The Bitterbynde Trilogy (136 page)

‘Where are we going?' asked Caitri, not unreasonably.

‘Northeast. Then north.'
Nearer to Thorn, in fact. Yet never shall I seek thee my beloved, never shall I bring my hunters upon thee
.

‘Did you find what you wanted at Huntingtowers?'

‘I did. Tonight, if we find a safe place to rest, I shall tell you everything.'

‘Tonight you shall sleep,' admonished Viviana in a motherly manner, ‘since you did not do so last night. We thought you were in a trance. We believed you were bewitched.'

‘Why are we heading north?' young Caitri wanted to know.

‘The region called Arcdur lies to the north. I must find something there—a Gate. The first time we see Stormriders overhead, you must wave them down and go with them, feigning that you have not seen me. You two have suffered enough. This new quest of mine is not for courtiers.'

‘Your words insult us,' retorted Viviana.

‘I am sorry, but it is true.'

In silence they walked on.

‘We will not see Relayers,' said Caitri, wise in the ways of Stormriders. ‘We are travelling far from the lands over which the Skyroads run, which are their usual routes. Besides, they have searched this coast already. They shall believe us lost, and they will not return.'

‘Is there any road to Arcdur from here?' Viviana queried.

‘Not that I know of,' replied the young girl. ‘The King's High Way used to go there, but it has long since been swallowed by the forest, or fallen into the sea. I know only that Arcdur's western shores lie along the north-west coast of Eldaraigne.'

‘Then we ought to keep to the sea's margins,' Viviana said. ‘If we keep the ocean to our left we will be sure to come to Arcdur eventually.'

‘It would be impossible,' said Tahquil-Ashalind, once Rohain. ‘The cliffs along here are rugged, pierced by deep inlets thrusting far back into the land. Without a boat we cannot go that way.'

Viviana stopped beside some low tree ferns. She plucked out some whorls of fiddle-heads, tightly coiled, like pale green clockwork springs. Other greenery and assorted vegetation hung on lengths of twine from her waist, her shoulders and her elbows, obscuring the articles swinging and clanking from her chatelaine.

‘You have not eaten anything since the day before yesterday,
auradonna,'
the courtier reminded Tahquil from behind her matted, bleached curls. ‘'Tis little wonder your belly pains you.'

The euphoria dissipated. Tahquil looked at the dead and wilting leaves she herself carried, and the dirty, worm-eaten tubers. A forgotten tendril of something akin to hunger stirred within her. One could not live on memories.

The three companions sat beneath the lissom poles of the birches and kindled a fire. Viviana unbound bunches of edible roots, seedpods and herbage.

‘Via has become adept at finding food,' explained Caitri with a touch of reproach, ‘especially since you went off on your own. She's remembered all you've taught us. She has an eye for it.'

‘Even courtiers can learn,' said Viviana haughtily, ‘to be useful.'

‘Then let me teach you how to cook,' offered Tahquil. It would be a distraction from the hurt within.

These wooded, gently undulating hills were named the Great Western Forest, but, more innocuous than a forest, they were actually one vast woodland of beech, budding birch, oak and rustling, new-leafed poplars, hung with leafy creepers. The trees were interspersed with brakes of hazel and wild currant bushes veiled with a diaphanous lace of blossoms. Rivulets chuckled through leafy dells. Bluebells sprang in a lapis lazuli haze, attractive and perilous.

Directed by a dim, smoke-bleared sun glimpsed through the woodland canopy, the travellers walked on through the reddish-brown smog of the day, and at evenfall, when weariness threatened to sweep Tahquil from her feet, they climbed to shelter in a huge and ivied weather-beech, pulling themselves up on vegetable cables to rest in a scoop at the junction of three great boughs.

Twittering like sparrows in the undergrowth and fallen leaves, a gaggle of small wights came tumbling and capering over the knotted roots below. They were grigs. No more than eight inches tall they stood, applecheeked, their eyes dark brown with no whites, their small mouths grinning. On their heads perched fungus-red caps, terminating in tasselled points. Their knee-breeches were bark-brown, their coats the fern-green traditionally worn by trooping wights. In this typical eldritch attire they performed cartwheels and other acrobatic feats which they apparently considered hilarious and which, in their audience's opinion, were tediously uninspired.

