The Starthorn Tree

by Kate Forsyth

  Pedrin could feel Lisandre’s hand trembling in his but she said nothing, leaning forward, watching intently. The six companions were now looking into a comfortable room, a fire roaring in the hearth. Lady Donella sat at a table, wielding a slim silver knife. On one side was a pile of golden apples, on the other side a bowl full of chopped fruit. As Lady Donella delicately cut another apple in half, the watching companions could clearly see the shape of a six-pointed star inside. When all the apples were chopped, Lady Donella crushed them and extracted the juice, then mixed the juice with sugar and spices and poured the frothy liquid into a barrel, which she placed near the heat of the fire.

  Once again, the vision returned to the snowy courtyard. This time it was filled with men upon horses, stamping and blowing frosty breath. The men were all grandly dressed in velvets and furs, and all were laughing and talking. Count Zoltan was there, his huge mastiff sitting panting beside him, the falconer handing up a hooded bird of prey. At the sight of her father, Lisandre gave an anguished cry but she did not break the circle. The castle doors opened and out came the countess, dressed all in white velvet and fur. Beside her walked her son Zygmunt, talking animatedly. Behind them was Lady Donella, smiling sweetly. She beckoned forward a servant, who carried the barrel of fermented star-apple juice. Though they could not hear what was said, there was clearly a lot of joking and laughing, as Lady Donella handed the barrel to one of the count’s servants.

  The next vision showed the clearing by the pool where they had first met Sedgely. They saw the starkin lords drink deeply of the apple-ale made from the starthorn fruit. They were possessed by a fervent excitement, talking and gesticulating wildly, singing and dancing about the fire. Only the young heir to the throne did not quaff his cup. He tasted only a few mouthfuls, then surreptitiously poured most of his apple-ale away. Again and again the men refilled their cups, and the dancing and talking grew ever wilder. At last men began to slump sideways where they sat, or fell mid-step, lying still and motionless as snowflakes drifted down, covering them with a cold, white counterpane.

  The pictures in the pool dwindled away. Pedrin had to clear his throat, and he could hear Lisandre trying to stifle her sobs.

  ‘I’m glad I warn’t made an offering of that apple-ale,’ Sedgely said gruffly. ‘What kind of fruit was that?’

  ‘No wonder they all died,’ Lisandre said miserably. ‘Apples from the starthorn tree! Why would Lady Donella do such a thing? Why, why?’

  ‘She loves Lord Zavion,’ Briony said simply. ‘And power too, I think. I have always seen it in her.’

  ‘She loves Lord Zavion?’ Lisandre said. ‘But why murder my father . . . ?’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘We all know star-apples can make a man dance until he dies, why did we not guess what had happened when Sedgely told us he saw the starkin lords dancing?’ Durrik said. ‘We should’ve guessed.’

  ‘Do you know the cure for starthorn poisoning, milady?’ Pedrin asked eagerly.

  Lisandre shook her head miserably. ‘I do not think there is one. If there is, I have never heard of it.’

  ‘Poor Garvin,’ Durrik said. ‘The thorns must be poisonous too. It looked like a mighty awful way to die.’

  Lisandre said shakily, ‘The thorns are poisonous. My . . . my father always warned Ziggy not to try to climb the tree, that the risk was not worth the dare. He did not warn me, of course. What starkin lady would ever desire to climb a tree?’ Her voice was full of bitterness.

  The water had begun to swirl again, this time spinning in a clockwise direction. Faster and faster it whirled, a dark funnel at its heart sucking them down, making them lean closer and closer, their heads spinning.

  ‘Look,’ Mags said hoarsely. ‘There’s more.’

  When the whirling water stilled, they found themselves looking at the starthorn tree once more. Its black thorns were covered in drifts of delicate white blossom, with little buds of leaves just beginning to burst open along the stems. A gust of wind blew, tossing brown leaves about in the courtyard and dragging away a shower of white petals. The men digging over the bare earth in the kitchen garden shivered and huddled their chins into their scarves.

