Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (13 page)

Eagerly Asrathiel and her grandfather hastened to the launching and landing place of the sky-balloons. At the northern edge of the shelf it lay, overlooking the stupendous torrent of the waterfall; an apron carpeted with small-leaved creeping mint. In recent times the weathermasters had acquired more sky-balloons. For many years they had owned a maximum of four of the great aerostats. These days there were twelve, and two more were being constructed as fast as the spidersilk farms could supply materials for the envelopes. The increase was due to demand. Across the four kingdoms of Tir the weather had grown more violent during the last decade. Weather-masters freely used their skills to prevent damage to life and property; however, they too must earn a living. The wealthy and influential, who were the least inclined to tolerate the vagaries of the atmosphere, traditionally sponsored them; gigantic spidersilk balloons were costly in the extreme.

The air-filled balloons, lifted by the heat of sun-crystals and guided by wrinds summoned by their pilots, could carry weather mages swiftly to wher-ever their skills were required to calm the atmosphere, invoke rain during drought, or stem flood-causing deluges.

Avalloc’s guess had been correct. In the distant skies three moonlike spheres could be seen approaching. A small crowd had assembled at the landing place. The return of sky-balloons was a commonplace occurrence,
but Dristan Maelstronnar and his crew had been absent for several days, and their friends and family were eager to greet them. On hearing about the semaphore signal, Albiona had fetched the children and run to the balloon-port to meet her husband.

Soapbubble, Silverpenny
and
Dragonfly
landed with precision, one by one, on the wide apron of mint. There was much welcoming and embracing of the new arrivals; it was always a relief when crews returned safely from a mission. Asrathiel kissed her uncle and greeted him with “Sain thee!” She smiled to see him hoist both his children onto his back, so that they squealed and protested in delight at being thus squashed like a stack of pancakes, but as she turned away to accompany them home she caught sight of the last deflating balloon, and was arrested in her tracks.

That familiar feeling of restlessness overcame her yet again; an unbearable desire to be on the move, to leap into a balloon-gondola and release heat from the sun-crystal so that the envelope swelled tight; to rise above the ground and leave it all behind; floating into the sky and summoning a wind, a
southerly
wind, to sweep her away.

After a final glance at the balloon Asrathiel returned to the house of Maelstronnar and climbed the spiral stair to the rooftop cupola. The small room, walled with glass, was bright and warm. To the west, a sweeping vista of the plateau showed through the intricate weavings of rose-stems that framed the panes. In this pleasant bower two women sat serenely, their hands busy with fancy needlework. They greeted Asrathiel as she entered. She returned their salutation and crossed the floor to the great, canopied couch that dominated the chamber. There, upon shimmering draperies and cushions of rubicund fabrics, lay a porcelain doll, or else the effigy of a beautiful woman. Yet it was no effigy but a living being who slumbered there as if lifeless; Jewel, the mother of Asrathiel.

Her skin was smooth and pale as ivory, her cheeks and lips tinged with a faint flush. It was as if twin petals of jacaranda blossom had drifted down to rest on her eyelids, whereupon they had thinned to translucency. Against the pillows, her black hair spread out in delicately vaned fans.

The young weathermaster stroked her mother’s hair, kissed her brow, and looked upon her with utmost tenderness. As always she wondered whether her absent father would ever discover a way to waken his wife from her enchanted sleep. But her father was immortal; he would seek forever; until the end of time, if necessary. He would search, and he would not return home until he found an answer. The damsel stood, unspeaking, by the canopied
bed for some while, then turned away. After a polite nod and a word to the two women who kept vigil, she returned downstairs.

The unquiet mood would not leave her. Later that morning she took herself on a solitary walk, climbing the precipitous path to the weathermasters’ cemetery on Wychwood Storth. The road mounted pine-clothed slopes, crossing bridges over gullies and rocky gorges, ultimately leading her to the small and tranquil dale that cradled the graveyard. There she halted a silent while beside a black headstone. A honeysuckle-like plant was growing on this grave, twining its slim stems between the miniature wildflowers that quilted the plot with rainbow stitchery. Tinkling twitters chimed up and down the brittle air; the call of Blue Honeyeaters. A single feather lay in the center of the grave. It shimmered with every shade of blue: lapis lazuli, sapphire, cornflower, antique ice, oceans, skies, sorrow, tranquillity.