‘I should like to throw something at the little uncouthants,' said Viviana peevishly.

Nestling into the spoon of the tree, Tahquil slept. Oblivion descended, total again. She slumbered through the shang wind when it came, but Viviana, watching, pulled her mistress's taltry over her head lest she dreamed. In the unstorm, the cindery air transmuted to minuscule sequins.

‘I shall have to inform her soon,' said Caitri, meeting the courtier's troubled gaze with a worried frown.

A putrid drizzle of stagnant daylight announced dawn, struggling to pierce Tamhania's airborne, incinerated detritus that hung like cobwebs in the skies. Fine powderings of that dust were slowly settling everywhere—on landscape, garments, hair and flesh.

Stiff and sore, the travellers stretched their limbs.

‘By the powers!' exclaimed Tahquil, snapping into wakefulness. ‘We're lucky to be alive—we didn't set a night watch!'

‘
You
did not,' said Caitri primly, crushing stytchel-thyme leaves to release their pungent oils. ‘
We
did.'

Tahquil smiled through a layer of encrusted ash-mud. ‘It is well that I have you both with me.'

She rubbed more thyme leaves over her limbs and clothing, and they breakfasted on water. As she stoppered the water-bottle, Caitri looked up at her mistress. Her deep-lidded eyes seemed huge, liquid; her cheeks were paler than usual.

‘It is the season to endure,' she murmured, obscurely.

‘What is it, child? Your eyes tell me a terrible tale. I recall, now, you have been trying for some while to impart some tidings to me. Suddenly I burn to know. This time you must out with it—for it is something that concerns me deeply, I feel.'

Caitri swallowed. ‘It is this. I should have told you earlier, but I could not. Even now—'

‘Go on! Give me the words, quickly, or I shall go mad with the waiting!'

‘The reprobate Sargoth, he who was once the Royal Wizard—'

‘What of him?'

‘He escaped from the palace dungeons and roams freely through Eldaraigne. He seeks you, and has sworn to take terrible vengeance upon you.'

The weather-beech stretched its arms upwards to the sombre sky. Talium-coloured butterflies puppeted through the leaves, like primrose petals on strings.

‘How do you know this, Caitri?'

‘I overheard, at Tana, the day after the last Watership came bearing news. It was too odious. I could not tell you, and besides, it was forbidden.'

‘Whom did you overhear?'

‘They were holding converse in the adjacent chamber, Prince Edward and the Duke of Ercildoune. I was arranging flowers in a vase for you—burnet roses, they were. I did not intend to listen. I could not help it—their words carried clearly. The Prince seemed agitated and sorrowful. He was saying that he wanted to leave the island, to go north to the war. He said he felt like a merlin in a cage, pent up, when what he wanted to do was to fly free to fight alongside the other warriors. He said it was not manly to hide on Tamhania when he should be on the battlefields slaying wights, his sword black and smoking with their blood. The Duke, he tried to persuade the Prince otherwise, saying he was too young yet for battle. The Prince replied that at the very least he should be scouring Eldaraigne for the escaped wizard, Sargoth, who by his tricks had slain the soldiers that pursued him, and who had vowed to do all in his power to bring about the downfall of the Lady Rohain, against whom he held a bitter grudge.'

Caitri was biting her lip, uneasy about conveying ill tidings. ‘And then the Duke, he told Prince Edward to hush, not to speak so loudly, for doubtless the wizard would soon be recaptured and it would not do to cause undue alarm by revealing this threat, which in fact was no threat at all, because my lady dwelt in security on the Royal Isle. And the Prince after a time, he said yes, he knew that. They did not say more, after.'

‘Are you certain of what you heard?'

‘Yes. There was no mistaking it. I am so sorry, but I thought it best to warn you …'

Tahquil-Rohain stared at the cinnamon rind of the weather-beech. A brightly enamelled ladybird walked across it, a tiny hemisphere of scarlet and black on barely perceptible feet. The fragile insect teetered along the edge of a crevasse in the bark.

‘Gramercie, Caitri,' she said. ‘It is well done, to inform me that yet another enemy seeks my blood. Nay, I do not mock! I mean every syllable in earnest. Those who know their enemies are better prepared to defend themselves. The disagreeable Sargoth, wherever he might roam, shall not catch me unawares!'

