The Bitterbynde Trilogy (167 page)

Tighnacomaire stepped now from a wide band of greyish rock—granite or basalt—which had lined the inside of the aperture; an outer casing in which the enormous hollow crystal of the underplain was housed. As his hooves touched the cut-mineral floor it chimed—not the dull
thunk
of a spoon tapping the bubble of a fine glass goblet and resting there, inhibiting the resonances—quite the contrary. Sympathetic vibrations rushed away from the point of contact, across the floor and up the walls, to flow across the upper choirs, crossing and recrossing, acting upon each other to produce new frequencies of nuance and penetration, and all these ringing notes, clear as water, pulsated against each other in a long, swelling chord.

Tighnacomaire halted, uncertain.

The last note faded, like a reminiscence of the stirring of the jewellery air. The crystal waited.

‘Cannat walk in silence,' stated Tighnacomaire.

‘Silence, silence, ence, ence,' sang the vaults, sending off sparkles like pieces struck from the sky, the sea, the sun, fire, ice.

‘Risk it,' said Tahquil. (Iskit, iskit.)

Tully held high the Hot-Heart and they went forward into a song, a net of rainbows, a web of glory.

It was not unpleasant. Never did the insistent decibels rise to a painful level, nor did the soft illumination of Hot-Heart produce intense beams. Even when they sprang off the facets at their most concentrated, the beams were rods of amber, or scarlet resin, or bolts of gold silk—not swords. Darkness fell away and fled before the interlopers, then closed in behind. They moved in their own orb of radiance, crisscrossed by spokes of astonishing colours. Deep beneath the High Plain they pushed on.

Presently, the nygel stopped again. The last patters of his and Tully's hooves rang off into the crouching darkness in front and to the rear.

‘Light draws attention,' remarked Tighnacomaire. (Tenshun, shun.)

‘Indeed!' Tully snapped shut the stone lid, breaking off the rose-marigold effulgence at its stem. Blackness slammed down; an iron curtain.

They went forward, through a pitchiness so solid it seemed tangible.

Of course, the wights had needed no luminescence to see by; they had provided it solely for Tahquil's benefit. Yet, none of them had earlier considered the danger they invited upon themselves. Perhaps in the nygel's case this was understandable—his mind was a bell-jar full of dragonflies darting at their own reflections. And Tahquil, for her part, was verging on delirium. Tully, with the commonsense of a common domestic wight, should have known better. Conceivably, some enchantment in the chant of crystal, some oblique spell zinging off the obliques, something occult in the dark occlusions had laid hands upon his eldritch senses and dulled them, lulled them, culled them, gulled them.

Annulled them.

Tahquil nodded, drooping on the waterhorse's back. Indeed, when they first entered this place she had, in a confused way, feared instant detection, trusting only that Tighnacomaire, with his sharper instincts, would be able to turn and flee at the first sign of peril, and so outrun it. As they penetrated further into the Icepipes and nothing untoward occurred, she began to relax, turning her muddled thoughts to what obstacles might lie at the journey's end and how the Fortress might be entered and what might be found therein. Ideas rambled incoherently through her mind, in tablature. She could not pin them down, could not make sense of them. In this state, she was unprepared for the encounter.

The cavern filled with the susurrations of Tighnacomaire sniffing through the velvet pockets of his nostrils.

‘Waterr,' he whispered. ‘I smell it. And what else—'

The dark exploded.

A clamour went up on all sides. The brief flare of an ignition revealed that, straight ahead, the floor ended. A thin bridge, suspended from above on slender diamond fingers, arched over the chasm. From the centre of this span poured a scrawl of spriggans, brandishing weapons. In their haste they jostled one another. One fell over the side, his fast-receding shrieks overlaying the wild shouts of his fellows.

The nygel whirled to face the direction from which he had come. A second time, he stamped. His hooves ignited sparks. The flash illuminated haemorrhages of yelling wights exuding from cracks in the walls, cutting off the escape route. Their noise fed itself back into the crystal, amplifying with each circuit, drilling through Tahquil's ears. Under her, the nygel spun like a compass needle. Dizzy, she braced herself for the onslaught. Would these enemies attempt to wrench her from Tighnacomaire's sticky hide, flaying her in the process? Or would they merely spear her as she sat on his back? Death never seemed inviting, yet at this instant, neither did it appear entirely unwelcome. Her head jerked back as the nygel surged. He bolted. His haunches gathered. He jumped. The ground dropped away, her stomach flew to her gullet. Her arms and hair flew up over her head as she and the horse plummeted like iron weights. In front of her nose, her ragged shirt fluttered invisibly. Her blood thundered with fear and exhilaration. They were falling together into the chasm.

