Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (14 page)

Like liquid glass, swift-flowing water combed over the rocks in the riverbed. The sound of it bubbling and gurgling was a delight. Asrathiel watched the water flowing into the shadows beneath the tree ferns that leaned out over the stream. She watched, but did not see, for her thoughts temporarily distracted her.

“It does not take exceptional wit to see through the wiles of the Sanctorum,” she said angrily. “There are no such entities as the Fates. ’Tis nought but superstition to keep people under the thumbs of the druids. ‘Tis all for money and power. The druids assure people they will beg the Fates to improve their luck. And for an extra fee, the druids will ask the Fates to ensure a blissful afterlife. There is no afterlife! Corpses return to rain and dust. Consciousness is nullified.”

“These destitute Grïmnørslanders,” said the urisk. “Did the words of the druids’ henchmen bring them joy?”

“Why yes, I suppose so; those who believed them, at any rate. I’ve seen it before. The druids give false hope.”

“Hope can heal,” said the urisk. “A madman can be happy. You ask why should anyone have hope? I ask, why not? How can you be so certain of the future?”

The wight stopped in its tracks, so abruptly that the damsel almost tripped over it. Without turning around, it said, “Even misplaced hope, or what may appear to
some
to be misplaced hope, is better than none.”

To that statement, Asrathiel could devise no reply.

The wight and the girl walked on without speaking, while the many tongues of water, woodland and wind sang all around. The path meandered, sometimes running along the banks of the stream, other times winding away amongst the trees. Whenever it approached the stream, the sound of running water became louder; a laughing sound, murmurous, melodious, lilting. As it moved away, the sound faded to a hushed murmur.

At length, Asrathiel spoke again. “You are lucky.”

“How so?”

“You may travel at whim, wheresoever you wish to go.”

“Ah yes. How remiss of me not to recollect my good fortune.” Overlooking the creature’s asperity, Asrathiel resumed, “I long to travel past the boundaries of the kingdoms of Tir. I am eager to learn what lies beyond.”

“If you are so ardent to depart, then why not do so?”

“I feel obliged to stay until I am older; at least until I have repaid my grandfather in some measure for his care of me throughout the years.” The damsel glanced at the wight with an inquisitive air. “The lands beyond the borders are passing strange, so it is told.” When she received no response, she pressed, “Have you ever seen them? The Stone Deserts? The Mist-Marches? The Barren Wastes of the North?”

“Urisks favour domestic situations, can it be you are unaware? Urisks prefer herding cattle and mending ploughs to adventuring in the wilderness.”

“But you—you are not like others of your species.”

“With how many other urisks are you acquainted?”

“I confess, none; but the lore-books in the library describe the customs and characteristics of your race, and the books were written by the most excellent of scholars.”

“Ah, the lore-books. Infallibility can be most inconvenient.”

“Sarcasm can be most vexing.”

“Weatherwitch,” said the urisk, “vexation can be most tedious.”

Moving on in silence, they arrived at a stone bridge that spanned the stream.

“Can you cross running water, creature?” inquired the girl.

“What do you think?” The wight had apparently lapsed into its customary irritable mood.

The damsel surmised that the urisk might be unable to cross the bridge but unwilling to admit its shortcomings. Deciding to allow it to retain its
dignity she said, “In any case, it is time for me to turn back for home,” and began to retrace her steps.

Fleeringly, the urisk leaned on the parapet of the bridge, making no move to accompany her. Behind her back she heard it say, “Go back to the confines of your walls.”

Scowling, the damsel rounded on the wight, ready to snap a retort. But the goat-legged fellow was no longer where it had been a moment before. All that leaned on the parapet was a diaphanous reflection of light from the stream, and a lucid shadow of ferns.

A breeze came out of the west. It picked up spores released earlier by those very ferns, and whisked them away. For days, and weeks, it carried them. Sometimes the spores would be blown back on their own tracks. Other times they would reach breathless heights, only to spiral slowly down. Eventually the living cells were caught in a rain shower and came to rest in a water-meadow, where some of them germinated. Through this region an old and unkempt man was plodding.