But, having allowed recollections of Tamhania to return, Caitri was weeping now. ‘Poor Edward!' she sobbed. ‘And dear Thomas!' Her tears were a catalyst. Memories of all they had ever loved and lost sprang clearly to the forefront of the damsels' minds. The impetus of Tamhania's tragedy, postponed during their scramble for survival, now returned to them in full force. Together, embracing one another, the three of them wept inconsolably until no more tears would come.

As aftermath, a deep tranquillity pooled within them.

Ultimately, Tahquil swung out of the tree, scrambling down the woody creepers to the ground. She landed hard and did not glance up.

‘Come.' Her throat rasped, irritated by volcanic fumes. ‘'Tis time we were away.'

Above the leaf canopy, rain clouds gathered. They let down their silver hair to wash away the grieving ash, the corrosives.

The next morning the air struck clear, wincing, sparkling like polished crystal.

Northeast they walked, keeping about two miles inland from the coastline. A northerly breeze brought the savage scent of the sea. The sounds of wights bubbled all around, especially at night: footsteps, rustlings, occasional bursts of manic laughter or screams, that
sense
of unseen presences that raised hairs, prickling, on the scalp, and choked the throat with a cold hand and hammered at the heart. Either their tilhals or the shining ring or good sense or luck or all four had, so far, kept safe this trio of inexperienced wayfarers.

From time to time, Caitri and Viviana continued to anoint Tahquil with oil of stytchel-thyme to prevent recognition by her scent, because there were, in the world, things that would not be barred by charms and good fortune. Tahquil showed her companions the gold enamelled bracelet and told them all that had returned to her as she sat in the shadow of the caldera. They were left awestruck.

‘After all that has transpired, my lady is
in fact
a lady,' Viviana declared, with a courtier's consciousness of rank. ‘A right rare one, if I may say so!'

‘How is it, my lady,' wondered Caitri as they travelled, ‘that you are not dust? In the tales, when mortals return from spending many years in Faêrie, they crumble away after setting foot on Erithan soil.'

Ashes to dust
. ‘I know not, unless it were part of the Lady Nimriel's gift, or a property of the Gateway in whose shelter I spent a thousand years.'

‘But can you not remember the exact location of this Gateway?'

‘I cannot. Yet I think that if I set eyes on it I shall know it.'

‘To search for it—that is where we are going?'

‘Yes.'

‘But should we not instead seek out the King-Emperor so that you may inform him of all you have recalled?' persisted the little girl. ‘For, if anyone can aid you in the hunt for this Gate, it is His Majesty! Why, with the Royal Attriod and all the Legions of Erith at his command, he could not fail!'

‘His hands are full enough with the conflict in the north,' Tahquil said quickly. She paused, as if reconsidering, then added, ‘In all truth, I would fain keep my lord from this perilous business of Gates and Faêran princes and unseelie hunters. Already, he risks his life at the battlefield. I have no wish to bring further danger upon him.'

‘In my opinion,' Caitri responded, choosing her words with tactful care, ‘a decision against taking your news to His Majesty is unwise. He is our powerful sovereign, and a Dainnan warrior beyond compare. Wizards throng to his summons. He governs great armies of bronze and iron. Does my lady truly believe such a one cannot defend himself against unseelie foes? I say he
can
—and he can facilitate your quest as well.'

‘I thank you for your outspokenness,' Tahquil said with sincerity. ‘There is much in what you say.'

Additionally
, she reflected wryly,
between my love and myself, who are handfasted, there should be no secrets
…

‘Surely it is our duty as citizens,' interjected Viviana, ‘to acquaint our sovereign with the nature of the disquieting undercurrents that are stirring. Surely it is his right, as Erith's monarch, to be able to name the enemies of the Empire.'

A look of pain twisted Tahquil's features. Racked with indecision, she strode faster, her hands plucking at the air as if grasping for answers. Unable, for the nonce, to decide whether to let the arguments of her companions sway her, she permitted her thoughts to briefly stray.

Indeed, he does rule armies of bronze and iron
, she mused.
His own armour is wrought of polished steel, and had I not seen him wearing it, I would wonder
—
not for the first time
—
whether Faêran blood flowed in his veins. Yet the touch of cold iron to the Fair Ones is as the touch of flame to mortals. No Faêran lord or lady may brush so much as a fingertip against steel and not be tormented with agony beyond measure
.