The Bitterbynde Trilogy Read online

  Dead trees reached their black and twisted limbs out of the waters, and near the shore, long water-grasses bowed before the breeze, their tips bending to touch their own trembling reflections. Tiny glitters winked in and out across the wavelets. The play of light and shadow masked the realm that lay beneath the lake. Nothing could be seen of the swaying weeds, the landscapes of sand and stone, the dark crevasses, any shapes that might, or might not, move deep beneath the water.

  As the wild ducks passed into the distance, the tranquillity of the lake was interrupted. Faint at first, then louder, yells and laughter could be heard from the eastern shore. A band of Ertishmen was approaching.

  Eight of them came striding along, and their long, tangled hair was as red as sunset. They were accompanied by dogs, retrievers wagging feathery tails. Baldrics were slung across the shoulders of the men, quivers were on their backs and longbows in their hands. At the belts of some swung a brace of fowl, tied by the feet. Already they had had a successful day’s hunting. Buoyed by success, they were in high spirits. This last foray to the eastern shores of the lake was considered no more than a jaunt—they did not intend to hunt seriously, as was evidenced by the noise they were raising. They chaffed and bantered, teasing one another, sparring as they went along. All of them were young men, hale and strong—indeed, the youngest was only a boy.

  “Sciobtha, Padraigh,” laughed the two eldest, slapping him on the back as he ran to keep up, “ta ocras orm! Tu faighim moran bia!” The looks of the two Maghrain brothers were striking—tall, copper-haired twins in the leather kilts and heavy gold torcs of Finvarnan aristocracy. Their grins were wide and frequent, a flash of white across their brown faces.

  “Amharcaim! Amharcaim!” Padraigh shouted suddenly, pointing to the black and leafless alders leaning at the lake’s edge. The men halted and turned their heads.

  A shadow moved there. Or was it a shadow?

  Gracefully, with arched neck, the stallion came walking out from among the trees. Clean were his lines, and well molded; long and lean his legs, finely tapered his frame. He had the build of a champion racehorse in its prime. His coat was sleek and glossy as the water of the lake, oil-black but highlighted with silver gray where the sun’s diffuse glow caught the sliding of the muscles. Clearly, here was a horse to outrace the wind.

  The men stood, watching in silent awe. The creature tossed his beautiful head, sending his mane flying like spume. He too stood still for a moment, then demurely, almost coquettishly, began to walk toward the huntsmen. The stallion seemed unconcerned by their presence, not frightened at all, but friendly and tame. They were able to go right up to him—he did not shy away but allowed them to stroke the midnight mane and marvel at the grand height of him, the sheer perfection of his contours and the power implicit therein.

  Then, in their own Ertish language, Iainh Maghrain spoke huskily, from the back of his throat.

  “That is the finest steed in Aia,” he said, “and I shall ride him.”

  His brother threw him a swift, hard glance. “I, too,” he said immediately, not to be bettered.

  Fearless, these two—and competitive. It did not enter their heads that appearances might be deceptive.

  “Easy now, easy, alainn capall dubb,” said Iainh, caressing the elegant arch of the neck. The stallion stood as steady as a cornerstone, almost as though he were encouraging a rider to mount. His eyes were limpid pools, fringed with lashes as a pool is fringed with reeds.

  But young Padraigh was wary.

  “Don’t do it, Iainh,” he said. “See how the hounds droop their tails and slink away? They are afraid of him, for all that he is so fine.” Indeed, the retrievers were cowering in the shelter of a clump of tall rocks at the lake’s edge, a hundred yards away.

  The brothers paid no heed to the youngster’s warning. In a trice, Iainh had vaulted up on the horse’s back, and in the next instant Caelinh was up behind him. Still, the stallion appeared unperturbed. At the touch of Iainh’s boot-heel he trotted amicably in a circle.

  “The fine one is as quiet as a lamb!” cried their comrades. “Hey, make room for us—why should you two be having all the fun?”

