The Bitterbynde Trilogy (76 page)

‘What do you fear?' Rohain asked suddenly.

‘I do not understand my lady's meaning,' the court-servant parried uncertainly.

‘I have a fear of rats,' explained Rohain. ‘A fear most intense and unreasonable. After all, they are only small animals, relatively harmless, easily slain by foxes and lynxes. Why I should hate them so is beyond guessing.'

‘My cousin Rupert is in dread of the sound of tearing cloth,' said Viviana.

‘How strange!'

‘Methinks it is not strange, m'lady. When he was but an infant, Rupert had a crooked hip. They used to bind it tightly so that it would grow straight. The binding was most painful for him—he used to wail when they did it. They would rip long pieces of linen to use as bandages, and this was the signal for his terror. So his fright remained, despite that he has now grown to manhood. My mother used to say everyone harbours at least one unreasonable dread, for it is human to do so. Mine is fear of spiders.'

‘Spiders? But they are lovely creatures, so clever, so delicate …'

Viviana shuddered. ‘Even to speak of them, ma'am, sets me atremble.'

‘Why must we have these fears?'

‘I know not, m'lady, but it is said they begin early in childhood.'

‘Then,' whispered Rohain to herself, ‘my childhood was troubled by rats.'

Viviana glanced again toward the window. ‘Was that not the most fearful storm last night, my lady?' she asked. ‘It has weakened now, but the wind's still with us, although it is past noon.'

‘Past noon? I have slumbered too long. I would have been better off without those last moments.'

‘It is well that Your Ladyship woke now,' Viviana said, with the air of one who has hitherto suppressed exciting news for the purpose of surprising her listener. ‘The Duke of Roxburgh's footman came here earlier, with a message, but I would not waken you. The Duke has already boarded a Windship bound for the north, but he left a message bidding my lady be ready to depart from Caermelor at sunset.'

‘So they are casting me out already?'

‘Nay—my lady is to be taken aboard a Dainnan patrol ship, a swift craft of the air, for a voyage to the Lofty Mountains under the protection of Thomas Rhymer, Duke of Ercildoune. I have been instructed to attend Your Ladyship on this voyage.' Her voice rose with exhilaration. ‘My lady, I have never travelled on a Windship before. This is the blissiest thing that's ever happened to me!'

‘I am glad of it.'

‘Your Ladyship, I am utterly delirious to be accompanying you from this palace. I will be well away from the clutches of the Dowager Marchioness, at least for a time.' The servant-courtier bobbed a small but exuberant curtsy.

‘For longer than that, perhaps,' smiled Rohain. ‘I will not give you up easily! Let us prepare.'

‘My lady, you shall require several changes of attire, as befits your rank,' Viviana informed her. ‘I have taken the liberty of notifying the Court tailors, who even as we speak are altering several ready-made garments in accordance with my estimation of m'lady's measurements. It will be necessary, nonetheless, for you to summon them to a fitting-session at the earliest opportunity.'

‘Well done, Mistress Wellesley!' said Rohain in admiration. ‘Have they told you the price?'

‘Of course, m'lady! And 'twas not over-high, either. I haggled somewhat,' she added modestly.

‘I shall straightway give you the money to pay these tailors.'

Despite the frenzy of preparations that day, visions of the rats did not crumble away for hours. Rohain knew it had not been a dream, but a snippet of memory.

The Dainnan frigate clove the air at speed, with a following wind strong from the west, at around twenty knots. Her timbers creaked. The decks rose and fell, lifted by rising currents on the windward slopes of the foothills and tossed by turbulent downcurrents on the lee slopes. The sweet fragrance of wet leaves rose from below, and the twitterings of a multitude of roosting birds. Behind the vessel, across the sea, penduline clouds blackened the long, infernal forge-fires of the guttering Winter sun. The sails' shell-scoops glowed fuchsia for an evanescent moment before graying to somberness, scoured out by the raw and grudging westerly. Soon the stars would appear.

Clutching the lee rails in one hand and her taltrystrings in the other, Rohain of the Sorrows stood on the open deck. She was looking back through the lower rigging at the dwindling lights of Caermelor on the hill: the buttressed dominite palaces, dark and massive on the heights, their crenellated shapes squatting among their battlement-crowned turrets and spangled with many eyes; the fragile, latticed columns of Mooring Masts like a forest of webby trees; the spires; the sudden skyscraping upthrust of Caermelor Tower, the fortress of the First House of the Stormriders.

