The Bitterbynde Trilogy (148 page)

Their borrowed steeds were a welcome means of travel. Three of the horses belonged to Arrowsmith and his sisters, the fourth had been lent by the water bailiff. To lend a horse was a generous gesture indeed, for which Tahquil and her friends were deeply grateful. It had been arranged that Arrowsmith would bring the beasts back with him after he saw the travellers safe to their destination.

The Master of the Village might have been a welcome addition to their band, except that he was a well-known figure in these parts. The news that he had ridden off with a trio of young women could not fail to attract the attention of inquisitive wights. His presence could only make them more obvious.

‘Your sisters' tears threatened to drown you,' Tahquil remarked to him as they cantered on. ‘You will return soon, within a day or two surely—not long enough to warrant such distress. They love you dearly.'

But will he turn back when he finds out we have no protectors to guard us along our further journey?

‘This I have said to my sisters and to all the rest,' replied Arrowsmith, ‘that either I will return in two days or my horse will return without me. And if they find tied to the saddle a strand of kelp, then they will know where I have gone.'

Then he rode his horse close up beside her and looked her in the eyes.

‘Fear not,' he said. ‘My sisters have spoken to me. By the ring on your finger I now know you to be pledged. I force no suit.'

He flicked the reins and cantered ahead.

She had seen what it cost him and her heart quickened with compassion. For that alone, she might have loved this grave, honest gentleman, almost.

The northerly way they followed was an old road, a faint path cut into the hillsides, called the Long Lane. Rising gradually all the time it crossed a land of dales not rugged, grand or majestic but rounded and gentle, with no peak rising more than two thousand feet. So vast and open was the sky that the land seemed no more than a rim pressed against it. the horizon framing the surging clouds and sun-rinsed blue of the heavens.

Thickly wooded hills stood above beck-threaded valley floors where bird's-eye primula, hart's tongue fern and pink foxglove peeped from stony crevices. An ancient rune-carved monolith, its edges softened and worn by the loving, ruthless caresses of wind and water, stood by itself—a lonely sentinel rooted in the turf of a distant slope. A windhover falcon gracefully rode a thermal, hanging in the lucid air.

‘By Kingsdale Beck we go,' said Arrowsmith, ‘and past Churnmilk Hole. By Frostrow and Shaking Moss, and Hollybush Spout.'

The Long Lane entered woodlands of wych elm and aspen. Spindly trunks like painted streaks, gold-flecked with sunlight, supported a misty tracery of leaves. Epiphytic lichens, ferns and mosses lived firm-footed on the organic debris which, for centuries undisturbed, had built up in clefts and hollows in the boughs. The undergrowth was rich with pink valerian, woodsage and early purple orchid. Red deer raised their heads at the sound of hoofbeats and darted into thickets. Grouse flew up in fright from wild shaws and bosky braes.

The horses splashed through shallow stony fords across fair streams of silver which cut through overhanging woods. Droplets flew from their hooves, as bright as polished threepences. Fish leaped like silver-plated leaves. Towering trees leaned their long boughs over the water and the banks were in flower with primroses and celandine, marsh marigold and herb robert.

Into open country they passed again, still climbing. From the peaks to the east, gills hung long and glittering like strands of Icemen's hair.

‘Over there to the east,' said Arrowsmith, ‘Ashgill Waterfall goes tumbling down the scar by Crooked Oak. In Autumn after rain the falls are thundering and the trees seem to have been wrought of copper. Look to the northeast—Rookhope Chimney rises beyond Briarwood Bank. The dales have names, though Men have never dwelt here. Only the road and the Rune-stone have been wrought by the hand of man, long ago, but the Long Lane ends at the foot of Mallorstang Edge.'

The late sun was turning towards dusk and mauve vapours coagulated in the still air. The distant hills took on shades of lilac and purple. Clouds kissed their tops. A small owl out hunting early was perched in the fork of a silver birch looking for mice and shrews in the long grass. It flew away as the riders disturbed it.

Tortuously the path began to wind, ascending a long fell-side out of the dales. Here the trees crouched, stunted. Higher up, they disappeared altogether. Wildflowers were overtaken by thick, tufted grasses. Swift, wild gills tumbled recklessly down narrow sluices.

