The Bitterbynde Trilogy (119 page)

Then it seemed to her that the wind lifted her suddenly and swung her against the night sky.

The jingling approached like the spangle of sequins, like a woodland of silver bell-flowers rustled by a Summer-silk breeze.

Seen indistinctly in the star-watered gloaming between the apple orchard's fretted boughs, a procession of seven score riders was slowly passing by.

A Faêran Rade.

Breathtakingly fair were they, with a shining beauty that was not of Erith. All were arrayed in splendid raiment of green and gold, and mounted on magnificently caparisoned steeds whose bridles glittered with tiny bells, like chains of stars. The knights among them wore golden helmets. Clasped about their limbs were finely chased greaves. Some bore in their hands golden spears like shafts of pale sunlight. To see these riders was startling, like a first glimpse of new blossom in Spring—a sudden enchantment glimmering against boughs that lately stretched stark and black.

To see them was to truly awaken, for the first time.

A knocking started up under Ashalind's ribs, for the yearning within her, born of the Piper's call, had found an answer at last.

The horses were of a splendid breed, surpassing any she had ever seen in the world—noble, milk-white steeds, moving with the grace of the wind. Each possessed the arched neck, the broad chest, the quivering nostril, and the large eyes of a superb hunter. They seemed made of fire and flame, not of mortal flesh. Each was shod with silver, striking silver sparks with each step, and each bore a jewel on his forehead like a star.

The fair riders made the orchard ring with their clear laughter and song, but other horsemen surrounded them—mounted bodyguards or companions. In contrast, these outriders were of hideous form and face, and mostly smaller in stature.

When the last of the procession had passed, Ashalind sprang to her feet and followed. Keeping well back so that they would not spy her, she ran after the riders, out through the orchard gate and down Hedgerow Lane and on across the valley. Although the revelers seemed to ride slowly, Ashalind was hard-pressed to keep up. She dropped farther and farther behind. Not once did any face turn back toward her—neither the achingly fair knights and ladies nor the misshapen riders seemed to notice her at all—and thus she grew bolder and more desperate, until after they crossed the bridge there was no more attempt at concealment and she ran openly, gasping for breath, her left leg throbbing deep in the bone.

Ahead loomed Hob's Hill, but now there was a broad road leading to it that had never been there before, and the side of the hill was open. A great light streamed out of the arched Doors. Without pausing, the procession rode inside. Their pursuer was so far behind that she saw the last of them pass within before she could come near. In great fear lest the entrance should close before she could reach it, she sprinted forward, sobbing with agony and longing. Her heart banged so loudly in her chest that she thought it would burst. As the monumental Doors finally began to swing to, Ashalind had almost reached the threshold. With a last effort she flung herself through the portal and heard, at her back, the sonorous clang of stone clapping against stone.

All seemed dark at first, but ahead, as if from beyond a corridor or tunnel, shone a pale pink light like the glow of dawn. After recovering her breath, Ashalind hurried toward it. A breeze blew from there, rose-scented, poignant. An extraordinary excitement surged through her, swelled by a sense of yearning and urgency.

The long hallway ended in a second archway. Its single Door stood open.

Beyond, she beheld a staggering view. Under a sapphire sky, a fair land of wooded hills stretched away to mountains of terrible height and majesty, their keen peaks piercing rings of cloud. She had heard tales and songs of the Fair Realm, and the Piper's tune had described it, but the splendor, the seduction, and the fascination of that realm had never yet come home to her. Her heart was possessed, stabbed by enchantment and desire, and she gazed, almost forgetting her mission, at the land beyond dream or invention. She wept, for it was the land of the Piper's tune, and she had only to walk a few steps to reach it. But those steps were forestalled.

Out of a side opening she had not noticed before sprang two small black figures dressed in mail, crossing their pikes to bar her way. Their ears were long, upstanding and pointed, their mouths wide and their noses broad. They stood about three feet tall and exuded a strong odour of leaf-mold.

In accents unfamiliar, these small and evidently dangerous adversaries demanded, ‘Halt, stranger. Who trespasses here and on what business?' A gleam darted from their slits of eyes. Their barbed and whiplike tails switched aggressively from side to side.

