The Bitterbynde Trilogy (22 page)

She clutched the heavy knapsack, hoping the charms would prove ward enough. The prickly bushes thinned and dwindled on one hand, the oaks on the other. After what seemed a year, the wights' quarry burst out from the coppice's precincts to find themselves amid stands of beech. The sounds of pursuit could no longer be heard. Stilling the bells, the girl cocked her head and stood listening. Silence ruled, heavy and thick as paste.

“Make haste,” Sianadh said grimly. Like the juice of ripe plums, blood ran from deep scratches on his neck and arms. He sheathed the skian and shouldered the knapsack, striding forward with a determined look. As they marched beneath the beeches, birds began again their arias.

When a safe distance stretched between themselves and the oaks, Sianadh stopped.

“Time to rest.” Soberly he began to shrug off his burden. “The Barren Holly,” he said. “A murderous tree. Yet when hollies grow in pairs they bring good luck! What were the wights that hunted us, I wonder? Not oakmen—they be guardians of wild animals. I haven't killed any beasts lately. Spriggans, maybe. Ach, it matters not. Imrhien, we must both watch out for fey places.”

<> Her hands, speaking.

Exasperatedly he hurled the pack to the ground.

“Eldritch sites!
Obban tesh
, girl. Fey places, I said. What be the matter with ye? Do ye do this to harass me, or do ye not know anything?”

<> The pinch-beak hand-sign and the shake of the head together, vehemently, repeatedly.

He grasped her by the shoulders. She returned his stare unfailingly.

“What mean ye?”

His puzzled gaze flicked over the ruined face, trying to read something from its lumpish landscape.

“No? Ye do not know anything? Ye be new to Eldaraigne, then, a foreigner?”

<> Hands fluttering. Like a bird in a cage, the meaning could not free itself.

“
Obban tesh
,” he exclaimed again. “I wish to the Stars that ye could parley the handspeak. It is impossible that nobody taught ye signing—how did ye get along? Ye learn so quicklike, how could ye have … forgotten?”

<>

His eyes widened in realization. He released her.

“Forgotten, eh? Forgotten, is it? Ceileinh's spear!” He groaned, sat down, covered his face with his bloody hands. “No voice, no
doch
memory. I have saddled myself with a right
mor scathach
here.” He continued to curse, softly, in Ertish.

She stood watching him. Here was her rescuer—large, grimy, and bedraggled, his left boot torn. Many things he had risked—his life, a treasure—many things he had given: freedom of sorts, a name, language. And somehow she had let him down. Sinking to her knees, she held out her hands, palms up. She waited, motionless. Eventually he raised his shaggy head and sighed.

“No, it is this.” He made a fist, the thumb sticking out, and rubbed his hand over his heart in a circular motion, “
Atka
, the thorn, pierces the heart with sorrow. Meaning, ye be sorry. And,” he added feelingly, “if ye be sorry, how d'ye think I feel?”

Later he said, “There be benefits in your loss. Many try to lose it at the bottom of a winecup or by other means. Memory be the mother of grief.”

They drank some water, there under the pale green-haired dancers of beeches, and made a frugal repast supplemented with creamy, frill-petticoated fungi discovered by Sianadh. He examined his boot, thanking the hand of fate that the thing that had clutched him had not pierced his skin with some fungoid poison. He then reminisced about the way his grandmother used to cook black-ear fungus, smothered in lard with a pinch of salt and pepper, as a sauce over a juicy slab of tripe and bacon with a rind of fat
this thick
. And there were the fried onions, the crispy chicken's feet, the sheep's eyeballs in batter, the gravy.…

“She be still living, my grandmother. A century old. Goes to watch the chariot races twice a month. Now if I am not mistaken, I believe we have somewhat lost our way by courtesy of those cursed spriggans or whatever they were.”

He consulted his map, squinted up to where the leaves hid any suggestion of the sun's location, and after much muttering and casting about decided on a direction and set off again.

