The Bitterbynde Trilogy (123 page)

‘Oh, balderdash!' laughed the carlin, her eyes crinkling with merriment. ‘'Tis merely banter among friends. He only teases those he loves. Besides, I am used to it—after all, I have put up with it since the lad's knees were as scabby as two tortoises. And that was a full day ago, at the least.'

Pryderi snorted.

‘The question,' interrupted Ashalind, before he could respond with a clever retort, ‘which was in fact the
answer
, was, “Would the other guard tell me that this is the door to freedom?”'

They walked awhile in silence. Presently Pryderi spoke again.

‘I see. Well said. Acute, if I may say so. 'Tis fortunate you had perused the same moldy tomes as Meganwy.'

‘I had not! It is news to me that this is an old riddle. As Meganwy said, I fathomed it myself!'

‘The more credit to you, child,' said Meganwy gently.

‘How strange it is,' mused Pryderi, ‘that not so long ago we would have given everything we owned if only the children could escape from the Fair Realm. Now we are desperately seeking a Way for them to return. Truly it is said, “misguided are mortals”.'

A pale, hollow-eyed child leaning from a casement called out to them. There was an ache in her voice.

‘My lady, have you found a Way?'

‘Nay,' Ashalind returned, ‘not yet.'

A gaunt, lethargic youth lounged beneath the wall by the city gates, looking out across the valley. A reed pipe hung from his belt. As though begging for his life he asked Ashalind, ‘Are you bound for Faêrie, my lady? Shall we return now?'

His name was Llewell, and he was one of the returned youths, a brilliant musician and songmaker. He was being driven mad by the Langothe. In his delusion he often believed he was truly one of the Faêran.

‘Nay, Llewell,' Ashalind said again, turning away lest the sight of his forlorn and desolate aspect should crush her heart. ‘Soon, maybe. Meanwhile, make us a song so that we might forget, for a time.'

So it was, always, with the children. They turned to Ashalind in their blind and urgent need. They clung to hope in the form of her native wit, by which, once, she had achieved the impossible. They wanted to believe she could do it again. And like them, she had been
There
. She understood how they suffered with the Longing.

Outside the gates there was a stirring among the trees, a susurration in the leaves. The rumour of things unseen was everywhere; muffled laughter, scamperings, squeakings, shrill whistles, low mutterings and far-off singing. The lands of Erith were alive with the denizens of Faêrie as never before—the Fair Folk themselves, often heard or sighted but rarely seen clearly, eldritch wights trooping and solitary, wights of water and wood, hill and house, cave and field; incarnations both seelie and unseelie.

‘Eldritch creatures lurk all about us,' said Meganwy. ‘Surely there must be one who can take a message to Easgathair. From your account, Ashalind, the Faêran sage seemed to hold you in high regard.'

‘Then the misguided are not only mortals,' said Pryderi, striding ahead.

Ashalind smiled, as she still sometimes did, despite the dull, sustained pain of unfulfilled yearning. ‘Pryderi loves me!' she cried after him chaffingly.

‘I do!' he called back over his shoulder.

Ashalind caught hold of Meganwy's arm.

‘What you say is true, Wise Mother,' she said. ‘Let us go direct to the orchard. It is said that apple blossom delights all creatures of gramarye, particularly the Faêran.'

Soft wind, as warm as love, whispered sweet nothings to budding leaves. From far away scraped the raucous hubbub of jackdaws coming home to roost. A skein of swans stitched its way slowly across the mellow west. Passing under the trees and half-hidden by blossom, the urisk was unnoticeable at first, but a flicker of movement caught Meganwy's eye. Silently the Carlin took Ashalind by the sleeve, indicating with her forefinger. A small, seelie man-thing moved between the trees on hairy, goatlike legs.

‘In the name of Easgathair,' Ashalind called out urgently, ‘I bid you tarry.'

With a rustle, the wight jumped away into the trees and was seen no more.

That evening after supper, Ashalind personally set out the pail of clean water and the dish of cream for the household bruney, a task usually carried out by Oswyn. The dark hours came creeping. She sat in the kitchen's inglenook, waiting, waking, and at midnight the bruney came stealing. Its face was ugly and rough, with a stubbly gray beard and wide mouth; its hands were outsized. A conical cap of soft brown deer's hide covered its head; its other clothing consisted of a threadbare coat, patched knee breeches, coarse woollen hose, and large boots. The damsel watched the wight begin its chores, sweeping and scrubbing, scouring the pans to mirror-brightness with preternatural speed and efficiency.

