The Bitterbynde Trilogy (111 page)

When Sargoth's tidings reached the Hunter, Isse Tower was attacked. Once again Rohain escaped, but now that she had regained both face and voice, Huon knew her. For whatever reason, he had traced her to the haven of Tamhania and knocked on the door. She, in her folly, had opened it and let his foul creatures enter. Why he hunted at her heels, she had forgotten.
He
had not.

‘Let us speak no more of the past.'
Close at her side, Thorn had said these words, while he leaned against a narrow embrasure of Isse Tower and talked with Rohain about Winter, and a hawk had hung suspended in the chalice of the sky.

Those effervescent days had been filled with joyousness. Consequently she, not to spoil it, had not spoken to Thorn of the past, nor told him that it could not be recalled. She had not let him know that in her history there might lie some important, hidden truth.

If he were struck down upon the northern battlefields, he would never know. Swiftly she brushed the thought aside; merely the thought of such loss was like a death-wound to her spirit. But if he triumphed in war, how could she ever return to his side, bringing, as she did, this bane, this curse that shadowed her and touched all those among whom she moved? Thorn was a warrior of extraordinary prowess who had proven his efficacy even against the Wild Hunt, but how long could any mortal man stave off such mighty foes? He and his forces could drive them off once or twice, maybe, but ultimately the immortals, with their unseelie gramarye, must win. This was a peril she would not allow herself to bring upon him.

Thorn—will I ever see thee again? Before I do, I must find out what lies hidden in my past. I must discover why Huon pursues me, so that I, and you my love, will know how to deal with this peril
.

Iron bells clanged inside Rohain's skull.

For three days the sun had not been seen. Under darkness, the air was smothering—a blanket stinking of brimstone. The island held still, or perhaps it gathered itself together one last time. And those who dwelled upon its flanks were still blind to its nature, deaf to its peril. Or perhaps they did not want to see or hear, for the probabilities were too mighty, too awful to comprehend. It is a human trait, to dwell in danger zones and be astonished when catastrophe strikes.

Then the land stirred again.

In Tana's oak-paneled west drawing room, Rohain sat playing at card games with Edward, Alys, and Thomas of Ercildoune, to escape the grit and stench of the outdoors. On the window-seat beneath wine-hued velvet hangings, Toby plucked a small ivory lute. His fingernails clicked against the frets. Occasionally, distant laughter and squeals drifted in from the nursery, where the children of the Duchess played hide-and-seek.

A butler glided in carrying a tray in his white-gloved hands. He was followed by a replica bearing a similar tray. Placing their burdens on two of a scattering of small, unstable tables, they proceeded to decant hot spike into small porcelain cups. They poured milk from the mouth of a painted jug fashioned as a cow (which had somehow escaped the eye of Tana's majordomo in his thematic pursuit), and offered cherry tarts and cubes of golden Sugar frosted with tiny pictures of sea-pinks.

Candles blazed in lusters and branches—yellow-white shells of light in the gloom. They lit up gilded chairs and tables, couches, silk-upholstered footrests, ottomans with their embroidered bolsters, polished cherrywood cabinets and toy clockwork confections. Roses gushed from porphyry vases.

‘Annie saw those flowers today,' commented Alys, taking note of the roses, ‘and was horrified. She said that the blossoming of the burnet rose out of its proper season is an omen of shipwreck and disaster. These small islands breed such superstition.'

‘Speaking of local vegetation,' said the Bard, ‘I was talking to some coral-fishers the other day. There are some on this island who hold that the surrounding mists are not accumulated, attracted, or given off by cloud-leaf. They hold that
duilleag neoil
has nothing to do with them. The waters around Tamhania are always warm. They say the vapors rise because of'—he picked up a card—‘a tremendous heat that burns forever beneath the deeps.'

Toby dropped his ox-horn plectrum, then stooped to retrieve it. In the silence, the clockworkings on the mantels clucked like slow insects. Toby resumed playing.

‘Did anyone hear anything last night?' asked the Duchess of Roxburgh, leaning forward to put down the Ten of Wands.

‘No. I slept well,' replied Edward.

‘I heard nothing,' said the Bard, considering his fan of cards thoughtfully. ‘But the servants seemed uneasy.'

Rohain upturned the Queen of Swords on the tablecloth of turquoise baize.

‘I thought,' she said, ‘I dreamed the sound of uncontrollable sobbing.'

The Duchess's cards slipped through her fingers to the floor. A footman ran to pick them up.

