Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (39 page)

The weathermage felt it would be pleasant to set eyes on her eldritch companion again. She had taken to frequenting the well-yard after sunset in hope that he might make an appearance. To the astonishment of the servants, who pretended not to notice, the intense cold did not bother her. In an effort to avoid appearing abnormal she wrapped herself in layers of thick velvet, but sometimes she forgot to wear shoes and trod the icy flagstones barefoot.

A sevennight after Midwinter’s Eve she was wandering about the courtyard juggling the three wooden balls; a trick at which she was, by now, adept. It had rained incessantly throughout the day, but towards evening the clouds had thinned and drawn aside, like a curtain revealing a theatre of constellations. The night’s fragrance was the scent of wet soil, and its music was the chime of dripping leaves, the chortle of fast-flowing gutters.

“Oh where are you, urisk?” Asrathiel sang spontaneously, watching the balls as she spun them in the air. “Oh where might ye be? Come to me, urisk, come unto me.”

“A pretty voice, but I fear you have scared away the screech owls,” said the urisk, who was lying on top of the wall as if he had been there for hours, his elbow crooked and his head resting on his hand.

Asrathiel caught the wooden spheres in her hands and let her gaze travel over the dwarfish figure. His clothes looked even more flimsy than she recalled, and perhaps it was a trick of the starlight, but the shaggy hide on his haunches seemed traced with delicate filaments of rime. Pity stabbed her heart. How could she have overlooked his plight?

“Wight,” she said, “I daresay you are cold.”

“And if I am?”

“Since I have recently discovered that you do not inhabit my hayloft, I wish to offer you a warm place to sleep.”

A sarcastic smile played around the wight’s mouth.

“Your bed, perhaps?”

Shocked by his insolence, Asrathiel found herself at a loss for words.

“If not your bed, then where?” asked the urisk, languidly raising himself into a sitting position. “A kennel like a hound? A hearthrug like a marsh upial?”

Asrathiel struggled to frame a reply. It was tempting to throw the juggling balls at the creature and march indoors without a backward glance. Was he intending to make some lewd insinuation, or was he merely being flippant? Was it simply her own train of thought that offended her sense of propriety, or was it his purpose to do so? Horror and squeamishness stung her like the brief flick of a lash. With difficulty, she mastered her own temper. It came to her that she ought, by now, to have learned her lesson never to offer anything to the wight. He inevitably mistook her good intentions as patronization.

“I only wished to help.”

“How very generous of you.”

“I daresay you have your own arrangements,” she said sullenly.

“Perceptive, in addition.”

About to fling back a matching retort, Asrathiel reined in the impulse. No doubt it was some arcane code that dictated the urisk’s provoking behavior; something perhaps related to the well-known and equally inexplicable brownie trait of departing forever after being given a gift of clothing. It was not for her to try to unravel the complexities of wightish precepts, and, besides, she wanted to coax him to stay awhile. He was annoying, but perversely, she generally found his company to her liking, at least by comparison to that of many people.

Perhaps, she thought, it was because she was more similar to the urisk than to her own kind. Wishing to deflect the topic but temporarily unable to conjure a substitute, she fell silent, toying with one of the juggling balls, scuffing her feet against the stone flags of the paving.

“Sulkiness fails to become you,” said the urisk at length. He yawned, staring into the distance.

Indignant at his obvious boredom, Asrathiel burst out, “I would not be morose if there were any entertainment to be had from you, jaded creature. All you do is tease. You appear dulled by surfeit of the world and incapable of merriment. Since you have traveled all the way here, can you not perform any amusing tricks?”

The wight’s eyes glinted dangerously. The damsel caught her breath; for a moment she thought she had overstepped the mark. Nonetheless her stab of fear was heightened by exhilaration. Would this supernatural entity react in anger? Common wisdom held that seelie wights were incapable of doing harm, and yet . . . One of the balls slipped from her grasp and dropped onto
the paving stones. She saw it roll away, but when she looked up she could no longer see the urisk.