‘Bruney',' she said softly into the shadows, never taking her eyes from it, never meeting its gaze.

The little manlike thing ceased its industry.

‘What are ye doin' sae late awake, Mistress Ashalind?'

‘I seek your help, hearth-wight of my home.'

‘I seen ye grow up from a bairn no bigger 'n meself, and yer father before ye and his father before that. Have I ever failed this house?'

‘No, you've never failed this house. You've been good to us—never a dollop of sour cream, never a drop of unclean water. In return, we've looked after you. Bruney, I seek audience with the Lord Easgathair of the Faêran. Can you bring me before him?'

‘I have ways to send messages to the Faêran, Mistress Ashalind, but I wist the Lord Easgathair will nae heed me at this time, if ever, for ill deeds and evil tidings have come upon us all.'

‘Of what do you speak?'

‘Fell doings and ill fortune,' said the bruney obscurely, ‘but there be nocht that such as I can do to change things. Alack that I should see such times as these. Alack for the folly of the great and noble. The world shall be mightily changed and what's tae come of it I know not.'

‘But you will try this for me?'

‘Aye, that I will, hearth-daughter. Now get ye abed as is proper and leave me to my doings. They's my hours now, not yourn.' He shook his little besom broom at her.

‘Good night,' she said, lifting the hems of her skirts as she flitted upstairs.

Toward morning, just before cock-crow, Rufus woke up and began to bark frantically at the bedroom door. Leaping half-awake from her bed, in her linen nightgown, Ashalind collared him.

‘Hush, sir. Stay.'

The bruney's head appeared around the door's edge and spoke. ‘'Tis only me, Rufus. What are ye groazling and bloostering about, ye great lummox?' Lowering his ears sheepishly, the dog wagged his tail. ‘Mistress Ashalind,' the bruney went on, ‘I hae a message for ye.'

‘Yes?'

‘Next middle-night ye mun gae to Cragh Tor.'

The head disappeared.

Steep, thickly wooded hills rose close on every side, dark against the star-salted dome of night. Streamlets splashed like threads of spun moonlight down their shoulders. A path wound its way up Cragh Tor, overhung by a cliff on one hand, dropping away precipitously on the other. As the party of three walkers climbed higher, they saw, looking back through a gap in the hills, a scattering of yellow lights shining like fireflies in a dusky dell: the lamplit windows of the city.

Finding the hilltop deserted, they sat down on mossy stones to wait, uneasily. Cragh Tor's summit was flat. No trees grew there; instead it was crowned by a half-circle of granite monoliths, thirty feet high, a ruined cromlech whose other half had collapsed in centuries past. Of the stones that stood, three were still connected by lintels while the others leaned lazily, painted with lichens in rouge, celadon, and fawn. Grass grew over the fallen monoliths, which lay partially buried. Usually this place was dismal and unwelcoming, and this night was no exception. An unquiet breathing of the night soughed and grieved its way in eddies around the angles and edges of the rocks. From somewhere below the ground came the gushing hum of running water. Glowing eyes peered out from shadows near ground level, but no voice answered the inquiries of the incongruous mortals. No Faêran lord or lady appeared.

Ashalind and her companions felt the presence of wights massing thickly all around. The night was full of their mutterings, their lascivious snickerings, sudden wild laughter and unnerving yells. A sneering bogle jumped out, then leapt, spry as a toad, over the rim of the hill. Gray-faced trow-wives peered from shadows and tall tussocks, whispering and pointing, their eyes protruding like onion-bulbs, their oversized heads bound in dun shawls. One of them was clutching a ragged baby. The slight weight of the tilhals at the throats of the mortals felt reassuring, yet inadequate. The trows melted away as slowly the hours of darkness stretched on. The mortals huddled drowsily into their cloaks for warmth.

It was about an hour before dawn when soft music came stealing out of the darkness, subtle but permeating, like jasmine's fragrance. Simultaneously, a rose-petal glow bathed Cragh Tor Circle, like the dawn but untimely. A fox ran across the grass. The monoliths were shining with an inner radiance, like crystal with a heart of fire, and now strange flowers sprang in the turf. Two people of the Faêran were seated upon a fallen monolith while a third stood, one foot braced upon a stone, strumming a small golden harp.

