The Bitterbynde Trilogy (165 page)

Tighnacomaire cancelled his stickiness and his rider slid off. Cold water sluiced her burning face. She drank and lay motionless, utterly exhausted. The combined torments of her recent travails and the Langothe's savagery had smothered her life-spirit until only a spark remained. Somnolence came like a midnight thief and stole her away.

7

DARKE

Evernight

Dark is the night that blinds the sight and, moonless, hides our paths.

Dark are the shadows of the madness gathered on our hearths
.

Dark the storm-cloud, tall, wrathful, proud, whence tears of sorrow rain

And dark my heart that we must part. When shall we meet again?

L
AMENT OF
F
AREWELL

Lie still.' Tully's reedy tones brooked no dissension.

Tahquil opened her eyes.

Suspended in the profound heights of a sky as deeply blue as pure essence of amaranth and as intoxicating, brilliant stars, layer upon layer, dwindled to a crystallised haze at inconceivable distances. Indigo, raven and iridium were the colours of the night. In every direction, long, tree-clad slopes marched rank on rank, fading into the darkness. A tingling entered Tahquil's shoulder blades, seemingly welling up from the ground pressing into her back—black ground, stretching in the north and east to black mountains that raised their blocks along glittering horizons.

Away beyond the southern ridges, above the dimly written fish-bone points of the furthest fir trees, the stars fell short of the world's rim, obliterated by a wide belt of impenetrable gloom. The width of two fingers, held sidelong at arm's length, measured the height of it. Higher up, the pall dissipated, drawing back to reveal the silent constellations.

Danger—the air vibrated with it, and other intuitions also: excitement, expectation. Tahquil, obeying the wight's orders, remained motionless.

After a time Tully announced, ‘They are gone.'

‘Who is gone?'

‘
Unket
things,' he replied shortly. ‘But there's no tellin' when they'll come by again. Cover yoursel' with muck, lass. Smear it thick, that they may not catch the tang o' ye. Blacken your face.'

Raising herself on her elbow, Tahquil tore up handfuls of moist soil and living leaves the colour of basalt. She did as he bade, then drank again from the seed husk's hull—long, refreshing draughts. Some way off, Tighnacomaire, in horse-form, was grazing.

‘The night is long,' the mortal girl said softly, wonderingly, tilting her chin towards the silver magnificence of the universal vault rising, fathomless, overhead.

‘No,' said Tully. ‘Elsewhere the sun shines. This is Darke, the land of Evernight.'

‘Is it so? Sain me! I have heard tell of this place. They say day never dawns here. But it makes no sense …'

‘From the bottom of a very deep well,' said Tully with aplomb, as though accustomed to such venues, ‘when ye luik upwards ye'll see naught but stars in a night sky, no matter gin the sun be shining up there or no. Darke is walled by a half-ring of mountains to the north, and a crescent of high smokes frae Tapthar to the south, which give the same result as a well's wall. By some trick o' the winds, the smokes ne'er blow intae this eye.'

‘Evernight,' repeated Tahquil. ‘A haven for nocturnal wights.'

‘Indeed,' said the urisk. ‘A pleasant land. If Men dwelled here in their snug cottages, fain would I stay and tend their hearths. But Darke is as much shunned by your kind as is Tapthartharath. Many things haunt here but few are mortal.'

‘Few?'

‘Ainly captured mortals. They dinnae suffer it for lang,' added Tully uncomfortably. ‘Ye shouldnae have come here, Mistress Mellyn. There's still time tae turn back noo, gin ye come tae your senses. The horse can carry ye back tae the lands o' Men, fleet as flight.'

‘I cannot. I must seek my friends.'

‘Och, but there's hobgoblins hereabouts, lurking in the stones, and other things even more
unket.
Darke is sair kittle for ye, 'tis perilous.'

‘I doubt it not. But I must face the risks. Where is the fortress?'

‘Atop Black Crag it stands, on the round, high plain, some seven leagues to the northeast. Long ago Prince Morragan had it built, as a retreat where he might take his leisure from time to time. Annath Gothallamor that stronghold is called—the Great Castle of Night, the Dark Fortress.'

Annath Gothallamor.
It was a thundering name, like the chord from the bass tubes of some eldritch bellows instrument. A name charged with portent.

‘Has it occurred to ye,' said Tully, ‘that ye might be walking intae a baited trap?'

