The Bitterbynde Trilogy (13 page)

The youth stared at the trainee Relayer's retreating back for several moments, before a similar kick from the Second Master broke his reverie and sent him hurrying.

The shadows in the goat-caves could play tricks, especially when outside daylight was so bright. The mute one moved uncertainly. No goats jostled therein; they were grazing at the forest's fringe, under the herd-boys' care. Their smell was there. patiently waiting for their return; some old straw and dung kept it company. Farther into the hollow places there was a hole in the wall, smaller and darker than the rest. It was toward this that the lad moved. He held a brass bougie-box by its handle, a wax taper coiled inside its drum-shaped interior like a pale, parasitic worm. The lighted end projected through the lid, breathing a weak flame, transparent.

“You! You followed me. Don't tell anyone … don't show anyone this place. What do you want?” wheezed a voice.

Clubfoot Pod's pale face leaned out of the gloom. The intruder stood immobile. He put down the taper-box and slowly lowered the burden he had carried on his shoulder. Pod stared suspiciously.

“Don't tell anyone that this is where I hide, will you? You won't, will you? You cannot?”

The youth shook his head and held his hand out in a gesture of friendship, from which Pod shrank back.

“Go away, go away. Someone might have seen you come here.”

The youth shook his head again, pointed to Pod, and put a hand behind one ear as if listening. Pod nodded, watching the signals.

“Aye, but only if you make it quick.”

The nameless one pointed again to Pod, then to himself, then to the cavern's entrance. He made flapping movements with his arms and shaded his eyes as if staring into the distance, then unwrapped the bundle to display a small pile of food: dried fruit, cheese, and hard bread.

“Go from here? You must be addled—don't you understand? Nobody can live in the forest unprotected, and the forest's all around. It stretches for miles and miles. I don't know how many miles. Thousands.”

Pod's eyes were white in their sockets, and his voice rose to a strangled squeak.

The youth made a shape with his hands.

“Windship? You mean, stow away on board? Kill yourself without my company. Don't you know what happens to stowaways? Go! Go! Take your nightmares and stolen food. Don't come near me! I'll not have anything to do with it. You shall be discovered. You shall be punished.”

The mute one gazed at him for a moment, then nodded, folded his bundle, picked up the bougie-box, and moved out into the sunlight.

There is a cure for me out there. I shall go, one day
, he said in his heart,
I shall go Beyond the Tower and make a journey, a quest to find three things
—
a face to show the world without shame, my name, my past. I will not rest until I find them
.

But without company, he was afraid to leave, so for now he endured.

“Wake up, wake up. Sunrise soon. Wake up, Lazy, you are strong now—hard work has made you grow strong, so now you must work harder.”

The partnership of Grethet's parrot-squawk and her boot in his ribs dissolved the mists of slumber in an instant.

The crone's ward no longer slept in the furnace room—she had made him move his bedding because she said the room was too bright, what with the constant opening of the furnace's maw to feed the fires; and he must hide himself away in shadow. He now slept, washed, and dressed in a small windowless cell used to store candles, laundry soap, and beeswax—a cupboard shared with optimistic spiders that, when their roommate sat upright on his heap of rags, would spin their way down from the ceiling on their long threads to hang level with his eyes, staring, before reeling themselves up again.

“Undress in the dark,” Grethet reminded him constantly. “Don't let them see you. No one must see you. You are deformed. They would have you thrown out. You understand?”

He understood. He obeyed.

Accustomed to darkness, he poured water from the ewer into the bowl and washed, as she had taught him, and dressed, tying the taltry over thick lustrous thatch, now the length of his fingers. He completed his first duties before eating the scrag of bread euphemistically known as “breakfast,” disposing of waste, sweeping the furnace room floor, drawing water for washing garments, setting fires under the laundry tubs, and vigorously rubbing a glass mushroom with a knopped handle across linen sheets to smooth them out.

His shoulders and arms ached always. Later he would be set to checking the stores. Featherstone had taught him to count. Now the mathematical equal of most of the other servants, he would repeat, over and over in his head,
Yan, tan, tethera; yan, tan, tethera
, after each trio, cutting a notch on a short green stick as evidence.

