It was a benediction she had heard chanted among the weathermasters.
“Gramercie, my dear protector,” she added. “And goodbye.”
After a while she departed. Left behind, the flowers glowed richly in a shaft of sunlight, like bullion on the silent grass.
Next day, Jewel crossed the toll-bridge over the Canterbury Water with no difficulty, and pressed on. Traffic was sparse. Few travelers were using the road, but Jewel moved swiftly, and by late afternoon she had caught up with five covered horse-drawn wagons driven by families of nomadic cobblers and traders.
The laden wains trundled slowly, in such lack of haste that the children were able to walk alongside if they wished. The wagoners were returning south, from King’s Winterbourne, where they had been bartering their goods for sought-after products of Narngalis: mirrors and glass objects, milled soap and aromatic cedar-wood, fine linen cloth, and wool.
Jewel greeted them cordially. “I am no beggar,” she said. “I only wish for companionship. May I join you?”
“Join us and welcome!” the nomads said affably, and, heartily glad, Jewel fell in beside one of the wains. It was driven by a man whose nose appeared to have been smeared sideways across his face. Beside him sat a woman who was comely indeed: smooth-skinned, round of chin and oval of face, with chestnut braids showing from beneath the folds of her head-scarf.
Jewel told them her given name, circumspectly omitting her surname, and they asked why she traveled alone.
“I ran away from home,” she replied, knowing it to be true. “I seek my fortune in Slievmordhu.” This they understood, and the woman clucked sympathetically.
“Ren away from home mesilf,” bellowed the man, “whin I was a led.”
Their society proved pleasant. There were two families of Slievmordhuan cobblers who also traded in saddles and other equine tack accessories, and three groups of Grïmnørslanders, led by the man with the smeared nose, who introduced himself as Fridleif Squüdfitcher. Squüdfitcher’s children ran and played with the other youngsters, or rode with their parents when they grew tired. The wagons of the west-coasters were as well bedecked with wight-repelling bells and talismans as any vehicle driven by humankind on the roads of Tir. They smelled of hempseed oil, and were littered with the dry fibers of the hempen rope, sacks, coarse fabrics, sailcloth, and packing cloth that was their stock in trade. The garments of the wagon-folk were covered by cloaks known as sclavines, which had wide, elbow-length sleeves, buttons down the front from neck to hem, and an attached hood. Some of the men wore narrow-brimmed hats over their hoods. The headgear of the women consisted of a long scarf serving as both head-kerchief and wimple combined. One end was held to the skull by a wide, leather headband; then the fabric was wound around the head and under the chin before being tucked under the band again and allowed to fall to one side in graceful folds. Their hair, dressed over the ears in the “ram’s horn” style, peeped out on both sides of the face. Boy-children went bare-headed or topped with little bell-shaped caps, while their sisters’ tresses were confined beneath simple, triangular kerchiefs tied beneath the hair at the nape of the neck.
From her perch up on the leading wagon Squüdfitcher’s wife, Heidrun, informed the newcomer in strange accents, “Our hebut is to go from Grumnors-land to Northrilm, then down to Cethair, then across to Eshquelith to trade for sulk, then beck home. The untire journey takes about tin months.”
Jewel nodded acknowledgment, coughing in the sprays of dust kicked up by the shaggy hooves of the draft horses. The Grïmnørslander considered herself a good raconteur, and whiled away the hours on the road by recounting her husband’s life story, shouting over the rattle of the iron-rimmed wagon-wheels, the jingling of harness bells, and the cries of the children as they called to one another.
“You’ll thunk he ez en ugly fillow, eh?” Heidrun yelled, shaping her pretty mouth into a wry grin as she waved her hand in the direction of her husband. “He used to be a fine hendsome led before huz nose was broken in a tevern brawl, five or sux years ago. Thet brawl arose after a dice-game in which he lost iverything he owned, includung a good gray gildung. Lost it all to one of your countrymin. But iver sunce then, he’s not touched the dice, nor a drop of drunk. He’s taken up the life of a trader, his luck hez returned, and he holds no melice against Slievmordhuan folk.”
“I am joyful to hear it,” Jewel called back.
An even more unsightly chap poked his head out of the wagon. The lower half of his face, which had collapsed inward, bawled indistinctly, “Good morrow, wench.” His lips flapped wetly, like the lobes of a snail.
“Thet’s my brother, Heiolf Meckerilnitter,” yelled Squüdfitcher’s wife cheerily. “He hez no teeth, and uz forced to eat foul goo et ivery meal.”
