Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “Grandfather, what lies beyond the borders of the Four Kingdoms?”

  Asrthiel asked questions like these from time to time. Avalloc was aware that despite having traveled all over Tir throughout her life, his granddaughter was far from content, and wished to reconnoiter beyond the fences. He pondered. “We cannot be certain. To my knowledge, no adventurers have ever come to Tir from the lands beyond.”

  The damsel persisted, “In all the tomes and scrolls in the libraries of High Darioneth, and many of the collections and stacks belonging to noblemen and royalty in the great cities, there is little to be told of those regions, save for their various names and sparse description of their hither marches. I should very much like to take a sky-balloon and go exploring.”

  Her grandfather observed her thoughtfully.

  “You understand, dear child, that is impossible,” he said. “Our fleet is larger these days, because the worldwide climatic pattern is altering. Our services are more in demand than ever. Bear in mind that the weather is wilder and more fickle than in earlier times.”

  Asrthiel said, “You and I, grandfather, can extend our senses great distances into the atmosphere, predicting the weather far in advance. When we augur that the atmosphere will be relatively tranquil across the kingdoms for a few weeks, leaving at least one balloon idle, I could go exploring!”

  “Even the most proficient weathermaster, “Avalloc countered, “must acknowledge that he or she is ultimately fallible, and that the atmosphere is as capricious as any tricksy wight. Emergencies sometimes arise, and we must be prepared. Balloons and crews cannot be spared for adventuring or exploring.”

  “But do you not wish to know what lies past the borders?” A hint of pleading had entered Asrthiel’s tone.

  “You and I both understand the nature of the weather systems that prevail over the closer areas of those outlying regions, at the furthest limits of our weather-senses. Is that not sufficient, hmm? Besides, all evidence indicates those lands are not inhabited by humankind, nor are they habitable at all by our race—” the Storm Lord checked himself, then amended, “by mortal men of our race, I should say. Too many perils and vicissitudes beset far-off places; if not heat and drought then icy cold, or unseelie wights in their hordes, or wildwoods impenetrable, or the hostility of landscapes wind-scoured and barren. To explore those strange countries would require a well-provisioned expedition, and I doubt not ‘twould take many a long day—months or years; perhaps decades. And no guarantee of a profitable outcome, or indeed of a safe return.”

  “Knowledge is profit!”

  “Exactly my point, dear child.” Avalloc wagged an earnest finger. “There’s no guarantee an exploratory expedition would discover any information of value. Writers of the lore books surmise that the acres of desert or snow or tangle surrounding the Four Kingdoms extend for league upon league, until they simply come to an end at some far-off shore.”

  “Well, I consider the prospect of exploration to be exciting, “Asrthiel replied obstinately. “I daresay there are wonderful discoveries waiting to be made.”

  “My dear child, what are you hoping to discover?”

  “I should like to diagnose the purpose of the universe, and learn the manner of its birth, and what we are made of, and how to banish wickedness.”

  Avalloc’s eyes twinkled. “That is very right-minded of you, to be sure. The druids would say you only have to pledge loyalty to the Sanctorum and be generous with donations, and you shall achieve all your goals.”

  “And why should we doubt their word?”

  Their laughter mingled, as so often. Conversation turned to the subject of the latest “prophecies” from the Sanctorum, which in turn led Asrthiel and Avalloc to discuss the violence being stirred up throughout the Four Kingdoms by the now-frequent schisms within the druidic brotherhood.

  “I would that they might all exterminate each other in battle,” said Asrthiel tartly. “Then we might live free of their strictures and blind bigotry. May the Sanctorum and all its rotten branches wither!”

  “And yet,” said Avalloc, shaking his white-maned head, “people have a profound need to trust in something beyond themselves. Hope, no matter how illusory, is preferable to despair.”

  Asrthiel threw him a quick look. “How odd,” she said, “someone else made a similar statement to me, not long ago.”