There was no time to scream, no breath for it. The terrible, whistling wind of their falling ripped it from her lungs. She was a rag doll on horseback, diving into a well.

Violently they smashed into something like a slab of adamant. Water filled Tahquil's skull like hemlock wine.

Pressure clamped down, roaring. Red bubbles popped and fizzed in her eyes. The nygel was drowning her again. Her arms flailed vainly. Tides sloshed in her head. Her brain swam like a frightened frog, and a band of steel tightened across her chest. Her consciousness dwindled to a golden pinprick, yet that tiny point burned bravely and was not yet extinguished.

And then the pressure reversed, crumpling her against the nygel's shoulders and neck. Fluid streamed from Tahquil like a garment. Sweet air swirled in freely. Tahquil lay along the spine of the waterhorse, sobbing, deprived of sight and hearing, shuddering with the hoarse rasps of her panting and the racking coughs.

When these subsided, she lay quietly in darkness. There seemed to be no movement. The only sound was a gurgling, a whisper of liquid brushing against stone. She was up to her neck in water.

A long time afterwards, the darkness paled. Dimly, the head and ears of Tighnacomaire took shape. Beyond them, an ashen glimmer dawned. As it strengthened, Tahquil made out walls racing along at a staggering rate, and close above, a ceiling going by in a blur. They were not motionless after all, but travelling at enormous speed, propelled by the current of an underground stream. A low archway framed the source of light. Towards this they hurtled.

‘Fear natt!' lisped Tighnacomaire, regenerating a vestige of her faith in him. Suddenly, the archway had them in its pincers. The current shoved them through. Suspended in midair, Tahquil closed her eyes.

They were falling once more, but it was only a short drop. It took them plunging down a hurrying sluice into a stream, deep and clear, flowing under the open skies of Darke. Tighnacomaire began to swim with the flow, angling towards land. Three hundred yards downstream, he climbed out on the shore, depositing his rider gently beneath the eaves of a coppice of unusual night-poplars. Leaves like coins of swarthy silver fluttered down.

Tahquil, sodden, weakened further by the aftermath of terror, lay dazed and ill, shivering, wretched. The stream, gurgled and babbled, flowing quickly beneath leaning willows and black alders. Glossy ribbons of starlight laced it. The poplars of Darke let their shining leaves drift down, winking bright and dark; leaves that thrived on nebulae of opalescent starfire instead of sunshine's golden downpour.

As in a dream, Tahquil saw Whithiue glide from the trees. The swanmaiden spread her white arms and between them stretched a space from which the stars had been erased. A warm snow fell on the prone form of Tahquil. It enveloped her in cosiness. Her limbs quieted. She slept.

Down the violet wind slid syrinx melodies, wild as foxes, mad as love, strange as awakening.

Whithiue sat nearby with her knees drawn up, hands clasped around them. She stared at Tahquil, her head cocked to one side.

‘Friend is speckless, spick and span,' she said. ‘Washed by fresh water.'

Indeed, the muck with which Tahquil had been disguising her scent was gone, and the waters under the High Plain had rinsed the dirt out of the roots of her brown-dyed tresses. Her locks now lay long and damp all around, in spirals and thick swathes, frosted by the starlight.

‘Fair friend is valiant, faithful,' said the swanmaiden, observing the true colour growing from Tahquil's scalp. ‘Vahquil of fulvous hair,' she mispronounced.

Boobooks called across the night. A stumpy bough became a tawny frogmouth, which spread owl's wings like painted fans and flapped away. Every detail of Darke appeared startlingly clear to Tahquil's eyes. The night was no longer murky, but luminous. The shadows' unlikely mysteries lay revealed.

Tully was perched between the spurs of a poplar. Like swanmaidens, urisks were associated with water. In domestic situations, they usually haunted their own pool. Tully had come through the underground stream unscathed. Now, he did not even look wet. Only one droplet, caught in the curls of his hair, shone pellucid; a fragile tear. A spider knitted a web between his stubby horns.

