The Bitterbynde Trilogy (53 page)

This was a wild, stamping dance of rural origin—there was nothing courtly about it. The girl could not copy the henkies' grotesque squatting goose-step or the trows' intricate hobbling, but it mattered not—each capered in his own manner. Partners were tossed from one to another, progressively around the ring. Faces blended into a blur, and the excited cries reached a new pitch. How long the dance went on, Imrhien could not say, but at the end she felt refreshed instead of tired, and warm with a tingling of the blood.

Thorn's white wolf-smile flashed out of the darkness. Little folk milled around their tall visitors, bowing deeply, speaking in a strange tongue. They did not appear at all irked by the presence of strangers in their midst—quite the contrary, it was evident they were delighted.

<> Imrhien signed, glowing.

“One more. With one partner.”

At his words, Imrhien was moved with a joy beyond understanding.

In their enthusiasm, the musicians had recruited a second fiddler to play harmonies. They danced, then, the Dainnan and the girl—so close, so very close, but never, ever touching. Neither did a lock of his hair flick her shoulder or the hem of her dress brush against his boot; that was how precisely they danced. Later, looking back on this night, Imrhien could not clearly recall the slow beauty of the inhuman harmonies or her wonder at the clear eyes that smiled down on her, only the way the wind lifted his long dark hair like spreading wings.

As they were leaving the revelry, a lone trow-boy wandered up to them, weeping sadly. He spoke in the common speech, but with a thick brogue, as though his tongue had difficulty getting around the words.

“Hae ye ony sulver, ma'am? Hae ye ony, sir, Your Lordship?”

“Go—get along to the dance,” said Thorn, not ungently.

“An it please ye, they will na' tak' me back, sir! They will na' let me in. I be banished frae Trowland and condemned to wander forever among the lonesome places.”

“Why were you banished?”

“Och, an' I stealed summat, sir, but I meant no harm, and it were sae bonny, all o' sulver. But it were the King's spoon, sir, the King o' the Trows. I gived it back, I did, but they'll nae let me in again, save for once a year on Littlesun Eve when I be allooed to veesit Trowland for a
peerie
start—but a' I gets is eggshells tae crack atween me teeth followed by a lunder upon me lugs and a wallop ower me back. So I wanders
wanless
, poor object!”

“But so it must be, for that's your law.”

The trow-boy went away, weeping afresh.

<>

“When it comes to themselves!” Thorn interjected. “Trows are no paragons of honesty—they will steal from other races. Yet their ethics dictate that they must never thieve anything from one of their own kind. It is a precept more far-reaching than any statute of mortal men. Laws can be made and unmade. They can be disputed by those who are bound by them. Like all wights, trows may break their code, but they are unable to disbelieve or challenge it. Their code is in their making, as natural and immutable as the laws that govern the tides and the phases of the moon, the rise and fall of the sun, and the budding of blossoms in Spring and the blossoming of frost in Winter. And trows are partial to silver,” he added. “If Diarmid has not been watchful, he may find that the hunting-horn is betrayed.”

They returned to the grassy dell to find that the silver-clasped horn had escaped being stolen. Diarmid related how Errantry had hurtled screaming from the trees to attack the sly gray hand that had reached down to snatch it. Frightened off, the thief had fled.

The goshawk kept vigil all through the hours of darkness, sparing the travelers the duty of taking turns at the watch, but Imrhien harbored more than a suspicion that Thorn scarcely slept and that if he did, it was only lightly. If ever she woke at night, she would see him sitting with his back to a tree, gazing up at stars thick as frost overhead, or perhaps standing outlined against their incandescent glory and looking out across the distant hills while a soft breeze lifted streamers of his hair and spread them out in a great, dark fan. Or he would not be there at all, but she would know somehow that he was not far away and that his watchful eyes would spy any danger, and that she and Diarmid were safe with him, for now. Beyond that, there was also a knowledge that under certain conditions they might not be safe with him, and that if aroused, his ire would be terrible, his retribution swift and sure. Like fire, he was a powerful ally but would be a dangerous enemy.