  One by one the other youths mounted. Like all Ertishmen, they were proficient horsemen and had been able to ride bareback since they could walk. They sprang with ease onto the stallion’s back. Meanwhile Padraigh hung back cautiously—prompted by some inner caution, he had decided to be last.

  It seemed apparent, as he watched each man jump up, that no space would be left for the next. Yet each time a new rider took his place, there was still enough room for another. Padraigh’s eyes strayed to the horse’s croup. Something unusual about it disturbed him. He thought that under the satin hide, the bones of the skeleton were shifting in an odd way, and the sinews were—the only way to describe it was lengthening.

  The last of his comrades leaped onto the horse. Now seven were seated there, laughing, jesting, and beckoning to him from atop the friendly steed.

  “Come on, Padraigh mo reigh,” they cried. “Get up and let’s see how he gallops!”

  A flash of understanding scorched the boy’s brain.

  In horror, Padraigh realized that the horse had grown longer to fit all its riders. Utter terror seized him, and his voice choked in his own gullet. Too frightened to scream a warning, he ran to the lofty boulders that stood at the lake’s edge and concealed himself among them, with the cringing dogs.

  Black against the silver-gray ripples of the lake, the horse turned its long head. It looked toward the rocks. Dark lips curled back from teeth as square as tombstones. An utterance issued like fumes from that aperture.

  “Come along, snotty-nose, do not be left behind!”

  A voice to corrode iron—cold, unforgiving, appalling.

  The boy did not move.

  The seven mounted men abruptly fell silent.

  Then the horse came after Padraigh among the boulders, dodging this way and that, flinging the riders from side to side, and all the while they were screaming, unable to tear their hands off its back. Back and forth they ducked about among the monoliths, and the hounds fled, howling, and Padraigh’s stricken gasps tore at his chest like claws, and the pounding of his heart thundered in his skull as if his brain would burst; but the boy in his desperation proved too nimble for the Each Uisge. At last it gave up and tossed its stormy mane, and with a snort like laughter it dived into the lake and under the waters.

  The last echo of their screams hung over the place where the men had vanished. Padraigh stared at the ripples spreading slowly from that center. He was shaking so violently that he could scarcely stand. Sweat dripped from his brow, but his flesh was cold as a fish’s.

  He listened.

  Nothing reached his ears but the fading staccato plaint of plovers on the wing, the sough of the wind bending the long water-grasses until their tips kissed their own reflections, and the lap, lap of wavelets licking the shore.

  When the white sun sank into the mists on the edge of the world, he was there still, his face bloodless; listening, unmoving.

  “The seven youths were never seen again,” concluded the Storyteller, leaning back.

  “Let storms blow hard and wolves for flesh howl on!” a porter expleted fervently. Similar sentiments gripped the entire kitchen.

  “What about the next morning?” persisted a wide-eyed potboy, perversely fascinated with the tale’s usual grisly ending.

  “The clan went down to the lake at uhta,” said Brinkworth, “the hour before dawn. They found the boy, living but unable to speak. Some dark shapes were washing to and fro in the shallow margins of the shingle. When they went near to see what they were, they found human livers, five of them, torn and bloody.”

  “What became of the other two?”

  “Nobody kens.”

  This narrative having been discussed and gravely pronounced upon by all, another took his turn to speak; a belligerent kitchen-gardener with a clever tongue who was always vying for a positio
n in the storytelling echelons.

  “Well, I heard of a lass what escaped the Each Uisge,” he argued. “In the south of Luindorn there was a farmer what had a large herd of cattle.”

  “Luindorn now,” commented the stoker obstinately.

  “Yes, Luindorn,” the kitchen-gardener confirmed, glaring. “And one day a round-eared calf was born amongst them. Well, he did not know what this meant, so he asked a woman what dwelled nearby—she was a carlin—and she said that it were a calf of a water-bull. It were lucky to have such a calf, she said, but it must be kept apart from the other cattle for seven years and fed with the milk from three different cows, each day. This farmer did as how she had told him.

  “Some years later, one of his servant-lasses was down by the lake, keeping an eye on the cattle as they grazed. A young man came up to her, a tall, handsome lad with long dark hair and a winsome smile. She had never seen him before, but she was struck by his good looks.”