For the remainder of the day they tramped upward through open forest, crossing steep, fern-fringed gullies stitched with water-threads, ascending rocky inclines. The lands of Erith had always been sparsely peopled and this was one of many places as yet never trod by mortal feet. Treetops on the opposite slopes caught flecks of sunlight here and there. A breeze sprang up. When it got caught in the blowing hair of the trees, it roared like the ocean. Once, they saw smoke coming out of the ground—doubtless an eldritch phenomenon.

In wary murmurs Sianadh informed the girl about fey places—bluebell woods, mushroom rings, especially under moonlight, rings of standing stones, mushroom-circuses known as “gallitraps” and the grassy circles folk called “Faêran Dances”; the turf-covered hills known as raths or knowes or sitheans; oak woods, wells, especially those overhung by trees; rings of hawthorn and certain trees such as holly, elder, willow, apple, birch, hazel, and ash; bushes of broom and thorn.

“Eldritch wights, both seelie and otherwise, gather in these places.”

He taught her more of the handspeak. “For my own safety,” he said.

They had climbed high among the mountains, leaving the forest-lands below. Trees were sparse here and stunted by lofty winds. As evening drew in, without warning the weather turned. A gray, chill wind sharpened itself on the rocks, and the travelers tied their taltries on tightly to keep it from snipping at their ears.

“Unseasonable weather,” Sianadh grumbled suspiciously.

The ground steadily became treacherous. Quagmires and bogs appeared suddenly in hollow places between the rocks. Darkness made it impossible to see these traps until the travelers were almost upon them.

“This country be not safe for those what are not familiar with the territory,” muttered the Ertishman. “If I was not an outdoorsman, I'd be afraid of losing our way or perishing in the cold. Best look for somewhere to shelter until the morning.”

The night became bitter, but all that they could find was a rock to crawl under—until they spied a faint light in the distance. Cautiously they moved toward it and found, much to their joy, a small hut such as foresters used when traveling. A fire was burning brightly inside, with a large gray stone on each side of it.

“Flay me! A woodmen's hut of all things!” Sianadh said enthusiastically. “If this be what it seems, we shall be spared the discomfort and peril of a night in the cold. The axemen build these huts from rowan-wood. Not a wight will go near them.” Yet he examined the place warily before he set foot inside.

“Nobody's here, but surely the bloke what made this fire cannot begrudge us a little warmth. Come in,
chehrna
. We'll toast ourselves while we wait for him to return.”

Trusting her mentor's good judgment, the girl sat beside him on the stone to the right of the fire to warm herself. Both travelers rubbed their chilled arms, stamped their feet, and kept their taltries tied on. In front of their feet was a pile of kindling, and on the other side of the fire lay two big logs. Sianadh added a little of the kindling to the fire, and as the warmth began to creep into their bones they became drowsy, sitting there on the stone. They woke with a start when the door burst open and a strange figure came stamping into the room. He was a swart dwarf, no higher than the travelers' knees, but broad and strong. A coat of lambskin covered his back, and he wore breeches and shoes of moleskin. Upon his head was a hat fashioned from ferns and peat moss, adorned with the plume of a ptarmigan.

“A duergar!” Sianadh hissed as the door slammed shut noisily. The Ertishman spoke not another word, and silence clamped down like a metal claw. The manifestation glowered at the visitors but did not speak, either, and sat himself down on the other stone.

The girl knew that duergars were of the race of black dwarves. They hated Men. In the Tower, stories of their bitter cruelties had been rife. She trembled but was determined to brave it out alongside Sianadh. To show fear or run would be to invite attack—the Ertishman had assured her that was one of the rules with wights.

So there they sat, staring at one another. After a time the flames began to die and an unbearable chill came back into the room, so, greatly daring, Sianadh leaned over and put the last of the kindling on the fire. Then the duergar, in his turn, bent and picked up one of the two huge logs lying to the left of the fire. It was twice as long as the dwarf was high and thicker than his waist, but he broke it over his knee as if it had been a twig and cast it on the flames. The duergar looked at the man scornfully and tilted his head with a sneer as if to challenge him to do the same with the other log. Sianadh steadily returned the look but did not budge—the girl knew that he suspected some trick. The fire flared up once more and gave out great heat for a while, but again it began to dwindle. The duergar's expression mocked the Ertishman, inviting him to pick up the last log, but Sianadh would not be tempted, even when the glowing fire ebbed so low that the bones of the two mortals felt turned to ice and darkness pressed in. So they sat on in silence, like three statues in the gloom.