In the darkening courtyards and gardens of Caermelor, fountains would be tinkling unheard. Indoors, out of the cold, lords and ladies would be drinking mulled wine by their fires, serenaded by bards with harps and lutes. The watcher's heart ached with an abstruse longing—but not for
them
.

The ship having just entered an airflow of a greater velocity, the wind—traveling faster than the ship it drove—swept the dark tresses from Rohain's face. Long strands fluttered out on the airstream. Aloft in the rigging where shadowy sky-blue canvas cracked taut, Dainnan aeronauts called out to one another. The sails were constantly being trimmed. The men working them from the decks were standing in a snakepit of hemp and manila. The aeronaut on watch at the bows stood by the bell ready to sound warning of any ships sighted to port or starboard, ahead, above, or below. Crewmen coiled rope on the decks, checked gear and rigging for chafing, and often, in the course of their duties, strode past the two passengers at the taffrail; the only women aboard. Others of the Brotherhood voyaged aboard the Windship; a
thriesniun
, a detachment of seven-and-twenty Dainnan under their freely elected leader, Captain Heath. Thorn was not among them, and Rohain feared to inquire after him lest she besmirch his name by association, or appear to be brazen. And what would she do, should she be brought into his presence? Confess her passion? He had protected her and Diarmid on their journey across Eldaraigne, as was his duty. As a Dainnan he must safeguard the lives of citizens. The journey was over, the task done. The entwined cords of their lives had split and unraveled. But each time a tall olive-green-clad warrior strode by, her heart lurched like a ship windhooked. From sheer habit, the Lady of the Sorrows pulled her sumptuous taltry closer around her face.

The ship heeled. Viviana staggered at her mistress's elbow. She looked pale.

‘Come into the chartroom, m'lady. If the air or the ground should become bumpier, there is a goodly chance of being tossed overboard.'

The courtier sidled like a crab across the deck, fell against a wall, and tiptoed back with involuntarily quick, light steps. Rohain watched in surprise. Personally, she found it little effort to compensate for the ship's movement.

The chartroom was lit by oil-lamps on hooks, sunflowers of light that swayed in a rhythmic dance with the shadows. Thomas Learmont, called the Rhymer, the Most Noble Duke of Ercildoune, Marquess of Ceolnnachta, Earl of Huntley Bank, Baron Achduart, and Royal Bard of Erith (to name only his principal titles) scratched his red goatee. He was poring over a map, alongside Aelfred, the ship's navigator. Lamplight glanced off the Bard's shoulder-length silken hanks of hair, turning them wine red against the robin's-egg blue velvet of his raiment. Around his neck coiled a torque of gold with sapphire eyes; the bardic snake-sigil.

At their first meeting, Rohain had almost mistaken him for Sianadh, not having expected to see red hair at Court, after all she had heard of the place. This man with the neatly trimmed
pique-devant
beard and dapper mustaches was not Sianadh, although he matched her lost friend in height and girth. The features of his freckled face were strong and pronounced, the eyes deepset and hooded beneath bushy eyebrows. Winged keys were stitched in gold all over his costume. A demicloak swung from his left shoulder, fastened by a zither-shaped brooch. True Thomas, as he was commonly called, had not questioned Rohain concerning the story she had told to Roxburgh. He was no fool, either; shrewdness dwelt behind those twinkling eyes. But for whatever reason, he took her at her word, for now.

The Bard's pale eyes now turned toward the visitor. He bowed and kissed the back of her hand.

‘My lady.'

She curtsied. ‘Your Grace.'

‘Thirty-four hours should see us at the Lofties, given that this fair westerly keeps up. We sail by night and day.' He turned to his apprentice, a downy-chinned youth in the Bard's blue-and-gold livery. ‘Toby, is the rosewood lute restrung?'

‘Yes, Your Grace,' said Toby, handing it over.

The Royal Bard appreciatively stroked the shiny rosewood and plucked a few strings, which gave out soft, bell-like notes.

‘Good.' He handed the instrument back to the apprentice. ‘See that it is kept tuned. As I do not have to remind you, new strings stretch, particularly in the changeable airs at these altitudes. Gerald, bring supper and wine. Roll up your maps, Master Aelfred—the lady and I shall dine here anon, with the captains. But first we shall stroll together on deck, if that is to m'lady's liking.'