  The gardener’s listeners nodded wisely.

  “‘Fair damsel,’ says he, ‘will you do a favor for me?’ She, very much flattered by his attention, says that she will. ‘My hair is so matted and tangled,’ says he, ‘I thought a charming maid like you might have clever fingers enough to straighten it for me, for surely I am at a loss.’

  “‘Of course, good sir,’ says the lass, and she seats herself on the grass with the young man’s head on her lap and proceeds to part and comb his hair with her fingers. But suddenly she freezes with fear, for what does she spy growing amongst his hair but green waterweed! Then she knew that he was no man of Erith but the terrible Each Uisge himself!”

  On cue, the audience gasped.

  “Woe the while!” they murmured. “O strange day and night!”

  “She came to her senses at last and did not jump or cry out, but sat very still so as not to disturb him and lulled him to sleep with her combings, all the while craving deliverance. When she saw that he was indeed sleeping, she carefully untied her apron strings and worked her way out from under the head, then swiftly and silently she ran for home as fast as she could go.”

  “But before she reached the gate she heard, hard at her heels, a thundering sound of hooves. The Each Uisge was coming for her, and his rage was dreadful!”

  The servants shuddered.

  “‘Loose the water-bull!’ cried the carlin, and the farmer, seeing what was about, did so. Just as the Each Uisge was about to seize the maiden and take her under the lake to be devoured, the water-bull came bellowing and charging between them. The two creatures fought each other all the way back to the lake and under the waters. The Each Uisge was never seen again at that lake, but the mauled body of the faithful water-bull was washed ashore next morning.”

  A sigh swept the servants’ kitchen, like the passing of a Summer breeze.

  “Water-bulls be good wights,” boldly squeaked a junior page. “My uncle said there were water-cattle blood in his herd, and there were always milk a-plenty.”

  “Aye,” said a cellarman knowingly. “’Tis true that seelie wights such as water-bulls do not wantonly injure folk the way unseelie wights do, and they reward anyone who does them a kindness. Some of them be helpful and some be just pranksters, but mark you, they too will readily revenge any insult or injury and can cause great destruction.”

  “Them duergars is some of the worst and most malicious order of unseelie things,” said a scullion.

  “Aye,” echoed old Brand Brinkworth, “a sailor who came here last year on the Pride of Severnesse has a cousin who lives in the hills of northern Severnesse, and he knows of a fellow on his way to Riothbury what lost himself on the hills when the night came on.”

  The servants pricked up their ears. They huddled closer together as the old man conjured a vision of a place far beyond the black-beamed kitchen and the cold stone walls of the Tower. The old man’s voice softly filled the night.

  “O viper vile!” cried the scullery maids when the tale was ended, clutching each other in delicious horror.

  At this display of sensibility Rennet Thighbone, a greasy-haired cook, snarled, “Fie, wenches!” and blew his nose on his sleeve. Old Brinkworth stretched his arms until they cracked and downed a draft of medlure, but he was not to be left in peace.

  “Tell us more tales of the King-Emperor in Caermelor, and of his wizard, Sargoth the Cowled!”

  “No, tell us a story of the Greayte Cities in the glorious days of old.”

  “Tonight,” intoned Brand, unruffled, unswayed, “I will tell one more tale—the tale of the beautiful maiden who slept for a hundred years under an enchantment, until she was woken by a prince’s kiss.”

  “Beauty, always beauty,” whined a peevish skivvy.

  “By cock and pie! Nobody wishes to hear a tale about an ugly maiden,” her companion retorted.

  “That’s why they’ve never made a story about you,” another added. He was thanked with a shove.

