The Bitterbynde Trilogy (108 page)

‘For my part, presently I shall say good night to all and wend upstairs,' said the Duchess, yawning behind her hand. ‘There is no profit in losing sleep.' When next Rohain looked toward her, the Duchess had settled back against the cushions of a brocade couch and fallen into a twitchy doze.

Avenel sat brooding.

Rohain and Prince Edward remained at Ercildoune's side. The Prince toyed with an empty cup, while Rohain stared out at the raging weather. The Bard compensated for the sobriety of his companions by quaffing deeply of his own cup, and calling for his squire to refill it. He was the only loquacious member of the party, loudly regaling them with an assortment of boisterous stories.

The main salon, where they kept company, was beautiful. A multitude of candles illuminated its glory. On the ceiling above the window reveal, stenciled swallows dashed across a painted sky. Bullion-fringed swags of heavy blue velvet in stiff folds festooned the pelmet. The tall windows were divided into smaller panes, each with its own shutter daubed with little pictures of rural idyll.

Through the panes of the embrasure, opalescent and salt-glazed, Rohain and Edward looked out across the village, now in darkness. Its lamplit windows were a scatter of square-cut zircons. Beyond it, the harbour now appeared insubstantial, bathed by the raw murk of night and thunderwrack. The gloom hid any sign of the Light-Tower standing lonely on the ocean's rim. There, the Lightkeeper would be holding vigil, with only the pigeons for company—their cries as soft as dollops of cream—and the great mirrored Light floating at the top of the Tower in its bath of quicksilver.

The storm threw an apoplectic fit. Lightning erratically cast blue-white plaster reliefs of the Light-Tower. For the duration of a thought, it blanched the entire landscape with dazzles so intense they printed specters on the vision of the watchers, against the blackness that smacked down afterward.

The night was at its thickest and the storm had reached an apogee of violence when a brilliant strobe described something
new
out beyond the narrow gap between the headlands. Rohain seized a spyglass, its bronze casing etched with whorls. She trained its round lens on the pale thing that seemed to dance there. After a moment, the cylinder dropped from her nerveless fingers. At her side, Edward deftly retrieved the instrument.

‘What is toward?' he asked.

‘Oh, I cannot bear it. Something must be done.
The Light must be kindled.'

The Prince applied the spyglass to his eye.

‘A ship!' he muttered wonderingly. ‘And in trouble, it seems—too close to the reefs. But what ship? The glass will not let me descry their ensigns.'

By now the Bard had relinquished his winecup and was squinting through a second spyglass. ‘Why does the Beacon not shine?' he cried, his voice somewhat slurred. ‘Surely by now the ship's master must have sent the message-birds.' Grim-faced, he flung down the instrument. ‘But in sooth, what birds could fly in this gale? They would be blown away. And with no Light, that ship shall soon be dashed to pieces.'

Roused from his reverie, Roland Avenel leapt up and strode to the window. ‘This is madness,' he said, frowning and peering through the metal tube. ‘No vessels are due to put in. Where is this ship from? And who is she?'

‘It matters little! Lives are about to be lost!' expostulated the Bard. ‘Surely the Lightkeeper knows that. No doubt he'll have seen this ship. It is unavoidable, for the Tower looks out upon the open sea. He is right close to them there—yet inexplicably he remains idle!'

‘Has he a heart of ice?' demanded Rohain, pacing the floor, clasping and unclasping her hands.

‘He obeys orders,' said Avenel.

‘A message must be borne swiftly to him, sir,' the Bard said, leaning unsteadily toward the Prince. ‘Your orders to light the flame.'

The Prince replied, ‘When an off-island vessel comes in, a foreigner, the command to kindle the Light must bear the Royal Seal. The signet ring bearing that seal is now far from here.'

‘Of course—it is upon your father's hand,' said Rohain. ‘But do you not wear a similar ring, Edward?'

‘No. There is no other.'

‘Then,' said the Bard, the Lightkeeper must accept the royal command by word of mouth instead! Zounds, methinks the cries of the drowning sailors are already clamoring in my ears. Is that the sound of men calling from the dim and heinous troughs of ocean swell? We must needs hasten!'

‘This is madness!' shouted Avenel.

The Duchess Alys woke in fright. ‘What's amiss?' she said, hastening to join them at the window.

