Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (30 page)

The watching children giggled at the cowman’s discomfort and tittered in expectation.

Suddenly Father yelled, “Hurry, you old slowcoach!” and up jumped the cowman, tumbling the goblins right over into the fire, straw and all. To the delight of the more heartless spectators, there was much caterwauling and howling as the Reynoldses and the cowman set to work poking the hapless wights with pitchforks and brooms, keeping them ablaze in the flames of paste-stiffened red cloth until they shriveled up and burned to ashes—or at least, until they disappeared from view and a couple of handfuls of black sawdust jetted into the air.

Looking about, Asrathiel noted differences in the way the children were moved by this gruesome comedy; some were vastly entertained, while others stared, agape with dismay.

“And the Reynoldses never saw anything more of the goblins after that,” announced the narrator, “so they went back to Gorsey Bank and lived in peace and quiet.”

The tin-pipes tweeted and the audience duly applauded with enthusiasm. Three Slievmordhuan puppeteers appeared from behind their screen, swept the hats from their heads and bowed flamboyantly. Winona rummaged in the aulmomere that dangled from her belt and produced a few silver sixpences, which she tossed to the showmen.

“I don’t think much of that as a story for children,” commented Asrathiel as she and her companions, trailed by various courtiers, left the parlor and drifted towards the Mauve Drawing Room. “When I was a child, that show would have given me nightmares.”

“For shame, Asrathiel!” cried Winona. “ ‘Twas only a bit of fun!”

“I shall be forced to leave the bedside lamp burning until morning,” said Prince Walter, who had joined their group halfway through the play. “For certain I will be having bad dreams about goblins tonight.”

“Pshaw,” his sister scoffed with a smile.

They emerged in the Mauve Drawing Room, where one of the more feckless royal cousins, who had imbibed a prodigious quantity of liquor that evening, was showing off to all and sundry a trick he had recently tried to learn from some wandering entertainer. “Look at me! Lo!” he crowed as he caught sight of the newcomers. “I can breathe fire!”

He swigged a mouthful of strong spirits, then plucked a candle from a sconce, held it in front of his face and expelled a great gust of air from his lungs. A jet of blue flame spurted from his lips and vanished almost as soon as it had appeared. The clown cheered triumphantly at his own trick, while several onlookers clapped their hands. “Wait, I can make a bigger flame!” he boasted, and proceeded to bury his nose in his cup, taking great gulps.

Asrathiel, who had witnessed fire-eaters, fire-breathers and fire-jugglers galore at the many fairs and festivals held all across the Four Kingdoms, could not help being bored by the amateur exhibition, and allowed her attention to wander. A familiar prickling brushed the back of her mind; her brisenses were picking up some natural disturbances in the atmosphere. Far away, beyond Wyverstone Castle, beyond King’s Winterbourne, beyond the lofty hills and verdant vales of Narngalis, a northerly airflow was developing across Tir. A high pressure system was moving across the Southeastern Moors, and a low pressure trough was traveling into the Stone Deserts. She judged that the trough would reach Ashqalêth late on the following day, Sun’s Day the twenty-sixth of Sevember, then cross the Four Kingdoms on Moon’s Day, with a weak ridge to follow on War’s Day.

The young weathermage perceived these distant conditions detachedly, and automatically made the forecast. To sense atmospheric phenomena was as much a part of her nature as breathing. She was always conscious of them with one section of her mind, just as anyone who reads a document or a book is distantly aware, despite being immersed in the narrative, of the surface on which they sit or recline, the sounds and odors of their environment, their own pulse, the texture of their raiment against their skin.

Lost in her reverie, Asrathiel was transfixed by a rush of confusion when the screams arose all around. Next moment, someone had thrown a tablecloth around her head and shoulders, wrapping her tightly, partially muffling her face. Vainly, she squirmed to break away. William had her enfolded in his arms, and Prince Walter was calling for carlins and apothecaries. “Are you hale? Are you hale?” William kept demanding anxiously.

“Of course I am! Set me free! What has happened?”