‘It has. But now, let us go.'

Tahquil stood, swayed and collapsed. She rubbed her wrist across her forehead.

‘I have not much strength. Do you carry food?'

‘Nay,' Tully hooted. ‘Water I carried, but here we'll not need it—springs rise everywhere. Fire I brought from Tapthar—see?' He uncovered a cone-shaped hollow stone. Within, a lump of rock glowed with inner fires. ‘Heat-bearing rock—
cridhe-teth.
Hot-Heart, men call it. Warmth and light we have, but no food.'

‘It matters little,' said Tahquil, levering herself to her feet again. She could not recall when she had last desired food. A greater hunger had her firmly in its grip. Her limbs weighed like congealed metal, her joints had rusted. Tighnacomaire raised his head and peered at her questioningly. His eyes were two gold coins in the night. Silently, she nodded and he trotted over to her. Soon she had mounted and they were on their way once more.

Tahquil sat slightly hunched, a tangle-haired, unkempt rider on a pretty pony. Quietly now went her steed, with the cunning of his kind, his horny feet making no sound, scarcely dislodging a leaf of the grey sedges or strange grisaille grasses. A bubbling spring made a chitinous chinking as of glass goblets. The air stirred, wafting in soft fans against Tahquil's face. Balmy, it was fragrant with a glistening of secretive leaves—shy, shady leaves nodding in dusky forests, washed clean by starlight.

Beneath the canopy of eternal night they passed over marshy ground where pale lights bobbed, wandering—soft, acid green, soft lightning blue, their flickerings mirrored dimly in sheets of water. Through the waving sedges Tighnacomaire's sure steps found the ways between hidden bogs and sudden pools.

‘I have seen a light like those,' the girl murmured, ‘long ago. It almost led a good man to his doom.'

‘Hobby-Lanthorns,' said Tighnacomaire. ‘Will o' the Wisps. They love the wetlands, the boggy places.'

‘As do your own kind.'

‘Aye!' he nichered. ‘I'd have a mind tae dance with them were ye nat riding.'

‘I am flattered you care.'

‘There's Joan-the-Wad and Jacky Lantern—I ken them all.'

Enticingly, a green luminance tinted a sheaf of ferns, a blue lambency highlighted a rocky prominence.

‘Are they not death omens?' asked Tahquil.

‘Ainly the spunkies and the corpse-candles are warners. As farr the rest av them, some are cruel as bogles. They'll lure marrtals intae sticky mires and drown them, orr lead them over the brinks av cliffs. But others are ainly seeking a laugh, same as tricksy boggarts—just seeking tae make a goose out av some drunken farmer weaving his way hame over the fens at night.'

‘Few such farmers weave hereabouts. As for foolish mortals, this is a desert, for I am the only one. Why do they linger here, these marsh-lights?'

‘'Tis the Call. The Call is strong here. It broadcasts from Annath Gothallamor.'

‘It is long since that summons first went forth,' replied Tahquil, remembering she had originally learned of the phenomenon in Gilvaris Tarv, while staying at the house of Ethlinn Bruadair.

With a faint rustle and a splash the three travellers left the marshes and cantered on under the stars, through a black and silver land, onward and upward, ever higher.

No rain fell in Darke, but every so often, mists rose from the streams and marshes, or rolled in from the sea, muffling the landscape in their thick wool. When they dissipated, they left glassy beads quivering on every leaf and twig, on every blade and web, and the damp loam seeping with moisture, the tree-roots digging deeper, the dark-green frogs gleaming as though oiled, the springs and soaks brimming, the flower cups filled with quicksilver, to spill again.

By degrees, Tahquil-Ashalind's vision adapted to the ambient illumination of Darke, subtle and changeless. Her perception was perhaps also enhanced by her contact with an eldritch creation. Bent figures she saw, limping amongst hummocks; grey trow-folk, lovers of silver. Swart grotesqueries she glimpsed, sneaking and cavorting in the black forests; hobgoblins, those wights more unseelie than bruneys, more seelie than bogles—pranksters whose tricks might be kind or cruel, or both together. In a forest clearing danced a circle of the vampiric baobhansith, like maidens clad in the colours of sunfall, with poisonous flowers plaited through the smoke of their hair.

