The Bitterbynde Trilogy (153 page)

Nothing remained unwet. Not a leaf, not a sprig nor raceme nor shard did not drip and run with moisture. Not a stick touted itself as fit for kindling.

It rained all day, a shimmering rain. The black bread which was all that remained of their provisions had softened in their packs and turned into black mud. Kept warm by dragon's blood, the travellers tried futilely to shelter in the lee of fallen logs. Sleep was impossible. The heavy sounds of pouring gallons thundered blankly in the skulls of the three companions. When taking their turn at the watch, they instinctively listened for untoward resonances, notes out of key, any signal of peril approaching. But the water's roar rose up like a wall all around and would allow no other sound to penetrate. They were forcibly deaf to all save the water's utterance.

That evening the deluge petered out. In the last light of the day Tahquil haunted the willows, watching for more spheres of Fairbread. Perhaps her eyes were obfuscated with the sands of sleep deprivation. Perhaps the elusive mistletoe did not grow on the sallies to the north of Black Force. In any event, she discovered none.

Caitri found a tree trunk which had fallen across another. So rotten was its underside that she was able to punch right through the cortex. Inside was a mass of fibrous debris, the desiccated pith of the tree, still arid within its rind. Soon the travellers had it piled up in a heap and blazing. Their clothes began to dry.

As night endured, Tahquil stared deeply into the fire. The flames burned themselves into the backs of her eyes. When the ring unexpectedly constricted her finger she looked away, accustoming her vision to the shadows, murmuring a warning to her friends: ‘Wights are nearby.'

A swatch of bullion gleamed. Some marsh flower—a tall, luteous lily perhaps—stood at the brink of darkness. Tahquil's eyes widened. She held her breath.

Could this be a Talith woman?

The lady in green glided forward. Her hair was the yellow of daffodils, marsh marigolds and buttercups. It draped in silken folds over her shoulders and down past her slight waist, which was girdled with waterlilies. Small green-white blossoms entwined themselves, or conceivably were
rooted
in that hair. Strikingly attractive was the face, and clearly not human. Sparkles of reflected firelight ran up and down the filaments of her butter-lemon tresses. They coursed along the water runnels which streamed from it, and from the leaf-green gown with the dagged sleeves flowing to the ground where her two bare feet stood in a puddle, like twin fishes.

Comparably with fuaths and the hair of sea-folk, gruagachs could never get dry, though their inherent wetness never stopped them from testing the ignorance of mortalkind.

The gruagach parted the petals of her river-rose mouth.

‘May I dry myself at your fire?'

A husky tone, sumptuous, rich with verdancy and fruitfulness. Tahquil recalled the swanmaiden's rede—‘
Speak well.'

‘You are welcome,' she said formally, concealing her apprehension.

Viviana and Caitri edged nervously away from the eldritch visitor, who observed them from beneath heavy lids and stretched out long-fingered hands towards the blaze. Water trickled down the slim arms and dripped from the wrists.

‘Star save me,' whispered Caitri, round-eyed. She clutched at the ragged folds of her garments as a drowning mortal might clutch at floating twigs.

Viviana fingered the knife at her belt. Catching her eye, Tahquil shook her head.

Throughout the night other gruagachs came. They asked the same question, receiving the same answer. The second to come out of the darkness was a manlike wight, naked and shaggy. The third was a comely, slender youth clad in lettuce-green and poppy-red.

‘We ought to be on our way by now,' Viviana muttered to Tahquil behind her hand. ‘You said we must not tarry.'

‘Do you suggest that we turn our backs on our visitors and walk away?' asked Tahquil in a low tone. ‘That we take our eyes off them and simultaneously give them offence? Nay. While they remain, we must remain also. Take advantage of this lull. Sleep.'

Ignoring the intriguing phenomenon of wightish masculinity uncovered, Caitri was already slumbering, curled up like a kitten. When Tahquil glanced again at the girlgruagach she saw a crone, wan and haggard, stretching out bony fingers towards the blaze. Water flowed down her skinny arms and drizzled off her wrists. Shuddering, Viviana made as if to rise.

‘Bide!' Tahquil pleaded, clutching Viviana by the elbow. It was curiously easy to restrain the courtier. Perhaps she had not been so keen to depart after all, or else she could not resist the grip of the ring-hand.

