The Bitterbynde Trilogy (64 page)

“I must go. Diarmid calls. Sleep well, dear friend, since that is your wish—I shall greet you again in the morning.”

A knot of people opened up to receive Muirne and closed behind her again. Thorn was by now seated on a table, the center of a sea of attentive faces. They hung on his every word. The tavern-girls blushed each time they glanced in his direction.

Guided by the girl who had first served them, Imrhien stole upstairs and retired to bed. She lay for hours staring at the warped rafters, wondering about White Down Rory and listening to the songs and laughter and hubbub from below. She could clearly hear what was going on in the common room. A customer had produced a puzzle-cup in the form of a double vessel, one bowl forming the inverted base of the other, which swiveled between brackets. Several uninitiated applicants were invited to drink from it and predictably drenched themselves, to the entertainment of the onlookers. The jollity increased when someone else brought out a three-merry-boys fuddling cup, a trio of mugs whose bodies were joined and whose handles were interlinked so that they had to be emptied simultaneously to prevent spillage. With the roistering in full swing, the patrons were ordering ale and cider in measures: pottles, noggins, tappit hens, mutchkins, and thirdendales. Rowdy song arose.

Later, oddly, the talk quietened. More sobering tidings were discussed. Hordes of unseelie things had been passing through in the night, and these days the innkeeper made certain his doors were heavily barred with iron at sunset.

As Imrhien listened, half dozing in her bed, ever and anon a tall, lithe shadow moved across her thoughts. The shutters of her window blew open in the breeze. A big black bird flapped out of the night, landed on the sill, and flew away again. When she got up to fasten the shutters properly, there was no sign of it.

In the morning, a wagon stood ready and packed on the cobblestones of the inn-yard. Muirne's companions were climbing aboard. A stableboy went running, an ostler called out orders. Sparrows perched on posts, watching for crumbs. A green-varnished saurian crouched atop a rain-butt, its spiny tail curling down like a hook. Behind a pile of bags and barrels, someone was whistling. The yard was busy with preparations for travel.

Thorn stood by a side-door. The innkeeper, rotund, rubicund, and balding—as seemed almost obligatory for those who pursued his trade—and swathed in a large smirched apron, stood before him, bowing repeatedly. The man's voice carried across the yard.

“'Tis an honor, sir, an honor, I assure you, sir. Please accept the night's lodging and all expenses on the house, sir, if it please you, and all the very best to you and those of your fellowship. We don't see many of Roxburgh's knights here, no indeed, sir, even being as we are so close to the Royal City, so to speak—but they're always welcome any time, at the Crown and Lyon.” He pressed gifts of food on the Dainnan, who waved most of them away, laughing. Many a covert glance was being cast his way from the staff and the inn-patrons moving about. They watched him with awe, not openly but from a respectful distance, feigning preoccupation with their business.

Imrhien had paid Diarmid's bill. To his consternation, he had recalled too late that his money-pouch lay submerged somewhere in the meres of Mirrinor, and in the heat of the moment he had landed himself badly in debt. Imrhien still retained her own pouch with its three jewels concealed under Janet's clothes, but she paid the innkeeper with one of the sovereigns that had remained secure in the linings of her old, ruined traveling outfit—for which she received seven shillings and sixpence change. The Ertishman's discomfiture knew no bounds—to be indebted to a girl was more than he could bear—but Muirne's money, too, was scarce, and there was nothing else for it.

“To you I owe my life and now my purse,” Diarmid said awkwardly to Imrhien. “I shall repay you, I promise, just as soon as I receive my first wages.”

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“Will you not accompany us to Isenhammer?” Muirne pleaded.

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“I will escort you, then,” Diarmid said heavily. “It is not safe to travel alone, especially for a woman.”

“Go your way to Isenhammer, Captain Bruadair,” interrupted a musical voice. “The road to White Down Rory is fair in all seasons, and I would fain take a stroll along it.” Thorn had crossed the yard to where they stood.

Diarmid's halfhearted protestations were overruled. He looked constantly toward his sister and the loaded wagon bound for Isenhammer. Plainly he was relieved to be absolved of his perceived duty toward Imrhien.