Spinning on her heel, she gazed about in an effort to locate him. He had apparently vanished, and she was about to murmur scornfully, “Oh, so you retreat from challenges,” when his voice issued from an unexpected quarter.

“Pery wyke is an erbe of grene colour

In tyme of Mai he bereth bio flour

His stakys ain so feynt and feye

Yet never more growyth he hay.”

The wight was holding forth from atop an urn on a pedestal. The urn contained a spray of evergreen foliage, in the middle of which he was sitting cross-legged, crushing the leaves flat, so that they splayed out around him like a circular fan.

Relieved at the release of tension, Asrathiel laughed at his impudence. Impulsively she tossed aside the remaining two balls, running to catch his hoof and pretend to pull him down, but he drew back his arm and energetically threw something across the courtyard. She turned around to see what it was he had hurled. Something was shining on the flagstones near the doorstep, but before she had dashed halfway across to reach it, the urisk’s voice was already emanating from another direction. She stopped short, darting glances all around, and spied him now reclining on the head of the stone dragon that spouted water into the basin of the operating well. In high-pitched, artificial tones he sang,

“Good druid, I have sent for you because

I would not tamper with Sanctorum laws,

And yet I know that something is amiss.

For when I see the youths and maidens kiss,

I tremble and my very knees grow weak

Until my chamber I am forced to seek

And there, with cheeks aflame, in floods of tears,

I toss, with strangely mingled hopes and fears.”

Asrathiel found herself blushing, for the verse was bawdy; but to her amusement it lampooned the druids, reducing their sanctimonious counselling sessions, at which they dictated how people should think, feel, and
behave, on pain of misfortune and an early death, to the status of eavesdrop-ping on the licentious daydreams of young women. The verse hinted also that the druidry might not be as chaste as their vows decreed.

Giggling with delight at the wight’s tricks, Asrathiel ran towards the fountain and jumped up onto its coping, but a cloud sailed across the starry theatre of the sky. The courtyard was shut into semidarkness broken only by shafts of chamomile lamplight from two high dormer windows.

“Where are you?” Asrathiel called out. She dared not call too loudly lest the occupants of the house should emerge and spoil the nighttime fun. For an instant she was tempted to summon an upper atmosphere wind to broom away the clouds, but she resisted the unworthy desire.

The skies swiftly cleared of their own accord, and celestial light revealed the urisk at the far end of the courtyard. He was hanging upside down from a gargoyle that served also as a finial on a gable-end. Unperturbed, he continued to recite indecent poetry, mimicking the shrill tones of a young girl;

“And druid, strange to say throughout the night

Although my figure, as you see is slight,

I dream I have a ripe, voluptuous form,

And strong arms ’round me hold me close and warm,

Until at last, at last, I blush to say,

My very garments seem to melt away,

Until as nature clad me, there I stand,

The willing victim to a wandering hand.”

Asrathiel doubled over in laughter, heedless, now, that anyone might hear. She was young, and glad of an opportunity to abandon herself to frolic-someness.

Her jollity was interrupted when her lady’s maid poked her head around the door. “Is aught amiss, m’lady?”

Suddenly the urisk was nowhere in sight, but Asrathiel fancied she could hear an echo of mocking laughter in the outer darkness. “No! No!” the weathermage said, between gasps. “Nothing at all, Linnet.”

“There is a good fire going in the parlor.”

“I thank you.”

“Would you like me to make some tea with supper?”

“No, thank you.”

The servant curtseyed and retreated into the house, closing the door.
When Asrathiel turned back she saw the wight sitting cross-legged on the pavement. His mood had changed once more, as the sky changed, and the weather. He was quiet now, and seemed pensive; she was reluctant to disturb him, and refrained from speaking. A movement attracted her attention; a small asp, the color of jade, slithered out of a chink in the wall nearby. As the reptile slid past the urisk’s knee, it seemed to become aware of his presence and reared up, gazing at the wight with bright glass spherules of eyes. The urisk extended his hand in invitation, whereupon the asp glided onto his palm and traveled all the way up his arm. It coiled on his shoulder, flicking its tongue at his ear and curly hair as if quite at ease. After withdrawing his hand the urisk seemed to barely notice this passenger. He remained silent, staring straight ahead as if brooding, while the snake investigated the upper seams of his waistcoat, climbed up and down his other arm and generally made free with his person. Asrathiel watched, fascinated. She presumed the urisk had forgotten she was present, but at the end of a minute or two he murmured, “I will make an experiment.”

