The Bitterbynde Trilogy (120 page)

Ashalind found no words for reply but bowed her head in silence, afraid of causing insult and losing her chance to redeem the lost ones.

‘His Royal Highness's Piper should have been paid,' continued the puckered fellow. ‘A bargain is a bargain. The brats are our playthings now, to toy with as we please. Mayhap we will keep them forever. Mayhap on a whim we will send them back'—with a sudden grin he cocked his head to one side—‘in a hundred Erith years'—his head jerked, birdlike, to the other side—‘and watch them wither with accumulated age, crumbling to dust as soon as they set foot on Erith's soil!'

This drollery was greeted with joy by several of the more insanely hideous unseelie wights.

Then for the first time the raven-haired prince spoke. His voice was deep and beautiful, like a storm's song.

‘What shalt thou give, to earn these children?'

Ashalind, still kneeling, heard her blood thump behind her ears. She chose her words carefully before she made reply.

‘Your Royal Highness, ask of me what you will and I shall endeavour to provide it—if such is within my power, and causes no evil.'

‘Think you, that you can make conditions,
cochal
-eater?' snapped the ocher-faced fellow. As he spoke a large rat ran across his shoulders and disappeared, and the warm wind from the window-arches turned chill, lifting the gray-eyed lord's fall of hair as if he were undersea in a current, spreading the strands like dark wings.

But the prince-lord smiled.

‘Elindor of Erith thinks to consider his words wisely,' he said. ‘Consider this. If thou canst solve three questions of me, then thou shalt take away thy noisy brats. If not, then they shall stay for ever, and thou also.'

Ashalind bowed low.

‘Sir, your offer is accepted as graciously as it is given, and I am ready for the three questions.'

‘First, tell me how many stars shine in the skies of Erith. Next, tell me what I am thinking. Last, thou must consider two of the Doors which lead from the chamber below this hall, and tell me which one leads to Erith.'

At these words the ratty fellow laughed hideously, but his master's face still revealed nothing.

Despair threatened to overwhelm Ashalind. She tried to play for time.

‘Those questions are …' she fumbled for words, ‘not easy, sir. I beg leave of you to take time to ponder them anon.'

‘Beg, snivel, grovel,' said the servant. ‘Now or never.'

‘Hold thy tongue, Yallery Brown,' said his master, ‘or I shall have thee again imprisoned beneath the stone. Go then, mortal, I grant thee the time. But speak no word, scribe no symbol, and make no sign until thy return, for the answers must be of thine own inspiration and not of others'. Return when the moon of thy land waxes full again. Give me the answers then or my servant Yallery Brown shall have thee too.' He turned away, to drink from a goblet he held in his hand.

Then the spriggans seized her and rushed her down from that place, and when she came out from Hob's Hill she found herself alone in the night and the falling rain. But the moon was crescent and three weeks had already passed.

When Leodogran's daughter was discovered to have vanished, the city had roused to uproar. She was sought high and low, until Oswyn in fear and shame confessed a garbled version of all that had passed—that Ashalind had met a wizard named Easgathair who had told her how to find a way to the Perilous Realm.

‘Alas,' mourned Leodogran, ‘for now she too is lost.'

He fell into a fit and would not allow a morsel of food to pass his lips. Oswyn had expected dismissal, but Leodogran told her she was blameless, whereupon she fell to her knees and thanked him for his mercy and justice.

The learned wizard Razmath was consulted.

‘Easgathair is not a wizard but the Gatekeeper of the Faêran,' said he. ‘Mayhap Ashalind has been ensnared because, after all, she is the One Who Would Not Follow when the Piper played his dire tune. The laws of the Faêran, so it is said, are absolute. It may be that she was marked as their own from the very moment the Piper blew the first note.'

In the house of na Pendran, one rainy eve, Pryderi the loyal young steward sat by the fireside with Leodogran. All the servants were abed, for the hour was late, when the hound Rufus began joyously to bark and there came a knocking on the door. There on the threshold stood Ashalind—wet, dark, dirty, dazed, unspeaking. From her black hair, ink ran in rivulets down her face and her ill-fitting men's garb. Leodogran clasped her in his arms.

‘Never shall I let you from my sight again, Elindor mine,' said he. ‘My bird, my precious bird is come home.'

