The Bitterbynde Trilogy (11 page)

Fresh straw heaped the dented andalum floor, padded corduroy lined the walls. An ornate box projected from each wall, seven feet up. The lift-keeper now opened one of these to reveal a row of ten andalum keys with elaborate filigree handles, each in its own recess, set well into the wall. He pulled out the first one almost as far as it would go—a long, narrow plate that had been shielding the slender sildron hoister attached to the lift's outer wall. He did not withdraw it entirely but stopped it when it reached a certain notched position. By this simple and direct mechanism, the lift rose.

All the sildron hoisters in the main lifts were grade alt 640. Only the turret lifts went higher. But the exiguous dimensions of a single alt 640 hoister bar could lift only the weight of the cage, a horse, and six adults to a height of one story. Two holsters, unshielded, could lift to twice that height. When the payload was lighter, the andalum keys for each floor were only partially extracted, to a prereckoned calibration.

The lift-keeper watched through an open slot in the wall as descending marks passed by to indicate levels. As they neared the top of the first story he pulled the second key out smoothly, and so they ascended, evenly, barely altering in speed. He moved around the walls opening one key compartment after another until all four had been opened and thirty-one keys pulled out, leaving nine untouched. Deftly he made some final adjustments. The lift stopped at Floor Thirty-two, the level of the Noblesse Squadron.

The part-time stableboy led the compliant eotaur out into the circuit corridor. Other Skyhorses hung their long heads over the half-doors of loose-boxes, watching.

A black-and-silver horse-rug covered West Wind's back; on it, her name and the Stormriders' zigzag lightning device were embroidered in frosted capitals. Her coat glistened as if oiled, every muscle delineated. Her horns were polished marble. She was iron-shod—only when a Skyhorse had been brought up to the height of its run would the sildron hoof-crescents be clipped on and the flying-girth added.

“This way,” said the second groom, tightening his taltry strings from sheer habit.

The three stablehands worked together quietly in the saddling rooms while the youth, his job finished, looked on. When the girth had been tightened and checked, when sildron hoof-casings had been attached and the mare had taken her fill from the water-trough, Hoad walked with her around and around the circuit corridor to warm her sinews. She floated slightly, placing her feet with calculated exactness as she had been trained, flexing her wings.

Two other saddled eotaurs joined in. Their strappers chatted to Hoad as they strolled.

“Bad uncomber yesterday,” said the old ostler gloomily. “Couple of our boys were caught, out past the far meadow. Came in and got drunk, after. Bad tableau down in the forest near the boundary. You know the one?”

His companions nodded.

“Reckon unstorms are worse these days than when I was a lad. Much worse.”

The others somberly grunted agreement.

“Pirates, too,” Hoad the Toad continued savoringly, “sailors on the
Dragonfly
said there's some about. Windship was plundered up northwest in the high country. Vicious, they were. Showed no mercy.”

A gatekeeper hurried in, extricating a timepiece on a fob from the folds of his tunic. He opened its gilt-metal lid, revealing a single hand on an unglazed face. After consulting it briefly, he raised the portcullis of Gate West Five Hundred.

The wind was warm. It was the beginning of Summer: Uianemis, the Greenmonth. Already the new season had provoked those downstairs into preparations for the Lugnais Festival and Greatsun Day.

A passenger lift descended and opened into the mounting rooms. The lift-keeper bowed deeply as three Relayers and their attendants swept out of the doors. Within the open cage, lamplight shone on pale buttoned-satin walls and intricately carved rosewood seats strewn with beaded cushions.

The Relayers of the Noblesse Squadron, in short cloaks and leather riding boots, clipped sildron flying-belts to their waists and paced restlessly. Beneath belted doublets of soft black leather they wore black linen shirts, the full sleeves gathered at seams just below the shoulders. Three silver stars glinted on each epaulet, echoing the gleam of the Stormrider
V
across the chest and the insignia over the heart. Thick black breeches completed the riding outfit. Two Relayers were silent; one badgered the equerries with questions and demands, obviously impatient to be off.

Pages, footmen, and stewards busied themselves. The gatekeeper stood watch, staring westward over the forest toward the mountain range. Mellifluous colors surged in and lay in pools of honey on the floor. Unable to restrain his curiosity, the flawed youth peered from around a corner.

