The Bitterbynde Trilogy (150 page)

Having helped to construct the fire, Arrowsmith lay back on the ground, breathing heavily. He refused to take food. Constellations of sweat bestarred his brow. His face was dark, as if congested.

Tahquil offered him water. ‘You are ill. Turn back,' she said, unintentionally echoing his earlier words.

‘No,' he muttered. ‘I will heal.'

Caitri rinsed a strip of cloth in the opacity of the pool. She shrieked. Clumsily, Arrowsmith jumped to his feet, knife in hand.

‘I thought I saw something,' said the little girl, between fear and doubt, ‘something in the water.'

There was nothing to be seen now, not even a ripple.

Arrowsmith sank down, his knees buckling beneath him. Caitri laid the damp cloth across his forehead while Viviana arranged his cloak in folds across his body.

‘Don't fuss,' he rasped. ‘'Tis hale I am. I shall keep watch.'

A moment later his lids were shuttering his eyes. His jaw sagged. Starlight silvered his face to match his arctic hair, and pooled blue shadows under his cheekbones. Save for the slight rise and fall of his chest he might have been unliving. Water hurdled and gurgled, bubbled and burbled and snickered like a chorus of eldritch voices. Osmosis seeped.

Tahquil took first watch. She sat with her mud-smeared face turned to the pool, which remained profoundly calm, profoundly black.

How secretive is water, and how deceptive! It can act as a shield to throw off sheets of light, or as a sucking void like this well, to absorb light, or as a kind of passive nothingness to let light down through sheer translucency. But even when it allows radiance to penetrate, water bends and magnifies—distorts and plays tricks on the eye. An arm inserted partway appears disjointed, severed at the point of entry. Reflected in the convex surface of a drop, a face bulges at the brow and the eyes slide outward like a fish's.

Little wonder that so many wights are attached to water.

This pool, now. So dark is it, so absolutely blank-faced, that its depth is a mystery. It might be a mere scum of water skimming a flat bowl—no more than a puddle. Yet again that inkiness might extend far below us, deep into the fell-side, a hundred feet, two hundred feet—even as far as some subterranean river system below the valley floor
…

Lallillir crooned soothing lullabies close to Tahquil's ears, singing songs of the susurrating sea and a synthesis of shadows sliding stealthily shorewards, soon to subsume …

The leaf-ring clenched. With a sick spasm, its wearer's head jerked up.

Have I dozed?

Something had broken through the pool's surface from below. It poised there studying her, unblinking. What it was, she could not be certain, but it looked like the staring head of a debauched sheep or goat. As she watched, the apparition sank without haste. Seven ripples opened in ever-widening circles from its absence.

Viviana and Caitri slept consummately. Arrowsmith muttered thickly in his sleep. He had rolled against a prickly bush and flung out his arm. Thin runnels of blood flamboyantly striped the back of his hand but he had not woken. She rose to attend him and throw more wood on the fire.

At the same moment the dark water coalesced, clothing itself with a shape. The shape ascended as smoothly and quietly as oiled machinery.

Dripping, a large goat emerged.

The goat's eyes were two wells of darkness. Water streamed from its greenish hide.

Tahquil stared at the fuath, not daring to move. She remained this way, motionless, on and on into the atrophying night. Her heart threw itself urgently against her side as though trying to escape. A desert had invaded her mouth. At length, with utmost care and deliberation, Tahquil began to move her hand towards the dagger strapped at her side. Closer her gloved fingers crept, while her eyes never left the goat-thing, yet never locked with its gaze.

The goat grinned.

Rather, it drew back its caprian lips and bared its fence of teeth. Bedded in bloodless gums, the teeth were long and pointed as stakes, yellow as old parchment, stained slime-green.

The fire went out with a hiss of steam.

Tahquil jerked her head towards the sound. When she looked back the entity no longer stood before her. Footprints led away from the pool, impressed into the mosses; the prints of cloven hooves.

Over at the pickets the horses began to stamp and whinny. Tahquil snatched the last burning brand out of the fire. Its uncertain glare described a form moving amongst the tethered animals—not that of a beast, but a woman. The figure stooped. A horse screamed, that unmistakable scream of mortal terror. The others instantly caracoled into a frenzy, pulling at their pickets. One mare uprooted her stake, another broke her rope. White-eyed, neighing shrilly, they fled. Tahquil ran towards the two horses which remained. One lay stretched on the ground, a terrible rose blooming under the arch of its neck where the throat had been torn out. The other struggled still to break free. Something was standing over the prone form—not a woman but a four-legged beast, as before. It raised its head as Tahquil approached.