Many miles to the east of High Darioneth the long coach-road between King’s Winterbourne and Cathair Rua passed through a wide variety of landscapes. Along this route trudged the man, heading south toward Slievmordhu in his ceaseless quest for different people from whom he might cadge food, drink, clothing or shelter. The skies were ragged with fast-moving clouds. The beggar lifted his stubbled chin and cocked his head as if listening. He fancied he could hear, faint on the west wind, the bass
clang
of a bronze clapper striking some hollow metal device. Hastily he raised a skinny, age-blotched hand, sketched an aerial sign to ward off wickedness, and hurried forward as fast as his limping gait would allow.

The highway wandered through the ancient flood-meadow carpeted with a wealth of buttercups and tiny ferns whose spores had blown from distant places, before ascending into woodlands clotted with bluebells, lily-of-the-valley and wild garlic. Cuckoos uttered their distinctive call from high in the boughs of oak, beech and alder. After passing through the woods, the road emerged into farmlands, where thick white blossom slathered the miles of hawthorn hedges bordering each field.

After brushing a stray harvestman spider from his tattered sleeve, the beggar scratched at a wart on his neck. He could hear the sound of singing
coming along the road behind, growing louder; a chorus of voices accompanied by the dislocated twanging of some stringed instrument and the tinkling of small bells. Behind the singing, the rattle of wheels and the clopping of hooves could be discerned. The voices gave the impression of being jovial, so the old man made a decision based on years of itinerant living, and chose not to run away or hide. Instead he composed his decaying features into their most pitiable expression and trudged on at a slower pace, until the travelers caught up with him.

The singers were nomadic merchants, journeying in five covered wagons pulled by hard-working horses. A flock of children walked alongside the vehicles. Many of the travelers were kitted out in the old-fashioned traveling-cloaks known as
sclavines,
characterized by wide, elbow-length sleeves, buttons down the front from neck to hem, and an attached hood.

“Sissa! ‘Tuz a biggar,” exclaimed the man driving the lead wagon.

“Odds bodkuns!” cried a woman who had poked her head out from the lead wagon’s canopy, “’Tuz Ket Soup humsilf, uff I’m not mustaken! Hey there you old perasite, what’s afoot?”

“What’s afoot?” repeated the old man, staring blearily at her. “Blisters is afoot, missus.” He sneezed juicily.

“Sain thy five wuts, Soup,” a second wagoner shouted. “Ho p aboard!”

Ponderously, the convoy rolled to a halt. It comprised several families of itinerant cobblers and traders, returning from their biannual bartering-trip to King’s Winter bourne. They spent much of their lives on the road, and during their travels they had encountered this particular tramp on more than one occasion. They knew him to be penny-wise, squalid, sly, a fine storyteller, and very, very old. Over the years, desultory familiarity had bred a kind of affection.

“Hop aboard,” yelled the second wagoner again. “We’ll save your feet, you old sponge. But make certain you repay us wuth a tale!”

The beggar needed no further urging, even though he did need a helping hand to haul his bone-bag body up onto the vehicle. He sat next to the driver of the second wagon, a grey-haired fellow whose nose appeared to have been smeared sideways across his face.

“Eat!” said the grizzled wagoner, passing a hunch of soft bread across to the beggar as the drivers yelled commands at the harnessed mares and the wagons rolled forward again.

“By the Star of Ádh and the Axe of Míchinniúint, Squudfitcher, you’re a generous man,” gushed the beggar, enthusiastically clamping his gummy jaws around the loaf.

The vehicles of the west-coasters were festooned with bells and other wight-repelling talismans. An odor of hempseed oil clung about them, and they were littered with the fibers of hempen rope, sacks, coarse fabrics, sail-cloth, and packing cloth. Having rid themselves of the items manufactured in their native land, the Grïmnørslanders had piled their wagons with boxes of produce purchased in the north: silvered mirrors, prismatic cristalle vessels, sharp knives of Narngalis steel, tableware, plate, buttons, buckles, cups, soap, fine linen and woolen cloth.