From the nygel's back Tahquil watched the prowlings of these entities. Darke was alive with them. She felt secure, protected by Tighnacomaire's speed and skill, guarded by Tully's watchfulness, yet security was tinctured with a certainty that they approached something awful and momentous, and that there was no escape. Somehow, through her link with these eldritch companions, she was beginning to sense the Call.

There was, of course, one who stood at the centre of the Call—its source, its Supreme Commander.

Morragan.

Consideration of that grey-eyed Faêran prince induced panic and shock. It also invoked visions of the Realm. The Langothe sprouted claws and tore at her equilibrium. Weakened by starvation and care, crippled by the devastation of love beyond reach, Tahquil teetered on the brink of insanity. She fell forward on the nygel's neck and slept without awareness of the transition to oblivion.

A change in the lullaby rhythms of travel woke her. Tighnacomaire was slowing to a halt. Through the tendrils of his weed-twined mane, constellations dazzled. Feeling his hide release her, Tahquil dismounted. The waterhorse cantered off to a silken mere where the images of stars floated like petals. He entered. One circular ripple glided out.

‘He was gettin' dry,' tooted the ever-present urisk. He raised a wiry arm, pointing. ‘See there.'

To the north, a rocky butte thrust up suddenly from the land—a plateau wide and high. Thongs of water threaded the draperies of its precipitous sides. From its centre jutted a hill, crowned with an architecture of many towers.

‘We're gettin' close now,' said Tully. ‘Up there on the tabletop they call the High Plain, Black Crag looms. And atop the Crag, the Castle.'

Tahquil's heart fluttered.

‘The story repeated,' she said, speaking her thoughts aloud. ‘Another dark fortress. Another
Tower Terrible,
and he in it, and the Hunt as well. If anyone were to be standing at the edge of that tabletop, he might look out over the whole of southern Darke. Were such a watcher in possession of keen nocturnal vision he might see us, as specks moving through these stands of slim trees.'

‘I'll warrant,' said the urisk, ‘that all o' Darke is subject tae scrutiny, not ainly from the High Plain, but from the skies and
aiblens
from ither vantage points or scopes ainly available tae those who hold great power in their hands. Yet, they watch for warriors and for mortal spies unaccompanied by wights. For 'tis not usual—nay, 'tis unheard of, for eldritch and
lorraly
to form such a league as we four. Many times I have thought it strange mysel', that I should be hurryin' from my ancient haunts and traipsin' across the countryside wi' a wee lass. And for the horse tae bear ye as he does, and for the swan tae even speak tae ye—'tis a marvel.'

‘Why
do
you come with me?'

The wight scratched his sparse triangle of a beard. ‘I dinnae ken, rightly.'

‘Good taste, no doubt,' she managed.

His pixie mouth stretched into a grin. ‘Nae doubt!'

Palely glimmering, tree boles stretched up to a star-perforated lattice of leaves. Long tree-roots wound along the edges of a brook. Here, Tahquil lay, drinking. The water cupped in her hands was clear and invigorating, laced with a welter of scintillants dancing like disturbed glitter-dust, a swimming echo of the sky.

Tahquil looked up again, across the rising slopes to the high, black loom of the butte, overhung with its silver canopy.

‘Let's away,' she said. ‘I'll ride on.'

Even as she spoke, a black cross intervened between water and sky. It swooped down into a grove.

‘
An eoincaileag!'
exclaimed Tully. After a moment, the swanmaiden emerged. Nothing about her disclosed the nature of the tidings she brought—whether they were good or evil. Tahquil stood up, clutching a tree-stem for support.

‘Say on,' she said quickly, and without preliminaries.

‘
Heihoo!
Valiant human friend is wise, wending to Fell Fortress from southern side, from slopes of fire and fume. On far side, further from the Fortress, hosts forgather, summoned. Hordes seethe and swarm on the High Flat.'

‘Dwell not on the manoeuvres of Morragan's armies! What tidings of James, King-Emperor?'

Tahquil looked into the lovely face of Whithiue. A curious anger was printed there. The swanmaiden would not say more, at first. When she began to speak again she informed her listeners that while she was seeking news of the King-Emperor, other tidings had come to her knowledge. The reason for it was not clear, but it was widely broadcast among wights all across Erith, that Prince Morragan was not the only Faêran lord to seek the yellow-haired maiden. Now the High King of the Faêran himself commanded that whosoever should find her must bring her to him.