The Bitterbynde Trilogy (166 page)

‘So, King Angavar too has woken at last,' Tahquil said, awed, ‘and has heard of my story.'

Again she wondered why she should be hunted—whether her pursuers had guessed, or somehow discovered who she was, and that she had come from the Fair Realm by some secret way.

Whithiue said, ‘Fain would swan serve Angavar and heartily follow his will. He is sovereign. The world's fairly sworn to submit. Swan's fealty, homage and sentiment are his.'

‘Pray do not betray me, Whithiue! I would not be a pawn in the games of the Faêran. You do not know why Angavar and Morragan seek me.'
And I shall not tell you! For, if they knew that I could open the Gates to the Realm, my eldritch friends would have me brought to these Faêran lords in a moment. I judge this High King would straightway force me to the Gate, if he got me in his power. Then, to take revenge on his brother, he would return to Faêrie with his retinue, leaving Morragan to give vent to his wrath by allowing unseelie wights to punish Erith until time's end. I want none of that. I want the Faêran all gone, every last bewitching, ruthless one of them.
Aloud, she said, ‘These Faêran monarchs and princes would have no care for the fates of my stolen friends. In the conflict of lord against lord, insignificant mortals perish. Keep my secret, I pray you! Do not betray me!'

‘I'll no' play ye false, lass,' said Tully, ‘and neither will the horse. But dinnae luik sae unkindly on the Faêran. Ye would be well advised not tae speak ill o' them. And certain, they can be merciful and just.'

‘Just arrogant!' cried Tahquil.

‘Had swan secured summons from Faêran sovereign's very hand, swan would hasten to fetch human to his feet,' said the eldritch girl, tossing back her dark hair.

‘Doubtless,' rejoined Tully. ‘But ye've heard the King's edict from some witless sparrows or sullen trows. Can ye break faith wi' the lass for the sake o' their rumour?'

‘Hearth-wight wheedles well. Swan's in sore straits,' said Whithiue undecidedly.

‘Do nat be wildered,' said Tighnacomaire. ‘Yarr bound tae the mistress by the feather.'

The swanmaiden bowed her long neck; a gesture of concurrence.

‘When friend has viewed fate of sisters, swan shall fulfill vow of fealty to High Sovereign and specify her whereabouts.'

Tahquil, now temporarily safe, repeated impatiently, ‘What tidings of James, King-Emperor?'

Whithiue replied, ‘Sixteenth sovereign so-styled has fallen.'

A white-hot stone knocked in the throat of Tahquil. ‘Say on,' she said, very, very softly.

‘He failed to survive,' said the swanmaiden. ‘Some heinous wight slew him. Swan speaks with fidelity. Seagulls voiced story, which wave-wights verified, who viewed his final hour.'

Thorn was dead.

With eyes like empty shells, the mortal girl stared at the immortal—she who was of the kind that could never lie. A heavy door slammed shut with utmost finality, leaving her desolate.

Night birds twittered and grieved.

A descant flute began to play somewhere in Darke's silver-grey coppices—breathy, burring notes. Others started up. The threads of their separate melodies entwined like tinsel streamers, creating harmonies to break the heart. The breeze was purple with the scent of violets.

‘No,' said Tahquil-Ashalind. ‘No.'

Reason left her then.

She could not hold back. Over and over the sounds burst from her, like water from a dam whose walls had been breached; a wordless, mindless keening, a long-drawn lament of anguish and desolation more bitter than she had ever known.

The high lamps of Darke shone steadily down on the dim meres and marshes, the groves and glades, the hills and hummocks. Their rays caught the satin sheen on the flanks of an eldritch horse racing up a steep shoulder of the plateau, with a rider on its back. They glanced from the horns of a short figure leaping in the horse's wake. They caressed the glossy feathers of a long-necked bird sailing the rising airs that flowed to the uplands.

High up, near the edge of the plateau, a shelf jutted. Barren and rocky, it was cut in under a cliff. On this shelf the horse stopped. The rider fell off. Seven hundred feet below the shelf, the twilight hills and lowlands of Darke spread out, the sumptuous velvet and brocade of the shadowy forests decorated with sequins and threads of water.

Tully sat cross-legged beside Tahquil, who lay as she had fallen.

‘Wauken, miss,' he said, and he murmured a spell of home and hearth, one such minor working as urisks are capable of. She roused, bewildered, blank-faced, and peered around. The wind elevating from below lifted her brown-dyed hair up and back, spreading it out along the currents like ribbons of kelp.