‘Since your hands touched the goblin fruit you have not been the same,' said Tahquil.

‘It is you who has altered,' sneered Viviana, yet she made no further move.

Tahquil looked at the crone. She was a fair damsel again, with long, golden hair like Summer sunlight on water. A frog of jade perched on her shoulder.

‘Cows' milk is sweet,' suddenly stated the naked, hairy fellow. His skin was slick, his curly brown hair and beard wringing wet as though he had just that instant climbed from a bath. Hirsute mats covered his chest and back. Nests of it clustered under his armpits and at his groin. Hair thickly thatched his arms and sprouted on the backs of his hands.

‘If we had any milk we would share it gladly,' said Tahquil. ‘Alas, we have none.'

Under bushy brows the gruagach's eyes scintillated; chips of emerald, like the eyes of drowners. He turned that green gaze back to the fire, stretching out his big, rough hands. Water sputtered and sizzled, going up in tendrils of steam.

The ground canted slightly towards the gruagachs, otherwise the mortals would presently have found themselves sitting in an expanding pool upon which tiny green-white blossoms floated.

‘Shilava shillava, sonsirrilon delahirrina.' The voice of the handsome youth in grass-green and holly-berry red was a rippling of water over stones, a sighing of shaken reeds.

‘Immerse,' enigmatically responded the golden maiden.

That was all the conversation there was to be had with the gruagachs pointlessly drying themselves at the fire, and of that fact Tahquil was glad. Seduced, sedated by warmth, it was all she could do to remain vigilant. She noticed that the belle again appeared as a hag, and a most decrepit one.

Make up your mind
…

By dawn the water wights had, inevitably, disappeared.

A trail of puddles and miniature green-white flowers led to a backwater down by a loop in the river. The companions followed it to the water's marge and stood beneath the willows, looking out across the glimmering surface. On slim green stalks, the dart-shaped leaves of arrowhead poked up from the shallows. The plant bore three-petalled blooms, white with a purple blotch at the centre, short-stemmed whorls on long fingers.

‘The tubers of arrowhead are starchy. They are edible,' said Tahquil.

‘But are not gruagachs dwelling down there?' asked Caitri, gazing at the black water.

‘I doubt it. I consider that leading us here was their way of rewarding us for our rather useless hospitality.'

Tahquil stripped off her damp clothes and slipped between the greenish water-panes of the billabong. The chill was a sudden violation, like a slap in the face. Mud oozed between her toes. She felt the swollen tubers beneath the mire, dug around them with her feet, gulped air, ducked underwater and pulled them up. Waist-deep she waded among flat discs of pondweed, her hair streaming like wet leaves over the waxy contours of her body. Returning to the banks she reached up and offered the produce to her friends. They took the dripping food from her hands, momentarily in awe of her.

Carefully, Caitri said, ‘My eyes deceive me. You are a semblance of—'

Tahquil flicked water in her face, smiling. ‘I am no water wight! In good sooth, I am weary of wetness and long to be dry. I should not be surprised if my ears soon begin to sprout watercress.' She dived a second time.

By the time the succulent tubers had been harvested, cooked and consumed, the sun behind the boiling clouds still roofing Lallillir had reached its zenith. Having fed themselves, the travellers fed the fire with the last of the arid fuel and slept until dusk.

‘According to the urisk, Black Bridge crosses the Ravenswater upstream of its conjunction with our friend the Blackwater,' said Tahquil, stuffing her pack with cooked arrowhead tubers. ‘We must direct our steps uphill again from here, away from the river.'

‘Besides, the swan told us culicidae lurk down here in the sheltered deeps of the valley,' added Caitri.

‘The rain will have driven them away,' responded Tahquil, ‘for the nonce. Though, doubtless they will soon return.'

Uphill they went, veering northeast to where they reckoned Black Bridge must lie.

More rain fell throughout that night, in listless curtains of monotony. The fishers' oilskins by now were too ragged to be waterproof. The travellers' garments again became waterlogged. Mud sucked at their boots. From beyond the rain curtains came the percussive
plink
of droplets like glass chimes, and sometimes a light patter as of fingertips drumming on a tabletop. Freshets chortled in channels. Of wind there was no breath. Between showers all was silent, save for the chuckle and tinkle of condensing vapour rolling off leaves. Lallillir loomed pearl-grey, her dripping trees swathed in mist, the nearer trunks glistening dark and wet, the further ones fading as they marched into obscurity.