It was the twelfth of Teinemis, the Firemonth. From within the dominite walls came the screeching and thumping of sildron pumps assisting the flow of rainwater from the great roof-cisterns and drawing water from wells beneath the lowest dungeons. The sounds, as of a screaming, beating heart walled up behind stone, testified to the large number of guests occupying the upper levels on this important day, the wedding day.

A Stormrider wedding at the Relay Tower at Isse in Eldaraigne—a momentous event. Marriages customarily took place only between and within the twelve Houses. The eldest daughter of the House, the Lady Persefonae, was to be joined with her cousin Valerix from the Fifth House, whose chief stronghold was in Finvarna. The betrothal had been pledged on the day Persefonae was born. It was a
bitterbynde
, the lower servants whispered at the time—a geas laid upon someone despite their own will. This was a babe too young to know the light of day, let alone whom she would choose to wed, were she of marriageable age. It was a shame, they agreed—but these alliances must be made if the glory of the Houses were to continue to wax strong. Fortunately, the pairing of these two had proved to be to the liking of both, and when the time came there was no reluctance on either part.

From realms scattered over Erith came representatives of all Stormrider Houses and several noble and royal Houses. They came by Windship or Watership, riding sky or in guarded cavalcades along the King's High Way, the great road that ringed Eldaraigne, to the Tower's gate.

Three or four Windships rode at anchor against a mackerel sky, above the far meadow; another waited at the dock on the seventh story, their sails furled and propellers motionless. Lord Valerix remained aboard his Watership anchored among his fleet and the other visiting ships in Isse Harbor, where he made his preparations. He would not set foot on land until the morrow.

Above the Tower fluttered a forest of pennants and standards. The Stormrider device, a white lightning bolt zigzagged on a black background, had been raised for the twelve united Houses. The flag of the Seventh House was identical, but black on silver, while the Fifth House displayed black on sky blue. “
Arnath Lan Seren
,” the motto, translated as “Whatever It Takes”—whatever it takes to fulfill duty and preserve honor; whatever it takes to serve the King-Emperor, uphold the strength of the twelve Houses, and rule the Skyroads.

A high stone wall, topped with shards of flint, embraced the demesnes of Isse Tower. A second fence of sturdy rowan-trees grew all along the wall's outer perimeter. Set in archways at wide intervals, the half-dozen posterns of oak and iron opened on little-used roads, scarcely more than cart-tracks, leading into the forest or the dunes. To the southeast, the main gate opened to the King's High Way running along the coast.

The time had come for the servants to go gathering fruit and flowers in the forest.

In the oblique, insipid light of dawn a convoy jingled along the path by the walled kitchen gardens and the low-roofed dairy with its underground cellars. Led by armed riders, it comprised a wooden cart drawn by two old draft-horses and a straggle of assorted domestic servants, some sitting in the cart, looking out through the trellised sides, and others walking. Capuchins and children clung to the cart like barnacles or chased each other.

Every measure for protection against unseelie wights had been employed. Many folk wore their clothes turned inside out for the expedition, discarding comfort for added security; some were crowned and garlanded with daisy-chains. The cart was hung with bells, as were the headstalls and bridles of all the horses; horseshoes were nailed around it. The servants carried empty sacks, baskets, and rowan-wood staffs topped with bells and festoons of fraying red ribbon. Mumbling, Grethet clutched at the wooden rooster dangling around her scrawny chicken neck. Of all places, the charms known as tilhals were needed most in the wight-haunted forest. Tintinnabulating gaily, at odds with the somber visages of its members, the procession reached the Owl Postern and proceeded through it into the forest, at which point those with the sourest expressions began to whistle, a practice said to repel unseelie wights for miles around. Judging by the tuneless discord of their symphony, this was not surprising.