But she spoke no reply.

A cool wind was blowing from the south. Leodogran's daughter left her father's lore-books where she had been studying them in the library. Throwing her cloak about her shoulders, she unlatched and opened the front door, but her father, appearing at her elbow, closed it again and took her hand.

‘Ashalind, you must not go out.'

He studied her face. He could see that a great conflict was happening within her, and knowing this hurt him grievously.

‘How can I help you? Why do you not speak?'

But his daughter was afraid to make any sign, even to shake her head, for the power of the Faêran was everywhere. Somehow they would know, and the chance would be lost forever. She turned again to the door.

‘Wait. I shall walk beside you.' Concerned only for her welfare, Leodogran took up his own cloak and his walking-stick. If, in her sickness, she needed to wander, so be it—only he would never let her from his sight.

Thus, every day at dusk in the wooded hills about the city, Ashalind walked with Leodogran and Pryderi, while the dog Rufus followed close in her footsteps. Tears ran unstaunched down the damsel's face, for she sought there Easgathair, believing he might help her in some way, and she feared he would not appear before her unless she walked alone. Yet her father would not leave her nor could she ask it of him. Her hope was that Easgathair would tell her the answers to the three questions without even being asked, for it was certain he would know of the bargain she had struck in the hall under the hill. But all that passed through the eringl woods were the white moths and owls. Without the help of Easgathair, she and the children must be doomed.

The third problem set by the Faêran prince at first appeared not to be difficult. She had seen two Doors leading out from a chamber below the Hall of Feasts, one made of polished silver and the other made of oak. It would seem simple enough to recognise the portal leading to Erith—but perhaps over-simple. Faêran things were often not as they seemed, and that task might prove the most treacherous of all. For the Erith Door to be fashioned of wood was too obvious. It was a trick—yet what if it were a double trick? Believing she would choose the silver Door, they would make sure the wooden one barred the way to Erith. Or perhaps not … Alas, that question might be more formidable than she had supposed, after all. For the second question she had prepared an answer—whether it would prove acceptable or not was another matter. But for the first there seemed no solution.

Every night, returning to the house, Ashalind gazed up at the sky. To look up and suddenly see the majesty of the far-flung net of stars burning blue-white in their trillions, that was an awesome experience. Always that moment of first seeing them was like the moment when, after silence in an echoing hall, a choir of hundreds burst into song, high and deep, accompanied by the rumbling growl of a pipe organ. The stars, indeed, seemed a heavenly choir if only she could hear their music. The Longing for the Fair Realm ached in her more gnawingly than before, ever since she had scented the rosy breeze at the end of the tunnel in the hill and walked the halls of Carnconnor. The sight of the stars in their quietude and utterness eased that pain yet exacerbated anxiety. How could they possibly be counted?

The swiftly waxing moon rode high in the heavens, pooling shadows in Leodogran's eyes. The glory of the stars blazed like diamonds thickly sprinkled on velvet. As soon as Ashalind began to count them, some faded and others twinkled forth, and they moved as on a great slow wheel, dying and being born.

On the night of the full moon, Ashalind stole secretly from the house and crept to the stables. There she had hidden a cloak that laced down the front. With this she covered her gown, adding a close-fitting wimple to hide her golden hair and a hood to overshadow her features. She smeared her face and hands with filth as before, and embraced the white pony standing in his stall. Silently, in thought only, she bade him farewell, not daring to even whisper his name. Win or lose, she must now honour her promise to return to the place beyond the hill. And lose she must, for should she solve the last two problems to the satisfaction of the Faêran, the first she could not answer.

‘First, tell me how many stars shine in the skies of Erith. Next, tell me what I am thinking. Last, thou must consider two of the Doors which lead from the chamber below this hall, and tell me which one leads to Erith.'

The final hour was come. She would be separated forever from her father, Pryderi, Meganwy, Oswyn, and her home. She would fall prey to the unseelie, unspeakable thing called Yallery Brown. Imagining what sport he might have with her, she quailed, hesitating. Should she go back, knowing she would fail? What if she never returned to those legendary halls—would they pursue her? Would they hunt her to the fences of Erith, or would they merely laugh at her impotency and faint-heartedness, turning their backs on her forever? She had promised to return.
Honor your word
, her father always said.
Honor your word
. She must keep her promise to return to the Faêran hall. And, though it should be pointless, she must also honor the condition not to speak, scribe, or show sign. No farewell could be spoken, no letter could be left for her father.