“Then, I shall go with Muirne,” he said at last. “My lady Imrhien, prithee send word to let us know where you are lodging, and I shall have repayment delivered to you with all speed.” Now that he was taking his leave, he spoke with painful courtesy, unable to meet Imrhien's eyes. “I … you have been kind …” His words trailed away. Turning to the Dainnan, the Ertishman lifted his head.

“My lord,” Diarmid said, clearly moved, “if I am successful in assaying for the Brotherhood, then I would have only one boon in the world left to wish for—that I might do my duty under your command.”

“That may yet come to pass,” said Thorn. Abruptly, Diarmid dropped down on one knee and bent his head. After a moment, as if bestowing on him some title of honor, Thorn touched him on the shoulder.

“Rise, brave captain, and good speed. Fare well.”

Diarmid stood up. “Fare well, both my companions on the Road,” he said. “May we meet soon.”

He bowed deeply to them both, then, as an afterthought, suddenly enveloped Imrhien in a swift embrace and jumped up onto the wagon. Imrhien's hands danced urgently.

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Diarmid reached down and helped his sister climb aboard. Then Imrhien tossed up a wrapped package to them. It contained the fire-red ruby. If her friends should not find success in Isenhammmer, at the least they would not have to beg on the streets. Before they had a chance to find out what the parcel contained or even to call out their thanks, the driver gave a shout. With the crack of a whip, a clatter of hooves, and a rattle of iron wheels, the wagon moved out through the archway, turned into the road, and bowled away.

It had rained during the night. Thorn's and Imrhien's boots swished through wet leaves. Lacking polish, Imrhien's allowed water in. Soon her feet were drenched. The grasses by the verge, tall and cream-colored amid new blades of pale wine-green, bowed their heads in obeisance to the faintest caress of air. Thrushes trilled. Errantry soared overhead, scattering the songbirds, then swooped to alight on the Dainnan's shoulder. He raised his feathers, shook them into place, opened his hooked beak in silent commentary, and snapped it shut.

Sunlight brushed Imrhien's skin with warm flakes, although the breeze was knife-sharp and bitter. Stamped against a blue enamel sky, the first wattle-blooms of Winter bubbled in bright, soft gilt on the trees and powdered the distance with gold-dust. Oak-leaves yet clung to ancient groves by the wayside, in masses of bronze and saffron that could not outshine the wattles' glory. But Imrhien might as well have been walking in a black tunnel under Doundelding, being blind to all save the path before her feet and deaf to all save the voice of he who walked beside her.

The road to White Down Rory ran up and down, through trees that parted occasionally to allow glimpses of rolling meadows and wooded slopes beyond and secret, misty dells threaded by streams glimmering like electrum. The way rolled down into one of these dells and ran beside a willow-lined beck that widened into a pool. Dragonflies flickered across its surface—at least, they appeared to be dragonflies until one looked closely. In fact, the forms between those shimmering double vanes were tiny folk, much smaller than siofra. Toadlike waterleapers scattered into the reeds at the approach of the intruders, flapping their fans of wings. When fully grown they would be huge and quite terrible, if they survived to adulthood.

There the travelers stopped to rest, and from a wallet given him by the innkeeper Thorn produced great doorsteps of bread and thick slices of ham. Her heart sickened by the imminence of parting, Imrhien could not bring herself to eat. Presently he put the food away without sampling it himself.

All the way, as they walked side by side, he had laughed and sung and they had made jokes in hand-speak, and she had taught him the sign for “shang.” Travelers coming the other way on horseback had hailed them blithely, without pausing, and he had called a greeting in answer. Now he fell quiet, meditative, watching the still pool with its reflections of bare willow-withes and dormant cloudlets. The goshawk perched on a branch and closed his mad orange eyes.

Where the stream entered the pool, Imrhien found smooth, water-worn stones, flat ones, and skipped one across the water to break Thorn's reverie. He looked up with his flash of a smile like a piercing blow to the heart and came, surefooted as a lynx, to the stream.