The wagoners were heavily armed. Always, two horsemen were posted on watch, one at the rear and one at the front of the procession. They were prepared, at the first hint of Marauders, to draw the wagons into a circle with the women and children in the middle, while the men made ready to defend them all.
That night Jewel stayed with the wagoners, camped in a field neighboring the fortified hamlet of Kiln Green. As she sat with her companions, around the cooking fires, Jewel learned that of recent times, many traders were hired by wealthy merchants to travel the roads in convoys. The merchants owned the vehicles, the horses, and the merchandise, while the hired men were paid a percentage of the profit. Mercenary traders were beholden to an oath-bound foreman, who supervised every deal to ensure his master was not cheated.
“On the other hend,” said Heidrun Squüdfitcher, “we trader femilies own our wegons. We hev sold our meager plots of lend to buy thim, choosing a life on the road. Aye, ut uz dangerous, but ’tuz also more profuteble then the lives we lift behind, and more unteristung by far!”
Two pairs of children were playing a hand-clapping game with each other, chanting as they performed the rhythmic movements:
“Wind a cradle for a moth,
Tight against the Winter’s wrath.
Spin a thread to make a cloth
Lighter than a puff of froth.
Needle, needle, stitch a thing
Pretty as a beetle’s wing.
Cradle, cradle, lift me up
Till the raindrops fill my cup.”
“What a quaint song,” Jewel commented. “I have never heard it before.”
“They learned thet in Eshquelith,” said their mother, “from the sulk merchants.”
The youngsters repeated the rhyme over and over, until Jewel was quite tired of it.
In the morning, villagers came to look over the wares of the nomads, and some commerce ensued. Awed, a village child gazed at Heiolf Meckerilnitter as he smacked his elastic lips over a bowl of porridge.
The wagons continued on their way through the rich agricultural regions of southern Narngalis lying between the Canterbury Water and the Border Hills. These gently undulating hills lay in limestone country, and the wagoners passed three deep quarries from which blocks were being hewn. Fumes arose from the tops of nearby brick lime-kilns, tainting the air with the stench of burning lime and coal. Pale gashes on the upper hillsides indicated smaller quarries dug by dry-stone-wallers. Miles of walls partitioned the countryside, clambering up slopes and plunging into vales, tenaciously gripping the contours and transforming into arched bridges when there were streams to be crossed. Two or three solitary laborers could be seen at work maintaining the barriers. With their spines curved like sickles they bent doggedly to their lonely task, fitting the stones together in interlocking patterns that would yield only to years of hard weathering.
The rutted way was lined with avenues of pin oaks, their arms outreaching and beseeching. White, flat-topped flowers and wild herbs hovered amidst the wayside grasses, on stems so fine as to be virtually invisible. Summer had arrived, casting golden nettings of dandelions across far-flung pastures that stretched away to green ridges in the middle distance. Behind the ridges rose the blue-gray shoulders of
the Border Hills, row on row of gentle peaks paling from indigo to pastel blue as they receded toward the horizon.
On the following day the road passed between low, wooded spurs, its verges burgeoning with brakes of hazel. Soon it clove through a leafless birch-wood, then wound its way among groves of ash. After diving into a marshy vale of coppiced willows it climbed again, bringing the travelers out into another insignificant hamlet, no more than a collection of half a dozen cottages and an inn.
In a covered yard stacked with piles of birch trimmings, hazel wands, and ashen staves, men were hard at work. Clad in long leather aprons, and with their shirtsleeves rolled up to their elbows, they were making besoms. One sat astride a shaving-horse, working the jaws of the besom-grip to squeeze the birch twigs together while he bound them tightly with willow withies. Another trimmed ash-wood handles with his draw-knife, before ramming them into the birch bundles. A third broom squire hammered wooden retaining pegs through the bundles to strengthen the brooms.
“Thus vullege uz known ez Birchbroom,” announced Heidrun Squüdfitcher, who, with her children, was walking at Jewel’s side. “Ivery year we pass through, we barter for bissoms from the broom squires. The bist metterials are grown hereabouts, and these squires make the finest brooms un the Four Kungdoms.”
Shortly after leaving Birchbroom the road led the wagons into a curious wood. Many hundreds of ash saplings grew here, and all were contorted in a most unnatural fashion. Their slender trunks stood perfectly straight until, about three or four feet from the ground, they bent over abruptly, into the shape of a shepherd’s crook. On looking more closely, Jewel perceived that iron templates were strapped to many of the saplings.