‘My servant tells me I am likely to be tipped overboard.'

‘There is little chance of that for the duration of the next watch, m'lady,' said Aelfred with a bow. ‘The ship will be passing over smooth and level territory. Turbulence is improbable.'

‘Then I accept Your Grace's kind invitation,' said Rohain, exulting yet again in her newfound powers of speech.

Quarreling over the best perches, the birds settling in the treetops beneath the hull made noise enough for a dawn chorus. The celestial dome arching high overhead glowed softly with that luminous, aching blueness that is only seen at twilight, and then rarely. The rigging stood out in ruled black lines against it. The moon, just over the half, floated, bloated like a drowned fish.

‘What a strange time of night—or day,' mused Rohain politely as they stepped along the gently canting deck. ‘Is it day or night, I wonder? The moon and the sun are in the sky both at once. Birds carol as though they greet the morning. It is a
between
time—neither one nor the other; a border-hour.'

Her companion offered her his arm and she reached past the wide perimeter of her petticoats to rest her hand lightly on his lace-cuffed wrist. The Duke of Ercildoune, Royal Bard and Rhymer to the King-Emperor, was a man of courtesy and learning. She had warmed to him at their first meeting.

‘Speaking of borders,' said the Bard, ‘puts me in mind of a very old tale. May I tell it you? There are few pleasures greater, it seems to me, than indulging in storytelling on such an evening, at such an altitude.'

‘I would be honoured, sir, to be told any tale by the Bard of the King-Emperor.'

He inclined his head in a gesture of dignity and courtesy.

‘There was once a fellow,' he began, ‘named Carthy McKeightley—a braggart who took to boasting that he could best any wight in a contest of wit. These brash words eventually came to the ears of Huon himself …'

Panic seized Rohain. She struggled to conceal it.

‘And,' Ercildoune continued, gazing out over the starboard side without noting her distress, ‘being of a sporting nature, the Antlered One challenged McKeightley to play at cards with him, a challenge which McKeightley, to uphold his words, must accept. To make it interesting, the life of the loser would be at stake.

‘“Be certain!” said Huon the Hunter, lowering his great antlers threateningly. “If I outwit you, your life shall be forfeit, whether you be within your house of rowan and iron or without it. If you run I shall come after you with my hounds, the Coonanuin, and I swear that I shall take you.”

‘To this, McKeightley blithely agreed.'

The storyteller paused. Having recovered her composure, Rohain smiled and nodded.

‘Wily as McKeightley was,' said Ercildoune, ‘Huon was craftier. The game lasted for three days and three nights, and at the end of it the unseelie wight was the winner.

“Now I shall devour you,” he said.

‘But McKeightley jumped up and fled to his house, locking the rowan-wood doors and windows with iron bolts. It was no ordinary house, built as it was of stone, with walls four feet thick. Every kind of charm was built into it.

‘The Antlered One came to the door like a dark thundercloud, with eyes of lightning, and said, “McKeightley, your iron bars will not stay me. You have pledged me your life, whether you bide outside your house or within it. I will devour you.”

‘With that, he struck a mighty blow on the door. Every hinge and lock in the place shivered to pieces and the door burst apart, for Houn is one of the few Lords of Wickedness so mighty that he can thwart the law of gramarye and cross thresholds uninvited. But when the mighty Huon strode in, McKeightley was nowhere to be seen.

‘“You cannot hide,” laughed the unseelie lord. “My servants will sniff you out.”

‘“Oh, I am not hiding,” said a voice from somewhere near the chimney. “After such a long game I am hungry. I am merely sitting down to dinner.”

‘“Not before I eat,” said the Antlered One.

‘“I fear I cannot invite you to join me,” said the voice. “There is not enough room for a big fellow like you here in the walls where I now dwell,
neither within my house nor without it
.”

‘Huon gave a howl of rage and disappeared with a thunderclap!'

‘But how clever!' said Rohain with a smile. ‘Did McKeightley spend the rest of his days living in his walls?'

‘No, for he had, in fact, outwitted the Antlered One and so had won the contest. He possessed a sort of immunity from the creature from then on, and his boastfulness became legendary. He infuriated a good many more folk of many kinds, but surprisingly, lived to a ripe old age; overripe, really, almost rotten.