair Realm and he went not unwillingly. He stayed with the Faêran for a long time, playing and singing for their pleasure at the Faêran Court. It was Asrhydmai who had gifted him with the geas of an ever-truthful tongue, as a reward for his music. Angavar was greatly pleased by Thomas, who became a friend to the Faêran High King.

  Tamlain Conmor, Duke of Roxburgh, had also been taken to the Fair Realm before the Closing. Like Thomas, he became a favourite among the Faêran, who loved him for his valour. Dear in comradeship were both these men to Angavar and dearly did they both love the Realm. At the end of their time in Faêrie, Angavar released them from the Langothe, which would have destroyed them, and gave them protection from the ravages of Time. ‘Go ye, Thomas,’ he said. ‘Truth and good fortune go with thee.’ And to Tamlain he said, ‘Take thee thy worthy bride, Alys. My benison shall be upon thee and upon thy firstborn daughter, who was conceived in the marches of Faêrie.’

  Yet both men remained loath to sunder themselves forever from that place. When Angavar saw this he said, ‘It need not be so.’ And then Thomas and Tamlain dwelled half in the Realm, half in Erith, for they were under the protection of Angavar and often he invited them to join him in a Rade or hawking party, or at feasting beneath the trees.

  Mesmerised by these scenes of long ago, Ashalind, kneeling at the poolside, blinked. A single tear dropped into the water; a single, lucent orb swimming with reflections. Glimmers expanded.

  The revelations resumed …

  The Lady Rosamonde, conceived in Faêrie, was born to the House of Roxburgh, and after that three more bairns. Those years before the Closing were years of great happiness. But after Prince Morragan caused the ways to be sealed, the Bard and the Knight felt it in their hearts bitterly. They could not endure the thought of never more beholding th
e Realm. For, having walked upon the greensward of that land, having been caressed by its winds and breathed the storm’s-breath, wild and Springtime-blossom scent of it, they could not bear to dwell on in an Erith bereft of all access to the Land Beyond the Stars. Even though the Langothe was not on them, they asked Angavar that they might go beneath Eagle’s Howe and enter the Pendur Sleep until such time as the brushing of the winds of gramarye might cause the Gates to crumble, or else the world to end. So into the long and changeless Sleep they went, and Tamlain’s family accompanied him.

  A thousand years these seven mortals had slept without waking—alone at first, later joined by Angavar and his Faêran knights. Then, when Angavar was called by the Coirnéad and forced to become King-Emperor, he woke them.

  ‘Will you keep me company?’ he asked, and now they readily assented, for they wished to take up their lives again and live them out at last. The desires and whims of mortalkind may change, even in sleep.

  Thomas went with Roxburgh and his family to dwell at Court. The King-Emperor returned to them the estates that had been in their possession so long ago, forfeited to the Crown upon their disappearance. It may be that these chosen mortals, companions of Angavar, carried with them some Faêran glamour from beneath the Howe—in any event, upon their return and the restoration of their lands, all other mortal folk forgot that it had ever been otherwise. Prince Edward, Thomas the Rhymer, Tamlain and Alys were the four mortals privileged to keep the Royal secret. Even fair Rosamonde and her siblings were not privy to it, the recollection of their early days and the Sleep having faded from their brains in the manner of dreams, leaving only a legacy of vague wistfulness.

  Thus, eight Sleepers from the King’s Howe came to the Court of Caermelor, while the High King’s Faêran knights slept on. But the city could not hold him for long, and often Angavar walked abroad. To confine themselves within castle walls, or any walls, was against the nature of the Faêran. And when he went alone or in company into the wilderness, he went as a Dainnan, as Ashalind had first seen him.

  He wore a shirt of fine wool with wide sleeves gathered at the shoulders and rolled up to the elbows; over this, a tunic of soft leather reaching almost to his knees and slit on both sides along the length of his thighs, to allow freedom of movement. Beneath the tunic, leather leggings. At each shoulder, the Royal Insignia was embroidered—a crown over the numeral 16 with the runes J and R on either side. Around his right forearm was wrapped a supple calf-skin bracer laced with leather thongs. From a baldric swung a silver-clasped horn, white as milk, and a smaller, sun-yellow horn mounted in brass. At his belt, a water-bottle, a couple of pouches, and a coil of rope. From a weapon-belt depended a sheathed dagger and a smaller knife, as well as a short-handled axe.

  He picked up a second baldric, heavily embossed, slinging it across his chest from his right shoulder. A longbow and quiver protruded from behind that boulder now, and arrows crested with bands of green and gold, fletched with dyed goose-feathers.

  At Annath Gothallamor, deep in the looking-pool, an architecture formed and locked together structurally. The liquid condensed, hardened. A fine gold-dust—the pollen of bluebells—scudded across the solid glass plane. The images of the past had evaporated. Ashalind sighed.

  ‘For whom dost thou sigh, Elindor?’

  The way in which Prince Morragan said this caused the humanlike sirens sporting on the flowery banks to spill the golden ball from their lissom hands. It hit the ground with a thud. At the same time, some spriggans who had been leering out of oaken gloom leaped nimbly backwards, falling on top of one another in their efforts to retreat from the peril conveyed by those silken tones.

  As of old, Ashalind found herself quite unable to reply.