Down a stairway incised into the cliff face drifted Whithiue in maiden-shape, comely as the evening star. She opened her feather cloak. Out tumbled fruity spheres as soft as teased wool, in hues of peach, apricot and melon. One rolled to the feet of Tighnacomaire. He sniffed at it, then, absently, ate it.

‘Ye great lunk,' said Tully, smacking the nygel on the nose. ‘Go and eat some eel-grass, or grass-eels. These are for the mistress.'

Tighnacomaire rolled his eyes guiltily and laid his ears flat.

Sorrow had gathered to Tahquil-Rohain from all its hiding places in the woods of Darke: from empty nests and buds untimely shrivelled; from a twig upon which a tiny owl sang a lament for his lost mate; from a mighty oak that had fallen on its side, whose last dry leaves, bunches of hands cut out of brown paper, clapped like a death rattle; from wind that grieved among the tree boles, whispering
farewell.

The grey raiment of despair was drawn to her, and when she was clothed, the dullness of the garments flowed outwards like the rays of an un-sun, spreading smoky un-light and wrapping even the wild things of Darke in its ragged webs.

But stone and ashes do not weep.

I am sere. I am stone. Desperate, desolate stone, deeply etched with the acid of agony. Let stone turn to ashes, as the stones of Tamhania were burned away. I am nothing, a husk. I will walk on, but the flame has consumed me, then died.

For herself, Tahquil had little care now. She touched some Fairbread to her mouth, moving like one of the clockwork toys from Tana's gorgeous salons—but she might have been carved from milk-quartz.

If he lives no longer, I must still go on. I will honour my inner promise to rid the world of the Faêran, if I can, and see my friends safe home, if it is possible. After that I will care naught about what happens to me.

‘Far have we come,' said Tully, after the damsel had broken her fast with three small bites. ‘Gin ye clamber up that stair in the rock, ye shall rise above the rim of the High Plain. Then ye shall see Annath Gothallamor.'

She climbed the stair. The steps were cracked. Mosses and tiny plants grew from the fissures, veiled with nodding white flowers. Near the top she paused, standing on tiptoe. Craning her head, she raised her eyes two inches above the level of the plateau's brink.

The Plain rolled away like a floor flagged with jet and obsidian. Yet it was not devoid of vegetation. Short grasses sprouted, and in places, bushes squatted in round-shouldered clumps. On their immense black backdrop, the spiky stars glittered more sharply now, huge and close. Against them, climbing up the sky and obliterating the celestial radiance with its bulk, a sudden, massive bulwark rose like the topmost peak of a mountain. And from the culmination of this crag thrust a fortress topped with clusters of spired towers, belfries, conical turret roofs, toothed battlements and flying buttresses, its grim walls pierced by narrow slots with pointed arches. These slots, which seemed miniature by comparison with the great mass of stonework, shone with an inner glow tinted with the dilute blue of
uhta,
like the lingering colour of the sky on a Summer's eve, just after the sun has set, like the cold blue of glacial shadows, like moonlight through wood smoke. Menace was implicit in these hundreds of gimlet eyes.

A movement caught Tahquil's attention. Slowly, she began to subside behind the edge. Gabbling broke out above her head—there had been spriggans in the shadows of the High Plain. She hastened down the stair. When she reached the shelf, Tully pushed her into a crevice. Creaking voices called from above and stones rattled down. Tighnacomaire whinnied. Precariously close to the shelf'
s
border, he curvetted, his small hooves balancing deliberately. The spriggans on top of the cliff watched him, gibbering argumentatively, then withdrew.

‘Whisht!' exclaimed Tully. ‘A close shave, that.'

For Tahquil, words would not form. She choked on them, as speechless as the duergar's lash had once made her. She strove for sanity, half wishing the Langothe would take her instantly, so that she would not have to wait for its slow-wearing effect to grind her down.

When at last she was capable of utterance, she asked, in a bleak monotone, ‘How shall I cross the Plain? There is scant cover.' It was the first time she had spoken since hearing the swanmaiden's tidings.

‘Strong-sinewed swans will hoist feeble friend's slight weight,' said Whithiue. ‘Sea-folk will surrender a wide fish-net. Four swans seizing hems have strength for ferrying human freight from here to Fell Fortress, flying fast.'

Scarcely comprehending the enormity of this tardily offered privilege, Tahquil nodded. She felt removed from the scene, as though she gazed down a long tunnel at the three wights on this precipitous aerial perch among the night glitter. Reason stood there alongside them, but she was disconnected from it. Tully's reply to Whithiue seemed to come from a room behind a wall.