“How many times can you skip a stone?”

Having practiced with Sianadh at Waterstair, Imrhien had almost perfected the subtle flick of the wrist. After a few tries, she achieved an eight. Thorn spun a few pebbles that bounded high, then sank.

<> she signed.

He nodded and gathered another handful.

Sianadh had been a great stone-skipper at Waterstair—the champion (so he said) of his village in Finvarna—but she had never seen him skip one more than a dozen times. Thorn's missiles now jumped twice seven, thrice seven, thrice nine times, and though she tried she could not match that and flung away her last pebble, half-vexed, half-admiring. A haggard hand shot up out of the water, caught it, and slowly withdrew. The pool was inhabited.

Thorn juggled pebbles and made them vanish and reappear.

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He let the stones fall. They rolled on the turf.

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The road was pot-holed and strewn with fallen leaves. Wheel-ruts were many, and the leaves looked as though they had been disturbed recently, as if many travelers had passed to and from White Down Rory. They met a wagonload of folk journeying from the village, then others on foot, staves in hand.

The sun wheeled its way to a low Winter apogee behind the clouds, which thinned and drifted northward, leaving only the white scuff-marks of their passing. Daylight sharpened each feature of the landscape, imbuing them with every tint of green, every shade of somber gold. Near at hand, the leaves were etched by their own shadows; far off, pastel chalk-dust overlaid the dozing hills.

Long shadows were stretching to the east when at last the travelers walked over the crest of a hill and saw below, down among the folds of the hills, the roofs of a village. The road ran swiftly down. Thorn turned his compelling eyes on Imrhien.

“To which house are you bound?”

Ethlinn had given clear directions: <>

Imrhien guessed the Dainnan was impatient to be on the road to Caermelor. He had accompanied her this far out of courtesy—one of the precepts of the Dainnan code was respect for women. But now, within sight of the village, there was no need for her to delay him any longer. Besides, if he continued by her side, there would come a time when her growing distress would well up and show itself.

The road entered a thick clump of trees at the bottom of the hill. It was here that the track branched off. Just past the intersection, it turned suddenly and vanished from sight behind the grove.

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“As you wish.”

Imrhien turned away from Thorn and strove to master her thoughts. Her hands were shaking violently. She heard him step close beside her shoulder, felt his heavy cloak blow against her skirts.

“Change your path. There is yet time.”

He was a dark flame. His nearness was too near—she must die of it.

“Come with me to the court.”

She started, as if stung. What? Go with him among the courtiers? To be made a laughingstock or, worse, to see him made one? To have to bear the pitying glances and the whispered asides? Yet there was that in the intense gaze he bent upon her that might have melted quartz-crystal to milk. Avoiding it, fixing her eyes on the ground, she shook her head.

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“Are you sure of this, in your heart?”

A nod.

Imrhien noticed a small thistle that was growing between two stones in the road, just beside the toe of her boot. Its leaves were dagged like the sleeves of aristocrats. She forced her attention to dwell on that thistle.

“Then we must part,” she heard Thorn say, “for my path lies to the west. Yet methinks it may be long ere we meet again,
caileagh faoileag
.”

Silence. She dared not raise her head, for he would not fail to observe that she stared with the eyes of madness. Dimly, from far above, the plangent cry of the goshawk was borne down the breeze.

“I must needs ask you—a matter has been troubling me.” On the brink of a question, he hesitated, sighed. “No. It is not possible. But there is something about you, I thought …”

He extricated something from beneath his tunic. “This, a gift for you.”

It was the red crystal phial of Dragon's Blood that he dropped into her palm. Tears pricked behind her eye sockets. What had she to give him in return? To gift him with one of her jewels seemed paltry and somehow discourteous.

“May I have something of yours?”

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Three sudden, sharp pains. Her hand flew to her head. A trio of golden hairs lay in Thorn's palm. “These I shall take as a token,” he said, twisting the fine filaments together and rolling them into a circle. “Safely shall I keep them.” He placed the ring on a finger of his left hand. “And now, since the phial was nothing, what would you truly ask of me?”