‘Shall we abandon the game at this point,' suggested Edward, folding his rising sun of painted cardboard leaves and tapping them on the table, ‘and take a cup of best Severnesse spike?'

‘An eminently practical idea,' replied the Bard diplomatically, stroking his
pique-devant
beard and auburn mustaches. ‘Who can think of playing cards on a day like this?'

‘'Tis a pretty pack.' Rohain examined the interlocking swan design on the back of each rectangular wafer. It called to her mind the tale of a swanmaiden stolen by a mortal man, and she was about to remark on this when a tremendous vibration went through the floor and walls, and a deep groan of agony emanated from all around. Almost simultaneously, a further commotion arose from the floors below.

‘What is it? What's amiss?' The Prince started from his chair. A tremendous clamor and clatter rushed up the stairway.

Footmen hurried to the door, but as they opened it a horseman rode through in a sudden gale, ducking his head under the high lintel. He wheeled to a halt before them. The stallion reared and curvetted, shrilling, its hooves slicing the carpets. The iron-shod forehooves struck a glancing blow off an ebony table, which flew across the room, its setting of porcelainware and sweetmeats dashing to pieces. Foam flicked from the beast's snorting mouth, showering the crystal vases. In the dark, gusting wind, the curtains of magenta velvet bellied out. The playing cards, all six suits—Wands, Swords, Cups, Coins, Anchors, and Crowns—flew up like frightened seagulls.

‘Master Avenel!' cried Edward. He and his companions stared in disbelief.

‘Haste, make haste,' cried the Seneschal of Tana, controlling his mount with difficulty. ‘I have just come from the house of Lutey. The island is about to be destroyed.'

When the denouement came, it came rapidly. At the Hall of Tana, furniture collapsed. Plaster cracked, loose bricks fell. The belltower shook, from its foundations upward. At last, up in the murky vapors of their eyrie, all by themselves, their ropes dangling untended by any hand, the great bells of Tana's
chastel
began to toll.

Hot and jarred, the sea chopped and changed without rhythm. Up and down the hillsides the fences undulated like serpents. Cracks unseamed their mouths; sand and mud bubbled out. It was almost impossible for anyone to remain on their feet. People stumbled and rolled, clawing at previously fixed objects that proved treacherous. Apple boughs crashed to the ground. Animals ran to and fro in confusion. Amid the black snow, tiny porous stones hailed down, too hot to touch.

Fishing-boats—the entire fleet—made ready to launch.

The false night was so dense now that it was impossible to discern even an outline of the mountain. Where its top should have loomed, there burned a red glare. Over this spurious sunrise strange lightnings snapped continually in an endless display. It looked like a wicker cage of eerie lightworks forming the death-blue, pumping veins of the smoke-tree whose black leaves continued to pour over the nightscape.

The islanders pushed open their doors with difficulty because of the detritus piled up outside. Down from the village to the harbour they fled with their goats, their hounds and horses, their cattle and sheep. Some folk wept; not many—this was a hardy people. Their strings of lamps, like blobs of grazed yellow resin, could hardly be made out in the gloom. Deep drifts of ash and pumice blocked the streets. Larger stones rattled down, causing hurt; a rain of pain. The darkness was so profound, so unnatural, that it was not like night at all. It was a windowless, doorless chamber. Only the tower of coldly flickering lightnings over the mountain could be clearly seen. Generated by tiny fragments of lava in the ash cloud rubbing against each other to build up enormous charges that tore in thundering bolts through the column, it rose to an unguessed ceiling.

The refugees boarded the boats, stepping from the land they knew in their hearts they would never see again. Great waves leapt up as tall as houses and smacked into one another. Through the chaos, the boats bravely put out into the ashen harbour. They sailed across to the Rip and through it, while smoke roiled on the water and fire boiled in the sky. Now blackened by poisonous effluvium, the brass bells of Tana rang out a lonely farewell from the swaying belfry. As the fleet passed the point, a mild glow as of candlelight exuded from the upper room of the Light-Tower.

‘The Lightkeeper!' exclaimed Rohain, in the leading ship. ‘He is still within!'

‘He refused to leave,' said Avenel, at her side.

