The Bitterbynde Trilogy (55 page)

“Chanticleer has the best bed of all, this night,” Thorn said with a swift smile that twanged Imrhien's senses like bowstrings.

The bird stank of stale fowl-manure. Her arms, enfolding it, were grimy and scratched, wrapped in ragged sleeves. Her dress was nothing but dirty tatters, and her face and hair must present a spectacle similar to Diarmid's—smudged, bedraggled, unkempt. The last time she had washed had been days ago in Mirrinor, splashing cold water over herself, for it was not safe to plunge into those eldritch pools to bathe. How Thorn remained unbesmirched—by some Dainnan trick or perhaps some wizard's art—was a conundrum.

“Take a drop of this.” The Dainnan unstoppered a red crystal phial and offered it to Imrhien. “It will keep the cold from you.”

She tasted the contents and passed the phial to Diarmid. The Ertishman swigged and nodded.

“That's a draft to warm the cockles of the heart, no doubt of it. What is it? For it is neither ale nor mead nor sack nor malmsey nor any cider or spirit that I have tasted.”

“It is
nathrach deirge
, called also Dragon's Blood—an elixir of herbs.”

“What tongue is it that sometimes you speak, sir? I have never heard it.”

“It is an ancient one.”

“Ah, yes of course. A Dainnan must be learned in many tongues.”

Time stretched out through the darkness. Wrapped in Thorn's cloak, with the elixir coursing warmly through her veins, Imrhien began to drowse. Just as she was about to drift away she thought she heard a knocking or tapping some way off. Too tired to care, she was soon asleep.

Her slumber was profound—a deep black pit that sucked the light out of its surroundings, so that no dreams could float above the chasm; a fathomless mine-shaft sunk into the hard layers separating the sunny, living, wind-tossed world from the carious world of grave stillness, eternal silence, and unrelenting cold.

Imrhien's eyes flew open.

The long call that had jolted her to wakefulness dwindled away, then broke out again. Harmonics bounced off the limestone walls and ran up and down the adit, crossing and recrossing each other in a cacophony of ear-splitting reverberations.

The rooster was crowing.

Imrhien clapped her hands over her ears.

“Cursed fowls!” groaned Diarmid. “Is a man not permitted some rest?”

The girl tried to hush the cockerel. It fluttered from her grasp and leaped onto her head, where its feet became entangled in her hair. It crowed a third time, then quietened, making little noises in its throat. In pain, the girl batted at the bird, which jumped awkwardly to the floor. Blood ran down her forehead and into her eye, from where its spur had pierced her scalp. A couple of feathers descended lazily in the light of the fungi.

“What ails the fowl? 'Tis the middle of the night!” Diarmid complained.

A tang of wood-smoke and a savory scent drifted down the tunnel. Imrhien looked around for Thorn, but he was nowhere to be seen. She struggled to her feet and made a grab for the rooster, which eluded her. Leaving it to its own devices, she walked with the Ertishman back along the tunnel's rising floor, through the entrance, and up out of the culvert into the open air. The cockerel followed several paces behind.

The sun had not yet lifted above the horizon. A gray predawn pallor washed over Emmyn Vale. Once again,
uhta
was on the world—that breathless hour between the marches of night and the threshold of day when nocturnal incarnations paused in their business, turning their eyes to the east, pricking up their ears; when birds began to stir sleepily in their nests, chirping tentatively as they made ready to greet the sun; when unseelie shapes and nightmares went skulking back to crannies and subtle places, there to hide from the solar glare and wait for nightfall.

There was no sign of the Foawr other than the aftermath of their battle—splintered trees, twisted bushes, gaping raw wounds in hillsides, gleaming facets of new-broken rock. Black mouths gaped from hillsides and under boulders, the entrances to the myriad caves that riddled the ground on which they stood. Daylight revealed that the adit ran into the side of a small grassy hill. The sight of this portal leading underground disturbed Imrhien, stirring a queer mingling of horror and excitement.

A fire sprang like a red lily in a stony clearing among the heather. Thorn stepped silently from the dusky trees, holding a brace of bunya cones. Errantry was perched on his shoulder. The Dainnan knelt by the fire and began to skin a dead rabbit that lay there already.