“They come,” announced the gatekeeper, stepping precariously out on the doorsill. As he finished speaking, a single, silver note sounded from the watchmen on the parapets, whose spyglass saw farthest. Three dark specks came out of the sunset, forming themselves into horses and riders, wings double-arched, cloaks flying.

“Wind's still from the west,” said the gatekeeper, eyeing a windsock, “about ten knots.”

Equerries helped their masters to pull on flying helmets and gauntlets. The Lord Relayers swung themselves up into the saddles, their silver and black matching the caparisons of the eotaurs who danced sideways and tossed their heads, held back within the mounting rooms by the practiced hands of their riders.

“They're late,” someone muttered.

The dark shapes grew and slowed. Suddenly, with a blast of wind and a jingling, sweating clangor, they were in, alighting with a rush in the high-vaulted gatehall and adeptly drawing in their wings as they continued with a decelerating ride along its length.

Equerries and grooms ran to catch hold of bridles as the incoming Relayers dismounted. Stewards started unbuckling the saddlebags.

All the newcomers were clothed in Stormrider black, but the uniform of one man was trimmed with magenta where the others displayed silver, magenta being the color of the Ninth House. After pulling off his flying helmet, he shook the sweat from his eyes. The three outgoing riders entered the gatehalls for the exchange of saddlebags and the latest weather report.

“Isterium,” called the Son of the Ninth House, “I know thee beneath thy helm; I offer thee greetings from myself and my lady.”

“And to thee, Sartores. Rest well in our House this night,” responded the other. “What news?”

“Rumors, only rumors. Unrest in Namarre. I can say no more here, but all shall be known in due course.”

“Good morrow, Sartores.”

“Wind be with you, Isterium.”

West Wind burst forth, leading the others in an explosion of energy down the middle of the gatehall to gain momentum, leaping out from the doorsill onto the powerful updrafts at the most dangerous moment of a Relayer's journey, when horse and rider could be blown back and smashed against the tower by the capricious gusts called windhooks. But they were away, all three, out over the forest and turning to the south. As they dwindled, so did the fires of the sky.

From a balcony below, Mortier, Master at Swords, craned his neck to watch them go. He stood awhile there, in accumulating darkness, as if waiting: a lone hooded figure on the Tower's black wall. Shadows coagulated. An echoing howl grew from the forest and broke off; voices drifted up from the yards in snatches; a sickle moon swung up over the world's edge. The wind abated.

With a sigh, another wind rippled over the tops of the trees. Leaf-edges glistened as if brushed with rime. A stronger sigh seemed to bring dim lights to life beneath the canopy and a faint echo, as of chiming glass. Mortier did not move, but he trembled. Beneath his fingernails, blood trickled from the palms of his hands. A low moan started in the depths of him and erupted suddenly in a short cry—he spun around and fled into his quarters, slamming shut the outer doors. Through more doors and into another room filled with fantastic apparatuses, then deeper still into the Tower he fled, until he reached a corner among woven hangings, where he pressed himself, face turned to the wall. Presently a smaller door opened hesitantly, admitting a limping boy.

“Master?” a thin voice quavered. “Master, I have come as you bid. I beg you, forgive Pod if he is late. Are you here?”

There was no reply.

Outside the tack room a light rain was falling, backlit by pale sunlight—a shaking of sharp, silver powders.

“Yan, tan, tethera,” instructed Keat Featherstone. “D'ye get it, lads? Yan, tan, tethera.”

He was teaching numeracy to some of the younger stableboys and the ugly menial. Featherstone had learned from his father, who knew only the shepherd's procedure, used for tallying their flocks. He would count up to three, one for each finger-joint, then count the number of fingers. By this method, the counter could reach a total of thirty.

Laboriously, the impromptu school had reached this landmark.

“But what about if you want to count more than all your fingers times tethera?” an enterprising boy wanted to know.

“You get a wooden stick,” explained Featherstone, “and notch it with your knife, like so. One notch for every fingers times tethera.”

The eyes of his students bulged.

“Why,” they said, “you could count all the stars in the sky by that there stick!”

