The Bitterbynde Trilogy (32 page)

Whistling a jolly tune, the Ertishman shouldered a fine-honed, splendidly decorated war-axe and went to cut saplings to build the raft. The girl helped him lash them together with lengths of spidersilk fabric, the local vines being far too fragile for the task.

“We shall build it stout and strong in case we meet with rapids on the way,” the Ertishman proclaimed enthusiastically. “With any luck we shall encounter no waterfalls—aye, but should we, that would be a ride to speak of!”

His strewn toys Sianadh removed back to the caves so as to leave no evidence.

When for the last time they swung the rune-doors together in the lower cave, the travelers wedged a precautionary stone sliver to keep them apart, just a crack, awaiting their return.

“Never trust an apparatus or an enchantment to work the same way twice!”

The waterfall flung miniature water-prisms, fracturing daylight into seven colors. An evanescent spectrum was entangled in its hair.

The raft, as shipshape as could be managed, had already been launched. It waited, bobbing on the river beside the campsite, tugging at its mooring-rope: four long-sleeved spidersilk shirts knotted together. On this craft lay the three full caskets, firmly tied on, which would also serve as seats, plenty of spidersilk ropes of various gauges, some boughs of yew in case the raft needed repairing along the way, clumsily woven rush baskets filled with pennyfoil leaves to repel Culicidae, and a small mound of fruit that would wither if not consumed at their next meal.

The spirits of the travelers were high. Whether owing to some property of the Faêran fruit, the cold purity of the riverwater, or some other factor, their various wounds and scrapes had healed quickly during their eighteen-day sojourn at Waterstair. Imrhien could have sworn her locks had grown a full inch or more. Sianadh had lost his limp, and his chest-pain had eased.

They stepped aboard, two gray-clad figures seeming clothed in twilight, and shoved off from the bank with long wooden poles. High on the escarpment at their backs, hidden figures made of light and dark faced each other, staring silently into the approaching years.

The current took the raft around a curve in the river. Looking back, the girl could not see the perpetual curtain beyond the bend, but her ears caught its long sigh receding, and between the trees she glimpsed a flicker of silver that might have been the mane or tail of a horse made of starlight.

At the journey's beginning, the river chivvied its way between low, gently sloping banks. Succulent grasses fringed it, and long-haired casuarinas, and azure jacarandas whose fallen flowers, like broken pieces of sky, were drifting in the current. The sun hammered white flints off the water. Songbirds strung glassy notes together like strings of beads.

“This little flood has no name, to my knowledge,” Sianadh expounded. “It was marked on the map as merely ‘a river.' I name it Cuinocco's Way. Did ye see it, the white horse with the long horn like a javelin? I thought I beheld it for one instant. Ach, we can speak of it now, but 'tis not wise to speak of such creatures when in their domains, even though they be seelie. It be not proper to name them where they might hear ye. Its presence was strong—it haunted my dreams, which was a nice change. Such majesty and strength, such beauty—I would give much to possess a creature like that. We have been fortunate. Few folk have ever caught sight of it, or of
them
—only one
cuinocco
or many, who can guess? Many have hunted the beast, but none have captured it. 'Tis known to frequent this kind of pleasant country, with galloping hills and secret glades, and where the
cuinocco
is, unseelie things do not go.”

He began to hum a tune.

The water bore them along on its back. Cautious of the not entirely stable nature of the raft, they pushed away from banks and protruding rocks with twisted branches of bay-wood.

Gradually the banks rose higher until the raft was bowling along through the shadowed cleft of the ravine past the wighthaunted forest and riding south on the tipsy waters.

Their fruit withered at the end of the first day, but they did not put ashore to search for more. Sianadh refused to leave the safety of running water until the haunts of the Direath were far behind. When dusk inked the air, dimming vision, he threw a mooring-rope over an outlying branch of a willow that leaned far out over the river. The long evening stretched into a lute-string plucked by the penetrating drone of cicadas, who lurked unseen in the trees.

Now that they had passed beyond the borders of the country of the horned horse, Imrhien felt the eyes of other things, invisible eyes, watching. An uneasiness crept upon her—she began to think of the unseelie water wights Sianadh had described. The river glimmered gray under the light of the moon, and the trees gathered along the banks like black sentinels. All through the night, the travelers remained damp but afloat, scarcely daring to sleep for visions of thin, bloodless hands reaching out of the water, trailing weed, and cold eyes the color of limes, unblinking, lidless. Once, a scum-dripping horse's head emerged partway above the water and regarded them out of the pits of its skull for some while before slowly sinking underwater again.

