Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Wheat, barley, oats, rye and other cereal crops would not thrive at these high altitudes. This was not a flour-mill but a nut-mill, and its water-driven machinery powered not only the massive grindstones for making nut-meal, but also the shell-cracking rollers.

  A family owned and ran the works. Their name, coincidentally, was “Miller,” and they had been friends to Asrthiel’s family ever since she could remember. Throughout her childhood Asrthiel had accompanied her parents and the large Miller family at the annual celebration of Mai Day. Now that she was eighteen, for old times’ sake she continued the tradition.

  Asrthiel and her young cousins ran ahead of the traveling-chaise as it bowled through the gates of the mill-yard, keeping their distance from the mud thrown up by the wheels. Primrose lamplight spilled from the windows of the building. Seven white geese scattered, honking, from Dobbin’s hooves, and a thick shaft of radiance shot from an aperture as a door was flung open. A few ghostly feathers drifted in the air while the eldest son of the current mill-master came striding out to welcome the visitors. He was a young man of three-and-twenty Winters, and his name was Faramond. In his wake his siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and parents issued from the building calling out greetings. The newcomers entered and, after they had partaken of some steaming hot soup, they and the willing members of the assembly set forth into the gloaming, lanterns held high, dragging small sleds or carrying baskets.

  All across the plateau folk bearing lanterns were bringing in the mai, collecting the spume-froth of hawthorn-flowers from the laden hedgerows. The darkling woods rang with laughter and cries of delight, which were not always associated with finding good specimens of flora; Mai Day Eve was a time of unbridled fun, for which reason many parents forbade their daughters to participate in the overnight flower-gathering.

  Mai Day Eve had an alternative name: “Mischief Night.” During these sunless hours, eldritch wights were wont to play practical jokes on hu-mankind. Taking advantage of this phenomenon, pranksters of the human variety indulged in an annual prodigality of lawlessness, during which their pranks, being blamed on mischievous wights, might go unpunished. It was a night for knocking on closed doors and running away, for blocking chimneys, abducting and hiding garden gates, pretending to smash windows by smacking them with the palm of the hand while breaking glass bottles, and blowing smoke through keyholes. In his youth, Asrthiel’s cousin-once-removed, Ryence Darglistel-Blackfrost, had perfected a cunning device made of buttons and string which, when hooked up correctly, could be used to tap on windowpanes from afar. He had taught the trick to several of his young relations, and still delighted in helping them confound innocent householders.

  The hawthorn blossoms appeared luminous against the evening shadows; in less than an hour their shimmering pallor filled basket and sled, and Asrthiel’s companions, their lanterns swinging like pendant jewels, were wending back to the mill to partake of more refreshments. They were secure in the knowledge that the mill had been well guarded from pranksters; the miller himself, and several stalwart mill-hands, had made certain of it.

  Mead and ale flowed freely, and much jollity was enjoyed. Afterwards the family’s hearth fire was extinguished with due ceremony, in the tradition of Mai Day Eve. As soon as their tankards were empty and the hearth-fire embers hissing their last gasps of steam, the Millers hitched two pairs of horses to their barouche and joined their visitors on the journey along the byways of the plateau to Greatlawn Common. On the way the two conveyances met and merged with convoys of other revelers, on foot or in carriages. The full procession, lighted by bobbing lanterns and heralded by mirthful singing, arrived on the common well after the sun had set.

  Resplendent firelight flickered through the trees. On Greatlawn Common the Mai Day Eve bonfire was beginning to burn. Almost all Asrthiel’s kindred and friends were present, the people who filled her life with unswerving love, occasional selfishness, kindness, thoughtlessness, friendship and evanescent quarrels. In a wide circle around the contorting flames the folk of High Darioneth mingled, regardless of worldly status, their cheerful faces painted with flickering red light. The weathermasters amongst them were of goodly bearing and appearance. Most were garbed in richly patterned clothing of various colours. The elder weathermasters, however, no matter were they man or woman, were invested with splendid raiment in many shades of grey; storm-cloud, ash, iron and slate. These were the mages. Their garments of voluptuous velvet and copiously embroidered satin were emblazoned with the emblems of their calling: the runes for Water, Fire and Air: ¥, Ψ and §.

