The Bitterbynde Trilogy (170 page)

‘There is no cover here,' said Tahquil as soon as the trows had passed. ‘Let us return upstairs to the chamber of the rose window.'

They were not halfway across the floor when a clatter from beyond a nearby archway startled them again into flight. Pressing themselves inadequately into the angles of a cluster of colonnettes they ceased, momentarily, to breathe. The noises, as of horn striking ceramic, paused then resumed. An unhuman shape loomed monstrously through the archway. High in its skull, two lamps burned.
Clack clock
, the horse's hooves rattled on the tiles.

Next moment Tauquil breathed a sigh of relief, for it was the friendly nygel Tighnacomaire who emerged from the shadows of the arch, with Whithiue walking at his side.

Uttering a low cry, the swanmaiden ran towards Tahquil. ‘Safe! Safe!' she whistled.

‘Take it!' Under no delusion that the swanmaiden was concerned for much more than the cloak's security, Tahquil thrust it at its owner, grateful to be released from the obligation of its care, yet panic-stricken at the relinquishment of her protective disguise. An instant she hesitated, before releasing her grip on the cloak. What glamours might be at work in Annath Gothallamor?

‘Are you called Whithiue?' she demanded.

‘Sooth, swan is so styled.'

‘Then the cloak is yours,' said Tahquil, her apprehension invalidated. ‘Tig, you must carry us on your back, this very instant. Discovery is surely imminent. Yet Viviana cannot be wakened—what shall we do?'

But the urisk had also arrived. With no preliminaries he stood already at the head of the plinth, murmuring his simple remedies of home and hearth—the same incantations and deft hand movements which had revived Tahquil after her dousing.

Viviana lifted her elbow. She rolled sideways, but Tully was there to catch her in wiry arms and save her from falling. The courtier smiled dreamily.

‘Have I slept?'

‘There is no time for explanations,' said Tahquil, joyfully, suppressing a desire to laugh and dance. ‘Make haste, Viviana—climb on the horse's back. Caitri shall ride up behind you, and I last of all, as his back lengthens. Tig my friend—if you can find no other exit for mortals, a secret way opens behind that tapestry.'

Echoes chimed softly off the walls. Somewhere in the vicinity, voices had started up. Approaching footsteps rang on tiles and stone.

‘Why, 'tis Tiggy,' said Viviana, wide-eyed and as yet oblivious of danger. ‘Greetings, friend.'

The waterhorse extended one foreleg and bowed low before her. ‘How charming!' began the courtier, stroking his mane. ‘Such courtesy—oh!'

Tully's strong arms tossed her across the back of Tighnacomaire. The sounds of approach grew louder and the nygel began prancing in fright at this sign of impending discovery.

‘An they catch us, spriggans shall make us pay hard farr helping ye!' he warned, rolling the whites of his eyes. ‘Get an! Get app!'

Viviana, now comprehending their peril, reached down towards Caitri. Their hands locked together.

‘Jump as I lift you,' cried Viviana. But as the little girl sprang, a scream raged through the corridors of the fortress, a scream so terrible it could only have been spawned by nightmare. The cacophony came barrelling into the hall of the tapestries like a tornado, buffeting the walls, shaking the furnishings, stabbing through eardrums, boiling with the quintessence of fury, vengefulness and triumph.

Tighnacomaire shied. It was a small movement—his haunches jerked away an inch or so—but it was enough that Caitri slipped and Viviana lost her grasp. In that instant, a flood of mischief, wickedness and madness came pouring into the hall on hooves and talons, on batty wings and large, flat feet.

‘Begone, Tiggy, begone!' Tahquil shouted desperately.

Hooves clattered, wings whirred. The swan flew up among the high and draughty places of the hammer-beam ceiling. A great rectangle of stiff and heavy fabric lifted off the wall. Into the cold blast that drove forth dashed the terrified waterhorse. Down the hidden way he vanished, bearing Viviana who was stuck to his back. Caitri picked herself up off the floor and looked about.