Once her mother had lain in this grave. That was before the scholar Almus Agnellus had discovered, from some mysterious source, that she lived yet, caught in an enchanted sleep; whereupon with the greatest haste she had been raised from the loam and taken to the cupola.

After a while Asrathiel moved on. Instead of continuing to climb to the boulder above the cemetery, one of her favourite lookouts for surveying the countryside, she turned downhill and went amongst the trees.

Sudden rushes in the undergrowth indicated shy creatures of the wild fleeing from her approach. The chirping of insects counterpointed the long-drawn sigh of fern-hidden streams flowing over rocks. Her booted feet trod upon the twigs that strewed the ground, and mosses, and scatterings of small stones. Sometimes she came upon fine strands of brilliance strung across her path: the gossamer threads of spiders glinting in limpid daylight. It felt good to stride out, with a long, easy walking pace along those dappled trails.

Clouds blew across the face of the sun, and the day darkened. Asrathiel had paused to stand beside a fast-flowing stream when she looked up and saw the urisk watching her.

This reclusive member of an innocuous species had been part of Asrathiel’s life since childhood. Sometimes she glimpsed it here and there, near water, or in high places on cloudy days, or in shadowy forests. Other times it would not be seen for months. Its appearance did not alarm her. She was accustomed to eldritch wights. Indeed, a domestic brownie was attached to the House of Maelstronnar; at nights it emerged to clean up the domicile and efficiently set everything to rights. All that the brownie received in return for its labor was a dish of cream and a small loaf, but that
was the traditional habit of its breed. If anyone tried to offer them greater rewards for their pains, they would invariably, inexplicably, depart. Furthermore, when Asrathiel had been very young, her father—before he went away—had adopted, or been adopted by, a small impet by the name of Fridayweed. The presence of seelie wights such as the impet, the brownie and the urisk did not disquiet the damsel.

Other folk seldom caught sight of the urisk. It was a secretive entity, generally shunning human company and behaving unlike the rest of its kind. Common wisdom held that urisks were a type of wild brownie, bringing luck to any house to which they attached themselves. Farmers, in particular, considered themselves fortunate if an urisk should come to dwell on their land, for the wights were skilled at herding cattle and performing general farm labor. According to lore, when not working, urisks preferred to haunt desolate pools, but occasionally they desired the company of human beings, and had been known to tag along behind folk who traveled by night. If the travelers halted, so it was said, the typical urisk would shyly approach in the hope of striking up a conversation. If not, the wight would continue its optimistic pursuit all through the night, inadvertently terrifying the wayfarers who, blinded by the darkness, presumed they were being hunted by some unseelie monster.

An urisk’s appearance, however, was not monstrous. Above the waist they resembled somewhat uncomely little fellows whose ears ended in pointed tufts, whose nose turned up at the tip, and whose eyes slanted in a way that gave the features an elfin aura. Two small horns jutted from their curly manes. As usual this particular urisk was wearing a decaying jacket and ragged waistcoat. Frayed breeches covered the shaggy goats’ legs, but there were no shoes on the cloven hoofs.

When Asrathiel encountered the wight she would attempt conversation with it. Whether any speech passed between them depended, apparently, on its mood. At times it exhibited a fair degree of sullenness and morosity. On other occasions it could be so merry and lighthearted that the damsel would wonder whether this was, in fact, the same urisk. Eldritch wights were incapable of lying, however; therefore if ever she was unsure of its identity she only had to ask: “Are you that same urisk who was acquainted with my mother and my grandmother?” And if it condescended to respond at all, it would reply, “Indeed, I knew them both.” If any doubt remained in her mind she would persist, “Are you the one to whom my grandmother proffered the fishmail shirt?” “I am,” the wight would reply—impatiently and acerbically, for it had made it plain that it detested the dullness of human beings who
could not tell one wight from another, and that her distrust was an affront and her barrage of questions irksome.

The entity’s surliness failed to bother Asrathiel. She considered the urisk to be a precious link with her family history on the maternal side, for it had known her mother and her mother’s mother long ago, when they had dwelled in the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu, and, in fact, her grandmother’s mother and any number of other forebears. Lilith, Asrathiel’s grandmother, had once given the urisk a shirt made of fish-scales, which was reputed to have been fashioned by a mermaid. The urisk had eventually returned the artifact to Jewel, Asrathiel’s mother, and the shirt had remained in her keeping, an heirloom to be passed on to succeeding generations.