  The vision moved to a room in the castle. The young count lay on his bed, covered with a white eiderdown. His eyes were closed, his hands folded. The slight flutter of a pulse in his throat was the only sign that he was still breathing. Lady Donella glided silently out of the shadows and stood, looking down at him, her lips gripped into a thin line. She watched him for a long moment then turned, quietly lifting a pillow from a chair behind him. As she bent over him, a little old hearthkin man rose from his seat by the fire. He was dressed in the white and gold livery of the Estaria family, the swan and starthorn blossom device upon his breast. They saw his lips moving, and Lady Donella paused with a sudden jerk. Then she was smiling sweetly, lifting Count Zygmunt’s head so she could slide the pillow underneath. She smoothed his long, fair curls, nodded to the old man, then glided swiftly out of the room.

  A few moments later, they saw her enter the Hall of Mirrors. Lord Zavion reclined upon a throne of cut crystal, sipping wine and ignoring the merchants on their knees before him, pleading. Lady Donella came and stood behind the Regent, smiling adoringly at him and laying her hand on his shoulder as she bent to whisper in his ear. He nodded, yawned behind his delicate white hand, then waved the hand nonchalantly. Soldiers dragged the merchants away and Lord Zavion ate another sweetmeat.

  Lady Donella then made her way back upstairs, giving crisp orders to various servants as she went. In the solar, Lisandre’s mother sat staring with vacant eyes out the window. She was as thin as a scarecrow, with great hollows beneath her cheekbones. Lady Donella looked at her with a small, secret smile, then bent over her, persuading her to drink a glass of some deep red cordial. After the dowager countess had obediently drunk it, she closed her eyes and seemed to sink into sleep. The smile on Lady Donella’s lips grew.

  The scene in the pool shifted to show Durrik’s father, lying on a straw pallet in some kind of prison, looking dirty, thin, haggard and very unhappy. Many others were locked up with him. With a jerk of his heart, Pedrin recognised his mother and sister among them, as well as many friends and neighbours. Pedrin’s little sister was crying quietly, and Pedrin’s mother was rocking her gently in her arms, a look of despair on her face.

  The vision widened to show the harvest rotting in the fields, as a few painfully thin people strove to bring it in alone. They saw a young mother struggling to hoe the fields, a wailing baby tied to her back. In the next field, a ragged bunch of children did their best to pick shrivelled, worm-eaten apples from the trees. The streets of Levanna-On-The-Lake were filled with people begging. Soldiers prodded them with spears, driving them out to starve in the countryside.

  The vision faded. The six companions had to hang on to each other’s hands tightly to avoid breaking the circle. All were horrified by what they had seen. Briony and Lisandre were both weeping, and Durrik was white as whey. Pedrin felt his anxiety about his family as heavy as a stone in the pit of his stomach, but he knew there was nothing any of them could do now. Sharply he called them all to order.

  ‘Look, the water is turning again! Watch! Watch!’

  Faster and faster the water spun, then slowly stilled. Once again they saw the starthorn tree. New leaves were bursting open all along the thorny branches, green buds of apples forming where the starthorn flowers had once hung. Only one spray of blossom remained, hanging from the very highest branch. A blast of cold wind came with a flurry of snowflakes. The petals were torn from the branch. Winter closed upon the Castle of Estelliana with grim, grey shadows. They saw the white flags being dragged down to half-mast and then they saw a sombre funeral procession, clad all in blood-red robes, carrying the dead count down to the burial ground. Lisandre sobbed out loud.

  The water swirled back. Snowflakes spun back into white blossom again. They saw the flowering branch bending and swaying in the wind. A girl’s hand
carefully broke off the flowering twig. A few petals twirled away into the wind, and were joined by a flurry of snow. They saw the arm suddenly jerk and wince, as one of the cruel thorns tore open the skin from wrist to elbow. Blood fell in a scatter of bright red. The vision spun, the colours all blurring. Then they saw Lisandre bending over her sleeping brother. She held the cluster of snowy-white blossoms beneath his nose. His nostrils flared as he breathed in the scent. Colour tinted his cheeks. His eyelids fluttered and then slowly the young count opened his eyes. He smiled. Her eyes wet with tears, Lisandre threw herself upon him, kissing him joyfully. His thin arms tightened about her back, then, when she did not move, held her away. Blood from the wound in her arm stained the white satin in a great, widening pool. Lisandre was limp, her eyes closed. Zygmunt bent over her, shaking her, but she did not move. He shook her more urgently and, when she did not wake, bent his head over hers, weeping.