“What manner of woodland is this?” she asked, amazed.
“Ut uz a walkung stuck wood!” Heidrun replied promptly, laughing. “They feshion fine walkung stucks in Birchbroom, ez will ez bissoms.”
When they emerged from the wood they could see the Border Hills more clearly. Closer now, the rounded heads of the hills rolled across their path, like the frozen troughs and crests of some stormy ocean.
“Strange thungs dwill un those hulls,” said Fridleif Squüdfitcher, narrowing his eyes calculatingly as he stared south toward the higher country.
“True enough!” agreed one of the Slievmordhuan traders. “But once past them it’s back in Slievmordhu we shall be!” His countrymen cheered, absence from one’s home soil being a catalyst to patriotism.
Following the direction of Squüdfitcher’s gaze, Jewel felt her heartbeat accelerate. There lay the border. On the other side in Orielthir the Dome of Castle Strang squatted, like some monstrous fungus, her inheritance locked within.
The remainder of their passage through the Border Hills into Slievmordhu was relatively uneventful and they reached, without mishap, the village of Keeling Muir, in the marches of the Orielthir region. It was a large settlement, notable for the manor house on the hill, a sprawling, fortified mansion of stone.
“Here we halt for a seven-night,” proclaimed Fridleif Squüdfitcher, handing out almonds to a gaggle of hungry children.
It was the custom of the convoy to spend a few days at some of the more substantial villages along their route. The Slievmordhuans amongst them were skilled cobblers. Their boots, each pair made to measure, would last for ten years of normal daily wear. It took each bootmaker two days of steady work to make one pair, using the high-quality Slievmordhuan leather and precision tools they carried with them. Every year, there would be a need for new footwear in the villages, as children grew, or as old boots reached the last step of their ten-year journey.
Jewel was relieved to learn of the wagoners’ sojourn. She had been wondering what excuse she might fabricate, when it came time for her to leave the road and head east across Orielthir. Although she despised duplicity, she could not tell them she sought Castle Strang; the admission would only lead to awkward questions.
“I do not wish to tarry here,” she announced to her benefactors. “Fain would I journey on.” They protested, but could not sway her. “Ardent am I,” she said, “to discover what lies ahead. ’Twould be passing irksome to remain here, when the road and the future beckon me.”
“Go then, uff you must,” said Heidrun Squüdfitcher, displaying a rueful grimace. “Perchence we shell meet agin, on the road, young jupsy. I hope you find what you seek. May good fortune go wuth you.”
“And with you,” said Jewel.
She handed her hostess a small cloth package, tightly knotted, and took her leave, in haste, lest they should repeat their arguments against her decision. The faynes’ leaves of gold were wrapped inside the bundle, ample payment for the wagoners’ hospitality.
Yet, when the wagons had been left far behind and Jewel darted, alone, along a weedy track branching from the road, her thoughts flew back to the campfires, voices murmuring in conversation, laughter, the smell of hay and apples as the horses were fed, the tapping of the cobblers’ hammers, the limpid eyes of the children looking up at her as they tugged at her skirts to claim her attention. She missed them already.
But the Dome.
The Dome lay ahead, so close now. She need only continue on her easterly course and she must discover it, at last.
The wind sifted like fine dry sands over the hills of Orielthir. It hunted clouds across the firmament, their shadows, like gray thieves, flitting across the land. Away to the east raced the aerial vapors, and a chevron of charcoal birds passed swiftly above, their discordant squawks grating against the sky.
Tousled by the wind, Jewel sped lightly across a wide, rolling meadow, down a narrow footpath that ran through a Summer-verdant oak wood, and over a bridge into a wood of rowans where rain-pools lay on their backs like silvered looking glasses, framed by the roots of the trees. Her spirits were buoyed by her proximity to her goal, and she scarcely felt the need for rest. On the other side of the rowan wood rose a green hill, beyond which a sweeping vale fell away down to a river. Two stately houses faced each other across the valley. Their windows and chimneys were many, and so elegant was their architecture that Jewel felt impelled to pause and gape. The nearer mansion was old, and appeared to have been abandoned for many years. Crooked arms of ivy molested the mullioned windows and throttled the graceful turrets. Starlings and swallows had crammed nests beneath the eaves. The other house was too far away for Jewel to make out any details. Birds spiraled around its upper roofs, but there was no other sign of activity and she concluded that it, too, must be vacant of human life.