  Their conversation continued until at length, when the moon’s white-bone face was peeping through the multiple glass panels of the windows, Avalloc decided to retire to his bedchamber, leaving Asrthiel alone in the library. Curled up in an armchair she commenced perusing a book, with eager intensity, as if words were the air she must inhale in order to stay alive. So intent was she on her reading that she was oblivious of all things around. The wall-paneling squeaked, leaded panes rattled in the night breeze, broken patterns of moonlight slid across the floor.

  As Asrthiel turned a page it came to her that the broken patterns of moon-light had conceived a shape. Or rather, a configuration that was an absence of light.

  A shadow.

  She started. The book slid from her knees to the floor, landing with a thump.

  “Fie on thee, thing!” cried Asrthiel, springing out of her seat in amazement and outrage. “How came you in here?”

  “And a good evening to you too, witch,” the urisk said, giving her an urbane nod.

  “It should be impossible for you to enter here. You cannot cross the threshold of any house unless invited!”

  “You invited me.”

  “I did not!”

  “Your words were, Come with me into the kitchen. I shall find you a dish to your taste.”

  Slowly, wonderingly, the damsel stepped back and reseated herself in the armchair. “Well, so I did,” she said softly, shaking her head. “So I did.”

  Abruptly she laughed. Her smile was a flash of pure white. Her face, when she laughed, shone as if lit with a golden radiance. She felt rather delighted at the wight’s impudence in interpreting her offer of food as a literal invitation to enter the house. Of course, the creature would still be unable to come inside if wight-repellent talismans were hanging over the doors and windows, but houses that harbored domestic brownies did not guard their entrances with wards and charms.

  “Why do you not appear before other folk?” she asked, secretly pleased that the urisk had returned after their quarrel in the courtyard. “Why to me alone?”

  “Humankin d is, by and large, a tedious race. Of all its members, you are perhaps least so.”

  “Why, thank you! I am pleased to learn I approach a chance of being tolerably tedious. I shall strive to achieve this goal, while hoping you do not perish of boredom in my company.”

  The last of the smile lingered, tugging at the corners of Asrthiel’s mouth. The creature could be entertaining, in spite of his vexing ways. Moreover, she was beginning to discover he was surpassingly knowledgeable. When he deigned to be in a reasonably pleasant mood, she was usually able to learn a great deal from this supernatural manifestation; after all, he had lived for an immeasurable span of years, and his store of lore must be greater than the greatest library of humankind. When he sank into an intemperate humor, however, he would tell her nothing.

  “You arrived at a convenient moment,” said the damsel, “for I am rereading Master Clementer’s speculations on the durable nature of Life. The writer used to be a druid. You seem to know much about the druidry.”

  “If so, it is merely because I have existed for so long.”

  “It is unfortunate the druidry has existed for any length of time at all.”

  The wight seated himself, cross-legged, on a woven mat. “Apparently you detest them.”

  “I wish them all exiled forever.” Asrthiel picked up the book that lay sprawled at her feet, smoothed the pages and closed it. As she walked over to the shelves to return the volume to its place she continued, “Once you claimed, ‘Even false hope is better than none.’ Since then I have mused often on the matter. I
do not begrudge people their hope of an afterlife, or of happiness in this one. ‘Tis those who would wield that hope as a weapon to en-slave others whom I detest. That is what the druids do.”

  “Would you shatter the comforting illusions of the populace?” asked the urisk. The window behind him framed his head. The silver moon seemed pincered between his horns.

  The damsel detected that his interest was purely academic; nonetheless she was passionate enough about the subject to press on. “No, but I would take away the lies and power-mongering that the Sanctorum has chained to those pristine hopes of happiness.”

  “Oh, it has ever been a tradition amongst your kind, political elites exploiting human emotions in an attempt at subjugation. How would you present hope to your countrymen?”

  Impetuously, Asrthiel dropped to the floor and knelt, not close to the urisk but low, so that she could speak to him face to face. He regarded her intently. “In this,” she said: “I would give them hope without the dogma. That is the hope I cling to, whenever I long for—” she hesitated and drew back, embarrassed to find herself on the verge of vulnerability in the presence of this alien personage. “No matter.” After pausing to organize her thoughts, she explained, “Life is tenacious. The scholar Adiuvo Clementer learned that it survives deep beneath oceans under enormous pressure, where no light can reach; even in the superheated vents of submerged volcanoes.”