The hairs of its chin-beard dripped crimson. It had been feeding.

The dagger dropped from Tahquil's nerveless fingers. An extraordinary stench of rotting vegetation surged over everything, so powerful that she retched. It was that same nauseating odour of decay given off by deep vases in which flowers have long since died, their immersed stalks putrefying to become mush in the dregs. A spatter of spray assaulted her. Hooves plunged, long teeth snapped. Outlined against the sky she beheld an appalling shape—not a goat nor yet a woman or a man, but a man and a beast locked together in combat. In the thicket of their belligerence, Arrowsmith's blade glittered. Viviana was screaming, Caitri shouting, ‘Avaunt! Avaunt!' Tahquil regained her feet and darted out of the way as Arrowsmith and the fuath came crashing down. Teeth snipped and snapped. Flames burst from the firebrand as she whirled it, ready to strike. Then came a rush of air and a beating of great wings.

With a snarl the fuath sprang sideways. It swung its wicked head. Five antagonists faced it, four armed with iron and fire, the fifth—for an instant a winged woman seemed to be rising there, but in the next instant it was clearly a swan, neck arched, head stretched forward like a serpent's, wings at full span as they stirred the air to a storm. Wind roared and clapped, mingled with the fierce sibilation of the bird.

Coldly, clear as ice through the tumult, the goat spoke with a woman's voice:

‘
Raggid forrn,'
it pronounced, oddly.

The fuath jumped into the pool, which sealed itself seamlessly.

‘Viviana, saddle the horse,' Tahquil cried. ‘Caitri, watch the water. Encourage the fire.'

Arrowsmith swayed and tottered. She ran to his side.

‘Are you wounded?'

‘Nay,' he gasped. ‘The hooves gave my ribs a drubbing but the teeth did not meet in my flesh. And you? The damsels—'

Pushing herself under his arm, Tahquil manoeuvred him to the remaining horse, which stood trembling as Viviana tightened its girth. Arrowsmith's eyes rolled in his head. It appeared that he was not fully cognisant of his surroundings, nor of what had occurred. Weakened as he was by many crossings of running water, the act of repulsing this unseelie attack had driven him to the verge of death. His existence hung in the balance.

‘Get up in the saddle. We will follow after,' Tahquil said, forcing ardent conviction into the lie.

‘The horses …'

‘They are near at hand.'

‘The world tilts. Weary. So weary—'

‘Get on your horse, Galan, in the name of reason. Only death waits for you in Lallillir.'

‘You
will
follow.'

Calling on the last of his strength, Arrowsmith heaved his frame up and flung his leg over the horse's back. Losing consciousness, he gradually fell forward onto his mount's neck.

They roped him securely to the animal, placing the knots beside his dangling hands so that he might reach them when he revived. Turning the horse to face south, Tahquil sent it on its way with a slap on the rump. Glad to be granted freedom, the gelding leaped forward, moving swiftly along the treacherous incline in the wake of its escaping comrades.

Now they looked for the swanmaiden, but in the elusive manner of wights, she had vanished.

‘No time to lose,' said Tahquil, gathering up a bundle. ‘We must away from this place, ere the fuath returns to finish this night's work.'

She wept, and the others wept also, as they abandoned the carcass of the poor faithful beast that had stood no chance against the eldritch slaughterer. When they looked back they saw the sea-shell curve, the hull of its flank pale under the starlight, while from the ominous pool a shape arose once more, with the smooth precision of oiled machinery.

Through the night they walked, afraid to stop, afraid to cease the crossings of running water. When they had put a goodly number of falling streamlets between themselves and the fuath's pond, they dared to speak.

‘Galan was kind and generous,' said Caitri, her eyes swimming. ‘I shall never forget him, or his sisters. I hope we shall meet again.'

‘Perhaps we shall, one day, out upon the waves,' Tahquil said. A breeze from the west breathed coolly upon her cheek.

‘He shared hearth and board with us,' added Viviana. ‘We are in his debt.'