“The Foawr have done us a favor,” he said cheerfully. “A bunya pine lies shattered, its cones rolling—easy pickings.”

The bantam rooster scratched vigorously in the dirt, throwing dust over Diarmid's boot.

“First the bird wakens me, then it befouls me,” the Ertishman said grimly, unaware of his pun. “It desires a short life.”

“Such birds can be useful,” said Thorn. “Even in dark places they can tell when dawn arrives in the world outside. Many wights fear the sun, including the Foawr. At a cockerel's proclamation of the sun's imminence, even powerful wights may flee in dread.”

As she sat warming herself by the flames, Imrhien cast her mind back to her old tilhal, the wooden rooster. It had been falling apart. She had lost it to the eastsiders when she and Muirne had been abducted—Ethlinn had given her the self-bored stone tilhal to replace it. The wooden rooster had been of no value, but the racketeers had taken it anyway, probably using it to fuel their fire. How much of Waterstair's treasure had they plundered by now? Where did Sianadh's body lie—had they possessed the decency to bury him, or had they left his remains to be devoured by wild things? That great treasure lawfully belonged to the Crown. What would the King-Emperor do when he learned of its existence?

Imrhien was tempted to tell Thorn of her mission. As a warrior of the King-Emperor he would be able to help—perhaps he might secure an audience with His Majesty. She was only a tattered wanderer with a maimed face. What chance would she have of speaking personally with the King-Emperor himself? At best, her information would be relayed up to him through the hierarchy of courtiers. Yet that mattered not in the long run, she supposed—for as long as the King-Emperor received word of Waterstair and of the evil deeds of the eastsiders, her mission would be complete. She need do no more, for then the Dainnan Brotherhood would be sent forth to dispatch justice.

<>
Ethlinn had insisted,
<>

Imrhien had made the “promise” signal, and thus she was bound, if not to her word, then to her sign.

Behind the ridge the eastern horizon was now brushed with orchid-pink, but the sun's first ray was not yet visible when from behind a hillock came a grunting and a snorting as of a wild pig. Something lumbered over the hill and stood still for a moment, as if sniffing the air. It was a giant, barrel-chested man-thing, with a black pig's head and two great tusks like a wild boar's. This formidable apparition started to travel down the dark slope, lifting its feet high with its thick ham-hocks of legs. The feet were large and blunt, all the toes, however many there were, arranged in a straight row. Although it was ponderous. it moved swiftly, grunting and snuffling all the while.

Thorn remained unmoved by this apparition. “He has not seen us,” he commented. On his shoulder, the goshawk stood on one leg and nibbled a strand of his hair. Presently the pig-man moved off among the hummocks and was lost to view.

“Now you have beheld Jimmy Squarefoot,” said Thorn. “When he is a giant pig he is ridden over land and sea by the Foawr. In his present form he is a stone-thrower, like them, but he does no great damage. He is out late—before the first sunray touches the land he must find shelter—”

He broke off and leaped to his feet. Errantry flew up with a whirr and a clap of wings. Imrhien and Diarmid lifted their heads, alert for danger.

“Longbow, what approaches?”

Thorn silenced the Ertishman with a gesture. A noise grazed the edges of hearing. After a moment the Dainnan lifted the brass-mounted horn to his mouth and sounded a long note. Then he said:

“From the north I hear the winding of a Dainnan horn. One of the Brotherhood calls for aid. I must answer.”

He turned toward his companions, speaking with urgency.

“That call comes from a long distance. I must travel swiftly, and so cannot bring you with me. I may be gone for several days. It is not safe for you to remain here—you must press on by yourselves. Without my company, you must travel under the ground for this part of your journey. This region of Doundelding's surface is an eldritch crossroad. Numbers of unseelie wights may pass through here on their way north, but belowground you will encounter mostly the seelie. Follow the adit down and then straight ahead—it winds through many mines, up and down—whenever it branches, take the left-hand path, save for the third and seventh branches. If you follow these directions, you will emerge in the west of Doundelding. If not, you will lose yourselves in the labyrinth and perish. Now, I must make haste. Drink only flowing water, never water that stands. Provision yourselves well and light
no fires
in the mines. Take these.”