‘They ken that we're here, noo,' he said grimly. ‘They'll have spied ye on the horse's back. They'll have issued an alert, lass—their eyes'll be all aboot, on stalks, and they'll come for ye any time noo.' He squinted up at the veil of stars, as though hearing already the howl and thunder of the Hunt.

‘I might run like the wind with ye, acrrass the High Plain,' said a man, or the semblance of one. Tahquil did not recognise him at first. ‘But they wad catch us befarr we gat halfway,' Tighnacomaire continued.

It had been several days since he had taken his man-shape. In this form he lay on his side, idly scraping up a dirt wall across an ants' trail, to flummox them.

‘So,' said Tully gently, ‘your quest is at an end, mistress. Ye cannae make it tae the grand fortress.'

White hares gambolled on the mouse-fur lawns of Darke, beneath the spray of silver lights from distant worlds and suns. Far off, voiced over and over, a kind of signal or summons echoed repetitively—
Ai-ee! Ai-ee!
Laughter, sometimes shrill and maniacal, sometimes low and coarse, wound through the night-forests. Heartbroken wailing and lamenting followed.

Tahquil said in a flat tone, ‘If only to see Viviana and Caitri once more, or to know what has become of them, I will remain here and await the Hunt. Unprotesting, I will let them take me. There is no other way.' Careful, even now, not to thank the wights, she added, ‘You have all been most kind.'

She lowered her lashes, shutters against the world.

The swanmaiden viewed the girl through half-lidded bird's eyes. She said, ‘Vahquil has fed on Fairbread, seed-fruits of Faêrie. She has voyaged with waterhorse, seen with eldritch viewpoint. Has worn on her finger special circle of strong, shining sorcery. Has sustained healing spell from horned hearth-faun. Vahquil-sister shares wight-ways. See, she's washed stainless.'

Whithiue stood up. She wrung her azalea hands, then lightly trod a few paces back and forth. For only the second time, the swanmaiden was not wearing the precious cloak of ebony feathers. Her gown seemed fashioned of mist and cobwebs. It was cinched at the waist with a girdle of flashing garnets. Her fabulous hair streamed along the light southerly breeze. She spoke again, hesitantly, her words aimed directly at Tahquil.

‘Scorn surrender!
Fly
hence, to Fell Fortress. Wights won't hinder, won't waylay swan. Friend will venture forth in security. Settle within high walls. Have certainty, swan will visit subsequently, to withdraw feather-cloak. Have certainty, should feathers be spoiled or scattered, vengeful hostility of swan's family will follow forever.'

The swanmaiden's words jolted Tahquil's memory. What was it that covered her and kept her warm, even now, as she lay on the cool lawns of Darke? She looked down at herself. The feather-cloak spread glistening like polished coals over her body. It had warmed her as she slept—maybe it had guarded her from the probing senses of the eldritch night-things that roamed throughout Darke. Swan-cloaks could not be swapped easily from one wearer to another for, like the law by which wights might not step over a threshold unless invited, the use of such a numinous garment required the permission, freely given, of the original owner. What an honour the swan had bestowed upon Tahquil, that she, a mortal, should not only be sheltered by the wight's most treasured possession, but should be offered the full use of it, with all the powers it could bestow! Gratefulness welled in Tahquil like spring water after a storm. Her eyes burned. She searched for words. Thickly, she said, ‘Whithiue is gracious …'

‘Swan fragrance shall smother human stink,' interrupted Whithiue, and indeed a certain aviary odour arose from the feather-cloak, reminiscent of the Skyhorse stable-mews. ‘When swan has found feather-cloak afresh, secure and flawless,' the swanmaiden subjoined sharply, ‘fetters shall shatter.'

‘Yes. After this deed is done, no longer shall you be obliged to me in any way. Never shall I ask anything from you again. This I swear. Rather, I shall be in your debt.'

But not for long,
Tahquil thought bleakly,
for I sense my life-thread unravelling. Thorn, soon I shall be with thee.

Whithiue fixed her alien eyes on Tahquil. Far off, a wordless ululation of Darke from some unhuman throat rose like mist from a river, like a waterbird from the marshes. The swanmaiden nodded—an odd, abrupt gesture, akin to the darting head of a bird scanning for danger, or hunting the waters for bright, swift fish.

Indeed, for all their appearance, swanmaidens are not human. This must not be overlooked.

Reverently, Whithiue lifted the cloak from Tahquil's body. The damsel stood up. A thrill of fear shot through her at what she was about to assay.