Often she wondered about Thorn. She had glimpsed the mote of callousness in him, born of a kind of amorality. Deeply he cared for beauty and for honor. He was kind, and he loved laughter—but he could find no sympathy for cripples or outcasts. Save for one. Then perhaps he did not consider her to be a cripple or an outcast. If not for pity, then why had he danced with her? She was not foolish enough to believe that one so proud and comely, so enamored of beauty as he, could enjoy looking upon her face—or that one accustomed to the witty repartee of courtiers and cityfolk parrying with their fine-honed words like rapiers could enjoy the company of a mute. What, then? Only that maybe it was a game to him, to play with hearts like hers and drag them on a string.

The sun rose incarnadine. Its early rays tinted a creeping Autumn mist that softened the landscape, hiding in secret rifts, smoking from secluded valleys like rows of cottage chimneys.

For breakfast there was nothing except a handful of walnuts and clear water from a rocky rill. The travelers set out soon after waking. The sky was a sheet of bleached satin. In its luminous heights a hawk circled. Suddenly the bird folded his wings and fell out of the sky with a speed that made the air whistle through his pinions. The thump of collision was borne to the travelers from three hundred yards away. A sparse drift of feathers hung where once a pigeon had flown. The wind teased them out like the tail of a kite, scattering them across the sky. Errantry lifted on the crescents of his wings, carrying off his kill.

“Hawks dine well, but we have left the lands of plenty behind us,” sighed Diarmid as they reached the crest of a long, windswept shoulder. “These lands are barren. Here I shall seek wood-pigeons, grouse, and rabbits.”

“Look down there,” said Thorn, indicating with a sweep of his hand. “Bunya pines and lillypilly trees grow in the valley. Upon Alderstone Edge, apple-berry vines climb over the ruins.”

A ridge on the other side of the valley ran for miles, from north to south. At intervals along its top stood crumbling pele towers. Nowhere near tall enough to be Relay Stations or Interchange Turrets, they were square and stubby structures of ancient stone, in various stages of disrepair.

“I'll warrant those are the old Watchtowers of the borders,” said the mercenary, “built long ago, when Doundelding was divided east from west. The borders are long since blurred and forgotten, but the Watchtowers remain. Their foundations are said to delve down a long way, and to be rooted in eldritch places.”

“Our path lies over that ridge,” said Thorn.

The going was difficult, for the ground was uneven and the grasses grew thick and tussocky. They reached the first stand of bunya pines about midmorning. The Dainnan threw down his gear, took off his boots, and began to drag strong vines off neighboring bushes. Above their heads, the bustling bunyas reared some three hundred feet into the sky, seeming to topple against a backdrop of scudding cloudlets. Their topmost boughs, like skinny outstretched arms ending in leafy hands, stirred the wind.

The Dainnan placed his dagger between his teeth and slung a vine around the nearest trunk. After knotting the rest of the creeper around his waist, he ascended without apparent effort. He would lean back against the vine, take two steps up the side of the tree, then lean in to take the pressure off the vine and simultaneously shift it farther up. By repeating these actions, he reached the heights where the huge cones grew and threw them down as he cut them. When they hit the ground, thumb-size nuts exploded out across the grass.

Once he had belayed the vine to a stout bough, Thorn passed it under one thigh and over the opposite shoulder so that it could be paid smoothly and gradually as he rappeled down.

“Bunyas are always prolific,” he said, springing down to land on the grass, “but every three years they are more so. Fortunately, this happens to be one of those years.”

They feasted until they could feast no more, then packed the pouches full of nuts and went on their way. Soon they encountered a sunken path winding between grassy banks. It led them to a line of stepping-stones across a stream and then up a slope scattered with lillypillies. Great, luscious bunches of fat pink berries dripped among their dark glossy leaves—these came easily to hand when the harvesters reached for them.

The little path wound uphill, toward the summit of Alderstone Edge. It was after noon by the time they reached the highest point. On the other side, the land dropped sharply away to a sparsely wooded valley pitted with craters. Huge boulders lay on their sides and in piles, some cracked open as if they had been flung carelessly by some giant hand.