  The bri, the innate ability to sense and affect the weather elements of air, fire and water, was a gift passed on through generations of weathermasters. As bri-children grew to adulthood they became prentices, learning how to master their abilities and being schooled in the ethics of weather-working. Successful prentices were permitted to become journeymen. When they had satisfactorily completed their studies—usually at the age of twenty-one—journeymen were deemed ready to pass the ultimate test and become full-fledged weathermages; only then did they receive the final secret of weather-wielding. Asrthiel was a journeyman, yet the brí was potent in her and she had sped through her lessons at an unprecedented rate. There was talk of her achieving early mage-hood.

  The schoolhouse down on the plateau, Fortune-in-the Fields, provided education for the plains-dwelling children; but Rowan Green perched on its high shelf had no schools. Personal tutors had the job of teaching all bri-children, prentices and journeymen, and at this period Asrthiel’s grandfather was her mentor. As the Mai Day Eve bonfire flared, the damsel smiled upon him; Avalloc Maelstronnar-Stormbringer, the Storm Lord, aquiline of feature and greymaned. He was surrounded by family and friend; his daughters Galiene and Lysanor with their husbands and grown-up children; his sister Astolat with her grandchildren; Lynley and Baldulf Ymberbaillé-Rainbearer with their son Bliant and his wife and youngsters; the venerable members of the Council of Ellenhall; Ettare Sibilaure, Gauvain Cilsundror and Engres Aventaur; the new carlin, Lidoine Galenrithar; and the farmers, orchardists and tradesfolk of the plateau. While Asrthiel cherished them all, it was at celebrations such as this that she mourned her parents afresh, longing for her mother’s touch, her father’s smile. Her smiles concealed a sorrow that never melted away.

  Calling on her powers of fancy and her weather-senses, she listened a while for signs of things and places unseen. Out at the edges of the night, far from the circle of firelight and the rejoicings of humankind, screech owls and other nocturnal creatures were awakening. Eldritch wights such as grigs, spriggans and siofra stirred amongst banks of early-flowering crocuses and anemones, while songbirds, lynxes, and marmots were settling down to sleep in their nests and burrows. All seemed at rights; however Asrthiel was insightful enough to understand that all was never completely at rights, that appearances could often be quite shockingly deceptive.

  Deep beneath the world’s surface many kinds of phenomena were slowly evolving, as ever; vast networks of fungi filaments infiltrated the soil, worms nourished their long pink bodies, roots drilled, dark rivers flowed. Miles underground iron boiled, and magma bulged toward crustal faults. Aloft, amidst the surrounding peaks of High Darioneth, the ambient temperature dropped below freezing point. Water from the air condensed and froze in the crevices of the mountains’ upper battlements. As seams of ice expanded, their pressure cracked the stone; the sharp reports of shattering rock echoed and ricocheted between the mountain walls and down steep, profound gullies. Asrthiel, had she wished, might have extended her weather-senses further and known the deep cold of the high crags.

  But on Greatlawn Common there was laughter, dancing, and song through the night. The youths and maidens and younger children spent the early morning of Mai Day in woods and fields seeking more flowering branches to carry home in triumph at sunrise; foamy snowdrifts of hawthorn blossom, sprays of rowan and boughs of birch; basketfuls of wild primula from the corries, explosions of pink cinquefoil from the sc
ree slopes and buttercups from the banks of the mountain streams; apronsful of alpine poppies, still in bud, and alpine daisies like surprised faces, and gentians like flakes of the sky fallen into the lap of the mountains. These blossoms and branches were used to decorate the exteriors of houses, or woven into gar-lands with marsh-marigolds from the highland bogs. Colorful flowers were also employed to deck the interiors of the houses, yet in no case were any white flowers used for that purpose. To bring white flowers indoors was to invite the wrath of unseelie entities, and attract ill fortune.

  A roguish group calling themselves the “Mai Birchers” sang uncouth songs as they traveled from house to house bestowing floral decorations on the thresholds of their neighbours:

  “Pear for the fair,

  Hawthorn for the well-born,

  Plum for the glum,

  Alder for a scolder,

  Bramble if you ramble.”