  A flurry of visions followed, so fast and fragmented they had trouble understanding what they saw. Lisandre and Count Zygmunt embracing joyously, smiling faces all around. Lady Donella holding Lisandre tightly, her silver knife glinting. Lady Donella holding a pillow over Count Zygmunt’s face. White feathers bursting, a flurry of white that could have been feathers or blossom or snow, concealing a whirl of faces, sometimes weeping, sometimes smiling. Then the silver knife stabbed down once more, and all they saw was blood.

  The red, swirling water slowly, slowly calmed, became a pool of water reflecting the dancing flames of candles and their own faces, cavernous with shadows. There was a long silence, fraught with tension. Lisandre clung tightly to Pedrin and Durrik’s hands, bending over at the waist as if trying not to be sick.

  ‘What . . . what did it all mean?’ Mags asked tentatively, letting go of Durrik and Sedgely’s hands and sucking at the cut on her palm. ‘Surely it didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘You can’t be a-going back, Lise!’ Pedrin said urgently. ‘You saw . . . we all saw . . . it means you’ll be a-dying if you go back!’

  Lisandre shivered.

  ‘Mebbe not,’ Briony pointed out. ‘Only if she cuts her arm on the thorns. She mightn’t.’

  ‘But we all saw—’ Pedrin protested.

  ‘Remember what the Erlrune said? It shows what may be, not what shall be.’

  ‘Even so,’ Pedrin said. He grasped Lisandre’s hand tightly, turning her towards him. ‘You can’t take the risk, Lise! ’Tis a mighty high price to be a-paying. You don’t need to go back. You can stay here in the forest, we’ll all stay! We’ll be like wood-sprites, a-living in the trees and a-catching fish for our supper, same as we done all summer.’

  Lisandre’s lip was trembling. Her breath caught. ‘Oh, if only I could! If you only knew . . .’

  ‘But you can! Why can’t you? We’ve managed this long, we can manage for longer.’ Pedrin’s voice was rough and urgent. He looked at the others for support.

  Sedgely was nodding and smiling at him, though his dark liquid eyes were sad. Mags was frowning and biting her knuckle, and Briony was shaking her head, though her moon-silver eyes were soft with sympathy. Durrik, although obviously troubled, nodded, saying, ‘Yeah, milady, of course there’s no need for you to be a-going back if you warn’t a-wanting to. We’ve lived this long in the forest, I’m sure we could find somewhere safe to keep on a-living.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Only . . . well, there’s my papa still in the dungeon, and all t’other folk too. I . . . well, I . . .’

  Bitter shame and remorse filled Pedrin. He dropped Lisandre’s hand and turned his face away, not wanting anyone to see how sick he felt. How could he be forgetting his mother and his sister, and Johan Bell-Crier, and all the other folk he had known all his life? Yet, for a moment or two, he had forgotten, the vision of Lisandre’s death blotting out everything else, just for those few minutes. After a long moment of frozen blankness, his mind began to grind again. He began to say We others can rescue our kinsfolk, while Lisandre stops safe in the forest, but he could not say it, the obstacles were so enormous and the implications so difficult, more than his heart or mind could grapple with. He cast a quick look at Lisandre.

  She had her face bent into her hands, shaking her head back and forth. ‘I cannot, I cannot,’ she said. ‘I came this far to save Ziggy, how can I turn back now? Besides, I gave my word of honour to the Erlrune. I know you all think me starkin scum and my word of honour as worthless as sisika dung, but . . . it’s not to me, it’s not to me!’ She was crying loudly now, as lost in her grief and bewilderment and indignation as a small child.

  Briony took her in her arms and rocked her against her shoulder. ‘Ssshhh, sweetie-pie, ssshhh,’ she crooned, as if Lisandre were still only a little girl and did not have the blood of the Ziv running in her veins.

  At last Lisandre sat back, wiping her face defiantly with the heels of her hands and looking pleadingly at the others. ‘Besides, do you not see? I know the antidote now. The blossom of the starthorn tree is the antidote.’ She gave a strange, merry laugh. ‘Is it not amusing? We came all this way to discover the cure is growing in my very own courtyard!’

  She laughed again, peal after peal of high, gasping laughter that had the others looking at each other in concern. Briony was just moving to grasp her shoulders and shake her out of it when Lisandre managed to get herself back under control. She wiped her eyes again, saying with a distinct tremble in her voice, ‘If I didn’t at least try to give Ziggy the antidote and he died, it’d be murder, don’t you see that? And my mother . . . I’d be murdering her too.’