As they bumped along the road, Cat Soup fell asleep, tumbled backward into the wagon’s interior and lay snoring, like a festering scrap heap that quivered with insect life. That evening, however, as he sat around the camp-fires in the company of Squudfitcher, Squudfitcher’s wife Heidrun, their children and grandchildren and numerous other members of the wandering family, the beggar rewarded his hosts with a story.

“There used to be tin-mines up Riddlecombe way when I was a lad,” said Cat Soup. “Greatly rich in ore was that ground, and the biggest mine of all was Ransom Mine. Called that because ‘twas said there was a king’s ransom worth o’ tin in the lode. And the knockers knew it to be true, because they were always plenty active in Ransom Mine, with their digging. You could hear their chippings and chopping in every part o’ the mine, but most especially you could hear their noise up the east end. Everyone reckoned there must be great riches in that part o’ the lode, yet despite the captains of industry offering the miners extra pay and tremendous inducements, no pair of men had courage enough to venture into the territory of the bockles.”

“I thought you sid they were knockers,” interrupted Heidrun Squudfitcher, a stickler for accuracy.

“Knockers, bockles, Small People, ‘tis one and the same,” answered the beggar. With speckled and grimy fingers he plucked a stray hair out of his tankard. “By any name they are seelie wights and skilled miners, but beware those who fall foul of them.”

“Where do those mining wights git their clothes from?” one of the children asked.

Having been asked this question before, Cat Soup already had an answer prepared. During long hours of tramping on the road he had honed his reply until, in his opinion, it sounded rather lyrical. “Maybe from the hides of excavating animals that have died underground,” he intoned, “or from threads spun by eldritch spinsters in darkling caverns, whose wheels hum night and day like the mutter of distant crowds. Perhaps they bargain for
cast-off raiment stolen from humankind by sly trows. Their source of materials, like their dreams and desires, remain incomprehensible to mortal beings.”

“Oh, viry nice!” the wagoners said approvingly.

“Anyway,” said the beggar, whose burst of poetic inspiration had come to an end, “Let me get on with the story. There was an old miner who lived with his son at Trenwith in the Riddlecombes, and some folk said these two were possessed of some secret by which they could communicate with the Small People.”

“Will, were they?”

“How should I know? ”

“I fency you might know more then what you’re tilling, Mester Soup.”

“That’s as may be,” replied the beggar cagily. “Howbeit, one Midsummer Eve this father and son went out around midnight and hid themselves near the top of a shaft, and kept watch until they spied the Small People bringing up the gleaming ore. Then they stepped from their hiding place, much to the astonishment o’ the bockles who, like all wights, greatly mislike being spied upon.

“ ‘Whae d’ye be aboot, carls?’ demanded the little miners. ‘For why sould we nae strik’ ye doon wi’ foul fortune seen ye clappit yer een on’s?’”

“ ‘Twas then that the two men made haste to explain themselves, you can be sure. With great couthness in their mouths and bending many a civil bow, they said, ‘Kind sirs, we offer to save you all the trouble of breaking the ore out of the ground. We will bring to grass for you one tenth of the richest stuff and leave it properly dressed, if you will quietly give up to us this end o’ Ransom Mine.’”

“What does ut mean, ‘brung to grass’?” the Squudfitcher grandchildren wanted to know. “And what does ut mean, ‘properly drissed’? Did they hev to put jeckuts on ut?”

“It means hauling the stuff up out of the ground and sorting the good from the dross and washing it clean.”

“Right enough,” said Squudfitcher. “End what dud the luttle min say to thet?”

“They considered the proposal, and muttered amongst themselves in their own jargon awhile, and then there was some dickering about the terms of the agreement, but at last the bargain was struck. The old miner and his son took the pitch and worked hard, and ‘twas not long before they had accumulated to themselves a great deal of wealth. All the while the old man never failed to keep to the agreement and leave a tenth portion of the ore for his benefactors.”