  ‘Come hither,’ said the Raven Prince, and she must do so. His gaze was mesmerising. ‘It is high time,’ said he, ‘those illusions of thine were shattered. Sighing for reflections does not become thee. Canst thou doubt that seeing in Angavar an echo of thy first love, thou didst deceive thyself?’

  ‘Not so,’ said Ashalind, yet her confidence wavered. Long ago, before she had first set eyes on Thorn-Angavar, Morragan had claimed her attention in a rare and extraordinary fashion. At the halls of Carnconnor he had offered a tantalising option.

  She recalled it well.

  ‘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-grey 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. 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. She sighed and lowered her eyes.

  ‘Sir, I must take the children home.’

  Never before in her life had she been prey to such enticement. There was no doubt, she had been close to surrender. Could there be truth in the words of this marvellous Prince?

  ‘Thorn plighted his troth to me,’ she insisted. ‘He loved me.’ But she began to mistrust her own words.

  At Morragan’s laugh the swanmaidens shrank into their feather-cloaks. Young Vallentyne dropped his smoking dudeen in a scatter of sparks, and even the savage Each Uisge flinched. Caitri, gripped by dread of Morragan’s wrath, thought she saw the sunless countenance of the Prince of Waterhorses turn a whiter shade of pale.

  ‘It appears he toyed with thee a little,’ said Morragan to Tahquil-Ashalind. ‘In exile, time hangs heavily on immortal hands. Long-drawn pleasure is sought after. As much sport is to be had in the chase as in the kill. Reflect, now, Elindor mine. What words of promise did he say to thee?’

  And she did reflect, and it was not too difficult, for certain moments were emblazoned on her psyche so thoroughly that she believed no spell or geas could ever remove them.

  Isse Tower, at evening: a star-wreathed balcony and someone breathtaking leaning upon the balustrade.

  ‘I have searched long for you,’ Thorn said. ‘Will you come with me to Court?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I want you to belong to me, and to no other.’

  ‘That I do already. I will be yours for my life.’

  ‘Do you swear it?’

  ‘Upon the Star, upon my life, upon anything you wish to name, I swear it.’

  He held out his hand. She grasped a levin-bolt whose convulsion sizzled from fingers to feet.

  ‘Now we are troth-plighted.’

  The trees in the oak wood shivered. The leaves withered on them like shavings in a fire. Caitri whimpered.

  ‘He said …’ Ashalind hesitated, distraught now. ‘Ah, alas,’ she was forced to admit, ‘he never promised to be mine.’

  ‘Art thou surprised, innocent?’Morragan mocked. He rounded on Whithiue, his blue-black hair swirling. ‘Enlighten the mortal, pretty duck.’

  The cup-bearer offered the Prince a golden chalice, which he dismissed. Beguiled by attention from the Prince—even were it insulting—the swanmaiden bowed to him and glided forward.

  ‘Whithiue is no unfriend to gracious lord Morgann Fithiach,’ she enunciated, using a wider range of initial phonemes than had been her wont. ‘Neither is she thus to mortal damsels.’

  Caitri started up.

  ‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘Before this, you used only words beginning with soft sounds. Do you speak the Common Tongue properly after all? Why have you kept that secret from us? And now you seem to take sides against us. We have been deceived in your integrity! What else have you hidden, traitoress?’

  The swanmaiden uttered a sound like the rage of snakes and flung out her arms. The cloak fanned from them, a black semicircle.

  �
��Why should Whithiue speak at all to mortals?’she upbraided. ‘A race of thieves! Ungrateful! Ugly human words not worthy of swan’s speaking. Hooiss shoshalnai souhuena whai mahaan! Yet, of courtesy to wonderful lord, she will speak thus to single-language maidens.’

  Morragan shot a dangerous glance towards the wight-girl.

  Recollecting her proximity to the Prince she subsided deferentially, subduing her natural antipathy, but the glint of eldritch haunted her avian eyes.

  ‘Consider,’ she said. ‘How should the Noble Ones esteem your infected race? Humans, who gobble up the husks of food, who consume the flesh of swans and beasts and swallow down roots grown swollen in the mire. Humans, who dine on dead matter and then defile the world with their waste! How might aristocrats adore swine?’

  ‘Thorn broke bread with me,’ disputed Ashalind. ‘Many times we dined together!’

  ‘Easily the glamour of the Fair Ones dupes foolish mortals,’ derided Whithiue. Did Vahquil indeed see with her eyes what she thought to behold? Only the toradh was taken and the cochal was whisked away. Or else, the toradh was wrapped in a mere semblance of the food, an illusion.’

  That is true! Hindsight reveals I never did see Thorn actually put food to his mouth …

  ‘Swans sup on worms in the mud,’ remarked Caitri venomously. The blast from the beating feather-cloak bowled her over.

  ‘Do not vent your vexation upon the child!’ cried Ashalind. Whithiue, once you were our friend. Tell me, if the Faêran consider us so foul, why do they steal us?’

  ‘As humankind keep companion animals in fond contempt, so might the Fair Ones be diverted by humankind,’ lightly said the swanmaiden.

  The wightish onlookers laughed uproariously at that, with howls and caterwauls and shrieks.

  ‘No. You are wrong,’ Ashalind declared, in the overloud tones of self-doubt.