The Bitterbynde Trilogy (143 page)

‘Yet its small archers are bad shots,' said Viviana. ‘Fortunately.'

Tahquil wondered about the village.
Should I walk down there amongst humankind? Will there be spies sent by Prince Morragan, to recognise and betray me? Few wights dwell within human settlements—mainly domestic solitaries, usually seelie and untravelled, for they do not willingly stray from their Places. I might be safer in that village than anywhere, and yet
…

At their backs, the black curtain of the ancient forest stood silent, like an unvoiced spell. The helpful Fenodoree remained a small blob in the starlight, still kneeling beside the stream. His tuneless singing wafted across the hillside:

‘If ye call me imp or elf

I rede ye look well to yourself.

If ye call me fary,

I'll bait ye long and weary.

If good neighbour ye call me,

Then good neighbour I will be,

But if ye call me seelie wight

I'll be your friend both day and night.'

The three travellers picked up their belongings. The night wind plucked at their hair and the corners of their garments. Now four, they strode down the hill towards Appleton Thorn on the high cliffs of the Grey Glass Firth, and the slender grasses sighed at their passing.

2

ISHKILIATH

Field and Fen and Mortal Men

In mountain caves the bat-winged worm, a thousand époques old,

With furnace breath and jewelled hide lies coiled around his gold,

While on the ocean's gleaming foam a giant shell unfurls.

Behold! A mermaid sleeps within, more marvellous than pearls.

With passion warm as dragonfire, with benthic mystery,

They kindle mortalkind's desire—the silkies of the sea.

O
LD SONG OF
T
AMHANIA

The piquancy of the salt sea and the pungent aroma of seaweed cast up on the rocks stung the wind. Straggling atop and down the cliffs, sheltered by hardy firs and rowans, the village of Appleton Thorn was protected on the landward side by a semicircular fence. This was no ordinary fence, but a mighty fortified palisade of oak and ash, studded and barbed and bound with iron. Eleven feet high it stood, overlooked by small watch-houses built in the treetops just inside the perimeter.

‘There is an East Gate and a West Gate,' said the urisk, leading the three travellers to the left. ‘The heathery coast road runs frae the West Gate. The road to the east leads tae the rigs and the corries of the Churrachan, the sykie risks, the heigh gowan banks and the foggie braes. No gate has ever been made in the southern wa' o' the Fence. There's nae road rising to the glaury choille-rais.'

‘We ken only the Common Tongue,' said Tahquil. ‘Make plain your meaning, prithee sir.'

‘Och, I'm forgettin'.
Rigs
are what ye might call fields, a
sykie risk's
a marshland, a curragh.
Banks
and
braes,
them's slopes and dales to ye. I must mind my tongue—things hae changed since last I spoke wi' your kind.' He sighed. ‘And as to the rest—there's no road up Creech Hill to the forest because naebody frae the village goes there and most things that come frae out o' Arda's shades are no' welcome among Men.'

‘I see no Mooring Mast either. Why do they choose to dwell in such a remote and forsaken place,' asked Caitri, ‘and so close to Khazathdaur?'

‘The forefathers of the villagers lived here in greater numbers once,' replied the urisk. ‘As years went by and things o' unseelie ilk pushed deeper into these regions, many o' the villagers departed. Those who remained did so because this is their land, or mayhap because of the Thorn.'

Tahquil's heart hung static over a beat.

‘What Thorn?' she said quickly.

‘The Noble Thorn, they title it—a lone tree growing in the Errechd, at the heart of the village. 'Tis said it is the only one of its kind. It puts forth flooers only once a year, at middle-night on Littlesun Eve. At that season, sailors sometimes come in their boats up the firth to see it.'

Merely a thorn bush. Tahquil felt deflated, though what she had been hoping for, she could not pin down.

The travellers arrived at the Fence and followed it around to the West Gate without being hailed from the lookout posts in the trees. Only a rumour of conversation emanated dimly from the village precincts.

‘Tomorrow's Flench Ridings Eve,' remarked the urisk. ‘They're likely all clatterin' at the tavern this night, singin' cuttie-muns.'

The gate was as tall as the Fence, a grille of wood and steel bars.

