Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “Ask no questions, be told no lies. You ought to know better,” said the urisk.

  “What can you mean?”

  “Names are not lightly to be asked for, or given.”

  Of course, he was right. There was weighty significance in a name. Telling someone your name gave them power over you. In particular the names of wights were notoriously difficult to discover, as many of the old tales confirmed.

  “Very well,” she said. “You won’t tell me your name but I shall tell you mine.”

  Name-telling did not matter quite so much with humankind. All the world might know one’s name and no great harm done. Appellations were necessary to social interaction.

  “I know it already,” said the wight.

  The damsel frowned. “I am overjoyed to learn you are as ill-mannered as ever. I would hate to suspect you had suffered any improvement. You have journeyed far. Will you take some refreshment?” She gestured towards the crockery by the door. Half a loaf sat on one dish, while the other brimmed with strawberry jam.

  The urisk uttered a short laugh. “These past two nights the hedgehogs have devoured your feast and licked the platters clean,” he said, “while you slumbered in the willow withies like a babe. Why not let them enjoy it tonight, as well?”

  Even as he spoke, a family of three hedgehogs scampered across the flag-stones and began to nibble and slurp at the provender.

  The urisk’s cavalier attitude abraded Asrthiel’s patience. For some reason she felt insulted. She had intended to please him with a gift, but now she felt like a patronizing fool. Her pleasure at the reunion was marred by her irritation. “What—did you think I left that food there for you?” she scoffed. “Of course not. What is it urisks prefer? Worms and fungus and stolen leftovers?” Petulantly, she tucked the juggling balls back into the drawstring pouch that hung from her girdle.

  “Prithee, do not confuse your own tastes with those of more fastidious diners,” the wight said icily, turning his shoulder.

  At this evidence of rejection Asrthiel became suddenly penitent. After all, it was a long way on foot—or on hoof—from High Darioneth to King’s Winterbourne. She wondered whether the wight had journeyed all that way just to visit her, or if he were calling on her while passing through on the way to some other destination. The question was best left unasked; in general, querying him only led to complications. If he had made the journey specifically to see her she would be greatly flattered and delighted. Were he only passing through, she would still be glad he had paid her the compliment of a call. The past connected the two of them. He meant more to her than she had believed, and the last thing she wanted was to estrange him, de-spite his infuriating manner. She hoped to entice him to stay at least a while longer.

  Subdued, she clasped her hands in front of her and said humbly, “This house is my dwelling-place. No brownie is attached to it. I expect you know that already, since you seem to discover everything that goes on. There is no ward above the side-door. I invite you into my home. Come and go as you please.” Alarmed by a sudden afterthought, she added, “But if you do cross my threshold, I beg you to refrain from throwing out my belongings or causing any mischief, as you did at the House of Maelstronnar.”

  The urisk, his curls silver-painted in the moonlight, gave no answer. She was not, however, discomfited; for at least he did not refuse, and he had, after all, traveled the long road from High Darioneth. If not to remeet her, then why? The little wight was inscrutable, and no doubt she would never understand his purposes, but for now it was enough to have his familiar company, even if he did vex her sorely now and then, and notwithstanding the fact that encounters with him stirred a curious sense of disquiet that troubled her from time to time.

  “If you stay in my home,” she said daringly, “you are welcome to dine at my table.”

  “I have no wish,” he responded, giving every sign of impatience, “to dine at your table, despite that you seem to consider it some great honor for a wretched wight to be invited to sit at board with a witch-princess.”

  “Alas. I meant only to be agreeable. It seems nothing pleases you.”

  “Oh, many things please me, Weatherwitch,” said the urisk, “and mayhap someday you shall find them out.”

  Unsure if his words were intended as some dire threat or some mysterious promise, Asrthiel was poised between apprehension and fascination. When he failed to proffer any further information, she made an effort to put aside her disquiet, and began to cast about for some innocuous topic of conversation with which to divert her unsettling companion.