These vast tracts of meadowland and forest were seemingly uninhabited. No mortal dared dwell in that region, not anymore. This was Orielthir, whose lands were beloved by the sky, kissed and held close by the heavens, land of wide meadows and mighty forests and swift-flowing waters, a landscape haunted by countless eldritch wights, and perhaps by the lingering echoes of ancient human-wrought spells. At nights Jewel slept uneasily. Sometimes she would waken to glimpse a slitted glint of eyes, to feel fingers pinching her flesh or tweaking at her hair, to hear laughter, footsteps, insane bursts of music, or agonized sobbing that broke off into abrupt and total silence.
As she traveled, the season ripened.
Through these rolling pasturelands little streams meandered, and broader rivers. Wild deer grazed, knee-deep in the gold-dust powderings of dandelions. Gusts of white butterflies arose, and leaves spiraled down, colored peppermint and rust. Great, outspread oaks stood in pools of their own shadows, while willows lowered their fine, dragonfly-threaded draperies along the edges of the watercourses. Distant valleys were gauzed in softest, palest gray-blue. The air was an elixir, a tonic, each draft dizzying with its vitality. Jewel waded across narrow streams but had to swim across those that were wider. Sometimes there were bridges in various states of repair.
Jewel reckoned it must have been at least ten nights since she had left the wagoners at Keeling Muir when she crossed the stepping-stones of a shallow, fast-flowing brook and climbed a slope topped by a fence of livin
g pines. As tall as towers were they, and so ancient that their boughs seemed to reach into the past. Dense and black-green was their needle-foliage combing the wind, and sweet-scented with resin. This soughing palisade stretched for many miles in either direction, and Jewel knew she had come at last to the borders of the domain of Strang. Quietly, despite her foment of excitement, she slipped through.
On she went in the direction of Castle Strang, despite being unsure how to reach that fortress. No visible road or track opened before her, and although she scanned the acres of meadowlands and forests she could discern no sign of any edifice. She passed the rotted and tumbled remnants of a wooden fence, perhaps once a barrier around a stock-yard. The crumbling timbers were overhung by venerable chestnut trees, some missing fallen boughs. Their roots were deeply buried in a thick litter of leaves and rotting chestnuts. Farther on, she passed a sycamore coppice, beyond which the hillsides were delicately terraced with the faded engravings of old sheep-tracks. As the day wore away she came to a shadowy oak wood as antique as any feature of that landscape, its floor littered with layers of decomposing acorns and leaves.
The afternoon was waning. Billows of alabaster cloud reared like monuments in the sky. Streaking through gaps between them, the lengthening sunrays were mellowing from palest gold to opulent amber. Jewel climbed up the slope of a grassy ridge. At the summit, she halted and looked down. Her gorge rose, as if she had taken a blow to the solar plexus, and she felt almost nauseous with excitement.
There below her on the other side of the valley stood the massive bulwarks of Castle Strang. The marsh-daughter had been unsure how to reach it, but perhaps that sorcerously built compound had its own way of being found.
Jewel could not know it but the stronghold remained much as it had appeared to her forefather Tierney A’Connacht, when he had first set eyes on it, more than eighty years earlier. A bulky dome, greenish-bronze in color, loomed out of the core. At its apex crouched a domed cupola. Countless round turrets, square towers, and minor structures crammed against its lime-washed walls, all with their hemispherical caps, looking like a rank infestation of toadstools. Fired by the florid tints of sunset, the pallid walls and metallic roofs burned, flamingo-pink in the light, hyacinth-purple in the shadow, like some fantastic confection. There were no signs of anyone guarding the fortress. Would it slay her, as it was said to slay all those who approached? By what method would it do so? She tried to recall all she had heard of the deaths of trespassers at the Dome. As soon as they touched a lock or tried to scale a wall or pass some invisible perimeter they had been struck down, but whether by lightning or some other agency none could say. The tops of the walls were lethal. Entrances were lethal. Men had been let down from enormous kites, on swinging ladders, but had perished before reaching the ground. The thought struck her—she could not know for certain whether she alone was able to open the Dome; what if it had been a false assumption in the first place? Nonetheless, Jewel took courage; nothing could harm her, except mistletoe, and maybe old age. Yet even of mistletoe she was uncertain. Unknowingly she had touched sprigs of the plant, handled its twigs and leaves, once toward Midwinter, when she and Elfgifu and Hilde had been visiting a lowland village and gone gathering greenery for decorations. Holding it had wrought no injury upon Jewel. Later she had found out what it was she had plucked and carried, and marveled that she remained hale.
The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 24