Already, while the fleet yet rode out of the harbour, the land woke again and shuddered. As if in answer, the Light beamed forth for the last time, pure and white like a Faêran sword cleaving the murk. Then the mountain roared violently, the scarlet glow flared brightly, and a huge wave opened from the shore, almost swamping the ships, bearing them forward. Bombs of burning rock fell hissing into the sea on all sides. Some went through the rigging and landed, red-hot, on the decks, threatening to set the ships alight before the wary crews scooped them in shovels and tossed them overboard. As the last ship passed through the Rip the island writhed. The Light-Tower itself leaned a little, then, very slowly, as if resisting, it collapsed into the sea. All the way down, the Beacon lanced out courageously, a descending white blade, extinguished only when the waves closed over it.

In a shower of darkness and cinders, the vessels plowed across the deep.

Whether they would escape with their lives or not, none could say.

Behind them, the sea-volcano that was Tamhania had become wildly unstable. Some delicate inner balance had been meddled with. Once, it had slept. Now it awakened. A heat so great it was almost inconceivable, hotter than the hottest furnace; a heat that had been lying in wait for more than a millennium at the base of a fracture beneath the island, miles under the sea, now was mobilized. Raising a mindless head, it set its huge shoulders—sinewed with magma, veined with fire—against the scabbed-over crust of soil, to split the lid that held it barely in check. The sea-bed struggled. Deep within the mountain, under tremendous pressure, molten rock welled up through fissures. At temperatures of thousands of degrees, it began to form a dangerous mixture with the volatiles in seawater: venomous fumes to rise like serpents out of vents, stinking sulfurs to belch from fumaroles, asphyxiating exhalations to flow invisibly downhill and gather in hollows, acid vapors to slowly eat through whatever they touched, and strong enough to etch glass, fiery ethers to glow in great veils against the sky, explosive gases to burst open the heart of the volcano with a thunderclap.

Like a chimney catching fire, the central vent began to roar. With each new explosion, blocks the size of palaces hurtled up to the surface, ripped from the throat of the vomiting cone. The air filled with flying rocks. Long streaks of flame arched into the air every few moments. Above the vent a cloud boiled out, convoluted like a monstrous brain, its cortex twenty thousand feet above sea level.

A downpour of rain mixed with ash fell on the fishing boats. Some substance in this mud glowed in the dark, and soon the masts and decks looked as if they were covered with a myriad tiny embers. Behind the fleet, the steady roar of the dying mountain-island continued, as the boats sailed on through the night—or was it the day? Missiles screamed like unseelie avengers and howled like frights. A subsonic pounding was going on, as though giants worked at their subterranean forges, their hammer blows
thud-thudding
relentlessly on huge anvils, echoing in caverns where nightmarish bellows pulsed, blaring gouts of smoke up through the chimney. Against the blackness of night, roseate fire-curtains gleamed, speckled with gold. Far away on the slopes of tormented Tamhania, jeweled rocks went spitting, spinning over ash wastes where tall fumes leaned now instead of trees. In the harbour, seawater vaporized like immense billows of smoke. Heavy, deadly gases hugged the contours of the mountainsides, streaming down in rivers. Water floated like smoke, gas flowed as if it were liquid.

But the pressure from miles below did not decrease. Tamhania fought, opening new smoking fissures in its flanks, letting the crimson paste ooze out in languid rivers to incinerate and slowly crush the houses of the village. The island bellowed as it threw its guts into the air.

Hours passed. The fleet now sailed under true night, although all celestial lights were extinguished by the tons of ash and fine debris spreading across the upper skies of Erith. The luminous mud scintillated along the boats' rigging. Tamhania was the light of the plenum: a fire-fountain, its noise circling the rim of the world like an iron wheel rolling around a bowl. Floating rocks—porous, gas-filled chunks of pumice like hard, black sponge—made the water hazardous. Infinitesimal specks of ash mixed with spray plastered the faces, clothes, beards, and hair of the refugees. The mixture stung their eyes and curdled to slippery scum on the decks.

As ring-shaped waves rush away from a stone dropped into a pond of still water, so the ocean reacted to the dreadful murmur of the island. The escaping fleet was rocked by ever-larger swells; long copings dividing extreme abysms. As morning was finally reborn, the sun rose dripping out of the sea like a corrupt gem fastened to the sky's filthy cloak. Those who stood on deck looking back, clutching the railings, saw a brilliant burst of light. Soon, over the continual roaring, the sound of a truly enormous explosion came bounding and crashing across the wavetops. It hit the boats with force and passed away to the horizon. The vessels dipped and lurched, but they held together. The passengers did not rejoice. They knew what would follow. Sound travels faster than ripples in water. Heedless of modesty, all the passengers doffed their footwear and outer clothes in case they should be thrown into the water. Many could not swim.