At last came the first vague light of dawn and the far-off warble of a magpie's salute to sunrise. At this sound the duergar vanished, and so did the hut and the fire. The travelers were left sitting on the stone, but first light showed that the stone was in fact perched at the top of a precipitous crag. On their left was a deep ravine—if Sianadh had taken up the duergar's challenge and leaned over to pick up the last log, he would have tumbled over the cliff and ended up a heap of broken bones at the bottom.

“As soon as that
uraguhne
walked into the place I kenned we were in no ordinary hut but some conjuration of glamour,” the Ertishman muttered. “No wight save the very greatest can pass over a true threshold uninvited.”

They hastened from that place as soon as there was enough light to show their way. After turning downhill, they walked throughout the day making little conversation, tired and uneasy, jumping at every sudden sound. On the lower slopes the trees began again to crowd closely. As they descended from the heights, the chill of duergar country gave way to Summer's balm once more, and the travelers found themselves back in the forest.

Toward evening the trees thinned. A light appeared, moving about over the treetops. Other lights materialized among the branches. The forest was full of twitterings and mutterings.

The hair stood up on the girl's head. Dread seized her. Something walked beside her, but it was not to be seen. She dared not turn her head to look; her pupils sidled, looking through an emptiness to the trees on the other side. After a time she and Sianadh forded a little stream; then the fear left her, along with the sense of a nearby presence.

“Me granny used to say, ‘Put fear aside, for only then will ye see your way clearly,'” Sianadh murmured.

The lights vanished, the ground leveled out, and a clearing opened out between the trees ahead. Here, forest giants had been felled years ago and taken away but new growth had begun and proliferated. In the center stood a rusting four-legged tower of iron struts and girders, stretching up to the sky, so tall that it overtopped the trees by far.

“An abandoned Interchange Turret.” Sianadh grinned in relief, wiping his sweaty forehead. “Fortune has shown favor. Plenty of iron here. No duergars.”

Then his face fell.

“Although,” he added, “no Interchange Turret be marked on this here map.”

He brightened again.

“'Tis a crudely drawn thing and smudged somewhat. Mayhap this mast was left out in error or blotted out by the greasy stains on it. It don't make no matter. We shall roost up on its heights this night.”

The wooden top half of the Interchange Turret was missing, having been dismantled for the retrieval of the sildron cunningly embedded and concealed in the upper timbers. Mooring Masts and Interchange Turrets had to reach so high that an impracticably wide-spreading base would have been necessary to support the weight, were they entirely made from iron. Sildron lifted the weight off the base and was redeemed by the builders when the operation of the mast was no longer necessary. Massive lengths of timber lay at the tower's foot where they had crashed, some leaning against the structure. Sianadh tied one end of his rope around a stone and flung it high among the girders. It fell back. He tried again, and this time it hooked around. The weighted end came down, pulling the rope behind it as Sianadh paid it out. Triumphant, he made it fast.

“Now, Imrhien, ye tie this to your belt, hold this part in both hands, and use it to help ye walk up these here slanting supports to the body of the mast. When you reach them struts where the rope is looped around, make yerself secure and throw the rope's end down to me.”

The ascent was not easy, particularly since a hot, gusting wind had arisen, punching through the trees to shove the climbers off balance.

The mast's ribs sloughed eroded scales of rust in their hands. The wind and the tremor of their climbing caused orange decay to rain in their hair, their eyes, the taltries hanging from their shoulders.

A rotting encrustation gave way beneath the girl's boot; she slipped, was brought up by Sianadh's hand on her arm with an iron grip of its own.

“Hold on there,
chehrna
. This be harder to climb than a tree, but safer when we get there!”

A ladder began halfway up the remains of the mast, leading the climbers to a wooden platform higher up. It was partly sheltered by jagged pylons. Here they rested, shaking oxidized particles from their hair. The sky flared above from horizon to horizon, overcast and darkling.