The Bitterbynde Trilogy (149 page)

‘Wights might still come upon us from the fell-top above,' objected Viviana.

‘The trick be tae get between a stream's fork, then. If any should lay siege tae ye, then move downhill till ye've crossed some more water and put yerselves beyond reach. But mind, the further down ye go towards the brae's floor, the broader the streams, the swifter, the harder tae ford.'

‘And what shall we do,' said Tahquil, ‘when we come to valley's end, with the Ravenswater turning its elbow to bar our path? For surely a spate so immense might not be forded.'

‘Black Bridge,' put in Arrowsmith. ‘Black Bridge spans the Ravenswater at that point. 'Tis the only bridge across it, since the old Wynch Bridge fell into the torrent downstream. The Wynch used to be part of the King's High Way, but in these regions that road has fallen into disrepair.'

‘One bridge only?' said Tahquil. ‘I mislike this. One bridge is dangerous, for, knowing that we have no choice but to cross it, that is where our enemies would look for us, and perhaps lay ambush.'

‘In sooth,' said Arrowsmith. ‘And that is why you need a man's strong arm—to smite those enemies.'

‘Sealman!' the urisk said sharply, his ears flattened to his curly hair. 'Tis the salt water that loves ye, not the fresh! These fells and vales sit well above the high tide mark! How far d'ye think ye'll get in Lallillir before the currents pull the marrow out o' ye and weaken ye like a babe? Then ye'll be naught but a burden to these lasses.'

‘Who's to go with them then?' Arrowsmith snapped. ‘You? You'd be worse off than I, goatfellow. You cannot even cross the Churrachan. Besides, you know nothing more than farming and housekeeping. You are no fighter.'

‘No fighter, aye, but is it a fighter that's needed? 'Tis cunning that's needed, and knowledge and maybe gramarye tae boot, if mortals are tae conquer Lallillir.'

‘What is your suggestion, urisk?' asked Tahquil.

Flames swayed like Autumn forests, bronze and cinnabar in the urisk's peculiar eyes.

‘I have none.'

Disappointment washed over the damsel. She felt at a loss.

Viviana broke in unexpectedly, ‘Mistress, do you not recall the article which Dain Pennyrigg found in his saddlebags when we returned from the Stormriders' Tower to the City?'

Tahquil shook her head, wrinkling her brows in puzzlement.

‘The feather of the swan, mistress,' Viviana went on. ‘You said it was a powerful talisman. Mayhap it will prove useful now.' She gazed at Tahqil with optimistic expectancy.

Slowly Tahquil nodded, as the possibilities sank in. ‘Gramercie, Via!' she murmured. ‘A bright hope indeed!'

‘If ye have a Summoner on ye,' the wight said eagerly, ‘use it.'

Tahquil drew out the tattered aulmoniere, one of the few keepsakes she had salvaged from Tamhania. Within, the black feather nestled beside the vial of
nathrach deirge.
It looked even more dilapidated, bedraggled and bent than ever. Indeed, events had battered it into such insignificance that she had overlooked its very existence.

‘Och, 'tis braw and blythe, true!' exclaimed the urisk upon beholding the plume. ‘There's more than one way tae cross running water! Use it, lass!'

‘Right now?' Tahquil asked. Arrowsmith smiled. The urisk inclined his curly head in assent. ‘How?' she inquired.

‘Give it your message,' Arrowsmith answered. ‘Cast it high.'

Tahquil stood up. Recalling the words Maeve One-Eye had told her, she whispered to the swan's feather, ‘Come, Whithiue. Aid us.'

Lifting her arm she flicked the pinion up, expecting it to drift down immediately in the windless night. A cold-blooded draught entered from nowhere, snatched it and twirled it away out of sight. The gust swirled Tahquil's cinnamon-dyed hair, rushing the tresses up around her face in a flare of singed fleece.

‘And now?' she asked.

‘Wait.'

That night the three mortals lay down to sleep with the tension of excitement stretched like a cord between them. Their two self-appointed guardians did not close their eyes.

