Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (38 page)

“But surely,” said Asrathiel, “such underground annals would be destroyed during quakes and volcanic upheavals!”

“As I asserted,” the urisk responded,
“know
what you are seeking. He wrho would study the strata must be aware that uplift, subsidence and deformation can interrupt even chronicles written in stone.”

Asrathiel said, “What wonders
are
written there?”

“The forms of ancient creatures now extinct, preserved in sand, or mud, or volcanic ash. Jewels and gemstones, shining ore, fire and water.”

“Underground is the haunt of knockers, and the Fridean, and other such delving wights. I would have supposed urisks had no interest in the lightless places.”

“That demonstrates your ignorance. Urisks are nocturnal, weatherwitch, or have you forgotten?”

Asrathiel was about to make a comment when footsteps creaked the floorboards in the hall and someone knocked at the parlor door. The voice of the butler said, “Your pardon, mistress, is there an anything you might be needing?”

“No, gramercie. Good night, Giles.”

“Good night, my lady.”

And when she looked again at the window the urisk had gone. Giving a shrug, she murmured, “Typical.”

As Giles’s footsteps receded down the hallway, she wondered whether the wight had moved into her new lodgings. She was uncertain, fully aware that he was a wilful thing and could not be caged, and would remain with her only as long as it pleased him.

The unlatched casement swung slightly back and forth, then abruptly banged wide open, driven by a gust. Asrathiel rose to her feet and walked over to the window to pull it shut. As she leaned out to grasp the handle she sniffed the air. The wind was changing. It had swung around. “Boreiss from the south,” she whispered automatically, naming the wind as was her habit. “Boreiss, whither do you wander?” And she raised her eyes to the heights of the north, where the wind was going. Honed against the stars, the peaks looked so close she might have reached out and cut her fingers on them. Instead she pulled the casement closed against the night.

Winter crossed the year’s doorstep, beautiful and stark. In the realm of Ashqalêth, where seasons had scant power to touch the rolling acres of dunes, parched and baking, a pear tree leaned over a splashing fountain. Its green leaves, crisp against skies of dazzling blue, stirred in the breeze. Both tree and fountain were sheltered from the desiccating winds of the desert within the high-walled grounds of King Chohrab’s palace in Jhallavad, amongst olive groves and shady fig trees and statuesque palms.

Inside the galleries and chambers of the palace itself, columns of porphyry, colored marble and veined serpentine soared, like fantastic versions of the palms, from the richly colored flower-gardens of mosaic pavements. Enamel-work, cloisonne, sumptuous fabrics and long cycles of frescoes covered all walls and vaults. The frescoes, on backgrounds of lapis lazuli, illustrated historic episodes; magnificently dressed kings winning victories at the battle-front or excelling at the chase; famous warriors on horseback engaged in combat, or noblemen driving chariots, against landscapes of trees and flowers or architectural backgrounds. The personified Fates frequently appeared, aiding or rewarding the kings. Creatures of eldritch abounded, and dancing girls, musicians, and circuses of lions, eagles, phoenixes, unicorns and griffins painted with brilliant colors.

In the palace grounds, however, the leaves of the pear tree overhung the sparkling diamante arcs of the fountain. A short distance away, sun-bronzed workmen in white turbans and loincloths had finished pouring wet concrete into a circular metal form on the ground, and were smoothing it with trowels. They were laying the base of a new oratorium that King Chohrab had seen fit to commission for his parks and gardens, in spite of the fact that five similar structures existed there already. Of late, the king had been unusually attentive to the Sanctorum, and particularly eager to propitiate the Fates.

From their vantage point beside the newly poured floor base, in which they had been investing a considerable amount of interest, Princesses Shahzadeh—the eldest—and Pouri—the youngest—saw their potbellied father staggering across the lawns, partially supported by Uncle Rahim. It seemed that since King Chohrab’s last return from Cathair Rua, he had not enjoyed a moment’s happiness. More and more frequently he “took refuge at the bottom of a goblet” as the saying went; yet he complained incessantly that the wine sent from Slievmordhu was “not right, there was something not right about it.” Semaphore messages of complaint on this distressing
topic had ricocheted back and forth between the two realms. King Uabhar, initially mystified as to the cause of the beverage’s alteration, had eventually suggested that perhaps his special wine “did not travel well,” and “the road must have plundered it of some of its virtues.” Close to despair, Chohrab had sought ways to distract himself from his misery.

As she watched her father, Shahzadeh in her patterned silks, graceful as the pear tree, lively as the fountain, heard her little sister observe, “I would very much like to draw a happy face in that concrete. May I?” Pouri’s ephemeral attention had returned to the more interesting job in hand, and the child crouched at the rim of the unblemished surface, brandishing a short twig of pear wood.

The eldest princess, intrigued by architecture, alchemy and the application of mathematical principles to practical ends, had spent many of her leisure hours studying the way craftsmen created mosaic floors, in defiance of the convention that such study was unsuitable for women. She judged that the thick paste of tile cement to be applied after the concrete hardened would compensate for a few shallow scratches in the base. The workmen, however, might fear retribution from their masters if the smooth finish was marred. As Shahzadeh meticulously formulated a reply for her little sister, her father came up and stood beside her, panting and red-faced. His smile was that of an inebriate. His robes and beard reeked of smoke; in particular, smoke from a blend of herbs and weeds called “calea reveries,” which these days he was wont to inhale from a special pipe apparently fashioned from some mysterious clay combined with volcanic ash, rare sands and distilled rainwater.

“Father, may I make a happy smiling face?” beseeched Pouri.