‘And my hair to grow toadstools,' said Tahquil to herself, wiping rain out of her eyes and contemplating the advantages of an afternoon in the desert.

On the twenty-fifth day of Uianemis the rain contracted to the east. While the travellers slept, or drowsily kept watch, the sky cleared. The primrose sun of Summer bloomed through skies of raucous blue and Lallillir smoked like a flagon of mulled wine in a night-watchman's chilblained hands. The travellers stowed their tattered oilskins in their packs.

‘No need to smear my face with mud for disguise,' said Tahquil to anyone who cared to listen. ‘It has occurred naturally.'

The top of Wold Fell was running down to meet them now, descending towards the east-west arm of Ravenstonedale. Sharply it dropped, and by the closing of the following night the travellers had reached its furthest point.

They stood at the lip of a steep and narrow dene, congested with shadows. Steaming mountain ash trees clad its walls, soaring above tree ferns and low-growing fronds. Tier below hazy tier dropped to the broad band of a river as black as schorl: the Ravenswater.

Further to the right, a high and airy shape could be discerned. Tall, pointed arches grew out of spindly pillars of black stone. Black Bridge was narrow; it seemed to have been drafted and embellished by a fine-pointed pen.

Moving down into the shelter of the mountain ashes, the travellers nestled uncomfortably between their massive roots, and there passed the day in vaporous black-green shade.

Towards nightfall a breeze stirred.

The howl that tore the mantle of evening was like no vocalisation Tahquil had ever heard. No storm-warner, no Boubrie-bird made such a sound. It was a round, melodious, chilling summons that began with a bass yodel, soared suddenly to a high pitch and finished on a descending note—imperative and primitive as instinct, savage as hunger, wild as wind, remote and solitary as the moon. At the noise, Viviana cursed in courtingle and jumped up, tilting her head back to look up into the tree beneath which they sheltered.

‘What yowls?' cried Caitri, following her gaze as though she expected something deadly to immediately drop out on their heads.

‘How swiftly can you climb a tree?' cried the courtier. ‘That was the howl of the morthadu!' She reached for a low branch.

‘Wait,' said Tahquil. ‘What's the use of trapping ourselves in a tree? The morthadu might not be able to climb but they will only scent us, and lay siege until we drop down with weakness like starved possums. We are downwind of them—I am certain they have not detected us. See—the breeze that stirs the ash leaves blows from the northeast and that, I suspect, is where the call issued from.'

‘How agreeable,' said Viviana. ‘That is also the direction of the bridge.'

‘I'd rather,' said Caitri, ‘cross the bridge and be stuck in a tree in Cinnarine eating apples than stuck in an ash tree gnawing on my knuckles.'

‘Either way you would end up as wight-fodder,' said Viviana pessimistically.

The howl issued again, wheeling vertiginously across the sky and through the trees.

‘We cannot go back,' reasoned Tahquil, her voice rising with urgency, ‘nor is there any purpose in turning east or west and remaining in Lallillir. We must depart from this soggy land and the only way is by crossing. the Ravenswater. While the wind continues to blow from the northeast we shall be safe—'

‘Oh yes, and the morthadu shall sit back on their haunches and stay exactly where they are to enable us to avoid them,' said Viviana.

‘They will roam,' answered Tahquil. ‘But with luck they will roam upwind. At any rate—'

‘We have no choice,' Caitri completed the sentence.

As noiselessly as possible, they set off towards the bridge.

Hours later, the sun rose, like a rose.

No light penetrated Ravenstonedale. The high walls of the valley blocked it out. Dark birds floated in circles over the fell-tops.

‘Listen,' said Tahquil. Her face closed in concentration.

Zephyrs streamed like gauze scarves stitched with the chirruping of birds, the hum and scratch of sequined arthropods, the satiny chains of running water.

At length Caitri said, ‘To what?'

‘The howling. It has ceased.'

‘They are nocturnal, the morthadu,' said Viviana caustically. ‘I thought it common knowledge.'

‘Perhaps they sleep,' said Tahquil. ‘But while they sleep we do not. Beneath the day's eye we shall continue to make our way to Black Bridge and across it.'