Towards
uhta
she came, in those ephemeral predawn moments on the borders of day and night when the world swings around and odd things may easily occur. They knew her first by a clap of wings and a rush of air. Presently a feminine manifestation emerged out of grey dewdrop stillness, forming as though she gathered shape to herself from the sky, the clouds, the last fading star. A startlingly scarlet band glimmered like a crescent of roses across her brow. The black cloak of feathers dripped from delicate shoulders to her bare feet. Coral-red bangles encircled the narrow ankles, matching the poppy-petal nails on the tips of her webbed toes. Like a wondrous girl she appeared, yet imbued with an inhuman wildness and a strangeness that evoked glimmering meres glimpsed through rising mist. Afar off she stood on the grass—unspeaking, remote.

Tahquil was already awake, smudge-faced and gloved to conceal identifying features.

‘I called you,' she said. ‘I need your help.'

The swanmaiden uttered a soft, hissing whistle. Stirring restively, the horses whickered.

The urisk trotted over to the wight-girl. He spoke in a low, soothing undertone, then returned to Tahquil's side.

‘I hae informed her of your need,' he fluted. ‘She'll aid ye in your journey across Lallillir. She'll see ye safe—gin 'tis possible—tae Black Bridge, nae further. She'd nae do that much, were it no' tae honour the geas o' the feather.'

‘I see,' said Tahquil. The swanmaiden's chill gaze struck through her like a sharpened icicle, or like a quill pen writing
aversion
on the air in frozen characters.

‘Tell her she must help us get across the river to Cinnarine, at the least, at the very least.'

The two wights conversed again.

‘Ye hold the feather. She must obey ye tae the word,' said the urisk. ‘But the swans dinnae favour mortalkind—they opine ye're all thieves and hunters.'

‘And not far from the truth, I suppose,' said Tahquil.

‘The sun's about to lift his head,' said the urisk. ‘I'll toddle along, and swans must fly. As ye make your journey she'll patrol the skies. She'll come down and tell ye if peril approaches. She'll point out the best ways to go. Mind, she doesnae love shifting tae her woman's form under the sun's eye—'tis not the wont o' her folk. She mun do it, if she be forced tae speak wi' ye, but she'll nae stay in that shape for lang.'

Already the swanmaiden's pale face was turning away, hidden by the long fall of ebony hair. Her slender form glided out of sight behind a rocky outcrop. A swan flew up with an elegant downsweep of wide wings, the serpentine neck outstretched, the red feet tucked up underneath. Wings beat hard, like sail canvas snatching at the wind. Soon she was no more than a pinprick on the sky.

The sun opened its eye over Scarrow Fell.

The paling of the dawn revealed a lack of urisks. In the little caves beneath the tree roots, Viviana and Caitri slept with their arms loosely woven about each other, their peaceful faces as soft and guileless as two pastel-hued peaches. Tahquil sat beside the cold embers of the fire, her hands clasped about her knees. Adrift in some sorrowful reverie, she gazed sightlessly at the ashes. The enchanter's nightshade had closed its blooms. It hung its many-hooded heads, eschewing the day. Only Arrowsmith stood under the twisted tree that canted its limbs over the rocks and the dew-limned ferns.

As so often, he looked to the west. A mauve breeze blew up over a powdered violet horizon, bearing with it the spine-raking whistles, the descending, burred notes and boy's-throat calls of magpies. Arrowsmith turned his silver-grey head. He directed at Tahquil-Ashalind a gaze of burning intensity.

That was all.

Up and over Mallorstang Edge the travellers climbed that morning, leading their horses. At the summit a wide vista lay spread above and below them.

Overhead, the sky was a drama of clouds, dark thunder-grey in the centres. The sun behind them made a dazzling white-goldness of teased wool around the edges. Fraying spaces revealed the azure layers deepening to infinity behind the clouds.

Out away towards a distant haze stretched Blackwatervale, a deep valley embowered in wild and lovely woods, filled with gauzy veils of vapours. The river's snail-track spurled down the centre, but only an aqueous glint appeared here and there through the trees. Close together clustered those trees, but as the slopes of the land rose up on either side, so the stature of the trees dwindled. Like sleeping giants the high, grassy fell-tops loured bare and windswept against the horizon—the domain of grey stones and vacuous bights of space, the haunt of cool barrenness and avenging winds to catch the traveller unawares and whisk him off the brink. Yet down their sides plashed their tinsel hair, skein on skein, strand on strand. Thickly wooded, the gills tumbled from the very edges of the fells to the valley floor. Sometimes they vanished, falling into sinkholes and coursing through underground caverns until, driven against a bed of solid sandstone, they were forced out as springs or founts upon the hillside. Larger becks toppled through the mist on the high crags and down their own little valleys in chains of falls.