  They all gave a little murmur of discomfort and reassurance, though the force of what she said struck them all powerfully. Durrik leant forward and grasped both her hands, saying, ‘Are you sure, milady? Are you sure? For I swear none of us would blame you if you were a-wanting to stay.’

  ‘No, I have to go,’ Lisandre answered. She bent forward, resting her forehead against Durrik’s for a moment. ‘It was all there, in your prophecy, you know. Think about it! That bit you said, about his spirit slipping free “with the last petal of the starthorn tree”. Meaning that his last hope of a cure would be gone too. And that bit about time turning inverse. We should have known that was all about the starthorn tree! Because the starthorn tree is all backwards, isn’t it? Blossoming in autumn, covered in fruit in winter, bare as bones in summer. It makes perfect sense that the starthorn blossom should reverse the star-apple poison. If only I had listened to you properly. If only I had thought . . .’

  ‘None of us understood what it meant,’ Durrik said, gripping her fingers tightly. ‘If anyone should have known what it all meant, it was me. I’m meant to be the riddle-master!’

  She nodded and sighed, drawing her hands away so she could wipe her nose and eyes again. Durrik sat back, looking as troubled and miserable as they had ever seen him look.

  ‘So then. All we have to do now is get back to the castle before the last petal of the starthorn tree is blown away,’ Pedrin said very matter-of-factly. His hands were clenched into fists and he did not look at Lisandre.

  A long silence fell.

  ‘And climb the tree without getting scratched,’ Lisandre said, her voice shaking.

  ‘And manage to get the blossom to your brother without any starkin scum a-stopping us,’ Mags said. ‘She looked mighty nasty, that starkin lady, and those soldiers have been a-chasing us and a-hounding us all along, they have.’

  ‘And ’tis not enough to just awaken your brother, milady, we’ll have to prove it was Lady Donella who poisoned him and your father,’ Briony reminded her. ‘And Lord Zavion won’t be a-wanting to give up his Regency without a fight.’

  Everyone looked depressed. It seemed an impossible task, so impossible no-one knew how to even begin.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Sedgely said, getting to his feet. ‘Best be on our way, I s’pose. By the ache in me bones, winter’s a-coming.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Erlrune sat on her throne, her eyes shut. She opened them as they approached and
regarded them silently.

  ‘You saw?’ Briony said.

  The Erlrune nodded.

  ‘Please, you need to help us,’ Lisandre said in a rush. ‘We have to get home as fast as we can. Winter is almost here.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Erlrune said rather dreamily. ‘And early this year. The cold mist of a river-roan’s breath always brings winter early.’

  Lisandre cast an accusing look at Sedgely, who shifted his shoulders uncomfortably and muttered something about gibgoblins under his breath.

  ‘It took us so long to get here,’ Lisandre said despairingly, hands clenched before her. ‘Oh, how can we get home on time?’

  The Erlrune sighed and got to her feet. In her hand she held a long, supple wand, made of some silvery wood. ‘I can think of only one way,’ she said rather apologetically. ‘And you tempted me, Sedgely, a-saying you had naught before you but your own death. Will you change shape for me?’

  He cast a suspicious look at her but did as she asked. With a hurrumph and a shudder, he turned himself into the big old roan-coloured horse again. Lightly she touched him, first on one shoulder and then on the other. ‘Sprout,’ she said, very softly.

  His hide gave a little twitch, then a bud of feathers suddenly swelled at the points where the Erlrune’s magic wand had touched. Swiftly they grew into two magnificent spreading wings, red and white feathers intermingled near the roan hide, and snow-white at the tips. Sedgely gave a little whicker of surprise then began to buck and prance like a colt, testing his wings. With a great whoosh, he soared up towards the ceiling, then swooped about their heads, neighing in excitement.

  The children were overcome with amazement. With those two gentle strokes of her magic wand, the Erlrune had overcome the first and worst of their obstacles. Flying upon the river-roan’s back, the children would be able to reach Levanna-On-The-Lake in days rather than weeks, and they would soar high over the most dangerous regions of the Perilous Forest.

  Lisandre seized the Erlrune’s hand and kissed her lined and sunken cheek. ‘Thank you, oh, thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, I will try to do as I promised, truly, I will.’