The Bitterbynde Trilogy (158 page)

Faint and far off, a long, eerie stridor issued from the southeast, scraping down the night breeze like a fingernail on slate, and trailing into silence. It was not the voice of a howler predicting storms, nor yet a weeper grieving for a fatality to come, nor yet one of the morthadu yowling. It was a multiple baying and yelping, as from the throats of a pack of hounds.

‘The Hunt is out somewhere tonight!' said the urisk, glancing up. ‘They havnae been about these parts for many a lang nicht.'

‘Might aerial riders see us through the trees?'

‘Not unless they ride directly over us, or mighty close to't.'

‘Maybe they have picked up a trail,' said Tahquil, shuddering in every limb, glad of the shelter of the trees. ‘All the more reason for haste.'

The shadow of a bird fled again between the stars and the ground. Following it, clouds rubbed out the moon. The black ruby of night held all things captive within its prism. Through it, five travellers passed swiftly through the woodlands of Cinnarine until morning brushed the east with colours. At
uhta
, some boughs dipped and swayed though no wind blew, the waters of a lonely pool stirred and the mortals found themselves walking alone.

In the mornings, the world was the bowl of a crystal goblet, its rim the horizon, pinging with pure resonant notes as though struck by tiny hammers. Birds in their gorgeous livery ushered in the day.

The coillduine flitted through the orchards between sunrise and sunset, lightly clad in opalescent radiance, through which their pale forms were dimly discernible.

‘Peacock feathers brush my eyes,' murmured Caitri, loath to close her lids against these sights and sleep each morning, but too weary to do otherwise. Despite and because of their seelie escort, the little band must continue its nocturnal existence, remaining alert in the most perilous hours, resting only under the sun.

Northward they traipsed through Cinnarine by night. The urisk Tully openly trotted by their sides, the nygel slithered, a vague shadow in the trees horsing around with things he met along his way, betrayed now and then by a splash, or a mischievous whicker of a laugh that the urisk called ‘nichering'. When narrow brooks crossed their path, the urisk would disappear to skirt them by some mysterious means. After a night or two the mortals became less uncomfortable with the ways and manners of their eldritch companions.

And so it has come about,
thought Tahquil,
that we three are now six. One escorts us by choice, one by design and,
she tilted her head to the dark skies,
perhaps another, by obligation
…

But it was all she could do to keep going, with the chains of desperate longing dragging behind.

Viviana raged alone among the trees at dusk, bitterness eating out the apple of her heart like codling larvae. A pear dangled like a drop of gilded jade. She plucked it. Could this be fruit of a goblin tree? Her teeth met in its flesh. She spat and flung the spoiled thing away. Thin fluids trickled from her snarling lips.

‘Everything here is so fair and preciously ornamented,' she cried to no one but the trees, ‘and as dependable as stairs of sand.' Tearing sprigs from the pear tree, she trampled them underfoot.

Alone she was, having left her companions in a grove of cherry trees, where they broke their fast on fruit and cold water. Unassuaged, stung by restlessness, the courtier had flounced away, as was her wont from time to time, to roam the woods in the lingering heat which was all that remained of the Summer's day, searching for wood-goblin fare. Hurtful as her wightinduced pining was, she could not guess at the depths of the greater anguish that was about to afflict her. Sometimes, moodily, she sang nonsensical ditties, spontaneously composed—for a kind of madness had taken root in her.

‘Oh, the blue-faced cat is merry when she moos,

With wings of grass to fly on.

And the hog is shod with dainty little shoes

That I should like to try on.

And the fruit-bat spins a web of many grins

That men must hang and die on!'

A stranger's voice said—

‘Might a nightingale endeavour to sing thus?'

The trees sighed beneath a sudden wind. A thrush ceased its singing and Viviana snapped her mouth shut on her own. The question had risen, with a tendril of mist, from a thicket of close-growing, antique apple trees, whose semirecumbent boughs had surrendered to weariness. It was not the abruptness of the sound nor the surprise at finding herself not alone as she had supposed, nor yet the unmistakable masculinity of the tones which deprived her of movement and speech—it was the thrilling music of the voice, to which she leaned and hearkened without hearing the words.