  The Storyteller wove the words and embroidered the tale’s fabric according to his way, casting his own wizardly enchantment over his audience. And when the story was finished it made a mantle that covered them all and held them together for a time. The Keeper of the Keys sawed mournfully on her fiddle, and her daughter, Caitri, sang an old song of Eldaraigne, a ballad from days of yore when the Icemen used to sail from Rimany to raid the southern villages of the Feorhkind and the great wizard Lammath had overthrown the enemy at Saralainn Vale:

  Oh, the fountains were frozen in Saralainn Vale

  And the mountains of Sarn were on fire,

  And the leaves blew like streaks down the dusty old streets

  And the wind in the valley rose higher,

  When down to the glen came four hundred men

  While the rest of the village was sleeping,

  And the light from their blades glittered bright through the glades

  And the cruel kiss of ice was their greeting.

  Behold the grim Icemen so pale and so bold!

  Beware of their frostblades that glitter with cold!

  But I saw them come and right swift did I run

  Till I came to where Lammath was lying

  “The Icemen are here!” I cried out in fear,

  “And the folk of the village are dying!”

  Then Lammath he rose and he put on his clothes

  And he kindled a torch from the embers,

  Saying, “I have a plan that I learned from a man

  With such wisdom as no one remembers.”

  Behind him I strode as through darkness he rode,

  And the Icemen he met in the dawning

  As the sun’s first flare turned to gold in their hair.

  I cried out to Lammath in warning,

  But the torch he held high drew the light from the sky

  Flaring out with a terrible power,

  And it turned them to stone and to ash and cold bone

  All in that cold morning hour,

  As the morning sun started to flower,

  All around Saralainn Tower.

  “Oh, Lammath,” I said, “what price have you paid

  For the power of light against shadow?”

  But he smiled with his eyes and they held no surprise

  As he walked with me down to the meadow.

  And I thought it might seem it had all been a dream,

  Except for the ice on the fountains,

  And the leaves in the street and the dust on my feet,

  And the fires that burned on the mountains.

  Singing along drowsily, the servants fell asleep, and a disharmony of snores jarred the kitchen.

  There would be other nights, other songs and tales.…

  The lad was intrigued: What powered the Tower’s lifts? How was water pumped up hundreds of feet of internal conduits to make possible life in the tall fortress? How could eotaurs lift themselves into the skies? Indeed, they were fine-boned horses, lean and sharp as swords, but surely even such powerful wings would not suffice to raise them. More
puzzling yet—what was it that elevated the huge bulk of Windships?

  Eventually he discovered the truth.

  Their reputations among their peers being neither trifling nor illustrious, the newcomer ought to have guessed that the serving-lads Spatchwort and Sheepshorn would gift him with trouble—and perhaps he did, but as the saying went, When the ship’s a wreck, what’s one more storm? Yet when he chanced to overhear them whispering together, his curiosity mastered him.

  “Ustorix will bribe the treasury guards tonight.”

  “How many and of what purity?”

  “Two, of alt four hundred. He says there is no activity scheduled for Gate South Four Hundred at moonrise. We meet there.”

  At night, nothing much lit the winding internal stairways except moon and stars slicing pale light-blades through slits in the thick dominite walls. The servants all lived below Floor Fourteen, but for someone who was used to effacing himself, melting into shadows and doorways at the first hint of approaching torchlight, it was not difficult to reach Floor Twenty-six unnoticed.

  Gate South Four Hundred stood open, its portcullis upraised. The floor of the gatehall formed a road that went out to the edge of the jutting doorsill and ended abruptly there, hard against the night sky. Far below, beneath a wispy cloud-layer at two hundred feet, pocket-handkerchief horse-yards and orchards gave on to a carpet of forest.

  On each squadron level, alcoves and vestibules led off the gatehalls to either side, filled with an array of equipment for Stormrider Relayers and their steeds. These entrance rooms opened onto wide corridors that circumnavigated the fortress’s walls and rejoined themselves. The floor of these circuits was strewn with straw, for this was where the strappers walked the Skyhorses to cool them down after a long, hot ride.

  Hidden among racks of saddles and tack beside a lift-shaft, the eavesdropper was able to glimpse a pattern of silver constellations on an ebony backdrop, dominated by a pale ship of a moon surfing cloud breakers. Somewhere in the dank and secret courses of the walls, water hammered in the pipes, or perhaps something else was pounding in there.