Ashalind drew herself up to her full height and tried to gain a moment to ponder, for she had not remembered to make a new name for herself. She shrank from giving them the name of anyone she knew in case it brought the owner into danger. Thoughts quarreled in her head—the kenning her father called her, and her golden bracelet, now lying on the dressing-table at home. She spoke in a gruff voice, mumbling.

‘I am called Elindor. I am come to ask a boon of the Lord Morragan of Carnconnor.'

Distastefully, the spriggans eyed the filthy peasant lad.

‘Steenks,' they agreed, exchanging nods. They spoke to one another in their own creaking tongue.

‘Follow,' they said at last, and one entered into the opening from which they had appeared, where a stair led upward. With one last longing glance at the land
beyond
the hill, Ashalind started to climb, and the second spriggan came after.

The stair soared up and up, and opened into a corridor from which led many branches and portals leading to rooms and other stairways, one of which the leading guard climbed. At the top of this second flight was a third. By now Ashalind had been rendered once again breathless, for it was difficult to ascend so far and fast. Fortunately she was not hampered by skirts or a feigned limp, although in the leg that had been broken the bone ached. Already weary from the race across the valley, she was also troubled by thirst.

The wights led her finally to a high room in a tower. The door stood open and a resplendently furnished room lay within. The walls were clad with bright tapestries and leafy vines; the chairs and tables were wrought of gold, embellished with jewels and living flowers. One of the tables was set with goblets and jugs, and dishes piled high with fruits and sweetmeats. Warm air blew softly in at the open windows. What had at first seemed to be a blaze in the hearth was no fire, but a heap of roses so red they seemed aflame. Ashalind had never seen such a splendid room and hardly dared venture in.

‘Enter,' said the creaking voice of the leading spriggan sentry.

She went in, but the speaker was no longer to be seen, nor was the other who had been following behind. After examining the room in amazement, she moved to the windows and looked out. There below she saw the spreading of a great garden ringed by a greenwood. Birds and fountains made music, a sea of roses surged and broke like waves against the garden walls, and on the long lawns children played.

The children of Hythe Mellyn.

Unchanged, not a day older than when they had departed seven years before, they frolicked there, lit by brilliant sunlight that seemed peculiarly clear and pink, as if viewed through a pane of roseate quartz. Ashalind dared not call to them, disguised as she was, but tears of joy and pain stung her eyes when she spied Rhys among them. Leaning from the window, she stretched out her arms, but a sound at her back made her start and turn around.

The spriggans had returned. They led her through the thundering halls and extravagant galleries of a fantastic palace, until they came at last to the most amazing hall of all.

Therein, the air was charged.

Lofty trees grew along the walls—indeed they constituted the walls, intersticed by greenery. Their boughs made a serpentine roof of leaves, forming arches laced together by the mellow breeze, tiled by glimmers of azure sky. Flamboyant birds winged across this ceiling and owls perched as if carved.

Merriment resounded, and music of harps and flutes. Long, narrow tables stretched the length of the hall, set with gold-wrought bowls of flowers and platters of food. Seated along them was a splendid company.

At the sight, Ashalind's head spun. For a long instant she thought she fell upward from on a rocky height into a dizziness of open sky where points of light glistered, thick as salt. The song of the stars seemed to choir in her head.

She was among the Faêran.

A faint shimmer of radiance surrounded them. Their voices fell like flower petals on water, as musical as birdsong in the morning. They spoke in a language Ashalind did not understand: a tongue as smooth as polished silver, as rich as the jewel-hoards of dragons. Some wore scarlet and gold and amber like leaping flames, some were clad in green and silver like moonlight on leaves, some in soft gray like curling smoke. Others among them appeared to be as naked as needles, graced only with the beauty of their comely forms and their flowing hair, which was threaded with jewels and flowers.

Courageously, Ashalind stepped forward. Instantaneously, silence fell and all eyes turned to her.

Justly were they called the Fair Folk. Indeed, they were the fairest of all, possessing a beauty that was intoxicating, almost paralyzing. Ashalind had barely caught sight of them through the half-leafless boughs of the apple trees, but now that she was so close, it seemed to her as if her heart and brain had stopped functioning and she could think of nothing to say.