‘Ercildoune would have us kindle the Light, despite that the proper procedure is lacking,' said the Seneschal angrily.

In a low voice the Prince said, ‘Good sir, good Thomas, I say to you the Light must not shine on this fell night. Not without the proper directives.'

The Bard stared at him in disbelief. ‘Do I hear aright?' he said indistinctly. ‘Is Your Highness willing to let those poor folk perish?'

‘It may be some trick.'

‘Edward, how can you say so?' Rohain trembled, hot with indignation. ‘It might
not
be a trick. Would you lay that on your conscience? On ours?'

The Prince's face looked troubled. ‘Lady, when the Light shines it opens a gate through a shield of gramarye which covers Tamhania like a dome. While that shield is breached, anything unseelie might penetrate.'

The Bard said urgently, ‘For one brief instant only shall it be opened! As soon as the vessel slips through, the Light shall be quenched. Where is your heart, lad? I entreat you—ride with me to the Light-Tower and give your command. The Lightkeeper shall not gainsay the Empire's heir.'

‘I will ride beside you!' said Rohain.

‘May the Powers preserve me from bee-stings and headstrong wenches,' muttered the Bard. He tottered slightly, steadying himself against a marquetry table.

The face of the young Prince was ripped to shreds of anguish and bewilderment. ‘Mistress Tarrenys, the weather is too wild for thee,' he said, taking Rohain by the hand. ‘Do you not see? Thomas is deep in his cups tonight. The wine leads his thoughts astray. Like many bards he is a passionate man, ruled by his heart; the drink amplifies that tendency. Were he sober, he would not argue against me, for he understands the rules of the island very well. Prithee, do not even contemplate going out in the storm.'

At fourteen, Edward already matched her height. Level with his, her eyes beseeched him. ‘Won't you come with me to the Light?' she said.

His visage, pale, dark-eyed against the black brushstroke of his hair, softened. With a shuddering sigh, as though torn in twain, he turned out his hands, palms upward as if in surrender. ‘I will ride with thee.'

‘Madness!' fumed Avenel.

‘Pray think twice!' Alys urged the young man.

‘I have made my decision,' replied he, and the Duchess could not gainsay the Crown Prince.

A stony road emerged from the northern end of the village. Hugging the line of the shore, it curved around the sweep of the harbour and along the promontory's spine, ending at Light-Tower Point. Along this road seven riders flew through the fangs of the gale, and slanting spears of rain. The darkness was intense, alleviated only by whips of lightning.

They covered the last lap at a gallop. Pounded by the fists of the ocean, the very ground shook beneath the horses' hooves, and salt spray erupted from the base of the cliff to smite them like a beaded curtain. Only the wall on the seaward side of the road saved them from being flung over the edge. Intermittent flickers of light revealed the ill-timed ship, closer now, foundering on the rocks. Its hull was cracking like a monstrous eggshell. Between blasts of thunder and wind, the riders' ears were assailed by cries of fear and misery as thin as the piping of crickets. The ship, hanged on cruel spurs, slumped sideways, dangling.

‘We are too late,' Ercildoune roared, but the words were snatched from his mouth even as he shouted them. The foundering vessel gave a great lurch. With a last macabre wave of its ragged sails it began to crumple slowly into the corrugated sea. A wave crashed against the rocks and jetted up in a pillar of spray.

The Light-Tower seemed to hover at the end of the causeway. Over the archway giving onto its courtyard, runes, weather-stained and eroded, spelled out:

Here, the Tower of Power.

Ye Who Wander Yonder

Keep the Light in Sight.

Tossing their reins to the two squires, the riders burst through the Tower's door in a swirl of drenched cloaks and a clatter of squelching boots. The stairs spiraled up and up. At the top, in a round room, an icicle stood.

The Lightkeeper.

Age had plowed severe furrows into the waxen face. Over heavy robes of overcast gray, a gossamer beard hung to his waist. Moonlight hair flowed halfway down his back, from beneath a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat. Hollowed out of a face as bleached as parian, the eyes were two glass orbs, limpid, almost colourless. The Lightkeeper was an albino of the kindred calling themselves the Arysk; the Icemen.

He unlidded his eyes, like two silver snuff-boxes.

‘Welcome, Your Highness,' this unlit candle declared above the tumult, his phonetics clicking in the Rimanian accent, ‘welcome Lords and Ladies.' But it sounded like ‘Veltcome, Yourk Hightness, veltcome, Lorcds ant ladties.'

‘The ship,' shouted the Prince, pushing past the closed eye of the Light on its pedestal in the room's centre. He stared down from the latticed windows, barred with chill iron against the ocean's siege.

‘Vun ist vrecket alreatty,' said the Keeper. ‘Aknothert comest.'

‘You have doomed one ship and now you say a second follows the same path, Master Grullsbodnr?' the Bard bellowed angrily.

It was true, The second vessel was smaller than her sister. Lanterns swung from the rigging. Their glow spilled sporadically on flowing-haired figures wearing long gowns. Their mouths were open. They were screaming.

The Bard swore vehemently.

‘There are women aboard!'

‘And yet …' Edward murmured. His voice trailed away.

‘No kmessagte. No copmandt,' intoned the Lightkeeper glacially.

‘Be wary,' cried Alys, ‘I mislike the look of this. What ensigns does the captain hoist? I see none.'

‘See how the wind has torn the sails! How might ensigns remain untouched?' Ercildoune returned. ‘They would be ripped to rags!' He and the Duchess disputed, then, like quarreling rooks, in this high nest on its granite tree, until the Bard bawled, ‘While we stand in discussion, the second ship is driven upon the rocks. Master Grullsbodnr, kindle the Light at once!'

The aged Iceman shook his head. ‘Ta Light not sheint vidout ta kmessagte.'

‘Rohain, I appeal to you!' The Bard drove his fist against the Light's pedestal.

‘I am of one mind with you, Thomas. Sir?' Rohain turned to Edward.

‘I do not know,' the Prince shouted against the din, desperately grappling with indecision. ‘Grullsbodnr is right, and yet if these mariners are indeed mortal and should perish, the shadow of this grievous misdeed will lie heavy on us forever. They might well have been blown off course …'

The Duchess Alys plucked at his coat. ‘Sir,' she said, ‘our own course must not deviate. The mandate is unambiguous. For generations it has obtained security for the royal island. I rode here to prevent folly if I could. The Light must not be kindled this night.'

‘And I concur,' Avenel declared.

As they spoke, another blistering flare displayed a ghastly scene on the rocks below. The second ship had fetched up on their points at last. She tottered. Amid the churning flood, human forms clung to broken spars. Some were overtaken by long valleys, emerging at the summits of crests, sliding down again through dark walls of hyacinth glass, to reappear no more.

‘It is too much to be borne,' Rohain exclaimed, ‘two ships destroyed! We might have saved the last. We must send boats without delay, to aid any that survive in the water.'

‘No boat would live long out there,' Avenel said.

On the second ship, the firefly lanterns had all winked out. Only the nautilus curve of her side now lifted and dropped on the storm's pulse, sinking lower in the water, a mere evanescence of bent wood and ruined canvas, in its death throes no longer a ship, merely a broken thing.

Edward touched Rohain's sleeve. His eyes clouded. ‘Forgive me.'

She nodded acknowledgment, unable to speak.

The fenestrations fretted in the gale, the panes rattling in their metal grooves like prisoners shaking the bars of their cells.

‘I am sick,' the Bard said. ‘I am sick to my very marrow that we should stand thusly by and let this happen on the chance that it is some ruse of unseelie. If this vision is a forgery, what of it? Do we not have Lutey the mage who breaks spells, do we not have strong men and hounds to hunt down any mischief that should infiltrate?'

‘Your heart governs your head, Ercildoune,' warned Alys.

‘And were that a more prevalent condition, mortalkind must find itself in better state!' he returned warmly. ‘Drowned, all drowned, those brave folk, and their corpses to wash up, bloated and staring, along the shores of Tamhania this many a day, a mute reproach, the more terrible in its silence.'

The windows clattered. Between the leading and the wands of iron, the diamond panes wept salt tears. The Tower room was cold and drear. Its freeze seeped through Rohain's sodden clothing and into her sinews. The wind's ululation dropped away somewhat, enabling softer speech, but there was nothing to say.

It was after midnight.

‘We should depart,' said Avenel bleakly.

Rohain stole one last glance through the salt-misted lattices, out across the wild sea.

Then, with an altered mien, she whirled away from the view. Seizing a candle out of a branch encrusted with dribbles of congealed wax, she stepped up to the Light in its glass cage atop the pedestal.