The Bitterbynde Trilogy (30 page)

Garments were here also, folded in chests. It was not until her teeth began to chatter that Imrhien became aware of the aching cold eating at her bones like poison. She donned a sleeveless shirt of some lightweight gray fabric, a garment that seemed narrow enough to fit. In a moment of panic she thought her stair lost and sought it wildly, for it was out of view on the far wall. While she searched, her gaze came to rest upon the wall close at hand, in which was set a pair of double doors about sixty feet high.

She approached them and put out her hand. At a light touch they swung open, outward.

Beyond lay an even greater cavern—so vast that its ceiling and walls would have been out of sight even had they been lit by a conflagration of torches. What towered there surrealistically, like white flame, made the treasure in the first cave seem almost mundane by comparison. Mounted on shadowy crosshatchings of gantries, stanchions, transoms, and davits, a marvel shimmered; a thing out of legend. Fashioned in the shape of a swan, gleaming, ready to unfurl and fly across the water with her sails and rigging all in place, here loomed a full-size threemasted barquentine.

She was all white, except where she was silver. Her beams of bleached wood were everywhere carved like feathers, each pinion white-enameled. Taffrails, binnacle—every article of metal that would have been made of brass on another craft was here fashioned of polished silver, untarnished. Sails lay heaped along the yards like snow. The figurehead was a swan, and it lent the only color to the white ship. The ceres was a startling band of garnets like drops of blood, and almonds of jade formed the eyes.

Beside this queen of ships, the girl felt herself diminished to a child's toy. Caged in supporting fretwork, the aero-keel rose in a perfect curve far above her head, to where the great hull opened out like a giant lily. The graceful lines of the long planks were sculpted into feathers, as streamlined as the flanks of a bird.

Walking beside this vision of splendor, gazing up in awe, Imrhien saw that the elegant swan figurehead faced a second set of tall doors. These also gave under the slightest pressure of her hands and swung back to admit a blinding blare of light and noise and a roaring, living giant brandishing a spear, his arm drawn back, ready to strike her down.

Beside a river that clove its way through miles of wilderness, far from human habitation, peppercorn trees spread their boughs, dripping swaths of long leaves over a glade carpeted with springy turf.

Here stood a chair.

High-backed, this incongruity was fashioned from some dark, rubicund wood—possibly mahogany—inlaid with hammered red gold, embellished with garnets, studded with blushing rose-crystals. The feet had been carved to represent sprays of leaves, but the arms and sides and three-pointed back blossomed with a relief of poppies.

A second piece of furniture faced the first—another chair, this time of blanched pearlwood. It was the twin of the first in size and design, but ornamented with green enamel and diamonds, sculpted with lilies. Between them squatted a low table of small dimensions; it was fashioned of walnut with silver and amethysts, and its motif was the cornflower. The table was laden with a motley array of silver dishes and golden bowls—and cups, each one hollowed from a single burning crystal, and chalices twined with gold-leafed grapevines whose fruits were emeralds. Among these fake fruits, a cocktail of real fruits had been heaped. Their juices filled the cups and also filled an upturned helm that lay under some bushes next to a standing armor of lustrous yellow metal damascened with fine silver foliates.

From the open mouths of exquisite boxes and caskets and gable-lidded arks with cock's-head hinges, jewelry spilled out across the grass. Red gold in alloy with copper, yellow gold, and pale electrum had been used to produce the effect of different shades of gold, thin layers that were chased in relief and carefully inlaid to create contrasting patterns over the sides and lids of many containers. On others, a gold or silver ground had been elaborately carved out, then filled with transparent enamel to give the appearance of intaglio gems. The rest were decorated with lavishly ornate combinations of mother-of-pearl, ivory, amber, horn, bone, leather, lacquer, silver, and precious stones.

Handfuls of coins, flung in childish glee by Sianadh, lay glinting in the ferns like leaves discarded from metal trees, bright argentum, and scalding gold.

Seated on the poppy chair, the big red-haired man now tossed over his shoulder an empty goblet of chased silver and leaned toward lmrhien in the lily throne. His hands danced, portraying every word.