By evenfall they had almost reached the top of Mallorstang Edge on the outer marches of Lallillir. Rising from the hill's brow, a twisted tree leaned stark against an arch of pale cloud flaring across deepening twilight. Beneath its roots a couple of shallow cave-openings bored into the rock face, overhung with ivy and ferns. Nearby, white-flowered enchanter's nightshade sprang in the grasses. A black fox loped past and uttered its rusty bark, so unlike a dog's, so strange it seemed more like the cry the moon would make, had it a voice.

There they halted to rest, kindling their fire just inside one of the caves in case it rained. They sat around its glassy blaze and ate some of their provisions: bannocks and dried fish, cheese, salty dulse and red carrageen from the firth. The treble
pip
of an insect chipped away at the upper edges of hearing. Caitri idly piped a few notes on Viviana's whistle of white dead-nettle, until Arrowsmith hushed her with a wave of his hand.

‘Soft,' he advised. ‘Wights may be moving up there on the edge-top, on the high land above the rising of the rills.'

The horses at their pickets seemed to sense the whiff of danger. They pricked up their ears but remained quiet. Only an occasional shuffling in the grasses indicated their presence.

Overhead, the sky deepened. The stars appeared, so huge and close that Tahquil fancied she might reach out and touch them. Disrupted from its swarm by a passing star, a frozen nucleus of ice in a coma of nebulous gases hurtled along its sky track. Pushed by the sun's wind the comet's tail streamed out a hundred million miles long.

‘Turn back,' said Arrowsmith.

Perhaps he said it to the comet. If so, futilely.

Tahquil shook her head.

‘A war is brewing,' she said. ‘I can stop it.'

She thought he might laugh, but he did not. He merely looked down at his elbows, which rested on his knees.

‘A young lad was lost out towards Mallorstang not two weeks ago,' he said. ‘Seven rode out, six returned. Lallillir is a mighty perilous land. You will not survive there without aid, clever though you are, possessed of a ring of gramarye though you may be. You would not have made it as far as you have, except that many wights have departed from hereabouts and vanished eastwards. For good or ill, fewer remain here now than ever in living memory.'

Said Tahquil, ‘As you have suspected, we make our journey alone. The ring I wear is protection enough.'

Arrowsmith stilled then, suddenly; every line of his body drawn taut.

Without glancing around he took the last bannock from the stone on which it had been warming beside the fire, and placed it beyond the circle of light. Then he resumed his position. Taking their cue from him, Tahquil and her companions continued as though nothing were afoot, though they strained their senses for signs of peril.

‘Not enough,' Arrowsmith went on, ‘for you were all tired and hungry and ragged when you came to Appleton Thorn. Why so unguarded on an enterprise which you say is of gravest importance to every kingdom?'

‘For secrecy.'

‘From whom?'

‘Galan,' Tahquil said, ‘only three people know the truth—myself and these two who accompany me. Too many know already. The knowledge in itself may be dangerous to the bearer of it.'

He laughed softly. ‘Think you that I cannot withstand a peril flouted by three girls? Very well, if you will not tell me, so be it. I will accompany you nonetheless. In Lallillir you will be in need of more than mortal strength.'

‘Aye, and that is the truth,' hooted a voice. ‘That is the truth indeed, Galan Siune's son.'

Beyond the globe of firelight the speaker propped himself against the twisted tree, flicking bannock crumbs from his hairy flanks. His deft hooves balanced on roots which were tangled like skeins of hair, caging the ground with an intricate, interlocking design like the embellished borders of manuscripts.

‘Urisk,' said Arrowsmith, ‘have you come back, then?'

‘Och,' said the urisk drily. ‘Ye mun be dreaming.'

‘A welcome sight you are, sir,' chimed Viviana.

‘Friend urisk!' exclaimed Caitri.

‘Will you sit with us?' Tahquil asked. ‘By the fire?'

‘Dinnae mind if I do.'

Graciously the wight squatted down on his haunches. The ruddy glow played across his features: the pointed ears, the snub nose, the slanted eyes with vertical slits of pupils narrowing in the firelight. Neat, he looked, and dignified—artistic in the way that an agile woodland creature or a gnarled, wind-wrung tree is a work of art. It seemed he remained part of the landscape against which their group huddled. Although he was inside the circle of light, he belonged outside it.

‘You have been long away,' said Arrowsmith, and somehow the listeners understood that he was speaking of years, not days.

‘Aye. Syne the sons o' the Arbalisters left their hame on the Churrachan and sailed across the Great Salt where sich as I couldnae follow.'