“Forgive me! Forgive me!” wrailed the fire-breather, staggering into a side table and knocking over several dishes. A couple of his comrades grabbed him by the elbows and marched him from the room.

“We have managed to smother the flames,” William told Asrathiel. “Your hair caught fire—pure carelessness on the part of that idiotic cousin of mine. I’ll see him thrown into the Tower for this. We’ll have a carlin to you straightway.” The prince’s comely visage was contorted in anger as he lifted Asrathiel into his arms and bore her away into an antechamber, where he laid her upon a divan. His sisters, his brother Walter, many courtiers and a bevy of household servants followed, thronging about, the courtiers loudly voicing their concern.

“For goodness’ sake, William, let there be no fuss,” Asrathiel insisted. A choking panic was rising in her chest. “I am hale. I felt nothing. Do you not recollect?
I cannot be harmed.”
The last phrase she hissed into his ear, hoping that no others would hear. Yet it was too late. The tablecloth, singed black and brown, and in places burned through, had been unwound from her person. All the people crowding into the room suddenly lapsed into silence.

They saw Asrathiel’s tresses, not a fiber demolished, coiling like dark ribbons down her back. In places her gown was scorched, but where it touched her skin it remained intact.

“The fire flared into your hair, m’lady!” exclaimed one of the courtiers.

“Yet it did not burn you!” another marveled, redundantly.

Asrathiel was indeed burning now. Her face glowed with a fiery heat. Her superhuman invulnerability, the secret she wished so ardently to keep private, had been made glaringly obvious to everyone. Now, surely, she would generally be regarded with awe and suspicion. Feeling utterly wretched she could think of nothing to say, and only wished she were far from that place. She sat on the divan, staring hard at her own hands as her fingers tied themselves in knots, unable to force herself to lift her head and meet their stares.

“Depart, one and all!” shouted William. “Tell the carlins and apothecaries they are not needed. Go, now!” And they went with a rustle of silk and a clatter of shoes; all bar the two princes and their sisters.

“We were worried about you, Asrathiel,” Winona said gently, wonderingly.

“No need.”

“No. Of course.” Winona dabbed at her forehead with a lace handkerchief.

Saranna gazed in awe at the Storm Lord’s daughter. Nonplussed, neither
she nor Lecelina, who stood at her side, uttered a word. The royal family had long shared Asrathiel’s confidence, but never before been audience to its ramifications.

Presently Walter said, “We had forgotten you are invulnerable, forgotten you cannot be harmed or die.”

Making a valiant effort, Asrathiel raised her eyes. It was immediately clear to her that these kindly people had become, if temporarily, uncomfortable in her presence. Since she was unhurt, they quizzed her no further about the extraordinary event. In turn she had no idea how to respond to them, but felt awkward, as if she were some misfit, an outcast amongst them. It seemed strange, so strange; just a moment ago she had been part of the group, and now she found herself as isolated as a far-flung atoll in some shoreless ocean.

After his brother and sisters returned to the revelries to reassure their father and the guests that all was well, William seated himself on the divan beside Asrathiel and took her hand in his. She was grateful for this sign of acceptance. His touch was warm.

“Forgive us,” he said gravely. “As our dear friend, you have been our guest many times, and we have been yours. Over years of good fellowship we have come to perceive only the qualities we have in common with you, and to overlook your singular virtues. We are but blind fools. Your pardon, prithee.”

“There is naught to forgive. Pray, do not distress yourself.”

William spoke hesitantly. “You must be apprised—I must tell you—these gifts of yours do not affect my family’s affection for you, adversely or in any other way.”

“Of course not. Yes, I know that.” It came to the damsel that he had noted her embarrassment, and pinpointed the source, and was endeavoring to ease her mind. His solicitude was genuinely touching, yet at the same time it unsettled her further. There would be no need for sympathy if she were not set apart.

“Are you certain?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“ ’Tis only that—if you should believe we look upon you as, well, exotic or anything, you would be mistaken. You understand?”