He thrust the red phial, the cloak, and some other gear into their arms. Placing a hand lightly on Diarmid's shoulder, he looked down at him—for the Dainnan was the taller by an inch or two—and said gravely:

“Captain, I would enjoin you to protect this damsel, but where native wit is of more use than a strong arm, she may prove the protectress. Yet, guard her with your strength, I do charge you. Both, come safely through.”

Diarmid opened his mouth to protest, but again Thorn silenced him.

“There is no time. Already it may be too late.”

<> The girl's hands fell to her sides, palms turned outward, empty. He stepped so close, then, that the pine-fragrance of him infused her senses. His glance pierced like a shard shawled in velvet, for there was a gentleness to its edge. Softly he spoke:

“May our parting not be for long, Gold-Hair.”

Errantry rose on his pinions with a sound like rushing wind. The Dainnan tilted back his head, his eyes following the bird's flight. His profile was drawn finely against the blushing sky of sunrise.

Then he was away.

As the sun lifted itself up over the blasted vale, Imrhien and Diarmid breakfasted in morose silence. Morning brought with it the first stirrings of a shang wind. The rooster pecked and strutted around authoritatively, obviously in charge now that the goshawk had departed. It had taken a liking to Diarmid, who kept pushing it away with his elbow and elaborately refraining from cursing it, to prove himself gentlemanly. Imrhien hardly noticed. She thought she must have swallowed a stone during the night, and it had lodged in her chest, just above the heart. She had become aware of it only after Thorn had gone. Her throat constricted, and she could not eat.

Few birds called from the surrounding countryside. A cold wind was blowing—the place seemed cheerless. As the travelers picked around the fallen boughs of the bunya pine, collecting as many nuts as they could cram into the pouches, the tinkling of a million miniature bells came over the hills. It was as though a meadowful of snowdrop flowers with tiny clappers were bowing under a breeze. The strange clouds of the shang blotted out the sun. Soft airs plucked at their clothes. Imrhien wanted to run on the hilltops, to spring into the air and see if the wind would buoy her up, would lift her into the sky and away from the ache of loss. Diarmid would disapprove—not that she cared.

Instead she tied on her taltry.

Rocks glittered with points of silver light. On a hillside a bloody skirmish was taking place between two bands of see-through warriors in old-fashioned mail and plumed helmets. They were up to their knees in turf, the ground level having altered since their day. Closer still, a young couple in peasant garb ran up a slope, he dragging her by the hand—she was exhausted. Fear was written on both their faces as they stared back over their shoulders at whatever had pursued them, long ago. Who they were and what they were running from was now lost and forgotten.

By the time the unstorm had passed, the travelers had packed and were ready to leave. They looked about for the entrance to the adit, and that was when consternation first set in. For there were numerous underground entrances puncturing the hills, and most of them were adits with cuttings running down into their mouths.

“We are left to ourselves for half an hour and already we are lost,” Diarmid expostulated as they searched. “Perhaps any one of these would do … I surmise that all are interconnected.”

Imrhien shook her head. Thorn's directions had been specific—the wrong entrance could lead them in the wrong direction, into peril.

Eventually they sat down, at a loss.

“We shall have to find it before nightfall,” the Ertishman said grimly. “That Jimmy Squarefoot will be abroad, and who knows what else may roam after sunset.”

The girl gave a start and looked around wildly.

“No need to be troubled yet!” he said.

<>

“I know not. I care not.”

Imrhien went looking for the rescued bird and saw it sitting on a hilltop. When she approached, it scuttled away down the other side of the hill. Following its trail, she came to the very entrance of the sought-after adit—she recognized it by a jutting limestone protuberance resembling a giant's nose. The rooster was already inside, darting after flies. The girl climbed back to the hilltop and waved her arms to hail her companion. In a moment he was beside her, and she led him to the tunnel where the bird was pecking.

“Then it has a use after all, the witless fowl,” he grunted, but his smile revealed his gladness.