She and Tahquil stood beside Tully in the centre of a circle. Surrounding them was a crawling net of shadow, a seething assemblage of unseelie manifestations, their eyes burning wells of malevolence. One stood a little apart from the rest, and when she noted him, worms of visceral disquiet began to wriggle in Caitri's belly. Small in stature was he, and stringy as a dried-out stalk of a weed. He wore garments of mustard-brown and dandelion—indeed, the dagged hems imitated the deep scalloping of dandelion leaves. Small, furred rodents wriggled in his sleeves. Coins of yellow flowers were sprouting from the strings of his lank locks and in the goatee which dribbled from his chin like some fungous growth. His thin and raddled face, the colour of old parchment, was stamped with malice and as remorseless as disease. A look of triumph flickered over it and Caitri felt the blood drain from her head. Here was the source of the blood-curdling scream.

The fellow's pale lips twisted. From between them emanated a corrosive voice.

‘Ill met by Evernight,
erithbunden
,' he grated.

A rat scuttled up his arm.

‘Yallery Brown,' acknowledged Tahquil, dully.

‘The very same,
erithbunden
, the very same. Long the chase, and sweet the ending. Spy, listener at the doors, stealer of secrets—you who know the Way Back—now you shall tell all and tell it willingly. Yet, willing or no, the penance for your false deeds shall be exacted.'

There was no escape. That fact had to be accepted.

‘If so be your will,' replied Tahquil evenly. ‘But release my companions. They have done you no wrong.'

‘The bait, Young Vallentyne's erstwhile doxy, has been allowed to ride away—but that is not to be
her
fate,' the wight said, levelling a skinny finger at Caitri, ‘or yours, either. As for the urisk, he's nothing more than a horsefly to be swatted, and matters not.'

Then, clear and commanding, a voice spoke out across the echoing interior. Immediately the crowd of wights dispersed—except for Yallery Brown—fleeing away into side passages and hidden galleries.

Three Faêran lords stood in the hall.

Light regaled them, emanating from their breath-taking comeliness. Their hair, crowned with chaplets of silver, seemed immune to gravity. It drifted up and out along invisible spates of air, or of gramarye, as though an unseen lake rose above the heads of these exiled denizens of the Realm. The same force billowed under their dark cloaks, spreading the fabric like fragments torn from stormy skies.

‘Ashalind na Pendran,' gravely said the tallest of the three, he who had first spoken. In the simple saying of her true name, in the look of fierce yearning in their eyes, Tahquil-Ashalind felt the strength of their desire. They knew her. She represented their unlooked-for hope, their priceless key, their lamp in the night of despair. Here was the one who
might
show the exiles the way home.

‘Lord Iltarien greets you,' said the tall Faêran lord, executing a bow in a manner that hinted at mockery.

‘I pray you, release my friends,' she repeated. ‘They know naught of this business.'

‘Who is here, remains.'

‘I know what you want of me. Yes, I returned to Erith after the Closing. I came through a Gate, but the memory of its location is lost to me. If the Faêran have sought it with no success, what chance have I?'

The face of Lord Iltarien darkened.

‘Follow,' he said, turning on his heel, and Tahquil-Ashalind, with Caitri at her side and the malignant motivation of Yallery Brown at her back, must follow. But they left Tully behind, for the Faêran hindered him with their arts.

Through the soaring halls and exalted corridors of Annath Gothallamor they went, the two mortals unsure as to whether they walked or glided or somehow flew. Shadows flowed, the colours of the ocean. Light glimmered, radiations of the stars. Gramarye was rife, imbuing the air, crackling in webs between their fingers like handfuls of levin bolts. Yet it was not to be grasped, not by them.

Climbing a stair of amethyst, they came to a high place. The walls shimmered translucent, as though hewn from crystal. Through them, like fire through aubergine lace, sparkled the prismatic stars of Darke. Possibly, there were no walls at all—the Faêran did not love enclosure. Indeed as the mortals entered with their escort, a scent of woodland pine, or rain-clouds, wafted through this spectral eyrie, this turret room, this prison, if such it was.

‘Go forward,' said the Faêran lords. They themselves withdrew.

He was seated, alone, his back towards the entrance.

At the sounds of their presence he rose to his feet and swung around. Caitri uttered a short, sharp cry.

A shudder rippled through Ashalind at the sight of him—an odd, icy shock, and yet it was not terror or apprehension that she felt; instead it was like a gust of cold wind, or the sting of a chill rain that rouses a restless dreamer. Marvelling, she balanced between joy and terror and was again bereft of speech. His eyes were the colour of rain-filled clouds. The look he bestowed pierced like shafts of the sun.