On this morning in Mai, as she stood on the banks of the stream, Asrathiel was about to speak to the urisk when it spoke first to her.

“Weatherwitch,” it said, “how farest thou?”

“I fare well enough,” she said, seating herself on a fallen log and propping her elbows on her knees. “I have not seen you of late. Where have you been?”

“I journey about.”

“Where?”

“Far and wide.”

“How wide?”

“Very. Also very far.” When the damsel looked dubious the wight added, “Typically you misconceive how swiftly my kind can pass across the countryside.”

“Doing what? How do you occupy yourself on your travels? You do not help anyone, I daresay.”

“I avoid your tedious kindred. To keep myself amused I scare a few frighteners.”

Asrathiel stared skeptically at the wight’s puny frame. “How do you scare them?”

“Creep up and say ‘boo.’ ”

The weathermage burst out laughing. “To be sure!” Chaffingly she added, “Why, perhaps I have underestimated you, urisk! You make it easy for me to forget you possess a sense of humor.” Laughter had relieved her melancholy mood, and for this she was grateful. Sometimes the urisk could be good company. It occurred to the damsel that she knew very little about this peripatetic creature who could amuse or annoy or astonish her without notice. “In sooth, you are a big perplexity for such a little thing. I have scant knowledge of you.
What do you eat? You do not help humankind, so you are not rewarded with our food. How do you survive?”

“I am immortal, fizzwit, or have you forgotten? Lack of victuals will not kill me.” The wight stared straight at Asrathiel with its disconcertingly numinous eyes. “I am like you. You know what you are, although you insist on trying to pretend otherwise.”

Discomfited, Asrathiel looked away. Why did the vexing creature have to spoil everything by referring to a subject that she assiduously tried to avoid? That it was aware of her immortality was no surprise; it had been hanging around long enough to have ferreted out all the family secrets; besides, eldritch wights had their own arcane ways of discovering things. Worse than alluding to her immortality, how could the urisk possibly compare itself with her? An ill-humored, goat-legged wight that was of no use to anyone, insinuating that she and it had something in common! Its presumption would have been laughable if not so irksome.

She deflected the topic. “Oh, so I presume it was not you who thieved a cooling dish of gooseberry fool from the kitchen windowsill last Salt’s Day se’nnight.”

“Of course ‘twas I. I take what I want.”

“And give nothing in return?”

“Why should I?”

“Because it would be mannerly to do so.”

“Spare me the lessons in etiquette, Weatherwitch. You are in peril of becoming as tiresome as the rest of your kind.”

Asrathiel shrugged. “If I weary you, seek other company,” she said, rising to her feet and brushing scraps of damp moss from her skirts.

“Be certain I will. For the present, you have failed to weary me.”

“I shall be forced to try harder.”

“Come now! You are too disconsolate. Instead of remaining with your family to celebrate your uncle’s homecoming, you wander abroad, alone, as if something bites you.” The wight began to saunter away, along the forest path beside the stream. Asrathiel followed, keeping within earshot.

“You seem to know all about the affairs of Rowan Green,” she said as she walked. “It’s intriguing, how you come to discover our business.”

“It is scarcely difficult. Three of your air-bubbles make show of themselves across the skies, and the whole world is forced to learn of your transactions.”

“It is true, my uncle Dristan has come home from Grïmnørsland.” The
damsel sighed. “He traveled there with his fleet, to appease a violent storm that blew in from the ocean. If I am disconsolate, it is due to his tidings. While he was on this mission he saw a small fishing-village that had been half-destroyed by extreme weather conditions. Roofs had been blown off, houses flooded. Most of the meager possessions of the villagers had been destroyed or washed away. If Dristan and his crew had not come to the rescue, the weather would have waxed more savage and the damage been worse. But even the brí of nine weathermasters could not entirely turn aside that powerful sea-storm. My uncle told us that after the wind and rain had abated he saw druids’ henchmen going amongst the destitute folk, telling them that the Sanctorum would intercede with the Four Fates on their behalf, if only they would give the druids their last few coins to indicate their trust in the Fates. I stayed to hear most of his news, then I felt driven to go out. It irks me every time I learn of druids exploiting gullible folk. I could endure such tidings no longer.”