  “The stars are bright tonight,” she ventured. As soon as she had pronounced the words she regretted their inanity. Surely he would deride her for it.

  “So it seems,” her visitor replied, completely without ridicule, “even though the light you see was fashioned in their hearts millions of years before humankind walked on this world. By tonight, although their radiance twinkles, those same stars might in fact be no more than dully glowing embers, or they might no longer exist.”

  “How strange! ‘Tis a melancholy concept.”

  “Old stars die, new stars are born.” Still leaning casually against the well-coping, the urisk appeared content to indulge in calm discourse, for the moment. “The death of stars gives rise to life, for it is the dying stars, the supernovae, that manufacture all the heavy elements. Living stars make sulphur, and the iron that reddens your blood, and the calcium from which your bones are constructed, and the salts that propel impulses along the pathways of your body. From dying stars issue silver and cobalt, arsenic and iridium, copper and zinc. The energies of the universe remix them, minting them into infant stars, new worlds, plants, and living creatures. Supernovae are our forebears. We are all made of Stardust.”

  “Oh!” Asrthiel was spellbound, almost dumbfounded by the wight’s extraordinary and partially unintelligible statements. It seemed, too, unusual for him to be so forthcoming. Again she wondered about the purpose of his visits. Could the unfathomable layers of his character ever be penetrated, the riddles of his nature solved? She stood with raised head, gazing heaven-wards. “How old is starlight?”

  “The light from Lucan, the brilliant red star in the west, is twenty minutes old. Those two blue stars overhead, the Andretes, are four light-years away. It took sixteen hundred years for starshine to reach us from that globular cluster suspended above the oak tree, and thirty thousand years before our world received the light from the most distant stars in the heart of our galaxy, those that appear to you as a haze. But even dimmer lanterns hang in the sky beyond the sky. If you observe with care, you might behold the lamps of the Meliodas Galaxy, two million years old, or the tiny fires of the galaxies in the constellation Galeron, fifty million light-years distant. When we look into the sky beyond the sky, we look back into the deeps of time.”

  After a few moments’ silent and awed consideration, Asrthiel said, “There is so much that mortals do not know.”

  “So much they cannot know,” answered the urisk. Then he appended softly, “The roots of crowthistle delve deep; deeper beneath the surface than can be guessed by the weed’s appearance.”

  A mournful hoot punched a hole in the night, breaking the spell.

  “Now lo!” said the urisk, as if rousing from a reverie. He stood up straight. “The owl laughs in the ymp tree and the night is aging. It is high time for witch-girls to be abed. Good night.”

  “Will you come back?” Asrthiel’s cry sounded thin and small in the dark. She was only nineteen, and far from home, and night’s web stretched out on all sides, seeming vaster than ever. The urisk had already vaulted over the wall into the kitchen garden and merged into the murk. His voice floated back; “Maybe.”

  After a while, fainter, “Maybe not.”

  The season’s colors, intense in the month of Otember, waned as strengthening winds ripped foliage from birch and oak and hazel. Across the Four Kingdoms Lantern Eve had been celebrated on the last day of Autumn. Ninember hera
lded the cold reign of the powerful wight called the Cailleach Bheur, the Winter Hag.

  There was plenty of work for Asrthiel during this season, even though she spent much time arguing with King Warwick’s advisors about what was truly necessary, and repeatedly explaining the way that alterations made in one area of the atmosphere inevitably engendered repercussions in other areas. Weather-wielding was never lightly undertaken. It was the responsibility of weathermasters to ensure that the atmosphere’s balance was never destroyed, for that would bring incalculable catastrophe upon the Four Kingdoms and even affect the whole of Tir.