“Indeed.” Asrathiel nodded, and composed her features into a pleasant smile. “I know you could never consider me an outsider, sir,” she said, putting as much conviction as possible into the falsehood.

“That is well. Come, let us return to the dancing.”

His emotions and desires were easily gauged. She could tell he disbelieved her words, and planned to take time to convince her.

The weathermaster coterie that had accompanied Asrathiel on her journey to King’s Winterbourne sojourned for a few days at the castle, enjoying King Warwick’s hospitality. The following Moon’s Day, with its low pressure trough, proved clear and bright, although the breezes were brittle with the chill of the northern latitudes. Enjoying this respite before she had to return to The Laurels to begin her duties, Asrathiel found a sunny nook in the castle gardens, where she seated herself on an elegantly carved wooden bench, arranged the draperies of her gown of dark blue linen-velvet, and resumed reading a book she had brought with her from High Darioneth.

In front of her, crescent-shaped beds were formally laid out around a circular central display of roses. Low, neatly clipped hedges bordered each plot. Here and there, bell-shaped topiaries stood up, like quaint toys scattered by the children of giants. Walkways led through arches covered with greenery, or curved past latticed trellises entwined with creepers. Late in this northern Summer, the gardens were brushed with the vertical amethyst of lavender, the blush of floating poppies, the gold of daisies. Two gardeners were pruning shrubs, working with long shears. Boys followed after them, gathering up the cut twigs and piling them into wheelbarrows to be taken away.

Beyond the formal garden green lawns swept smoothly away to the right, towards the park with its bowery trees. To the left, the lawns led to the massive stone walls of some of the outbuildings that nestled amongst foliage, traced with ivy. In another direction the glazed roofs of the glass-houses glimmered like great cut-crystals, transparent white against a backdrop of dark green conifers. On the far side of the garden walls rose the gentle shoulders of tree-clad slopes, giving way to the sudden spectacle—always breathtaking, even when familiar—of the Northern Ramparts; colder, sharper, clearer, higher, more imposing than even the storths of High Darioneth. And above the mountains, only the vivid indigo sky, dramatic, swirling with feverish cloudscapes whose shadows fled across the world below.

Asrathiel was engrossed in the perusal of her book when William came by. “I have been seeking you,” he said, seating himself beside her. “There is news from Slievmordhu.”

“Oh, news,” the damsel said with a sigh. “I had hoped to shut out the world for a while and lose myself between these pages.”

“Is it so interesting, your book?” The prince tilted his head in an effort to see the title. Strands of his hair fell across his face, and he swept them back with both hands. Asrathiel closed the book and showed it to him. “’The Other Inhabitants,’” William read out loud, “ ‘Our Neighbors That Dwell in Wood and Hill.’ ‘Tis all about eldritch wights, I suppose.”

“It’s not about wights. It is fiction with nonhumans as the protagonists.

“Nonhumans?”

“What you would call animals. In this narrative the animals are acting as they would truly act, not as human beings would behave.”

“I do not know how you can bring yourself to read such tedious stuff!” William scoffed gently. “Honestly, Asrathiel, it cannot be any good! How can there be a story to it? I can show you some really interesting books. All the best literature is concerned with exploring the human condition, the nature of the human spirit.” He leaned against the back of the bench and folded his arms across his chest.

“Why?” she said simply.

“Because—and I know you will upbraid me for saying so—humankind is the highest life form.”

His eyes rested contemplatively upon Asrathiel. Carefully avoiding his gaze she said, “Our world, William, is one of many worlds amongst the stars. So is our race only one of many races within this world, all with rights of their own.”

“Ah yes,” said William. “I have never understood this unusual philosophy of yours. Tell me more.”

“Nonhuman animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, entertainment, or any other purpose. They deserve consideration of their best interests regardless of whether they are endearing, or useful to humankind, and indeed regardless of whether any human being cares about them at all—just as the madmen who dwell in the Asyluin for Lunatics have rights, even if they are not agreeable or useful and everyone detests them.”