It seemed that during the night, Sianadh's good spirits had been stolen away. The next morning, bleary-eyed and grumbling about the aching hollow in his belly, he fought to untangle the spidersilk rope from the willow's clutches while his companion moved back and forth to balance the violently rocking craft.

“I'll make a longbow this very day to shoot our dinner, or me name ain't Sianadh Kavanagh!” The Ertishman's voice rang, unnaturally loud on the still airs, skipping off the water like a pebble. “I care not if we have to eat the kill raw—and that we shall do, ye ken, unless ye be a master of that Dainnan trick of spinning wood on wood to make fire.”

Imrhien shook her head. She too was gnawed by hunger but would refuse meat, cooked or uncooked, since she couldnot abide the smell or taste of dead flesh. In any case, it seemed doubtful whether Sianadh would be able to fashion weapons out of spidersilk and the few thin boughs of willow and yew on board, but he had made up his mind. He fell silent and sat whittling with a horn-hilted dagger inlaid with gold. The raft drifted downstream.

As they passed among celadon curtains of willow withies near the western bank, Sianadh muttered, “I wish I had not shouted out me true name back there. If there weren't pointy eldritch ears a-listening, I'm an Iceman.”

Daylight welled out of the sky with the amber mellowness of honey-mead. Otters frolicked and splashed beneath trees along the riverbank. In placid backwaters, fish leaped up like silver spear-blades. Secretive holes among the roots at the water's edge indicated the presence of platypus or water-rats. A line of ducks rowed upstream. The Ertishman inaccurately projected stones at them from a makeshift slingshot, expressing a fervent wish for a baited fishhook or a bird-net. He whittled so savagely that he was in danger of cutting off his fingers, and he caught duck-feathers floating on the water with which to fletch his crude arrows.

They gathered handfuls of watercress that did nothing to assuage hunger. Imrhien leaned out over the raft-side and looked past the dapple and satin gloss of sunlight on the surface, gazing far down into the depths into a world of waving weeds. Abruptly she recoiled, almost upsetting the pallet.

Feminine forms as pale as corpse-wraiths were gliding, swooping, diving beneath the raft. Their hair was long and green, like fine seaweed. Membranous robes wafted gently around their slim white feet. Sianadh peered over the side.

“Asrai,” he grunted, “seelie. Wights cannot be eaten. Do not bother with them.”

By the afternoon, he had fashioned a yew long-bow strung with spidersilk cord and three off-balance arrows. Imrhien had occasionally been witness to the butchering of domestic animals for the Stormrider tables, had seen injuries resulting from various accidents in the servants' quarters, and unwillingly viewed aeronauts being run through with pirate scimitars. Considering she had managed to conquer an initial squeamishness at the sight of blood, she felt oddly disturbed at the prospect of some wild creature dying, impaled on one of those barbless, sharpened shafts.

<>

“The way this ditch wanders about, it might be four or five days before we reach Tarv. I should fade away to a mere shadow of my former self if I waited until we arrived in the city to get food. Would ye be wanting to turn up in town beside a shadow,
chehrna?
Now, we must tie up and go ashore. I'll not risk losing arrows in the water, shooting at river-rats from this unriverworthy craft. Besides, there shall be better game off-water.”

By now, Cuinocco's Way had meandered out from among the parklike hills on the one hand and the dark uplands on the other. On both sides, ferny banks rose sharply toward ridges densely wooded with silver birches. The trees were misted with cucumber-green and steeped in cool shadows amid the heat of the month of Arvarmis.

Long ago, an old willow-tree had fallen into the river. Most of its roots had failed to hold on to the crumbling banks, yet some were still embedded therein. Silt had built up along the half-submerged trunk, and a backwater had formed. A quiet pool gleamed there, into which flag-lilies lowered their blue reflections. The travelers secured the raft to a branch jutting from the trunk and disembarked. Halfway up the slopes, Sianadh found himself hampered by his spidersilk cloak. Impatiently he unpinned it and let it fall to the ground. The girl caught at his sleeve, gesturing back at the raft.

