The Bitterbynde Trilogy (191 page)

Others were glimpsed at Court, usually by night—in the gardens, or the Royal Quarters. It might be an urisk, or a small innocuous looking waterhorse, or a dark-haired youth dressed in leaves and moss, with a small pig trotting at his heels. At times when Angavar walked beside the leaf-strewn pools of the Autumn Garden with his betrothed, a gorgeous swanmaiden dallied there too, her slender frame reflected in the water like a burning hibiscus. Soon the Autumn Garden began to be shunned by the courtiers and most of the mortal visitors—it was considered to be haunted. Rumour had it that the ponds were connected to the sea by underground waterways, that merfolk and benvarreys and silkies came up through them, and sea-morgans also, and merrows, and the
maighdeanna na tuinne
, and something completely festooned with shells which laughed inordinately, and dripping gruagachs with the sheen of flowing water gleaming down their ankle-length hair. Of course, the citizens were not surprised that numerous eldritch manifestations should be attracted to Caermelor Palace, because the tidings of an amazing event had spread—the High King of the Faêran had come to Court with his retinue. For that same reason there was not a lady's heart that did not yearn, not a single human being who remained unmoved.

Vinegar Tom and various domestic imps lurked among the Autumn Garden's rufous hedges. High in the golden fire of the trees small figures moved, laughing and chattering in an arboreal language of Khazathdaur, stringing up ropes and ladders until the treetops of the garden were webbed with them. Like butterflies, the coillduine flitted rapidly in and out of the crystalline brilliance of the foliage, trailing auras of soft fire. Unseelie things also gathered to haunt the palace domains, for they loved the Faêran no less than their seelie counterparts—but some enchantment prevented them at this time from wreaking their mischief upon the mortal citizens of Caermelor.

Even Finoderee loped in one evening, dressed in his new clothes.

As for Edward, now King-Emperor uncrowned, he seemed at once merry and melancholy. The members of his Household whispered understandingly that the prospect of sovereignty surely filled the young man with both eagerness and dread.

‘I urge this upon you,' Edward said to Ashalind, ‘that you go now with Angavar to seek the Geata Poeg na Déanainn in Arcdur. Now, before the coronation. You must go by sea, for there are no Mooring Masts in that northern land. All my Seaships are at your disposal.'

‘If we pass through into the Fair Realm it might be years before we come back to Erith,' Ashalind reminded him. ‘Besides, Angavar's vow to your father is not yet fulfilled.'

‘Then do not yet pass through the Gate but mark it only, and set guards upon it to await your return.'

‘You are eager to find the Gate.'

‘No. But I wist well how Angavar and the others of the Faêran yearn and cannot rest. Mayhap, finding it shall soothe them, for a time.'

‘You are generous.'

But when she put the proposal to Angavar, he looked sombre, thoughtful.

‘Edward suggested this?'

‘Yes, and I am glad to discover what has been vexing him, for of late he has been as doleful as a—' She had been about to say ‘crow', but thought better of it. ‘—as a weeper.'

‘Methinks it is not the restlessness of the Faêran that eats him.'

‘Then, what? The approaching coronation?'

But he would not say.

All over Erith, people wondered where the shang winds had gone. No longer did tableaux glow and shimmer in a numinous twilight, no more did ancient cities awake from slumber to relive their glory days. Angavar had banished the unstorms. As days and weeks went by, folk began to realise that the shang would visit them no more, but they were reluctant to abandon the old, ingrained habit of the taltry.

Since the return to Caermelor, Angavar laid aside the Lion of D'Armancourt and openly displayed his own eagle escutcheon, the sigil of Faêran Royalty. The couriers and everyone in the kingdom who knew him by sight were fully apprised of the truth—King James had asked the Faêran High King to rule in his place until Edward came of age. Surprisingly, or perhaps predictably, this truth did not affect history as it existed in the minds of the soldiery and the majority of the citizens of Erith, who recognised the face of their sovereign only from crudely stamped images on coins. The King-Emperor had come to be regarded as a sovereign without parallel, a paragon, the most popular ruler in history. The people would have followed him into any sort of danger. They found it difficult—nay, impossible to accept the idea that the entire Empire had been under glamour's illusion for so many years, that this monarch they loved was in fact not of their race. Popularly, the obvious explanation was that the King-Emperor had been slain at the Battle of Darke, and his ally the Faêran High King had subsequently arrived to stamp out those of his enemies who remained alive.