  In the undercurrents of her mind, Asrthiel was still haunted by the desire to explore the Northern Ramparts at some undefined period in the future; to investigate those forbidding mountains, and maybe even to venture beyond, into the lands where her father had gone journeying, seeking a remedy to waken her mother from the enchanted sleep. At present, however, there was no time for expeditions. When she was not working, or playing the role of diplomat, she was practicing swordplay, writing letters, reading, exploring the countryside of Narngalis, caring for the kitchen garden at The Laurels—a hobby that privately perplexed the servants—or attending the various concerts, balls and plays regularly staged at various venues in King’s Winter-bourne. Her presence was greatly in demand by high society, but at the close of a busy day she preferred to dismiss the servants, retreat quietly to the downstairs parlor and curl up in her armchair by the fire, reading a book.

  It was there one late Ninember evening, to her joy, that she saw the urisk again.

  She looked up to see him perched on the wide windowsill, poised as if ready to jump out of the open casement at the slightest provocation. Gently she spoke in greeting, wishing fervently that he would stay.

  “Prithee, let us be friends,” she said. Putting down her book she reached out her hand, but he recoiled and she quickly pulled back.

  “Keep your distance,” he said shortly. “I am not your pet goat, to be patted.” Asrthiel gaped, dumbfounded for a moment, then could not help but burst into laughter. She tried to stifle her mirth quickly, fearing she must have offended him yet again, but to her astonishment she perceived that a grin brightened his quaint little face. It was the first time, in her recollection, that she had ever made the wight genuinely smile, and she was quite taken aback.

  “Nor are you my scapegoat,” she quipped. “Come, sit with me. I’ll not harass you.”

  “I will sit with you,” said the wight, without budging, “on this ledge.”

  “As you please.” Casting about for an opening to conversation, she added, “It is a quiet night.”

  “Quiet enough to hear the mice singing. . . .” the urisk said. “But your storybooks keep you happy, apparently.”

  Asrthiel fancied she detected a hint of contempt, but ignored it. “This is not a storybook. It is an account of an expedition to the highest peaks of the Northern Ramparts—purely non-fiction. Words on pages do bring me de-light, but conversation keeps me happy too. You have lived longer than anyone I know. I daresay you have a wealth of tales stored in your memory.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Do you ever allow others the privilege of hearing them?”

  “If they ask nicely.”

  Asrthiel swallowed the few vestiges of pride that remained to her. It seemed to be one of the prices she must pay for this companionship. “Prithee, will you tell me one of your stories?”

  “Can you bear to take your nose out of your books for long enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then.”

  And he did tell her a story, while behind him the uneven glass of the window panes distorted and smeared the shapes of the stars, so that the sky looked as if it were weeping.

  The wight recounted a tale of ancient war and woe, concerning a captain and his lieutenant. Many battles had been fought over a long period, and the captain’s armies had the upper hand against their foe, but the end of the conflict was nowhere in sight. Loyal was the lieutenant, and utterly devoted to his leader. Wishing to hasten the victory, he went before his commander and said, “Forgive me, lord, but I would ask you to change your tactics if we are to gain swift success.”

  Valuing his officer’s opinion, the captain hearkened.

  The lieutenant said, “Never have you deigned to bear arms against the weaker elements amongst our foes—the women, the children and the elderly, the sick and crippled. Always you have commanded your armies to ignore them, or merely to sweep them from our path if they block our way. But I declare, lord, that the enemy must be totally wiped out, if we are ever to triumph. We must slay them all, regardless of their strength or weakness.”

  The captain hearkened, but he did not agree, and said so.

  Thereafter the lieutenant went away with a heavy heart. He esteemed his captain beyond all others but was certain that his leader’s eyes were veiled to the truth. He believed also that he, the lieutenant, understood what was best for his commanding officer and for their cause. The longer the battles continued, the longer his worthy commander would remain at risk from the enemy. For a long time he agonized in his own thoughts, seeking an answer, and at last he hit upon a daring plan. In order to force the captain to come around to his way of thinking, he would betray him to the foe.