The fern-embroidered Owl's Way twisted through overhanging trees forming a leafy tunnel. Tiny opalescent flies threaded themselves on gold needles of sunlight pricking the canopy. Sphagnum moss and skull fungus covered fallen logs. Wrens darted, and a gray shrike-thrush trilled. The convoy followed the track until it reached a clearing, at whose edge it halted. The horses dropped their heads to graze. A guard shouted orders. Hooded gatherers spread out in groups and disappeared among the trees, shaking the bell-tipped staffs and whistling. Some boys with capuchins who remained climbed the cart's sides to pull vines of purple coral-pea from overhanging boughs. In the center of the clearing, in the full light of the warm morning sun, women and children knee-deep in grass gathered armfuls of yellow everlasting daisies, perfumed boronia, and rosy heath-myrtle, pushing the stems deep into the damp moss with which they had lined their baskets.

Grethet's stooped figure pushed through nettles and undergrowth.

“This way, this way,” she panted. “Berries here, too, maybe. But beware of paradox ivy.”

She was one of a group of two that, although ostracized, reaped a good harvest during that morning: trails of fireweed, satiny snowblossom, and a small bag of early berries, whose livid juices prevented premature consumption by promising to advertise it. Tree trunks like pillars of a palace soared to a filigree ceiling. Grethet's helper sucked greedily on sweet airs and feasted on the million green shades of wilderness, the thousand subtle songs of it.

The shouting of guards beckoned the gatherers back to a cart now overflowing with flowers; some folk began tying their baskets to the outside to avoid bruising the petals.

The certainty that it was about to happen had been with the nameless one since he and Grethet first pushed their way into the forest. He looked forward to it with excitement, light of step, eager, the blood already leaping in his veins. It was that same sensation he sometimes felt when inside the Tower—only now he was Outside. Now he would see what caused it.

The prickling wind came first, soft as a child's breath, strengthening. A clamoring of birds. Clouds suddenly clustered over the sun, day turned to night, and gusts sprang up, bringing with them a racing exhilaration. Laughing soundlessly, the youth could not restrain himself from breaking into a run—at the same moment cries and violent oaths broke out on all sides:

“The unstorm! Cover your heads!”

Men and women clutched their taltries even closer to their scalps, hurrying toward the rocking cart. Some children laughed, some cried—capuchins shrieked, swarming like startled beetles. Soft lights then shone unexpectedly from darknesses among the trees, and as the wind gained power it seemed to awaken other lights and deepen other shadows. The dark forest sparkled. It
changed
.

Colored jewels of flowers glowed fiery against velvet; the edges and veins of leaves were dusted with tiny spangles of silver and gold along their skeletal networks; pinprick stars along each blade of grass brightened and faded with each gust and ebb of the wind. Branches tossed and bucked like restless horses, leaves dancing like seaweed in a shifting current, a current that eddied and swirled all around, satin smooth and cool, alive with movement. Behind the haunted sighs of the wind, soft glassy chimes. Bells on bridles winked with silver glitter and rang with a different, purer note, somehow poignant.

The driver's whip cracked blue stars along its length, and the draft-horses sprang into motion, striking red sparks from their hooves. The cavalcade moved through the unstorm like swimmers underwater. As the wind's voice rose to a moan, the strange fires brightened and weaker ones began to appear.

The youth longed to leap up and ride away on the wind's back, far from contumely and contusion, but he must run with the taltried crowd who followed the cart with eyes downcast. They did not look to left or right, but he did, and he saw under an archway of trees halfway down Owl's Way a flickering scene, half-transparent, made of light. Two men, unhooded, dressed outlandishly, dueled with swords. Weapons clashed but made no sound. A tree grew in the center of the scene, unheeded by the combatants, who passed through it as though it were not there—or perhaps it passed through them.

They parried and thrust, intent on their silent game. One stumbled, wounded in the arm, and fell back before a fresh onslaught, his mouth open in a wordless shout. Yet then there was an instant like the blink of an eye, and the scene jumped; he was on his feet, whole again, and they thrust and parried as before, fading as the wind drew breath and shimmering brighter as it blasted. This, then, this subsidiary impression left over from physical energy, was what the inhabitants of the Tower called a tableau.

By the time the troupe reached the Owl Postern the unstorm had passed. Lights dimmed and winked out, the skies cleared, and leaves hung stagnant. The flower-laden cart and its followers passed through from the forest into the demesnes.