  She had spent untold hours at her mother’s bedside, puzzling over whether there was some profound meaning to Life, and if so, how it was to be found. It was a topic that fascinated and frightened her. Motivated by the urisk’s intelligent glance and contemplative attention, she added, “Life exists even at the bitterest ends of the world. It can survive in the harshest of environments, if water is present. Is that not marvelous?”

  “Certainly.”

  He was not being sarcastic, for once.

  Asrthiel paused. At length she said huskily, “Clementer has written that at the dawn of time the dormant seeds of life came to our world across the airless void of the heavens, through a cold so profound we have no words for it, riding on the backs of falling stars.”

  Beyond the windowpanes, as if in response to her words, a meteor traced a luminous stripe against the constellations. While watching the bright arc swiftly fade, Asrthiel said, “It moves me deeply to understand that the universe wants Life to be. As long as the universe exists, so will Life, in some form—even if not necessarily a form with which we are familiar.” The damsel glanced back toward her listener, who was still seated on the mat, self-contained and typically aloof, though patently missing nothing.

  “It is indeed a fact,” commented the urisk, “that the first motes of Life alighted on this world after voyaging through the Void on fragments of broken planets—as fevers and agues travel from sufferer to sufferer on a handkerchief, or through the air. Life germs discovered a victim to infect, a host in which to breed—the world of Tir. They proliferated and, out of the resultant purulence, humankind arose. Indeed,” said the wight, “thegerms of humankind were aptly titled. They were, in truth, specks too small to be descried by human eyes, whose pathogenic cousins, to this day, make war on your kindred as your kindred make war on each other. The plague called humanity has much in common with other diseases. You act like your festering and destructive forebears because it is in your nature to do so.”

  Ignoring the wight’s sardonic tone, Asrthiel said pensively, “Perhaps Master Clementer’s apocalyptic vision is right, and in the distant future Tir will no longer be fit for Life to inhabit. But the seeds of Life are tenacious, and if they once spread to this world, there is every reason to believe they have spread to other worlds, and will go on spreading forever, whether or not Tir falls into the sun.”

  On the mantelpiece, a lighted lamp guttered. The wick hissed.

  “Even so,” the urisk acknowledged. “The Uile is made up of matter, energy and life. Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely changed. It is the same with Life. Like matter and energy, it is perpetual.”

  “So if Life is ‘Good,’ ” Asrthiel philosophised, “then we may rest assured that Good will be, throughout eternity. With the power of the Uile driving every living entity, how can there ever be an end to the essence of mortal creatures? I would give people that faith,” she concluded, “and then they would have no need for these fabricated icons, the Fates.”

  Now the lunar dazzle from the windows had concentrated itself into a glaze of glittering quiddity, which sparkled in the eyes of Asrthiel. Her lower lip trembled. She gazed at the urisk, almost beseechingly, hoping for some validation of her reasoning. The moon seemed to melt into the horns of the wight, and flow down into his curly hair. It limned his silhouette with metallic glimmers. Beholding the small figure wrapped in moonlight and shadows, Asrthiel was brushed by the wings of awe.

  “I doubt whether they would ever lose that need,” said the urisk. “Evidence indicates humanity requires some anthropomorphic idol to turn to at times of despair and abandonment. That is why they invented the Fates.”

  Asrthiel sighed. “Yes,” she said. “And for that I can find no remedy.”

  “Perhaps there is one.”

  She glanced sharply at him. “You astonish me, condescending to seek solutions to benefit humankind.”

  “My consideration is merely a whim.”

  “Of course. It has not escaped me that your disdain for my race is exceeded only by your contempt. But prithee, state your case.”

  The urisk was no longer sitting cross-legged on the mat. He stood upright; a small, somehow indistinct figure in the tenebrous chamber. The yellow light from the lamps glinted on brass fire-tools and the gilt-embossed spines of books, but did not seem to have the power to touch him.