  One youth shouted, “Nut for a slut and gorse for the whores,” but he was pounced upon gleefully by several of his companions, carried bodily to the nearest duck-pond and hurled into the half-frozen mire.

  As the sun rose higher the clouds blew away, leaving only a few languid wisps wreathed around the pinnacles. The spirits of High Darioneth’s denizens soared with the sun, whose rays seemed to reach into their hearts and open the doors of jollity. Curlews gave warning of a sparrowhawk in the vicinity with their bubbling cry, and magpies warbled greetings to the morning. Human songsters with flowers twined in their hair tramped from house to house while the day aspired to noon, and they were greeted with gifts of food in return for the vegetation they proffered. Yet, for all the fires and the flowers, the parading and the songs, the apogee of Mai Day was the Mai-pole.

  With the greatest veneration this perennial icon was brought to Greatlawn Common. Twenty yoke of oxen, each with a nosegay of fragrant flowers adorning the tips of his horns, hauled the straight-grown birch-tree trunk. The Mai-pole, painted all over with gorgeous colors and decorated with flowers and herbs fastened with twine, was hoisted into position. The handkerchiefs and flags tied to the top fluttered in the breeze. Folk strewed straw all around it, and upon the straw they begin to dance while the band played merrily. It was as if the Mai-pole were itself the stamen of a great flower, and the dancers that encircled it were living petals, gaudy in their festive colors. In addition to dancing they participated in sports and simple plays. Over all the Mai games reigned the Mai Queen, a democratically elected schoolgirl clothed in fine costume.

  By the evening of Mai Day the revelers were exhausted from their merry-making. They wended their way to their separate houses, some of which had recently received the attentions of pranksters such as Ryence Darglistel and his cohorts, who had generously been painting whitewash over the windows while the householders cavorted on Greatlawn Common.

  The weathermasters returned to Rowan Green, the wide shelf atop the cliff. Some proceeded to their homes, but others went to Long Gables, the great common-hall of the Seat. It seemed they were reluctant to allow the night to conclude, unwilling to go straight to their beds: to do so would be to admit that the festival was over for another year. Inside the hall a fire was burning low in the grate, and in the half-light human forms could be glimpsed, draped here and there on cushioned settles and in chairs or on the thick rugs scattered across the floor. Amongst them was Asrthiel.

  Snippets of desultory conversation crisscrossed one another. One of the prentices plucked three notes on a stringed instrument. At length a voice inquired, “What is your favorite tune?”

  Another responded, “I enjoy the funny drinking songs, especially the one about the rooster in the yard.”

  Lazy laughter up welled and trickled away, but with the fire mellow on the hearth and wine ruby in the glass a sated lethargy had stolen over the gathering, and no one felt inclined to the exertion of belting out a rollicking tavern ditty.

  “I have always liked the melody of that old song about Fallowblade,” said a third speaker. “It is plaintive yet thrilling.”

  “Ah yes, Fallowblade,” said the first, “a wistful strain in sooth, as pleasing to the ear as its subject is to the eye, or so I am told, for in fact I have never seen the fabled weapon drawn from its sheath.”

  Several persons looked to Asrthiel, who rejoined, “As one who has seen the golden sword, I can tell you he is fairer far than any music, except perhaps the music of the baobhan sith, who lure men to dance in mushroom circles.”

  “Some day,” a fifth speaker put in, “I would like to behold Fallowblade wielded in combat. Only in rehearsal, of course.” This pronouncement was greeted with approval, and a rambling discourse about the sword’s history ensued. The companions were weary, however, and eventually the conversation petered out.

  Someone began softly strumming a lute. Presently, the musician began to sing:

  “A wondrous sword was Fallowblade, the finest weapon ever seen;

  Forged in the far-famed Inglehre, wrought by the hand of Alfardene,

  Famed master-smith and weathermage. Of gold and platinum ‘twas made:

  Iridium for reinforcement, gold to coat the shining blade,

  Delved from the streams of Windlestone; bright gold for slaying wicked wights,

  Fell goblins, bane of mortalkind, that roamed and ruled the mountain heights

  Upon a dark time long ago.