“Emmyn Vale,” said Thorn. “Once its slopes were fair, covered with pine and sloe and heather. Now they are bleak, the seasonal haunt of felhens and other wights.”

The barren slopes of Thunder Mountain loomed closer now. To left and right, the line of ruined Watchtowers marched at wide intervals along the spine of land. The wind was strong up here, and cold, galloping out of the southwest. Heavy clouds obscured the sun, darkening the landscape. They seemed to bode ill. Far off, a bird of prey, possibly Errantry, folded its wings and plummeted like a stone. A cawing of crows or rooks came creaking on the breeze.

“This is too steep,” declared Diarmid, looking down. “We must find another place to descend.”

The smoking clouds thickened. It was as though a shang storm were on its way, but without the sensation of fizzing in the blood. Yet no glimmering airs of gramarye came rushing to scatter powdered lights over the landscape—instead there came a lull in the susurration of the wind.

Thorn stopped and stood quite still, as if listening.

“What is it?” Diarmid presently asked.

“Dunters.”

“Dunters?”

“A noise of them issues from the old towers.”

Roofless, jagged, the nearest pele tower stood open to the sky, its window-holes watching.

“Walk staunchly past the tower walls,” said Thorn. “Do not stop or show fear.”

Imrhien began to hear a constant noise, which swelled as they approached the ruin—a noise like the beating of flax or the grinding of barley in a hollow stone quern. Closer to the tower, it grew so loud that it was almost unbearable. It vibrated in Imrhien's ears and fibrillated in the cavities of her skull, it trembled in the very ground and the bones of her feet. As they drew level with the ruins, the grinding stopped abruptly.

A thick dough of silence fell, heavy and deafening.

<> This she signaled to Diarmid, who had hesitated, his hand on his skian. They moved on.

The pele tower stood still and quiet. There was no sign of movement from its blank windows and overgrown walls, except for the nodding tendrils of apple-berry vines. Whatever lurked inside made no sound, but Imrhien sensed a watching and a waiting so intense that it suffused the surrounding airs with a tension as brittle as dry leaves. As soon as the travelers had moved a few paces past the building, the noise broke out anew, as loud and constant as before. The tension abated. The girl breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

With distance, the dunters' grinding gradually died away.

“What do they look like, the dunters?” asked the Ertishman.

The Dainnan raised one eyebrow. “No mortal has ever seen them.”

The ground beneath their feet began to drop away rapidly toward the valley floor.

“Can you climb down here, lady?” Thorn asked Imrhien. She shook her head doubtfully. The slope was precipitous. Hampered by ragged skirts, she was uncertain whether she could negotiate it.

“Then we shall go farther on this downward path. We shall bear north along the land's spine and make for that squat tower yonder. If I read its shape aright, that is the Twenty-ninth Keep. Once past it, the fall to the lowlands on the west side is gentle—you shall have no trouble there. But if we must pass through the Twenty-ninth Keep, beware. For years a redcap was wont to skulk therein, and he maybe lurks there still. If so, then doubtless his cap is by now quite faded. In this unoccupied region it must be a good while since he colored it with redcaps' favorite dye, and he will welcome the sight of mortals.”

They turned then to the north and followed the ridge top until they came to the next pele tower. The wind had risen again, and wisps of dark cloud began to move in from the southwest. Under a marbled sky, the Twenty-ninth Keep loomed, a square, buttressed fortress of verdigrised stone. At its top some crenellations still remained—perhaps even some part of its roof. Certainly the south wall, facing the travelers, had well withstood the ravages of time and tempest. Starved arrow-slits squeezed themselves between massive stones, some of which, higher up, jutted out to form slight ledges on which entrepreneurial plants had taken root. The stonework was fretted all over with vines.

The Twenty-ninth Keep straddled the narrowest part of the ridge. On either side of it the ground fell away in a sheer drop—the only way past was through.

The travelers halted at the doorless archway, which was curtained by vines that had lost most of their foliage. Only shriveled, dry leaves remained clinging and small oval fruits—apple-berries. The wind rattled the vine-stems and soughed eerily high in the chinks of broken stone. There was no other sound.

The Ertishman squinted up at a weather-blurred inscription over the entrance.