“We” (indicating himself and her) “are as rich as” (beginning with both extended index fingers pointing forward apart from each other, he brought them together, then raised his right hand up from the left and ended with a claw hand, palm down) “all” (making a large loop with his right hand) “the double-dealing” (pushing his index finger across his chin) “filthy” (with the knuckles of his hand under his chin, he wiggled his fingers) “fat pigs” (rocking his thumb and little finger on the opposite palm like a fat person waddling, then holding his downturned right hand under his chin and moving the fingers simultaneously up and down) “of Luindorn merchants” (forming the L-rune, followed by the miming of counting money) “put together.” (His fists made a clockwise horizontal circle.) Throwing back his head, the Ertishman roared with laughter. Then he settled himself back in the chair—which was padded with torn grass for comfort—and took up a brimming cup, sampling it with a satisfied air and watching the girl over the gleaming rim as she repeated every sign, almost to perfection.

“Ye left the fat out of the pig part.”

Having corrected his student's error, he went to check on the helm of fruit juice, which, optimistically, he was trying to coax to ferment into something stronger. Imrhien remained reclining in the priceless chair, reveling in the glow of success. Idly she flipped gold coins in the sunlight. They winked light and dark as they spun. She had never even touched gold before—not that she could remember.

There had been one appalling moment, when she had opened the rune-doors from within and stepped out under the lower waterfall, only to be mistaken for an unseelie wight and almost killed by the startled Ertishman. In her fright she had mistaken him for a spear-wielding ogre. But since that time, joy had reigned—peppered with the odd frisson of alarm, a feeling that had become almost familiar to the girl during her journeyings with Sianadh. Now Imrhien recalled with amusement the astonishment written on his features, as she emerged from the opening portals of the “mine.” In the instant of recognition he had frozen like a rough-hewn copy of a game piece, arm upraised, mouth gaping. Then the staff had dropped from his hand, accompanied by assorted Ertish expressions dropping from his lips. It was several minutes before she could get any coherent conversation from him, and
that
had been barely intelligible.

Then he had surged between the open doors at a limping run—a gait that (he grudgingly admitted later) had been caused by his climbing the bluff in search of her, passing out owing to the effects of the exertion on his damaged ribs, and waking to find himself lying flat on his back with a swollen ankle. Fortunately, the sight of abundant wealth seemed to act as an effective remedy for agony. Sianadh, crowing, lost himself for most of the day in the ship-cavern and the inner storehouse beyond. Infected by his excitement, or perhaps by some innate quality of the treasure, his companion forgot her weariness and joined him.

There had been another terrifying instance when, emerging with a silvery candlebranch in hand, Imrhien had been wrenched off her feet, to hurtle into the air at a breathtaking rate. Too late she had realized that the silver was, in fact, sildron. On releasing the object, she had fallen instantly some ten feet, to be clumsily caught by Sianadh, who deposited her on the ground in a careless heap.

“The caves be floored with andalum, girl! Be careful what ye bring into the open.
Oghi ban Callanan
, ye nearly broke my back to match my ribs and foot—ye'll be the death of the Bear!”

She frowned, misliking his choice of words.

Now a nine-branched candlestick would he floating somewhere in the upper layers of air, to be scooped by the salvage nets of some passing trade-ship or pirate jackal.

By the end of the day they had wedged open the doors with stones, furnished and redecorated their campsite, and gathered a conglomeration of fruits. It was time to feast in celebration of success.

“Two days and two nights, Imrhien, ye were away up there. And ye wonder why I went looking for ye! What a laugh—to think the doors would open to anyone who pressed the buttons in sequence. The game-board must simply have been set there for the door-makers to amuse themselves! Seems odd to me, but as they say, other races, other customs—eh, Imrhien? Ah, but no matter. All that stuff be irrelevant now—'tis the time for reveling.”

Thus began under Waterstair a happy period, a kind of golden era. Imrhien and Sianadh explored the trove, sometimes wandering awestruck in the caverns, at other times bearing chosen pieces into the sunlight. Their camping spot took on the effect of a splendid palace interior, sumptuously furnished, stamped in rich colors against a green backdrop of fern and foliage. Grass-heads tufted against inlaid mahogany table-legs. Precious stones glittered, heaped carelessly upon gray river-rocks. Birds alighted on crocketed chair-backs and on damasked helmets of war. Painted beetles crawled up the stems of chalices worth a peasant's lifetime of labor and sometimes halted, looking as if they were part of the exquisite decoration thereon. Flowers bloomed like dyed silks in the same mosses that couched golden torques with eyes of ruby. It was indeed a surrealistic pageant.