They seemed as if formed of air and light, yet as strong and living as trees, as lively as wind and fire and swift-flowing waters. Clean and finely drawn were their features, with high cheekbones and sculpted chins. At the outer corners, their eyebrows and their eyes swept up, slanting ever so slightly, as if everything about them was suspended from above and only whimsy anchored them to the ground. Tall and straight as spears were they, the lines of their forms clean and hard. Taut was their peach-blossom skin. Always they smiled and laughed. Indeed, it seemed that gravity and other weighty matters never touched these flower-ladies—fragile and slender, almost waiflike—or these virile lords possessed of the strength and grace of warrior heroes, who were beautiful in another way entirely—not as flowers, but as lions and eagles of immense power. Ashalind thought some among the assembly were older, some younger, but how they gave this impression was hard to say. No heavy jowl, no sagging chin gave evidence of accumulated years. Perhaps the effect of age was lent by an air of greater wisdom and tempered gaiety, in addition to some indefinable aspect of appearance.

Appearing stiff and awkward by comparison with the easy grace of the Faêran, eldritch wights sat among them. These seemed to be mortal men and women, but were not. Some were lovely to look upon, others ordinary—but all were betrayed by some deformity, no matter how minor. Others not so beauteous also mingled with this astonishing company: dangerous fuaths and murderous duergars, unseelie wights of assorted hideousness whose spindly shanks and outsized extremities made a screamingly grotesque contrast to the beauty of their companions. To Ashalind they appeared like fungoid growths and molds sprouting amid wildflowers.

Woodland beasts she saw also—the mask of a narrow-eyed fox, the curve of a deer's neck, lop-eared hares pale as curd flitting over the roots of the wall-trees, a raven on a high branch.

A voice announced, ‘Elindor of Erith comes to beg audience of His Royal Highness, Morragan, Crown Prince of the Realm, Fithiach of Carnconnor.'

Bright, melodious laughter rippled around the hall as Ashalind approached the high table and knelt, hardly daring to raise her eyes.

‘His Royal Highness bids me welcome you, stranger,' said a corrosive voice. ‘Come, drink the guest-cup with us.'

The fellow who had spoken gave a rictus of a smile. He was small and thin, with bloodless lips, a savage, wrinkled face of a yellowish-brown hue, a greasy beard sprouting from his chin. His hair hung lank and stringy, like tangled rats' tails, but it was striped with the colours of dandelions and mud. Clothed in shades of tan and yellow, he stood behind the shoulder of a tall Faêran lord who was seated at the centre of the high table.

As Ashalind dared to lift her gaze for a moment to this lord, a cool, keen wind gusted through the hall.

Or so it seemed.

With eyes as grey as the cold southern seas,
he
was the most grave and comely of all the company. Hair tumbled down in waves to his elbows, and it was the blue-black shade of a raven's wing. The heartbreakingly handsome face betrayed no sign of any passion. Leaning his elbow on the table with the relaxed poise of the omnipotent, he regarded his petitioner, but said nothing.

Bending forward, the wrinkled fellow at the lord's shoulder poured a draught into a jeweled horn and offered it to the newcomer, along with a knowing leer.

‘Drink,
erithbunden.'

‘Sir, I respectfully decline your hospitality, but let it be no cause for ill will, I beg of you. I am come but for one task, and I have vowed to neither eat nor drink until I have accomplished it.'

It was a sore trial to Ashalind to say this, for the wine was sweet-scented, clear and pale green like the new leaves of Spring in Ysteris, and thirst shriveled her palate.

‘You are as discourteous as you are decorated with the dirt of your country,' reprimanded the rat-haired fellow, handing the horn to a gargoyle-like creature, which gulped the drink. ‘And what may be that task?'

Undaunted she bowed, replying, ‘I have come to win back the children of Hythe Mellyn.'

The crowd of Faêran murmured among themselves, and, the sound was a brook in Spring, or wind through the cornfields.

‘And why do you wish to take them away from this happy place?' barked Rat-Hair. ‘For mark you, they dwell in bliss.'