‘Might it dare, were it audience to superior accomplishment?' murmured the slender young knight who pushed aside foliage and stepped out of the thicket.

The blood pounded into Viviana's face.

‘The King,' she gasped, stretching out a hand to steady herself against a mossy column. She flinched, once, then resumed her stillness. Only a slight quiver scurried back and forth through her, like ripples in a cup—only that. Beneath the apparent stasis, her blood had ignited. She was aflame, she was assailed by dizziness, she was drunk. Her eyes drank him in but already her fever burned unquenchable.

He was clad in bleached linen, buckled over with half-armour in the soft grey tones and pure white highlights of silver; chain mail and plate which lent him the air of a dire machine of metal, or a carapaced insect or a cold-blooded sea-creature, yet within this casing, his excellence was obviously superlative.

Darker than wickedness was his hair, falling unbound past his shoulders. As compelling as forbidden pleasure was his countenance, but ‘Nay, I am mistaken …' she said, and now she saw clearly that surprise had confused her. This champion whose looks and voice stirred the very marrow of her bones was not the King-Emperor. Slighter of build and somewhat less in height, paler of skin was the one who stood looking down at her from eyes not the hue of storms but black as sloes, eyes as alight with passion as her own—a passion matching in intensity, but very different, had she but known it.

And to Viviana now, any man not possessed of this exact stature, this frame, this hair and skin and eyes, was insufficient. The attractiveness of all good-looking men she had known was like candles to the sun. Never had she beheld anything more desirable, and she willed the moment to last for all time, that he might never leave her sight.

‘What maiden wanders here?' he said, or sang, and she did not think to ask his name, nor why he cast no shadow. He did not smile; his look was sorrowful, like that of a brilliant poet precociously doomed—a sadness which, if it affected his comeliness at all, enhanced it.

Then he began to speak again, this time in rhyme—rhyme and metre being as natural to the speech of wights as prose, or more so. In fact, ‘ganconer' was a word the Common Tongue had derived from the original; ‘
gean-cannah
', which meant ‘Love Talker'. The words of ganconers were enchantment in its true meaning: snares to the senses. A sonnet was the form his wooing took, that traditional pattern of love's eloquence. Hearkening to the puissance of his syllables, Viviana did not notice the skew of the narrative or its menace, its obscenity.

‘What maiden wanders here? Whose locks of gold

Frame youth's fresh looks? What mortal paradigm?

Pulchritude sweet as this ought ne'er grow old

And suffer from the ravages of time.

With such hot passion do I burn for thee

That I would ward thee from that odious fate.

All other joys in life shall worthless be

When once our union is consummate.

The act of love reflects a violent death:

The piercing of the sword, the gasping cry,

Th'expense of spirit and th'expense of breath—

Close, ecstasy and agony do lie.

Now, hearken to the hungers of thine heart—

Let's lovers be, whom death alone shall part.'

His tragic appearance was concupiscently romantic. Inside Viviana a bird sang shrilly, its beak perforating her heart.

‘You shall find me,' added this vision of male allure, ‘
breathtaking.'

He drew closer and she felt a chill like the utter coldness of a marble tombstone. A phantasmal mist rose out of the trees and twined about them, shutting out the world.

‘Silken of flesh,' he said, provocatively brushing her cheek with a long finger, ‘hazel of eye and rose of mouth.' His fingertip trailed across her lips. She trembled frenetically, distracted unbearably by his ardency, his nearness. The potent outline of his face was carved in alabaster against the spilled ink of his hair. Sloe eyes looked into her wide pupils, through her vulnerability to the wellspring of her psyche, and where they looked a wound opened and began to bleed.

‘But why so thirsty,' he concluded softly, drawing away a finger on whose tip stood out a cloudy bead of pear juice, ‘beloved?'

All senses abandoned Viviana, consumed by obsession. She reached out. His arms closed around her. He filled her embrace with his passion, her mouth with his kisses, her eyes with his blinding hair, her thoughts with chaos, her lungs with his breath.

And that breath was as icy as a comet's heart.

Tahquil sat with Caitri and the urisk in the grove of cherry trees while evening thickened. It was an unspoken fact that tension always eased with these brief absences of Viviana, who took her ill temper and sarcasm and fidgetiness away with her.