  To forge the mighty Fallowblade upon the peak of bitter snows

  The Storm Lord labored long and hard. The heights rang with his hammer blows,

  Hot sparks flew up like meteors. A lord of fire was Alfardene;

  With power terrible he filled the sword. And all along the keen

  And dreadful blade he wrote the words in flowing script for all to find:

  Mé maraigh bo diabhlaíocht—’I am the Bane of Goblinkind.’

  Upon a dark time long ago.

  When weatherlords to battle fared, the glinting of the yellow blade

  Was spied from far off. Wild and strange the melody, the blood-song played

  By winds against the leading edge. The wielder of the golden sword

  Smote wightish heads, hewed pathways of destruction through the goblin horde.

  Their smoking blood blacken’d the ground. Unseelie wights were vanquished. Then,

  ‘To victory!’ sang Fallowblade. ‘Sweet victory for mortal men!’

  Upon a dark time long ago.”

  As the singer’s words rose from the hearthside like clear sparks and whirled away through the windowpanes into the starlight, Astriel-Asrthiel, granddaughter of the Storm Lord, felt a terrible restlessness sweep over her, as if her heart yearned to leap from her ribcage; and as the last chords of the lute died away she moved to stand beside one of the window embrasures.

  Out across the roofs of the compound she gazed, and through the budding branches of a rowan tree, and past the parapet bordering the cliff edge. To the left, the fertile plateau of High Darioneth stretched away toward the far side of the mountain ring. To the right, towering steeps soared up like a colossal palisade. The lofty waterfall that cascaded down Wychwood Storth was making its own music. Dark, double-bows of bird-shapes were circling in a sky that seemed impossibly huge; deepest indigo sprinkled with a salting of stars. When they flew closer, one could see that they were bats, black as blowing ashes against the beaten silver of the star-fields. Behind the cloud-wrapped peak of Wychwood Storth, the sickle moon was floating. On the plateau more than three hundred feet below, feather-down mists lay peacefully across dim fields and orchards.

  Somewhere to the southeast the ruins of the Dome of Strang lay brooding in the mists of Orielthir. That desolation claimed Asrthiel’s attention from time to time; she could not rid herself of the tug of the past. Her mother and father had told fascinating, fearful tales of the place. She wondered whether any trace of the sorcerer’s reign still lingered undiscovered amongst the tumbled stones. . . .

  As ever, Asrthiel turned to face the north. The crags of Wychwood Storth loom
ed, as implacable as ever, a sentinel against what lay beyond. Stars winked out, then materialized again as some other winged thing flew across the night sky. Beyond those crags, into the unknown lands her father had passed, striding away on his long legs with a bundle on his back and purpose in his heart. Would any news of him ever come back? What would it be like to follow after him, to seek him out—impossible in those vast, unmapped tracts—and to join him in the search? What unimaginable adventures waited beyond the Northern Ramparts, the loftiest and loneliest mountains in the Four Kingdoms of Tir?

  In a melancholy mood the watcher murmured to herself as she leaned yearningly across the sill, “Upon a dark time long ago . . .”

  Conversations

  She dreams in lonely splendor, while the seasons of the year Ornately alchemize the hues of mountain, wood and mere, And daylight flits through walls of glass like yellow butterflies, Or grey moths, when the wind draws ragged clouds across the skies.

  By night the silver moon and stars reflect from crystal panes That shelter this fair sleeper from the bitter winds and rains. She slumbers in tranquillity, untouched by time’s decay, A figurine of porcelain, though warmer than the clay.

  Her lids, two azure petals, rest upon her raindrop face. Her hair, nocturnal filigree, entwines like silken lace. And round about her bedchamber a wondrous web-work grows, Of thorns and blooms and twining stems—the gorgeous briar rose.

  The briar rose; a living cage, a leafy, fragrant bower Each blossom tinct alizarin, each bud and full-blown flower Aglow with vibrant reds, a fitting canopy for one Who dreams in lonely splendor ‘neath the pathways of the sun. The secret of how she may be awakened, no one knows So she sleeps on, amid the tangles of the briar rose.

  —“THE SLEEPING BEAUTY IN THE BRIARS,” A POEM BY ALEYN CILSUNDROR-SKYCLEAVER, BARD OF THE WEATHERMASTERS