They went quiet for a moment, until one, reaching the end of a fruitless cogitation, said, “No, you couldn't.”

Another added, “What if some of your fingers got chopped off, like the Toad's?”

Featherstone glared at them. “What d'ye want to be counting up stars for?” He frowned. “How many hoof-crescents, how many apples and bales of hay, that's what you'd be counting.”

“Yan tan tethera,” said the enterprising boy. “That ain't right. Sailors count by their fingers, that's tethera times tethera and one more for luck.”

“Sailors count by tens,” said Featherstone.

“That ain't right, neither,” said the boy who had commented on Teron Hoad's fingers. “I know more than that. There's twelve inches in a foot and twelve pence in a shilling. We ought to be counting by twelves.”

“Sheepshorn can count all the Floors of the Tower,” complained another, “right up to the topmost, where the battlements are.”

“Look,” Keat Featherstone said exasperatedly, “if you want to be learning, then sit and listen. Don't be arguing. ‘Yan tan tethera,' that's how it goes. That's how I do tallying, and it's been working for me all my life.”

Noting the second groom's deepening grimace, the lads opened their eyes wide and developed expressions of innocence. As their tutor continued the lesson, they nodded, to all appearances drinking in every word.

It was a pity, as the servants usually said when they talked of the King-Emperor in Caermelor, it was a pity about the dreadful loss of the Queen, taken by wights of unseelie, and Prince Edward only a lad at the time. It was a blessing that the Prince and his father, King James, had survived, but a shame that the lad had to grow up motherless. Many whispered that the wickedness of unseelie wights was growing, their numbers multiplying. The world outside the Tower was reputedly becoming a darker and more dangerous place.

It was rumored, too, that some kind of trouble was brewing in the northeast, in Namarre. What it was, no one could be certain. Speculation was rife. Several of the servants lived in terror.

“Barbarians and unseelie wights shall come sweeping out of Namarre and slay us in our beds!” they said.

Others scoffed at their fears. “The King-Emperor's warriors will overcome. The Dainnan Brotherhood shall water the turf with the blood of his enemies, and so shall the Royal Attriod and the Legions.”

In the kitchens at nights, these rumors revived talk of battles past and of a legend that was largely unrecalled.

“In time of great need, the Sleeping Warriors who lie beneath the Raven's Howe,” proclaimed Brinkworth, “can be awakened. When their strength is most needed, a champion must find the entrance under the Hill, which is covered with briars and rubble—he must make his way in, down a long passage until he comes to the vault where they lie. Beside their King he will find a horn, a garter, and a stone sword. He must cut the garter with the sword and then blow the horn.”

“Has no one ever found the entrance?”

“Many have tried. It has been found, but only once. And the Sleepers were almost roused. It was poor Cobie Will that discovered the entrance by accident—a shepherd he was, sitting on the Hill winding a ball of wool while he minded his sheep. The ball slipped out of his hands and rolled down a deep and narrow hole. Cobie Will thought he must have found the entrance—all spirited up, he cleared away the brambles and rocks until he had uncovered a tunnel into which he could go. He followed his track of wool down under the ground, along a dark, vaulted passageway, until he saw a distant light. He pushed on toward it and found himself in the mighty chamber where the Sleeping Warriors lie, lit by a fire that burned without fuel. On a hundred rich couches round the room lay the sleeping bodies of caparisoned knights; in the dim light behind the fire, sixty couple of noble hounds were slumbering, and on a table in front of it he saw a gold-clasped horn, a curiously wrought stone sword, and an embroidered silk garter.”

“Foolish boy, he touched the stone sword, half lifting it, and at once the knights stirred and sat up on their couches. In fright, Will let go of the weapon and they lay down again and went to sleep. He must have breathed a sigh of relief then, looking around the chamber once again as still and silent as a tomb. But instead of leaving well alone and tiptoeing hence, he thought to interfere one more time. You see, he was an inquisitive lad and liked to try things out to see what would happen. Many a lad has come to grief in this way, Master Pennyrigg. So he picked up the horn and blew it. A clear ringing sound like the purest silver, loud enough to reach the farthest valleys, came out of that instrument, and all the knights rose up, drew their swords, and leaped toward him. A great voice cried out: