The Bitterbynde Trilogy (109 page)

‘Lightkeeper, open the Light's door,' she commanded in a clear voice, ‘I shall kindle it myself, if you shall not.'

Edward, filling her place at the window glanced out. Sharply, he said, ‘Obey, Master Grullsbodnr.'

The future king has spoken,' subjoined the Bard, scowling at the Iceman.

The Lightkeeper unfastened the little door. Rohain reached her hand inside. The buttercup candle entered, met the wick, and inflamed it.

The wick was surrounded by polished mirrors. Stark white radiance stood out from them like a solid bar of frost-quartz. Somewhere, clockwork machinery started up. Spring-and-sildron engines whirred and the Light began to rotate. It sent its steely beam through the lattices, far out into the dread of night, over frothing, coughing reefs and farther until, over the trackless ocean, the bounding main, it stretched itself too thin, becoming nothing.

Rohain had espied a third vessel down there—a lifeboat. Its sail seemed as small as a pocket handkerchief.

It was in the channel now. By the Light of the Tower, in protected waters, it steered true—straight for the gap between the headlands. On board were three shipwreck survivors. The young mother stayed at the tiller while two tiny children clung to each other beside the streak of a mast.

The Bard and the Seneschal ran down the stairs, calling to the squires in the stables to launch the Lightkeeper's
geola
, that they might meet the fragile craft as it entered the harbour.

Past the Tower on its northern headland sailed the boat with its three passengers, beneath the single spoke of the wheel of light. The watchers in the upper room could see them clearly, could see their faces now—the courageous, tragic mother, the darling children standing up and spreading their arms wide for balance. But why had they done so? Why let go of the mast? And their arms had a strange look now—they seemed to be stretching … the children were growing.

And she was growing too, and changing, the one who no longer held the tiller, who could not hold anything anymore because it had no hands, only terrible wings like two charred fans of night. The two creatures by the mast extended their black pinions. The darkness was pierced by three pairs of incandescent coals—red fires burning holes in beaked skulls. One by one they rose, retracting spurred tridents of talons. The beaks opened.

‘Baav!' cawed the first. ‘Macha!'

‘Neman!' croaked the second.

Effortlessly on those outsized kites of wings, slashing the air with slow, powerful downstrokes, the three abominations, crow-things out of nightmare, flapped away over the lightless harbour. Out of the Light's reach they fled—shadows winging toward Tamhania's highest point, the mountain's summit.

‘Morrigu,' quoth the final corvus in a creaking voice, like the closing of a coffin-lid.

Then the moon came flying in terror from behind the clouds. Her light gleamed down. And there on the opposite headland, on Southern Point just across the Rip from the Light-Tower, was a child. It was Liban, the adopted daughter of Elasaid. She ran, spirited and free, like the ocean. The fear that the Crows had brought was not on her; she was not of mortalkind. Her own pale tresses flew in the storm wind as she ran along the path to the sea, laughing. A handful of men chased after her but they couldn't overtake her, and the last man ran with a crooked gait. That strange sea-song came again, and the waves thundered against the rocks. The men halted in fear, staying where they were up on the cart-track.

The watchers in the Light-Tower heard Liban singing as she ran out along the reef, and then a mighty wave smashed against the reef and reared up. It washed over her, and she was gone.

In fitted bursts of moonlight the tempest subsided, rolling away to the southeast. The wind eased. Utter stillness commenced. Fog snakes came coiling out of the sea-harbour and all along the weed-dashed beaches. Although the hour was well before cockcrow, the villagers were astir in the streets. Lanterns passed to and fro in the dark. Much was amiss. The rough weather had wrought severe damage.

Furthermore, it had been discovered in the village that under cover of the storm, John Scales and his wife had incited some of the more superstitious islanders to form a lynch mob and go after the fey girl sheltered by Elasaid of the Groves. Hearing that trouble was afoot, the mayor had taken charge. He mustered certain law-abiding men who were now riding with him to the road from Southern Point, in order to confront Scales's mob as they returned.

A few islanders—mainly those who were known to have a tendency to be fanciful—claimed to have seen three dark shapes flying from the headlands. They said they were like great birds, traveling in a barbed formation like an arrowhead, and they had ascended toward the mountain peak hanging in the sky. But with more pressing matters to attend to, of the alleged Crows little note was taken.

Seven riders hastened back along the crescent road to the village. They drew rein in the marketplace. Overhead, cloud-tendrils unraveled before the face of the bald moon. Frigid radiance bathed the Old Village Square.

‘I must find Elasaid,' said Rohain dully. ‘She will be here, in the village.'

Her horse was restless, as if sensing her unease. The cold that weighed her limbs like iron chains was generated more by horror than by her soaked raiment. It was a clammy dread that drained her vitality and painted with a lavender hue her nails and lips. She could think of nothing but the appalling Crows, and the child taken by the wave, Elasaid's loss.

‘'Tis folly to remain here,' remonstrated the Duchess Alys, quietening her own steed with an expert hand. ‘I urge you to return with me to hall and hearth.'

‘I will not be dissuaded.'

A man ran up to the party of riders.

‘My lords, my ladies,' he said, ‘the mayor's wife bids ye come to his house, if ye will, and be warmed at his fire, and take a sup.' He bowed.

Suddenly Elasaid was standing at Rohain's stirrup. Her eyes were dark.

‘Have you seen Liban, my lady?' she asked. Her tone was flat, without hope.

‘Elasaid,' said Rohain, dismounting, ‘the child is gone back to the sea. Come with us to the house of the mayor. There we will talk.'

At the home of the village's chieftain, servants brought wine for the guests. A cherry fire burgeoned amid a heap of driftwood, but Rohain was unable to thaw. She had become as one of the Arysk—a glazed and brittle shard, numb to feeling. When she closed her eyes, three ghastly birds flapped across the linings of her lids.

Edward described to Elasaid the entire story as it had been seen from the Light-Tower.

‘We heard Liban singing as she ran out along the rocks,' he ended, ‘and then a great wave came surging up and swept her away. We saw her no more.'

After a time, Elasaid murmured, ‘Another child of mine is gone.' She seemed like one who has been struck blind. ‘But I thank you for bearing these tidings,' she went on doggedly. ‘I do not grieve for her sake—perhaps somewhat for myself, but self-pity bears no merit. She has returned to her own kind as I always knew she would. She was never my child. Liban has been reclaimed, as is fitting, just as Rona Wade returned to her people not long ago. Those two were not born for the land. Yet I never kept Liban here against her will—she was always free to leave. When it was time, they called her, and it was the song, not any act of credulous, craven mortals; it was the song that brought her to the waves.'

‘Those who harried her shall pay the price,' vowed Thomas of Ercildoune, striking his hand against his thigh.

‘What of the black birds, the outsized hoodie crows?' asked the Prince. ‘Had the child aught to do with them?'

‘No sir,' replied Elasaid. ‘Of this I am certain. Such creatures are not associated with the sea-morgans—not with any of the merfolk.'

‘Do you know their portent?'

‘I saw them, the strange birds flying toward the mountaintop, but I know not from whence these fell things came, or what is their purpose. I know not what they fortoken, but I fear no good will come of this night.'

The cherry fire glowed. Somewhere, a cock crowed.
Uhta
waned—the sun's edge ran a line of tinsel along a diaphanous horizon.

In pain, Rohain said, ‘Elasaid Trenowyn, I understand now why I thought your face was familiar to me. On a glass mountain in Rimany a girl with your face opens a lock with her finger, to free seven enchanted rooks. And in the valley they call Rosedale in Eldaraigne, a fine man waits for you and grieves, as he has waited and grieved this many a year. Do not let him wait much longer.'

Elasaid Trenowyn trembled. A spark jumped in her eyes. She picked up her shawl and gave Rohain a wide-eyed look, as though she had never before set eyes on her.

‘I hear you.'

Saying nothing more, she left the house and went down to the harbour.

No wreckage from drowned ships, no barrels, planks, spars, or corpses washed up on Tavaal's shores. This proved it—eldritch vessels they had indeed been, all three. What mortal understood the workings of such simulacra? Perhaps they had repaired themselves as they sank. Perhaps they were sailing now, deep down among the benthos, phosphorescent lanterns swinging on the rigging to light up the abysmal darkness.

Today the swell rolled long and slow and blank, as if it had grown as heavy as lead, whose sad colour it reflected. On the beach, the skeleton of a whale lay as it had lain for years—a behemoth beached a decade earlier. The ribs curved skyward, sand-blasted, wind-scoured. Now the skeleton was a framework of great upturned vaults, a vacant hull, a giant cage of ribs that once housed a heart the size of a horse.

It could be seen from the house of the sea-wizard. Lutey's abode perched like a rickety gull's nest on a low cliff overlooking the village and the harbour. Gulls, in fact, went in and out at the windows like accustomed visitors. They spoke with harsh voices at odds with their lines of loveliness, and when the party of riders arrived, loud was their announcement.

Silhouetted against a souring sky, the company of noble visitors and their retainers waited on horseback. Presently the head of Lutey the Gifted appeared between cliff and sea. He came clambering up over the edge, his robes and hair and plaited beard-ends streaming up over his head, blown by vertical drafts. From a pocket in his clothing peeped a fantastically fashioned Comb of pearls and gold.

The riders dismounted and the mage led them to his house. Bowing, he held open the door. As they entered, the structure trembled like a bird's nest in the wind. From somewhere not far off resounded a deep sound as of drums rolling.

The interior smelled of stale seaweed, yet for all its clutter and avian traffic it was surprisingly clean and orderly. Dried seagrasses—pink, rust, cream, and copper—hung from the rafters. A delicate clepsydra dripped by the window. Beside it lay a brass sextant and a folding pocket-spyglass decorated with lacquer, inscribed with the maker's name:
Stodgebeck of Porthery
.

Shelves held nekton memorabilia. The only two chairs had been carved out of coral broken from the reefs by storms. The bed was a giant clam shell, the table a salvaged captain's table inlaid with nacre and scored by daggers. It was set with sea-urchin candleholders, scallop-shell plates, mussel-shell spoons and dark amber-green dishes formed from lacquered bull-kelp—a material light and strong, malleable when fresh yet when dry as hard and impermeable as vitreous. Here in Lutey's house existed many things of salt-water origin that, like the sea-wind forced by the cliff to alter direction, had suffered a land-change.

Like some barnacled, weed-grown sea-creature he seemed, this wizard. His skin was as translucent as a jellyfish, his eyes the windows of an ancient coelacanth. Strung about his throat, a necklace of shark's teeth; scimitars of dentine.

‘A force unseelie, a force powerful, has broached our defenses,' said the coelacanth, putting aside a brass astrolabe to clear a space on the table. ‘I saw them last night. My strength is not great enough to challenge such foes. I know not where they have gone now, the three dark birds, or what will happen. But ye, Princess, should not bear the guilt of it.'

He mixed a blue-green potion that he gave to Rohain in a chipped porcelain caudle-cup shaped like an octopus. It burned away the cold dread that had filled her veins with ice since the moment the unseelie entities from the sea had shifted back to their true bird-shapes, and she had at last understood what she had wrought.

‘I have Combed the sea,' said the sea-mage, ‘but for the first time in my experience there is no reply.' His face was grim. ‘What became of the masted lifeboat—the vessel that bore the invaders?'

‘It spun around three times,' the Prince replied, ‘and then sank, straight down, like a stone.'

An echoing boom rolled up all around, and the shelves racketed.

‘Be not unduly alarmed,' said Lutey, observing the discomfiture of his guests. ‘It is only the voice of the sea. Alack, that I do not possess its power.'

‘It sounds from near,' said the Prince,

‘It is near, sir,' said the mage, pulling up a trapdoor set into the floor. Beneath their feet, a great cavern opened out and fell away. Far below, perhaps a hundred feet down in the half-light, a dark swell travelled rapidly toward the inner wall of rock on the last few yards of its journey from the outer ocean.

‘The sea-cave undercuts this cliff,' explained Lutey as the wave smashed into the wall and another hollow roar shook his house. ‘It is the same sea-cave where Urchen Conch found a chest of antique gold so many years ago, according to local legend—which I doubt not. Here is a ladder. Sometimes I climb down. I have found no gold there,' he added.

He closed the hatch. A gull alighted on his shoulder and wheeled its fierce yellow eye.

‘Again I shall Comb the sea this day,' said Lutey. ‘Leave a messenger with me, and I will send word of any tidings.'