Beyond the western wall of Blackwatervale a tenebrous line indicated the serrations of Bleak Fell's spine. To the east, the high route of Wight's Way pressed against the sky. But it was lost from view in the mists.

Keeping to high ground the riders picked their way to the right. Cotton grass and heather rolled green, brown and purple at their feet. Curlew and snipe flew up into the crisp air and grouse broke cover chattering a warning: ‘Go-bak, go-bak.'

Noon saw the travellers reaching the southern limit of Wold Fell. This formidable ridge dividing two river valleys culminated in a flat top, as narrow and tortuous as a crumpled ribbon. Here and there, its width contracted to no more than two feet. A few steps further on, it would broaden to seven feet or more, only to narrow again within a furlong. In places, thrusting crags flanked this high way, but in the greater part the ground fell steeply away on both sides. Those who would walk this open, windswept path might obtain a view of both valleys, Blackwatervale on the one hand and Ravenstonedale on the other. Out of the fell-sides, sometimes only yards below its crest, rivers were born. The walker might perceive the slender beginnings of the Blackwater spouting forth beneath his left heel, while the many sources of the Ravenswater trickled below his right.

Because it hung above these stony gushings and spoutings and did not cross them, this was a road favourable to creatures of eldritch. At noon it might appear quiet and inviting. Later it would not be so.

‘We ought to turn now down to the slopes of Blackwatervale,' said Tahquil, ‘to put some distance between ourselves and these heights before nightfall. Here, where the incline to the left is gentler, we might find our way. And here, by rights, we ought to part company.'

‘Nay, do not leave us, Master Arrowsmith,' cried Viviana before he could make reply. ‘Do not heed the urisk's words. I am certain you may cross these tiny waterways without trouble—why, up here they are a mere finger's width and nothing at all compared to the Churrachan.'

‘Yet so many,' said Tahquil. ‘And there may be a need to find a route lower along the hillsides for safety, where flow many streams like the Churrachan. Your bravery, sir, is not at question. But freshwater, running, must be like poison to you.'

‘Its force pulls and tears,' he confessed. ‘It cruelly disrupts the eldritch patterns of gramarye woven into the fibres of half my being. Yet only half—the other half can master it.'

Tahquil remonstrated, ‘To ride or walk the lower slopes of Lallillir would drain your strength. She will be our watcher, the swanmaiden, according to her geas. You can leave us in no better care.'

The man shook his head. ‘Come. It is dangerous to tarry here,' he said. Loosening his reins he moved on.

Flower heads of hard rushes poked up out of the middle of the plant's round rosettes. The one-sided blooms of mat grasses thrust forth like tiny hay rakes. Among this low vegetation the horses' hooves slipped and slid on the steep ground. Soon their riders dismounted and led them by the reins, in single file, with Arrowsmith in the lead. It was not long before they must cross a chattering cascade no bigger than the dribble poured from the spout of a pitcher—then another, and another. Tahquil watched Arrowsmith's back. He did not falter. The fell rose high to their right, blocking out all view of Ravenstonedale. Below, a sea of trees engulfed the valley sides and floor. From all around echoed the sounds of water babbling, chuckling, clattering, arguing vociferously, gossiping, laughing; the rich warm roar of a far-off river behind the high crystal chimes of droplets striking clear liquid, flung from a great height.

The cataracts matured as the travellers descended.

‘We shall not own a dry boot between us before long, if I am not mistaken,' predicted Viviana, sloshing through the most recent rill. She spoke loudly, to be heard above the white noise.

Keeping above the tall trees clustered on the lower slopes, they levelled out their course. Open country provided a better vantage from which to scan for danger. Here, brakes of low bushes squatted, well spaced and no more than waist-high. Horizontal surfaces were a rarity on the fell-side. Caitri laughingly declared that her right leg must be growing shorter, her left longer.

As night approached, Arrowsmith seemed weary. On reaching a spot where the incline flattened out to form a semicircular apron ringed with low scrub, they halted to make camp. The Summer evening drew in, damp and mellow. Lily-of-the-valley sprang in crevices, its racemes of tiny snow-bells sweetly perfumed. A rush-fringed pool had collected in the hollow at the centre of this grassy ring. On the utterly black surface of the water the campfire mirrored itself.