Asrathiel started. For an instant she thought the wight was talking to the viper, but he was regarding her; directly addressing her. He murmured, “Let me tell you something, mist-maiden, frost-friend, storm-sister.”

Lifting its narrow head, the jade-green serpent made its forked tongue flicker like a flame. The urisk hesitated, then made as if to continue speaking, but uttered no word. He appeared to be waging some inner battle. Asrathiel waited, holding her breath in case even the slight hiss of an exhalation should drown out his impending revelation. Presently the wight shook his head and said, “Well then, perhaps you will never know. But it will do
you
no harm.” Fie touched his fingers to the ground. The serpent wriggled down his ragged sleeve onto the flagstones and slipped away.

“What would you like to tell me?” Asrathiel softly asked.

A series of curious looks passed rapidly across the creature’s face; some indefinable expression followed by rage, bitterness, and finally cynicism. Eventually he said cuttingly, “Look to your own affairs. Your servant comes to nursemaid you.”

Footsteps approached the door, which swung open. Once again Linnet put out her head. “Supper is ready, m’lady.” The maid’s attention seemed fixed on Asrathiel’s feet. It came to the damsel that she was wearing no shoes. Feeling nonplussed by the urisk’s behavior and overcome by confusion at having so
carelessly highlighted her uncommon resistance to the cold, she stammered, “Oh, I will come in directly.”

He was nowhere. After scanning the apparently empty close, Asrathiel went into the house. The back of her neck prickled as she stepped over the threshold. While she sipped her tea she repeatedly wondered what the urisk had been trying to say, and why he could not say it.

After supper she stole once again into the courtyard, inquisitive about the object the urisk had tossed onto the flagstones. It turned out to be nothing more than a worthless fragment of slate.

A quiet mouse happened to be foraging on the pavement beneath the fountain’s lip. It continued to go about its business after the damsel retired into the house and went upstairs to her bedchamber. Like a handful of cobwebs and mist coalescing to form a living creature, the goat-legged wight reappeared from the shadows. The mouse reared on its hind legs and sniffed the air. Overhead, strands of tenebrous cloud blew away from the vista of the heavens. Falling silver flooded the courtyard with soft but brilliant light. His eyes downcast, the urisk paced back and forth as if deep in thought, or indecisive, or angry. Once he glanced up at the high window of Asrathiel’s bedchamber, from which lamplight streamed forth between the curtains. As he looked down again his gaze happened to alight on an unlit ground-floor window.

The slender lead cames framing one of the glass panes enclosed the portrait of a ghost.

Or not a ghost, but something else—a insubstantial image; a chimera; a
reflection
in the pane. A face, delineated by astral radiance, which appeared to hover there in the shadow-backed glass.

It was a masculine face, pale and confoundingly handsome, framed by long hair blacker than wickedness. The stars of the firmament seemed snagged in that pouring of coal-gleaming hair. The eyes, of some color that was elusive in the starlight, were chips of diamond, or perhaps slivers of steel, outlined with lashes of a darkness so intense they might have been rimmed with cosmetic antimony.

Here, instead of the reflection of a curly-mopped wight with stubby horns, was the very vision that Asrathiel’s mother, Jewel, had witnessed long ago when she dwelled in the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu; the unnerving, ephemeral but preternaturally lingering reflection in the pool beside the old black stump where this same urisk had been wont to sit. It was, too, the image that nine-year-old Asrathiel—then Ast
riel—had glimpsed by starlight, mirrored in her silver hairbrush. Unknown to her, the elusive urisk had
been watching as she dressed her hair, and had departed the moment before she glanced over her shoulder.