She might vanish without clue and spend eternity in the rose garden with Rhys, or in the clutches of Yallery Brown, but in her perverse and willful heart, despite her misgivings, sorrow was mingled with excitement. Since her first glimpse of the Realm the white-hot Longing had begun to excoriate her mind more stringently than ever. That land was the vision of her waking hours and filled all her dreaming, and the pull of it was like the moon to the ocean. The Piper's tune had told all. It was indeed the world wherein lay all the hidden forests of fable, the soaring peaks of dreams, sudden chasms of weird adventure; a land at once dangerous and wild, yet filled with joy and wonders unguessed.

She muffled Peri's hooves, tying on rags. When she ran her fingers through his mane, one or two coarse hairs slid free to cling to her sleeve. One or two more would grow to replace them. The pony swung his head around to look at her. His brown eyes seemed full of wisdom, and as she gazed into them the answer came to her and she knew what to do. From the nearby tack room she fetched a sharp knife and hacked clumps of hair from the mane in several places, letting them fall into the straw. Haltering the now unlovely pony, she led him from the stall.

Beneath the silver penny of the moon went the cloaked damsel and the white horse, among the outbuildings to the overgrown apple orchard. For there was only one way Ashalind could be certain of finding the doors under Hob's Hill once again. She lay down under the ymp-tree.

Middle-night approached. Gnarled lichen-covered trunks leaned, their leafless boughs reaching out to cast shadow-nets on weedy aisles. Feeling the spell of drowsiness coming over her, Ashalind clutched a clump of thistles. Needles of pain shot up her arm, awakening her to the sound of sweetly tinkling bells. The Faêrie Rade passed through the trees like shimmering ghosts. Peri whickered softly and pricked up his ears. Climbing on his back, Ashalind followed.

As before, the Doors of Hob's Hill opened and the light from within revealed a paved way. Lagging several paces behind the end of the procession, Ashalind rode in. The Doors rumbled to, and she slid down to stand beside her steed, who strained toward the far archway. Beyond it now lay a landscape of purple night bejeweled with giant stars of every hue. The everdawn day of Faêrie had altered to soft silver-blue, a sonata in moonlight.

Would Rhys now be sleeping in a bower of blossom somewhere in the Fair Realm? Or would he and the other children still be playing their enchanted games in the rose garden under the canopy of stars? With a rush of tenderness a picture of his face came to mind; his skin soft as a ripe peach, his eyes wide and trusting. Always he had looked to Ashalind as a mother, since their own mother, Niamh, had died giving him birth.

The two spriggan sentries appeared and, complaining, commenced to escort the visitor away.

‘Garfarbelserk, Scrimscratcherer,' remarked one, hefting his pike in a knobble-jointed hand.

‘Untervoderfort, Spiderstalkenhen,' agreed the other with a nod and a scowl.

Peri snorted and tried to kick the wights, at which they struck at him with the butts of their pikes, screeching. Ashalindas-Peasant-Lad shouldered her way between the weapons and the pony.

‘Stay away from my steed! Hush, hush, Peri. You must come with me.'

His mistress took the tilhal from around her neck and tied it to his halter for protection. This time the sentries led her by a divergent route with no stairs up or down.

Gathering force as she approached, the presence of the Faêran broke over her like a wave.

On this occasion she was brought to a different hall, whose walls were lined with silver trees. The ceiling was high, or else there was no ceiling. Overhead gleamed the shadows and strange fires of the night sky, a fever of stars. To a wild song of fiddles the Faêran danced, clad in rustling silk or living flowers, their hair spangled with miniature lights. Many wights, both seelie and unseelie, danced among them garbed in robes of zaffre and celadon. Repulsive beings, scaled, mailed, leathered, feathered, beastlike or bizarre, mingled with the beauteous. Lace-moths drifted everywhere like bits of torn-up gauze tossed into the air. In the shadows, a pair of agates opened, watched, closed—the eyes of a great black wolf.