  The lieutenant judged that if the proud captain were to be seized, imprisoned and humbled by the enemy, he would be persuaded to hate his captors so absolutely that he would agree to the lieutenant’s ruthless proposition of genocide. He had no doubt that his clever and fearless commander would quickly escape, and that then he would unleash every power at his disposal to begin a thorough slaughter of the foe, leading his armies in triumph to utterly wipe out the enemy from every corner of the world.

  Thus it happened that the lieutenant conveyed messages in secret to the foe, revealing certain information. He betrayed his commander, who was indeed taken prisoner.

  “What happened next?” asked Asrthiel, speaking in hushed tones during a pause in the urisk’s story of passions and bloodshed.

  “The plans of the lieutenant went all awry,” said the wight, “for his commander was not given any opportunity to respond as he had envisaged. Indeed, the enemy was more powerful than had been guessed, and they destroyed their prisoner. Crazed with anguish because he had brought about the downfall of his champion, the lieutenant cast himself from the brink of a terrible abyss, thus ending his own existence. Leaderless, the armies of the captain were defeated—ironically, all due to one soldier’s obsessive loyalty.”

  Presently Asrthiel said, “What a strange tale. It has moved me.”

  “Even so.”

  “It is pure tragedy for a man to destroy what he loved through his own fidelity.” The damsel brushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes. “And, how sad it is to think of all those slain soldiers lying in the cold ground. Conceivably, every day we living creatures travel over the bones of the fallen, buried in fields or beneath the roots of the forests. We walk above, in the sunlight, and have little concept of what lies below.”

  “Many things are buried in the ground,” said the urisk, “some deeper than others.”

  “Things such as lost coins, I should imagine,” Asrthiel said musingly, thinking aloud, “and broken ploughshares, and shattered glass or pottery, buttons and beads.”

  “Those and more. The history of the world is written underground.”

  “How so?”

  “Year after year, blankets of sediment are deposited over the world’s surface. Each layer preserves a record of the atmosphere, the climate, the state of the biosphere, cataclysmic events and other conditions that prevailed in the era it was laid down. Those who dig underground, through the youngest layers to the deepest and oldest, knowing what they are seeking, will discover a wealth of knowledge.”

  “But surely,” said Asrthiel, “such underground annals would be destroyed during quakes and volcanic upheavals!”

  “As I asserted,” the urisk responded, “kn
ow what you are seeking. He wrho would study the strata must be aware that uplift, subsidence and deformation can interrupt even chronicles written in stone.”

  Asrthiel said, “What wonders are written there?”

  “The forms of ancient creatures now extinct, preserved in sand, or mud, or volcanic ash. Jewels and gemstones, shining ore, fire and water.”

  “Underground is the haunt of knockers, and the Fridean, and other such delving wights. I would have supposed urisks had no interest in the lightless places.”

  “That demonstrates your ignorance. Urisks are nocturnal, weatherwitch, or have you forgotten?”

  Asrthiel was about to make a comment when footsteps creaked the floorboards in the hall and someone knocked at the parlor door. The voice of the butler said, “Your pardon, mistress, is there an anything you might be needing?”

  “No, gramercie. Good night, Giles.”

  “Good night, my lady.”

  And when she looked again at the window the urisk had gone. Giving a shrug, she murmured, “Typical.”

  As Giles’s footsteps receded down the hallway, she wondered whether the wight had moved into her new lodgings. She was uncertain, fully aware that he was a wilful thing and could not be caged, and would remain with her only as long as it pleased him.

  The unlatched casement swung slightly back and forth, then abruptly banged wide open, driven by a gust. Asrthiel rose to her feet and walked over to the window to pull it shut. As she leaned out to grasp the handle she sniffed the air. The wind was changing. It had swung around. “Boreiss from the south,” she whispered automatically, naming the wind as was her habit. “Boreiss, whither do you wander?” And she raised her eyes to the heights of the north, where the wind was going. Honed against the stars, the peaks looked so close she might have reached out and cut her fingers on them. Instead she pulled the casement closed against the night.