‘Here I'll leave ye,' said the urisk. ‘The haunts o' Men are dear to me but I walk them in my own way.'

‘Oh, but shall we see you again?' stammered Viviana.

‘Aye, if ye wish it.' The urisk seemed shyly pleased.

‘Farewell,' they said.

He bowed and trotted away through the darkness into a stand of feathery peppercorns.

Caitri turned suddenly and looked over her shoulder, back towards the forest. ‘I thought I heard footsteps following,' she said.

Tahquil took a deep breath and shouted towards the gate, ‘Hallo! Please let us in—we are benighted wayfarers seeking hospitality!'

This announcement was greeted by sudden tumult on the other side of the gate. It sounded like someone heavily armed, falling out of a tree. This cacophony was followed by a subdued cursing and a clanking of metal.

‘Who goes there?' a man's voice eventually yelled.

‘Three wayfarers seeking hospitality,' repeated Tahquil.

‘Stand back nine yards from the gate!' came the order.

They obeyed. From a wooden boxlike affair nesting above the Fence in the fork of a tree, a figure wearing a brightly polished open helmet surveyed them. This figure exchanged remarks with a party on the ground near the tree's foot, then a large nose appeared through the bars of the gate.

‘Advance and be recognised!'

Forward now they stepped again. They could hear the guard in the tree saying, ‘Certain, are ye?' and the guard on the ground mumbling unintelligibly.

‘Are ye wights of eldritch?' challenged Big Nose, peering through the gate.

‘No. We are mortal damsels.'

‘All of ye?'

‘Yes.'

A further raucous clangour ensued; a laborious unbolting, unlatching, unchaining and unlocking up and down the length of the mighty gate. With one last crunch, a small portal in the gate swung open. Big Nose's head popped around it and he jerked his chin in the direction of his shoulder, a gesture the travellers interpreted as permission to enter.

‘Look lively, then,' he said. ‘Can't leave the door open all night.'

Ducking their heads under the low lintel, the visitors entered.

Big Nose quickly shut the postern after them, securing it again with much fuss. Meanwhile, Bright Helm hurried down his ladder, which was missing a few rungs, and stood looking at the newcomers with undisguised awe.

Both the gate-guards were clad in loose-fitting tunics belted at the middle, taltry hoods with camails and cross-gartered breeches tucked into boots. Over this they wore half-armour; thick leather tassets and epauliers. One had on a worn leather brigandine decorated with bright studs where metal plates were riveted to the interior; the other sported a mail hauberk of antique design. Thick and brown, their hair straggled to their shoulders. They were armed with falchions, broadswords and halberds, and a thorn tree sigil was emblazoned on their gear.

At their backs, some forty paces off, stood an ivy-covered tavern—it was from here that the sounds of conversation had issued. Tangerine lamplight glowed from its leaded casements. The sign over the door bore a painted image of a thorn tree, black-boughed and spiky.

The mouths of the guards hung open. Tahquil shifted uncomfortably under their stares, until one man elbowed the other in the ribs and they recovered their composure. Their eyes slid briefly over Tahquil's companions but kept rolling back to her like ball bearings to a lodestone.

Bright Helm cleared his throat.

‘Well I'll be jiggered,' he said, scratching his ear. ‘I never seen the like. Three young maids a-traipsing over the countryside on their own—well I never. I suppose you heard the Forest Horn a-blowing.'

‘You'll be here for Flench Ridings,' surmised Big Nose, ‘and the Bawming of the Thorn on the morrow, with Burning the Boatman. You'll have come up the coast road, off a ship. Will you be staying for the other Summer celebrations?'

‘Regrettably, no,' replied Tahquil without depriving him of his assumptions. ‘We are but travelling through.'

‘Ah.' Bright Helm tapped the side of his nose with a stubby finger and winked knowingly, in the manner of one who is privy to knowledge so common it need not be questioned further. Tahquil guessed he had no idea why three damsels might be ‘travelling through', but presumed that everyone else did, and was loath to reveal his ignorance.

‘Are rooms available at the inn?' she inquired.

‘Most assuredly, mistress!'

Bright Helm flew along the path ahead of them, to be the first to announce the Arrival of Strangers. Big Nose stolidly brought up the rear with the air of a seasoned campaigner who would not allow Unexpected Visitors to interfere with Duty.