Now from every country came, at last, the Talith. The scattered remnants of that race gathered at Court to meet the Lady Ashalind, the betrothed of the Faêran King—she whose hair now glimmered with a golden sheen to match their own. Old and young, they came—the few who were well off and lived on the bounty of their estates; the few who were poor and who generally sold their tresses for wigs or who had gone into service, such servants being much sought after for their looks; and the majority, who dwelled in middle-income comfort.

If the Talith wondered at this newcomer in their midst, in their delight they put aside their questions. It may be that their natural curiosity was dulled by the gramarye hanging in heavy veils about the palace, drifting like incense through the corridors and halls. Avlantia's dispossessed formed a coterie about Ashalind, reviving the ancient songs and lore of their northern land, polishing their innate skills of eloquence, sharpening their scholarship, revelling in poetry, music and theatre, showing off their skills in the sports of field and track.

With her anointed eyes, Ashalind perceived the wakened Faêran of Eagle's Howe here and there at Court, sometimes where others could see them, sometimes not. They preferred to spend their time in the gardens, or riding and hawking in the Royal Game Reserves of Glincuith, rather than enclosed within walls. She thought them selfish, sternly moral, callous, cruel and kind, with a love of courteousness and an infinite capacity for joy. They were as swift to punish as to reward. She glimpsed them helping people with a wave of their hand, or bidding small (also generally unseen) wights pinch lazy servants and frowzy courtiers until their flesh appeared smudged with cobalt and charcoal.

Yet it could be argued that they were neither better nor worse than mortalkind, and in any case this sanctioning of vice and virtue was not a frequent occurrence. In general, the Faêran ignored mortals, taking more interest in their own affairs. Sometimes they mingled with the Talith, but only half a dozen mortals commanded their whole-hearted attention—Ashalind, Prince Edward, Ercildoune, Roxburgh, Alys and young Rosamonde.

One evening a flight of eotaurs came hurtling out of the sunset. Stormriders had brought tidings of the brothers Maghrain.

‘Your Majesty,' panted the Wing-Leader of the Royal Squadron, bowing low, ‘they were found as you described, standing beside the black loch. The waters were boiling, as though some violent storm raged beneath the surface.'

‘A storm indeed,' said Angavar.

‘As we speak, the Dainnan bring them here aboard a patrol frigate.'

‘You have done well.' The King dismissed them.

That night the Dainnan Windship docked at the Mooring Mast of Caermelor Palace. The Maghrain brothers were brought before Angavar and Ashalind.

She looked with joy and horror upon the red-haired men. They stood to attention, their faces blank. Neither spoke. Water trickled from their clothes. Kelp was tangled in their wet hair.

Turning to her betrothed she said, ‘Enchanted they remain! Wilt thou free them, prithee?'

‘Goldhair,' said Angavar, ‘these men have existed in Erith far beyond the span of their years. Unlike thee, they have lived and breathed every mortal moment of the last millennium. Dost thou understand what will happen, should the spell be broken?'

She paled.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘That I had not considered.' She paused pensively, for the space of six heartbeats. ‘Does one still speak only untruth, while the other is honest?'

‘Nay. That was laid on them only for the purpose of thy test. Yet two words only may be uttered by them. Down the centuries they have been permitted only “yea” or “nay”, for the Each Uisge detests the sound of men's speech.'

She went to the Ertishmen, searching their dispassionate faces.

‘Do you wish to remain enchanted?' she asked.

‘No,' replied one of the brothers. A vein stood out at the side of his neck, pumping hard. Every sinew seemed knotted, as though he strove against some mighty force. Yet he and his brother faced no visible opposition.

‘Do you know what will become of you, when you are freed?'

‘Yes,' said the other brother, whose brow was beaded with seawater, or possibly sweat. His jaw was clenched, his knuckles white, as though he strove to speak but could not.