He was like a sudden bird of the night, this harpist; an orchid of many colours, a tonal melody. Twined about his neck was a live snake, slender as grass, yellow-green as unripe lemons. Blinking away the blur of weariness, Ashalind started up, biting off a low cry before it had left her lips.

The harpist was also the Piper.

She turned away, wisely concealing her anger and indignation.

The musician laid down the instrument and spoke softly to his companions. Then the whitebeard with the staff spoke.

‘Hail and well met, fair company,' said Easgathair, greeting by name each of the three who now stood before him. He looked indefinably older and more careworn than before, and at this, Ashalind wondered, for the Faêran were said to be immortal, and unaffected by the passage of time.

The three petitioners bowed.

‘At your service, Lord Easgathair,' Ashalind said.

‘We know your names.' She who uttered these words was seated at Easgathair's right hand—the Faêran lady with the calm and lovely face Ashalind had seen in the halls of the Fithiach of Carnconnor, she whose dark hair reached to her ankles. Green gems now winked like cats' eyes on her hair and girdle. The fox that had run across the grass sat elegantly beside her, looking out from narrow slits of amber. ‘But you do not know ours,' she went on. ‘I am called Rithindel of Brimairgen.'

‘My lady, you gave me courage when I needed it most,' said Ashalind with a curtsey.

‘That which is already possessed need not be given.'

‘I Cierndanel, the Royal Bard, greet you, mortals,' said the slender young harpist-Piper, bowing with a white smile that seemed, to Ashalind, mocking.

‘The musicianship of Cierndanel is renowned amongst our people,' Easgathair said.

While Meganwy and Pryderi saluted the musician, Ashalind faltered, filled with conflicting desires for vengeance and courtesy. Here before her stood the one who had originated all her troubles, with his irresistible pipe-tunes.

The Faêran bard turned an inquiring eye upon the young woman. Like a nail, it transfixed her.

‘Have I offended thee, comeliest of mortals?' (A voice like rain on leaves.) ‘Say how, that I might ask forgiveness. A frown blights thy loveliness like late frost upon the early sprouts of Spring.'

‘Can you not guess, sir? Yet, offended, I have no wish to offend. I will say no more.'

‘Tell on. Our discourse cannot progress until I am satisfied.'

‘Well, then.' Ashalind took a deep breath and blurted out, ‘You, sir, are the perpetrator of the most heinous thievery of all. You are the Piper. You stole the children. That's your offense.'

‘I am all astonishment,' said Cierndanel.

At Ashalind's tidings, Pryderi took an impetuous step forward, raising his fists. Meganwy's eyes snapped fire.

Before they could take issue, Easgathair held up his hand. ‘Wait,' he said. ‘Cierndanel, thou know'st not the ways of mortals as I do. In their eyes, your accomplishment was not a meting out of justice but a misdeed. Understand, mortals, that Cierndanel was acting on behalf of the justice of the Realm when he led away the children with the music of the Pipes Leantainn. 'Twas not done for revenge or spite, 'twas a lessoning and an upholding of what is just; a fair treatment and due punishment in accordance with equity.'

‘Faêran equity,' said Pryderi tightly.

Meganwy said, ‘We can hardly applaud the Piper's actions, but let us not quarrel. I have studied somewhat of Faêran customs and mores, and while I cannot approve, I acknowledge. Our moral code is not yours.'

‘You all seem to forget,' pursued Cierndanel, the bardic snake sliding around his neck like a pouring of liquid jade and topaz, ‘that I piped away your plague of rodents also.'

‘But did not Yallery Brown send the rats to begin with?' cried Ashalind.

‘The wight Yallery Brown has nought to do with me, sweet daughter. He, like many of his kind, mingles freely with those of our people who tolerate such types, but what mischief they may choose to make outside the Fair Realm is no concern of ours. The crime, the betrayal of promise, was the city's,' he added, stroking the seashell curve of his harp with a long and elegant hand. ‘Why hold a grudge against me for being the instrument, so to speak, of retribution?'

The corners of his mouth quirked. A smile tugged at them, as ever.

Said Easgathair, ‘Condemned mortals ever rail against the executioner, though 'tis only his given task, and had there been no transgression, there would be no punishment.'