“Mmm, yes, yes,” Chohrab slurred.

Shahzadeh greeted her father and uncle with due courtesy. The three engaged in shallow discussion about the progress of the work, while Pouri tentatively stroked the concrete with her twig. Presently Chohrab took half a step towards the spongy floor base, stubbed his sandaled foot on a stray chunk of broken stone and lost his balance. On the edge of the pool of soft concrete he teetered, bent forward almost at right angles with arms flailing, for an agonizing instant, until miraculously he righted himself and tottered backwards into the arms of Rahim. The turbaned workmen groveled in terror at having witnessed such near humiliation of their ruler.

The Princess Royal sighed. She leaned down to Pouri, who was poised, immobile, between horror and hilarity. “That would
indeed
have made a
happy face,” she whispered. The child brightened like sunrise and continued to sketch in the matrix, while Shahzadeh, having bidden the workmen to depart as if nothing had occurred, found it prudent to kneel beside her sister and become absorbed in the child’s play. She could not help overhearing what passed between the two men, once her father had recovered his compo-sure. Evidently they were discussing their earlier burning topic, in which the princess had been taking a keen though discreetly concealed interest.

“I repeat, there can be no doubt,” insisted Rahim. “My own spies have confirmed it. We
must
preempt their attacks by striking first.”

“Mmm, yes, yes,” Chohrab said. “Yes, you are right. We must join him and make ready to fight. We must drink many toasts to victory!”

On clear evenings in Narngalis vermilion sunsets flared, painting gorgeous backdrops behind fretworks of leafless boughs. Morning hoarfrost transformed trees into ornaments cast from solid silver, each twig defined with elaborate precision.

Tenember was a wet and stormy month in the northern latitudes of Tir, bringing flooding and strong winds. The chilly weather and scarcity of food in field and hedgerow drove an abundance of wild creatures into the parks and gardens of King’s Winterbourne. Black-headed gulls and cormorants flew inland to roost by night on the sheltered waters of the river. The grounds of The Laurels were alive with birds and insects. Mistress Draycott Parslow scattered bread crumbs on wooden bird-tables in her garden, and at nights she left tidbits for the foxes and badgers. A robin frequented the well-yard, often sitting on the gatepost and surveying the surroundings with eyes as round and shiny as jet buttons.

Throughout the first weeks of the season Asrathiel came to enjoy her new tenure as she grew more familiar with the city and its surrounding regions, and became acquainted with a wider circle of friends. There was, also, the ongoing company of the urisk. The goat-legged wight’s presence made The Laurels seem a brighter, more welcoming residence, despite that he never stirred so much as a finger to help with the chores.
As a weatherwitch I seem to have acquired a familiar,
Asrathiel joked to herself; but she did not share the jest with the urisk, temperamental creature that he was, in case he took it as an insult.

His temper could fluctuate without warning. On several occasions in the
past she had seen him as blithesome and happy-go-lucky as a reaper celebrating the end of harvest; so clownish and irresponsible that the damsel wondered—as of old—whether this was, in fact, the same urisk. This merry humor was on him more often these days, and she was glad of it. He could be mightily entertaining, if he chose. He loitered so often about The Laurels in the evenings that she surmised he must have moved in after all, presumably having found some cozy sleeping-nook for daytime use.

When Mrs. Draycott Parslow’s gardener noted some signs of disturbance in the hayloft above the empty stables, Asrathiel guessed the wight had made his bed there. She instructed the groundskeeper and hands to leave the loft alone, and mulch the garden-beds with straw from the shed instead. When the occasional Winter vegetable went missing from the kitchen garden, and the bread she left out by the doorstep had always disappeared by morning, she smiled to herself.

A few days before Midwinter’s Eve it came to Asrathiel’s attention that the urisk had
not
been making his bed in the hayloft as she had believed. Mrs. Draycott Parslow’s coachman had discovered an old tramp sleeping there. He had spied the vagrant climbing down the loft’s ladder in the morning, crossing the yard and slipping through a hole in the wall next to the gnarled oak, to go begging in the streets.

“The loft stinks,” said the coachman, “pardon my bluntness, m’lady. He is a dirty old gaberlunzie. Best to get him out of there.”

Asrathiel ordered that the tramp be given a nourishing meal, as well as a warm coat and trousers to replace his threadbare rags.

“What is your name?” she inquired of the beggar when he was brought before her, a doughty stable-hand gripping each of his angular elbows in case he should make a break for it.

The vagrant blinked inflamed eyes. His cheeks were traceried with a fine netwrork of capillaries, his arms and neck encrusted with senile warts. “Cat Soup, ma’am.”

Carefully blank-faced, Asrathiel said, “If you wish, Master Soup, you may lodge in the lean-to behind the gardener’s cottage. It backs onto the fireplace-chimney, and is always snug and warm.” She offered him the job of “gardener’s assistant,” but by the following night he had made off with a bag full of gardening tools, and was not seen again.

Temperatures were particularly low for the time of year, and Asrathiel forecast that the Spring thaw would be arriving late. Concerned about the urisk’s welfare, she combed the house from top to bottom looking for his
sleeping-nook. She scoured the attic, the wine cellar, the cupboards under the stairs, the still-room, the henhouse, the garden-shed and an abandoned dog-kennel. So thoroughly did she search that she discovered secret passage-ways and hiding-places behind the paneling, obviously undisturbed for years; yet she found no evidence of any wightish lair. Snow glittered hard and bright on the summits of the Northern Ramparts. At nights she lay awake listening to the rain battering on the roofs, and the wind screaming of its lust to bite flesh to the bone, and bone to splinter.