  “No thing that lives,” he said, “is ever alone. Most mortal creatures can read the maps and make sense of them. Many of the human variety, however, no longer remember how to draw wisdom from the current of life.”

  “Tell me how!”

  “You know already. Meditate, or write, or speak softly, from the heart, into the world that exists behind the eyes. The answers are all ready and waiting to be found.”

  Unexpectedly, an aching pressure arose within Asrthiel’s chest. She was taken by surprise, and fought to suppress a dry sob.

  “Life is without you,” said the urisk, “and within you. Ultimately,” he concluded, “it holds all its own explanations. It is complete, question and answer both. I would say that is the remedy.”

  Asrthiel quickly turned away and hid her face.

  “Why do you weep?”

  “I do not,” she replied in muffled tones. “I cannot. Or if I do, I weep no tears. Immortal human beings are unable to shed tears. Did you not already know that, wise urisk? Perhaps you did not, since only two such beings walk free on the face of the world. Did you know that when people speak of matters close to their hearts, they may sometimes cry, even if no tears fall?”

  “I did. I do.”

  “Then you are indeed wise.” This time, when she said it, she was in earnest.

  She found that she was, however, discomposed by having been so profoundly affected in front of the urisk, notwithstanding that the lapse had been but momentary. Upon regaining her composure she spoke again, affecting a nonchalance she did not feel, in order to dilute her discomfort. “I value your insights, of course. You have traveled hither and thither in the world accruing erudition, while I am obliged to remain within the Kingdoms. Your visits are welcome, although—” A thought struck her and she swung around to face the wight. “I have never understood why you do pay me this courtesy. Tell me, why did you attach yourself to my family so many generations ago, and why do you remain with us after all this time?”

  The wight uttered a short, cynical laugh, which, for the most part, was what Asrthiel had come to expect. Nevertheless, he gave reply.

  “For many years I wandered aimlessly,” he said, watching the shadows as if they reflected the dista
nt past. “The tedium half drove me mad. It chanced that I stayed awhile by a western seashore, and it was there that I witnessed an event that stirred my jaded curiosity for the first time in ages, though only to a trifling degree. A mortal man, a boat-builder, rescued a stranded mermaid, carrying her down to the sea’s edge from which the waves had cast her. It was then common knowledge—and remains so to this day—that he who does a good turn for the merfolk is entitled to three wishes; albeit, this man refused to demand his payment. Some weeks later the sea-girl gifted him with that shirt fashioned from the armor of sea-fish, and he was too polite to return it.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Asrthiel, thinking of the shimmering garment she had inherited from her ancestors. At long last she understood how the strange artifact had fallen into the hands of the Heronswoods.

  Her companion continued, “The boat-builder’s surprising stupidity—doubtless some would call it “altruism”—interested me a little, and for want of any better purpose I came to look in on him and his family from time to time. I followed them when they migrated to the Marsh, then stayed there. It seemed as good an abode as any. Also,” the urisk appended, “I came to hear certain stories about the exploits of your forebears—stories I found some-what inducing.”

  “Inducing? Why? ”

  “Indeed, I cannot say.”

  “Cannot or will not?”

  “Conjecture as you please.”

  Asrthiel pondered, but could make nothing of the creature’s oblique references. A cloud drew its veil across the moon, and the library darkened. The oil lamp by which the damsel had been reading was burning low; the wick needed trimming.

  When the damsel looked around again she could barely make out the shape of the eldritch presence in the gloom. She shook herself, as if ridding herself of cobwebs. Unaccountably she once again felt ill at ease with the wight. To conceal her awkwardness she yawned. Rising to her feet she said, suddenly formal and impeccably polite, “The hour is late. I am weary and must seek my couch. Now that you have been so impudently artful as to interpret my remark as an invitation, I suppose you may stay or go as you please, for my word, apparently, is given; therefore I cannot prevent you. Nevertheless, whenever you are in this house be aware we have a brownie of whose welfare we are solicitous, for it performs all the onerous household tasks during the night when we sleep, and it is a most cherished member of our household. No doubt it is lonely, being the only wight around here. I daresay it might enjoy your company from time to time, when you are gracious. Good night.”