‘We must travel by night from now on,' said Tahquil briskly, endeavouring to distract her friends from melancholy, ‘and use the days for sleeping. Our senses must be sharp and wakeful during the wighting hours.'

‘The swanmaiden ought to have warned us not to camp by that fuath-haunted sink!' fumed Viviana aggrievedly. ‘That is her duty! A poor sentry she has shown herself.'

At
uhta,
they halted from sheer exhaustion, throwing themselves down in a gully, narrow and rugged, near the confluence of two streams. Spikes of frog-orchids grew amongst the upland grasses. Hooded, toothed and spurred, their yellow-green flowers were tinged with russet. Below, the valley lay lead-grey in the half-light, the ancient furrows and folds of the land flowing down with unhurried grace to meet the riverbanks.

‘I shall call the swanmaiden,' said Tahquil. ‘Wights are unable to dishonour their word. She has vowed to oblige herself to whosoever should summon her with that feather.'

‘How shall you call her now?' asked Caitri. ‘The feather is gone.'

‘I know her calling-name.'

With that, heedless of invisible eavesdroppers, Tahquil cupped her hands around her mouth and called, ‘Whithiue!' into the echoes of the valley. Thrice she called the name—to the north, to the south and skywards. Thrice the walls of the fells tossed the syllables from one incline to the other.

The swan answered; a dark rune scribed on a grey slate sky, a swart and swooping serenity of flight, falling behind an outflung arm of the fell.

With the demure protocol habitually practised by shape-shifters, the swanmaiden made her transformation beyond the view of mortal observers. Soon afterward, she was standing amid the angular rocks edging the gully's head, her pale face like a flower on a dark stem.

‘Welcome,' said Tahquil. ‘Pray sit with us.'

A low ‘
Whaiho';
perhaps a symbol of derision. A soft pre-dawn breeze stirred the feathers of her cloak, but the preternaturally lovely maiden remained as poised as a bird stalking fish, and did not step forth.

‘Well, then,' said Tahquil, ‘explain yourself from your exalted position. Why did you not warn us as promised? Our lives were endangered by a fuath. Had you informed us of its presence we would never have bided by its pool.'

The swans have their own language. Can she understand my words? Is it possible for her to reply?

‘
Whaiho,'
presently the swanmaiden deigned to say in a low, mellow voice. ‘Sedulous stealers are squeamish.'

She understands very well. Her command of the Common Tongue is estimable—at any rate, it appears she is adept at alliteration.

‘We are not thieves,' Tahquil said aloud, ‘nor are we squeamish. Mayhap it is hard for you to comprehend, but we do not wish to be slain. You have promised to do your best to prevent this occurrence, have you not?'

‘Said so,' replied the swanmaiden. ‘Handsome humans not harmed, ho?'

‘Do not congratulate yourself.'

‘Furtive fuath hungers for horses' hide.'

‘And would fain feed on further flesh, I fear,'retorted Tahquil angrily, seizing inspiration.

‘
Whiath!'
The eldritch maiden tossed her head. At her back, two wide ribbons bordered the length of the eastern horizon. One, of pastel blue, was dry-brushed with white-of-blue cloud puffs. Above it, a delicate lilac-pink band faded up to a dove-grey dome.

‘In the future you must warn us of any imminent danger,' said Tahquil. ‘You must tell us of the safe paths, the negotiable paths. Inform us of the secure resting places.'

‘Weary wanderers wish for haven.'

‘Aye, we do.'

‘Sentinel shift-swan succours woeful wold-walkers.' The swanmaiden's demeanour remained wary, aloof, cold.

‘Precisely. You must help us until we safely cross the northern border of Lallillir. After that, I will set you free from the geas. If we are now agreed, you may depart, but do not go too far away. I might summon you at any time.'

‘Sorrowing shift-swan stays steadfast.'

‘My heart breaks,' commented Viviana sourly, aside.

‘Your command of the Common Tongue is excellent,' Tahquil said to the swan-girl. ‘You have the ability to form all sounds. Why speak thus?'

‘Swans speak smoothly. Humans have harsh sounds. Harrowing words wound,' the marvellous bird-girl said contemptuously, stretching her long neck.

First I am reviled for my ugliness, then for my beauty. Now I am despised for being born into the human race. Ah, but I must recollect—prejudice is merely the shield of the self-loving.