The armors shone with the nacreous colors of seashells—gleaming greens, opalescent blues, silvers swift and pure, lustrous moon-gray, and the soft golds of sunrise.

“Do ye see these armors, d'ye see from what materials they be fashioned?” asked Sianadh, fascinated. “Not so much as a steel rivet amongst them. Many of these metals I have not before seen, but I have heard of such—the platinum and iridium so beloved of the Icemen, here in alloy silver white; chromium, gold, and silver; copper as bright as Muirne's hair, dimmed by no patina of verdigris; yellow bronze and talium. I know not these even rarer types—here a metal as green as the ocean and there another blue as the evening sky—perhaps cobalt salts have been used—'tis a glasslike surface and seems like ceramic, yet is not brittle. No iron or steel can be found anywhere in this trove. Its makers misliked it for some reason.…”

He scratched his head deliberatively.

“I can only reckon on one reason.” He looked up. “
Doch
, there's a wasp in the wine!” Distracted by concern for his fermenting fruits, he hurried off without elaborating.

During these days of leisure, when there seemed no need for much haste, Sianadh was wont to recline negligently among piles of gold and jewels, telling stories of his travels in the Known Lands of Aia, various scurrilous escapades—into which he had been drawn as an unwilling, innocent, and wrongly suspected participant—and of his sister, Ethlinn, who at the age of sixteen had fulfilled her ambition to become a fully fledged carlin, to their mother's sorrow. On Littlesun Day in her sixteenth year, Ethlinn had received her carlin's Staff from the Coillach Gairm, the eldritch hag of Winter. She had given up her powers of speech in return for the ability to wield the Staff. Sianadh spoke often of his youth in Finvarna. When he talked of his native land, a light would come into his eyes and a lilt entered his voice. His eyes misted, and he would gaze as if at some far-off place.

“The gaunt cliffs along the west coast of Finvarna be the westernmost edge of the Known Lands. There the gulls scream and crowd like snow on the heights. Beyond them, thundering, the terrible ocean stretches out darkly westward and northward to where the Ringstorm rages. All of Finvarna borders upon the ocean. In the west my land be wildly beautiful, desolate, a land of mountains, lakes, bogs, and rivers. Often 'tis shrouded in low curtains of cloud. Isolated, inhospitable, and rugged be the west—mysterious and wight-haunted. The people of that region work closely with seelie dwarves in metalwork: gold, silver, bronze, and copper. The land is as harsh as the folk are kindly, generous, and hospitable. We Erts welcome everyone into our homes—members of the family, friends and acquaintances, strangers, all alike. In Finvarna we do much visiting, for we be fond of news—and we dress for the occasion, and there might be a song or two when there be visitors. Above all else, we value eloquence and music. And playing Kings-and-Queens,” he added, and after a reflective pause, “and hurling. That's a sport to live for. It is said the game was taught to my countrymen by the Strangers, in times long ago, before that race disappeared from the world. D'ye know of the game?… No? Here's the sign for it. See, it is hitting a ball with sticks, like this.” He demonstrated.

“Not that I be overpatriotic, mind. Patriotism be the cause of many a young life lost on the fields of war. I be the King-Emperor's man—an Erithan first, a Finvarnan second. Yet a
place
can call to ye, it can beckon to your very blood.” He sighed.

“In other parts, forest covers Finvarna, or wide-open rolling grassland, never enclosed by fences or walls. There the mighty herds of giant elk graze, and their antlers branching as wide as trees. Here and there ye might spy the ruins of small castles and tower-houses. South of the river lie rich farming lands, and that is where my mother's folk came from. So fair, Finvarna. So far. Will I see it again? Ach! Why should I he getting meself heartsick for me home? Homesickness be a scourge—it devours the life that feeds it. Me grandmother allus used to say, ‘There be two days ye ought never to fash yerself with—yesterday and tomorrow.'”

Sometimes the shang wind blew. reviving no tableaux in this place where humankind rarely passed. Once or twice, at dusk, the girl glimpsed, on the edge of vision, a wild, white horse etched like ivory on the forest, its single horn a lance of moonlight—one of the elusive creatures that Sianadh called
cuinocco
.