Ashalind bit her lip. She kissed each brother on the cheek. Cold was their flesh, which for centuries had known only the touch of water under stone.

‘Then may goodness and mercy go with you, and the sun to shine upon you, and the wind ever at your backs.'

Angavar placed a hand briefly on each waxen brow.

‘
Sain
thee,' he said.

The brothers turned towards one another. Expressions of joy slowly spread across their faces. With hoarse shouts they opened wide their arms to embrace each other, but even as they leaned into the embrace, time caught up with them. Before they could meet, two columns of dust rained down upon the floor. So fine was this pollen that a slight breeze was enough to lift the particles, and they blew away.

Sometimes it was a terrible thing, to be at the side of the Master of Gramarye.

But it could also be exalting.

Always, to be in the presence of the Faêran was an exhilaration. It was like experiencing the prelude to a storm when the wind rises, the skies darken and the air is charged with magic. On the doorstep of storms the world is an altered place where anything is possible, where you become so buoyant that at any moment that gusting wind will whip you off your feet and carry you up, over lashing treetops to its elemental domain of turbulent air and purple steams. That is what it was to be with the Faêran.

How much more intoxicating to be close to the Faêran King.

‘When I am with thee, I believe I can fly!' Ashalind exclaimed.

At that, Angavar laughed aloud.

‘It would please me to see thee take thy pleasure of the sky,' he said, and he took her flying.

To fly, without visible means of support, is an ancient dream. Mortals have forever desired to fly like a bird—this was
not
that way of flying. It was not the way of a swan, dependent on muscular effort and skillful balance in gliding the lofty currents. Nor was it the sildron-borne way, the courtly, mechanised glissanding, with a flying belt for hoisting and ropes for propulsion.

The Faêran manner of levitation was like that of a mote, of thistledown, of a butterfly, a leaf, a fly, a blackbird, an arrow, an eagle, a firework a storm cloud, an ideation and more, combined—for it permitted ascents far beyond the reach of the highest flying birds, to thousands of feet above the ground where temperatures dropped to extremes and the sparse air would have been hard to breathe, had not the forces of gramarye sustained life in effortless comfort.

It was to float, weightless, amongst lofty leaves on fragile twigs, passing through bowers of foliage which swung like green spearheads—as birds could never do without breaking their feathers. It was to hang suspended above a limpid pool or the wavelets of a wide, grey mere, and then to let down one foot and dip the toes into the water. It was to jump from a cliff top, arms wide-spread, and hurtle out into the abyss, descending in a gentle curve, only to bank and climb into the low cumulus, or catch an updraught back to the cliff top, or alight halfway down the rocky face on some precipitous ledge, impossible to gain by any other means. It was to be as light as gossamer, to walk across a bed of flowers without crushing a single petal, to ride on the back of a storm with the thunder exploding in your ears and the wind racing unchecked through your veins, the outraged thunderheads towering all around like a giant city. It was to feel every nuance of change in air pressure, wind speed and direction, yet to master every fluctuation; to be as conscious, as capable of altitude and flying speed and navigation as perambulatory land-bound creatures are sensible of the act of walking.

Yet for the Faêran, flying was purely a leisurely pastime. It was no use for long-distance travel, for it was too slow—especially in the heavy airs of Erith. As a swimmer labours in the wake of a sailing ship, as a walker falls behind a chariot, that is how Faêran levitation compared to riding on winged horses or voyaging in Windships.

Thus, Ashalind and her lover made a progress on eotaurback, visiting many of the regions of Erith they loved best. When they arrived at each location they dismounted and flew, unsupported, except by gramarye.

In Lallillir, they swooped over the misty fells and down into the damp river-combes where gruagachs, like slender iris flowers, combed their buttercup hair beside reedy pools.

To Haythorn-Firzenholt they rode. There they alighted on hedge tops, disturbing their close-growing foliage no more than would a fallen leaf, for they could walk light-footed where any Erith-bound creature would sink into the green mass.

At twilight in the rolling hills of
cuinocco
country, a slender white ‘horse' shyly approached the couple and bowed its horned head, trembling with delight as Angavar's hand caressed the moonbeam arch of the neck.