‘Burning the Boatman?' Caitri whispered nervously in Tahquil's ear. ‘Are these folk so barbaric?'

‘I think not,' Tahquil replied. ‘I suspect it is a title for some less excessive custom.'

The uproar triggered by Bright Helm's advance warning instantly broke off when Tahquil and her companions entered the yellow torchlight of the tavern's common room.

Dirty, stained and ragged the travellers appeared, this being partly self-inflicted for purposes of disguise and partly imposed by the exigencies of travel. Before them, the room presented a motionless tableau: drinkers poised with tankards upraised, folk sitting, standing, immobilised in the act of turning around, jaws dangling loosely, eyes protruding.

All at once Tahquil felt very weary and wished they had not entered there.

‘What's amiss, lads? Ain't ye ever seen a
miss
before?'

The pun-maker, a doughty man, sun-browned, stood with his thumbs hooked through his belt. In contrast to the snuff-brown locks of the other patrons, his silky mane of hair was a soft shade of grey, streaked with silver as though it had aged before its time, for his face was that of a young man of perhaps eight-and-twenty Winters.

Laughing but shamefaced, the patrons buried their noses in their beer. The hum of talk and the clatter of tavern business resumed. Now covertly, the customers observed the three visitors, squinting sideways, as the urisk had augured.

The doughty man nodded affably.

‘Wassail and welcome to Appleton Thorn by Grey Glass Firth,' he said with a cheerful grin. ‘I hight Arrowsmith, Master of the Village and Lord of the Hundred. Will you sup this night?'

‘That is indeed our wish, sir. Gramercie.'

While Arrowsmith called for meat and drink, places were found for the newcomers. After guardedly introducing themselves as ‘Mistress Mellyn', ‘Mistress Wellesley' and ‘Mistress Lendoon', they sat down, unnerved by the excess of attention. It was not long before every customer at the inn had found a reason to gather around their table. Big Nose, his post forgotten, was saying authoritatively, ‘They have come for Flench Ridings and the Bawming of the Thorn. They have come up the coast road, off a ship.'

Everyone contributed.

‘We don't get many ships these days—I reckon only two or three a year.'

‘And after that storm, the terrible one when the sky went all black for days and the waves came up big, right to the cliff tops like never was seen before, well, we ain't seen a single ship since.'

‘Give us tidings—what news from the world?'

‘The Royal Island of Tamhania has been destroyed by unseelie forces,' the visitors replied. ‘Its downfall was the centre of the storm. Meanwhile the armies of the King-Emperor amass in the east. Skirmishes and small engagements have been fought, but as yet no great battle, when last we heard.'

By the time the taverner's wife planted heaped platters on the table, the audience was packed tightly around. Arrowsmith waved them away.

‘Allow our guests to dine in peace, gentlefolk. Give them room to lift their elbows! You, Wimblesworthy and Ironmonger, are you not on guard at the West Gate tonight? Hasten back to your post. Bowyer, give us a song by the chimney.'

Sheepishly, Big Nose and Bright Helm hurried out. Enthused at being called upon to entertain the guests, Bowyer stepped up on a three-legged stool, tidied his jerkin, puffed out his chest, waited for the talk to subside and began to sing:

‘All was hushed in the Mountain Hall as the Jester told his tale

But outside in the bitter cold a voice began to wail.

The Jester told of the Great High Road that goes forever on,

Winding by the greenwood trees and past the Ring of Stone.

‘Through the rocky mountain gate, along the jagged ridge

Past the dark well of the fire, across the iron bridge.

And who would travel this long road with lamp and staff in hand?

'Tis Jack the soldier seeking for the Door to the Lost Land.

‘Three coins within his pocket and a raven on his shoulder.

The rival's sword hangs at his side—the South Wind's blowing colder.

And when at last he reached Road's End, 'twas at the eleventh hour.

The storm raged in the darkling sky ahint the blackened tower.

‘And who art thou,' the Watchman cried, ‘that knocketh at my door?

For now that thou hast raised thy hand thy fate is sealed for sure.'

The soldier raised his sword on high—a rune was writ thereon.

The thunderstorm fled swift away, and a bright star shone.'