‘Thorn …' Ashalind's voice cracked. She went to him and paused, drowning in the ecstasy of his nearness, beholding him beholding her. A kind of paralysis gripped her—she dared not reach out and touch him lest he prove to be naught but a phantasm. But his smile was tender, wondering.

‘Speak to me,' he murmured, in the low, melodious voice she knew well.

‘Alas,' she said, ‘they have made thee a prisoner here too!'

‘A prisoner? Aye.' He placed his hand lightly on her arm—a gentle contact, yet it leaped through her like a lance.

He laughed then, giving her a curious and unfathomable glance. ‘Indeed, thou'rt a treasure among maidens.'

‘Oh, my love,' she said softly, ‘I have longed for thee as life longs for breath! Deep joy it is to find thee again, but bitter sorrow that our meeting should happen in this perilous place.'

He studied her, from head to toe. ‘Love's desire, thou canst set us both free. Only say where lies the last Gate to Faêrie, and how it may be opened, if at all.'

‘I perceive they have told thee my tale, beloved, though I know not how they found out the truth. Would that I might describe the Gate! I only remember that it lies somewhere in Arcdur, and may be unclosed by my hand alone. Would that I might send Morragan and all his kindred through, and rid Erith of that bane forever.'

‘Most sorely dost thou rail against the Faêran.'

‘Which mortal would not? They steal us and toy with us, they trick us and tempt us—to the Strangers, we are no more than playthings to be cast aside or broken. Their cruelty and callousness knows no bounds. In earnestness, my love, if I could recall that Gate I would do so, but in passing through it a geas was laid on me. To that geas I later lost all recollection, until the finding of this bracelet I wear on my wrist. On my seeing it, the vault of my brain was unlocked. Yet even then, memory was not wholly restored. The one fact I most need to remember is beyond my knowledge. Even if I regain that knowledge there is no guarantee that the gate will still be there, for 'tis a Wandering Gate.'

Into his arms he drew her, she half swooning with pleasure. Beneath the storm-blue velvet of his doublet the strength of him was lithe steel.

‘Wandering or not, it will remain where thou last saw it. Recall thou
must
,' he insisted. ‘As thou lov'st me, thou must.'

The hyacinthine torrent of his hair fell loose around them both, an enfolding curtain. Raising her hand, she wound her fingers into its luxuriance. Her own heartbeat filled her like the subterranean drumming of Tapthartharath. She was shaken to the core with every beat. Something took hold of her—something like a stirring of the Langothe, like a hunger so terrible it could never be sated, and she longed for his kiss, that it might soothe the agony.

‘A beautiful tyrant is thy passion, at this meeting,' he said. ‘Why should we deny it?'

She looked up to where the rich embroidery of his collar folded back, revealing the base of his throat, the gentle hollow at the meeting of the two straight collarbones. Above this rose the masculine curve of his throat and the hard swelling there, like a plum slipped beneath the skin, sliding back and forth with each modulated syllable he uttered. Her eyes traced every detail, following the sculpted lines of the jaw, clean-shaven but powdered with a darkness the colour of his hair, along the taut planes, the chiselled bones of a face so handsome that surely no woman could look at him but her heart must split asunder.

‘Sigh no more, pretty bird. Thou shalt have enough of me, and more,' he said in tones of amusement and delight. ‘I intend to take time to enjoy thee most thoroughly.'

Catching her up in his arms as if she were a child, he laid Tahquil-Ashalind upon a divan of damson silk, its edges embroidered with silver and seed-pearls. His beauty saturated her vision. Her thought focused on him, to the exclusion of all else. Starlight rippled down the length of his hair, striking a sheen from it like the glowing blue sky of evening. His long fingers unbuckled the knife belt at his waist. This, he thrust aside. The dagger's gem-encrusted hilt struck the floor with a bell sound, a light
chink
, which for all its softness, seemed incongruous, a peculiarly jarring note, and she was assaulted with a swift recollection of his hand upon her sleeve, moments ago.

Ashalind sprang to her feet, tearing the tilhal and iron buckle from her throat. The chain broke and the jade-leaved tilhal rolled upon the floor. She gripped the belt buckle in her fist. Caitri, until now forgotten, crouched in sudden terror at the furthest end of the room. Embarrassed by the intimacy of the exchange to which she was an involuntarily witness, she had been covering her eyes. Having been blind to events so far, she was now frightened by the noise and sense of sudden movement.