‘The old cot is naught but broken stones now,' said Arrowsmith, ‘and bindweed clambers over the remains of the walls.'

‘The hame I used tae keep fine for them, and all,' the urisk replied regretfully. ‘Still, that's the way o't. The forest reaches oot, the village dwindles, folk take their leave.'

‘You would have been welcome at any house in Appleton Thorn.'

‘Now dinna be tellin' me ye don't understand the way of it, Galan Siune's son,' chided the wight. ‘'Tis the
place
that's the thing. The Churrachan's my ain stream o' water. ‘'Tis in me bluid and 'tis mighty hard tae leave it.'

‘But you cannot cross it, can you?' asked Caitri. ‘A running stream? How did you reach this side?'

‘Lassie, there be a mindful o' matters ye ken nowt of, I see!' chuckled the urisk. ‘There be more than one way tae get tae t'ither side o' a running water. I went around by the springhead, up where the stream rises out o' the hills. The mightiest barrier agin our crossing be the
south
-running water. Churrachan flows tae the west, otherwise Siune's son wouldnae be here the noo. Saw ye how his horse fashed itsel' against crossing the Grassrill, and baulked at goin' over the Churrachan Bridge? It felt the current flowin' aslant its rider. But there be an affinity there too, with the water, and the bluid that's half mortal is insensitive. So you ride over it, Siune's son, but ye feel it sorely, do ye no'?'

‘'Tis naught,' said Arrowsmith curtly.

‘Oh aye, 'tis naught by comparison tae Lallillir,' said the urisk. ‘Lallillir be the Land of Running Waters.'

‘What can you tell us of this land, this Lallilir that lies ahead of us?' asked Tahquil.

‘Much,' said the urisk, and he proceeded to do so.

He told them about the four long ridges running parallel, south to north. Swarth Fell, the highest, bordered the coast and attracted rain to the three sharp valleys: the Vales of Wood, Water and Stone. Elfinwoodsdale was the westernmost, Blackwatervale lay in the centre, and to the east delved Ravenstonedale. The early tributaries of the river Elfinwater rose on Mallorstang Ridge and rushed away down between Swarth Fell and Bleak Fell, until at the northern marches of Lallillir the river turned west through the last foothills of Swarth Fell and ran to the sea. The middle waterway, the Blackwater, began in the same heights and was fed by the thousands of springs on the eastern side of Bleak Fell and the western slopes of Wold Fell. Where Bleak Fell sank in the north, the Blackwater curved to meet the Elfinwater on its journey oceanwards and at that point the names of both the rivers changed, for though mighty, they became but feudatories to the thundering Ravenswater gushing down from the east.

The Ravenswater flowed furthest inland. Its valley clove between Wold Fell and Scarrow Fell. Like its siblings it received tribute from the myriad brooks, streams, waterfalls and fountains gushing from the hillsides and cliffs. The entire rain-drenched landscape of Lallillir was threaded with silver and electrum and faceted with sheets of platinum where water curtained down great rock shields. It was diamonded with the brilliant necklaces of sudden jets spurting from subterranean chambers. Bleak and gaunt were the heights of the Fells, but the vales were rich with ferns, thick with moss-crusted trees dripping with epiphytes, hung with permanent rainbows in a crystal mist.

Wights of water haunted Lallillir, but it was a land to dwell in for aeons, not to roam, for they could not leave their rivers or streams for long without fading. And wights of land could not traverse Lallillir's surging currents, the flowing waters inimical to the eldritch of their gramarye. They must keep to the ridge tops, to the roofs of the fells, and so they did. Yet, while it was possible to reach the fell-tops from the south without crossing running water, it was also impossible to leave them in the north without crossing the Ravenswater—except in the eastern foothills of Scarrow Fell. For this reason, wights must traverse Lallillir along the top of Scarrow Fell. Ever since the land was formed, they had done so. The path they travelled came to be known as Wight's Way.

‘No mortal walks Wight's Way and survives,' said the urisk sombrely. ‘Ye canna go that way. Ye mun go by the western slopes o' Wold Fell, in the upper reaches o' Blackwatervale. 'Tis directly to the north o' us noo, if ye could but see it o'er the top o' Mallorstang. Ye'll hae many's the brook tae cross, but each one shall put a fence atween ye and whatever's got on yer tracks.'