<>

Sianadh pondered.

“Ye may be right, lass. Wights be full of mischief. As soon as our backs are turned, they are likely to turn our craft upside down, or cut the rope and let it drift away with our wealth on board, to break up against some snag.” He scratched his beard, furrowing his weather-beaten brow. “Yet I will need your help up there in the timber. By rights ye ought to go upwind and beat the bushes, to flush the game toward me. Ach! What a two-headed puzzle! Shall I risk my future as a rich man for a feed of raw flesh? I shall,” he added quickly, hearing his stomach growl. “But ye, stand at the top of the ridge where ye can keep an eye on the raft. If anything comes near, run down and knock its head off. If any true and
lorraly
beast comes blundering out of the forest, wave your arms and scare it back toward me, so I can make breakfast of it. If owt unseelie-looking comes out at ye, get down to the running water. But never fear—either way, the Bear shall win out.”

It was Imrhien's turn to frown. This idea seemed confused, harebrained, and risky.

<scothy
. Not kill.>>

“
Scothy
, eh? Well, perhaps 'tis true.…” The Ertishman nodded philosophically. “Howbeit, I have come this far, and I will go on.”

Taking a firmer grip on the makeshift longbow, he climbed up over the cliff's lip and was soon out of sight.

Imrhien clambered in his footsteps, the wiry bracken-fern springy beneath her bare feet. She stood and waited, looking around warily. Below, the river flowed past and the raft tugged lazily on its tether. Above, the birches stood silent on the ridge top. When had such a hush fallen on the leaf-roofed landscape, such a breathless stillness? No birds sang, no leaves jostled. Even the chuckle of the river seemed to have faded.

And it seemed to Imrhien that some kind of pressure was building, that a mighty weight was crushing her like an ant, pinching her between land and sky. There was a wrongness, a flaw, in the surface of this natural world. Horror seized her by the throat, and she could not move. She stood alone, more isolated than ever she remembered, waiting for a killing to occur.

From somewhere in the birches' green fog, a shout burst the silence. Something that was moving too fast for a man crashed through the woodland, snapping twigs in its haste. As the invisible menace approached, the girl gathered her courage and braced herself, staff upraised, ready to defend or flee. Several yards away, the crashing burst out from the cover on the ridge top, then whatever had caused it dashed back in. The noise of its progress ceased abruptly.

It had been a young doe.

Imrhien went after it. She followed the deer's short trail to a small glade where the animal had fallen. She lay struggling to get up, her flanks heaving, eyes dark with fear and pain. Long red streaks striped her side, welling from where the arrow's fletched end stuck out from the shoulder. A swish of leaves announced death's arrival. Sianadh shouldered out of the undergrowth and stood with dagger drawn, triumph blazing like beacons from his blue eyes. In the same instant he looked across the body of the wounded creature and met his companion's level stare.

Her hands hung limply at her sides. Her eyes spoke.

After a long moment, the Ertishman reached down with a smooth, practiced movement, the movement of one who had been raised on a farm and knew how to use a blade cleanly. But the knife was no longer in his hand. He had sheathed it, and when he straightened, he held the red arrow. He stepped back.

A pressure split down the middle and fell aside in two halves like a walnut. Birds sang, the river gurgled. A fly went by.

With some trouble, the doe heaved herself up and stood shuddering on her long legs.

“Get along, then.”

Sianadh turned away, cursing under his breath. The doe melted into the forest, leaving only crimson blossoms on bruised grass.

“She will live.” The man glanced sourly at his companion from beneath beetling brows. “The shaft did not go deep, and they know where to find the healing herbs.”

Imrhien tried to smile at him. Then she recalled the raft.

Made fleet by panic, she turned and ran through the trees to the cliff top. The high vantage point afforded a glimpse of the river—and of creatures crowding among the flag-lilies around the raft—creatures that had chewed at the spidersilk mooring-rope, freeing the raft from its tether. Already the vessel was beginning to depart from the banks of the leafy backwater. The girl flew down the slope to the water's edge. With a mighty effort she sprang, leaping through the air across the widening gap between rocky shore and wooden platform. At the last moment the raft swung out from under her feet. She made a desperate, useless grab at it. Water slammed up into her face, and down into a weird, breathless world she plunged.