‘It cannae be done. The Hunt would find ye, or else watchers on the ground would look up and see the shape o' ye outlined by the constellations. The lass wants tae creep intae Gothallamor, not be dragged there in chains. Twa prisoners in there is enow—what's the use o' three?'

‘How is she to secure her sisters?' Whithiue now looked exasperated. ‘What's a scatter-witted half-sensible human fit for? Her fancy's wandering, frantic. Who wists whether stolen wenches survive? Such a scheme is futile, certainly set for failure. Cease following such folly.'

Doggedly, Tahquil said, ‘You
must
help me. Take me in secrecy to this Fortress. I will not be thwarted. I must find my friends before I perish.' She was dully aware that Whithiue looked insulted, Tully puzzled and Tighnacomaire vague. Deep in thought, the urisk stroked his straggly goatee.

‘Tharr's the Icepipes,' suggested Tighnacomaire abruptly, ‘the burrows undarr the Plain.'

‘Never heard o' them,' declared Tully. ‘Might they be tunnels o' Fridean delving?'

‘Nat Fridean. Icepipes warr made by atherrs.'

‘Such subways are sealed from swan's scholarship, veiled from her wisdom,' murmured Whithiue.

‘Those who fly high see ainly surfaces,' sagely quoted the nygel. ‘Waterr seeks the underr places and the secret.'

‘Ye're no' clashin' on aboot underground streams are ye?' hooted Tully. ‘The lass can hardly traipse through tunnels filled with water.'

‘Streams arr lower. Icepipes arr high and dry. Men made them, cleverr men, long ago. Wizarrds of Namarre.'

‘How shall I find a way to these Icepipes?' asked Tahquil.

‘Wait,' said Tighnacomaire. ‘I seek.'

He jumped away. As though the steep cliffs were level parklands, he crossed them swiftly and without faltering, his hooves finding secure footholds where none were apparent.

Evernight glistened on. The southerly breeze brought a distant croaking of frogs.

Tighnacomaire returned not a fly's wing-beat too soon. A commotion was developing at the cliff top above. Spriggans had congregated there again. Their spindle-shanked shapes ranged along the skyline like gesticulating hieroglyphs. Some were shouting, while others had already started down the stair.

‘Ride now,' said Tighnacomaire. After scrambling onto his back Tahquil was borne away from the rumpus, along a narrow ledge, until they veered around an outflung spur of rock and the spriggans disappeared from view. Tighnacomaire's sinews bunched and released rhythmically. Beneath his legs, chasms plunged and great holes gasped, filled only by eerie winds. The stars were sparks struck from his hooves. Somehow, he clung to the cliff side and at length arrived at a vertical fissure, deeply cloven, dark and silent. Warily, he poked his nose around a tall boulder and sniffed. Then he stepped through.

Darkness sealed Tahquil's eyes like tar. She felt the waterhorse under her, moving forward. At the sound of a voice she started and would have fallen had she not been fastened on.

‘Och, where's a light fa' the lass?'

Reflected sound waves mocked Tully's words.

Unexpectedly, light blasted out. It stripped Tahquil's eyes of tar, peeled them like onions, divested them, it seemed, of eye hatches, of lenses, of cornea, of retina, until they were seared sightless with a white blindness.

As swiftly as it had appeared, this glare vanished. The urisk, who had posed the light question, uttered a short, explosive word.

‘A wee bit stark, that,' he added.

This time he uncovered the glowing rock of Tapthartharath more slowly. A slim ray shot out under the lip of the stone cover. It bounced off a plane, zigzagged back and forth between multitudinous facets and splintered into a billion and three fragments.

‘Oh,' sighed Tahquil, raising her awed head from the waterhorse's neck.

‘Oh, oh, oh …' the echoes murmured.

From every angle, rainbows dazzled. Wide and high was the Pipe itself, perhaps eighty feet from floor to vault and fifty feet from wall to wall. Here was a duct massive enough to accommodate ranks of a dozen horsemen bearing tall standards.

The inclinations of the wall, ceiling and floor of this tube took the warm tangerine-amber radiations of the Hot-Heart of Tapthartharath and multiplied them to uncountable repeated images, splitting them prismatically into subtle component hues. It was like being inside a wizardly kaleidoscope, but in fact the Pipe was the eaten-out heart of a crystal of unimaginable dimensions; a majestic splendour, yet hard, cold and merciless.