Tahquil's fingers twirled a closed daisy plucked from the long grasses. She had just seen the nygel in horse-form, kicking up his heels and chasing a bevy of small, white pigs. Now he was feeding down by the nearby brook. From his muzzle trailed long, green ribbons that might have been water-weed or the feathers of a parrot.

Are nygels herbivorous like
lorraly
horses, or carnivorous like that prince of their breed, the cruel Each Uisge, devourer of mortalkind?

Recollecting her meeting with the Each Uisge under Hob's Hill, she fell to brooding about her experiences at the Hall of Carnconnor, a thousand years since. ‘
Cochal-
eater', the sadistic Yallery Brown had called her.

‘What does it mean, the term “
cochal
”?' she idly asked the urisk.

‘
Cochal?
'Tis a husk—a glume or a shell, an outer structure.'

‘Why should a wight accuse me of being a
cochal-
eater?'

‘Only some windy-wa' blusterer wad scauld like that, lass. Mortals a', and wights also when dining, eat baith the
toradh
o' the fairin', which is the essential guidness, and the
cochal
as weel. The
cochal
is only the appearance, the container, gin ye will, but the
toradh's
the prie and the smell and the life-giving powers.'

‘Good sir—Tully—were you to be a little less, ah, parochial in your speech, I should understand you better.'

‘Och, then I mun give feater currency tae my jandering, lass!'

‘How is it possible to consume the one and not the other? To dine upon the taste and goodness of victuals, without eating the unnourishing substance?'

‘It is not possible, for yoursel' or mysel'. Only the Lords of Gramarye, the Faêran, can take the
toradh
and not the
cochal
, leaving the fare to appear untouched.'

‘But food left without
toradh
must look hollow within—'

‘Not so. Ye mun understand the nature o'
toradh
. It cannae be seen, nor touched, but it imbues e'en a pickle o' wheat, a drap o' milk.'

‘What would betide, were you or I to eat seemingly whole food from which the
toradh
had been stolen?'

‘We wouldnae thrive on't. We might feast forever and niver gain an ounce o' flesh, a doit o' strength. In the transports of gluttony we would shrivel.'

‘Would we not notice a difference in the food?'

‘Nay. Though the true taste is removed with the
toradh,
a semblance remains—enough tae trick the palates o' sich as you and I. Only the Faêran could tell the difference, and that at the verra crack, at the instant.'

‘Therefore the Faêran eat to live, in the same manner as mortals and wights, is it not so?'

A bird soared silently over the treetops: a swan. The urisk did not reply immediately. He seemed agitated, glancing about at the thick shadows woven by the trees, which his nocturnal eyes could pierce.

‘Nay,' he said eventually. ‘The Faêran dine for pleasure alone. They hae no need for meat or drink tae support them. Tae sich as they, food is not a source o' life but a source o' entertainment. Often wad they come tae feast by night in Erith's groves before the Closing, but their feast tables were laid with
toradh
clothed in illusion, or else true fare which in the morning wad lie scattered on the ground.'

The leaves rustled. Drifting into a half-dream, Tahquil invented a scene in which Thorn was lounging idly on the grass close by, and she had only to reach out and she might touch him.

The urisk turned his curly head again, scanning the grove of cherries.

‘I'm waur't Mistress Wellesley may be tint. She has been gane too lang,' he muttered, ‘and something
unket
and kittle roams close by.'

The leaf-ring stung. Tahquil jumped up. Simultaneously, a willowy feminine form materialised out of the trees leading to the brook.

‘Sweet-speaking handsome one haunts here,' hissed the swanmaiden urgently. ‘Heedless hussie hearkens. She stumbles. She who falls for shadows shall soon weave her shroud!'

Sickness punched Tahquil in the stomach. Her blood drained to her feet.

‘We must find her immediately!' she cried. ‘Come, Cait! Ho, nygel, now's the time to render assistance!
Obban tesh,
I should have known better than to let her from my sight.' She grasped Caitri's hand. ‘Stay with me, Caitri. Tully, prithee do not leave us. Against a ganconer we are as sparrows to a hawk.'