The Bitterbynde Trilogy (171 page)

‘My lord,' Ashalind hesitated, swallowed and breathed deeply. ‘I see that thou dost wear a dagger. How is it that our captors allow their prisoner to remain armed?'

A keen wind gusted through the eyrie.

Or so it seemed.

‘The Faêran have no fear of mortal-wrought blades,' he coolly replied, regarding her steadily.

‘My lord wears his dagger at his left side. How then may he draw it, unless with his right hand?'

He grinned, a white wolf-smile.

Ashalind's scalp prickled. ‘Who are you?'

‘Mistress, mistress, what are you saying?' Caitri appeared at her sleeve, plucking at it. ‘Your Majesty, prithee, pay no heed. My mistress is overwrought—'

Ashalind pushed her away.

‘
Who are you?'

‘Dost thou not know me, Elindor?'

His features shifted subtly, or else rods and cones realigned within her retinas, or perhaps certain synapses within her brain altered their impulses. Whatever it was that changed, it was not much. But it was enough.

‘No.' Aghast, Ashalind vehemently denied, ‘No!'

But yes. It was not Thorn who stood before her, nor—as she had feared for an instant—the wanton ganconer, Young Vallentyne of Cinnarine. She paled like an arum lily.

‘Say my name,' he commanded.

Tears buzzed like wasps behind Ashalind's eyes.

‘Say it,' he said.

‘Morragan.'

‘Even so,' he answered, without hurry. ‘How tenderly the name of her first love is framed upon a wench's lips.'

‘You are mistaken, sir. I never loved you.'

He watched her face with a knowing, half-mocking expression.

‘Time after time thou hast taken great pains to seek me in my own domains—twice at Carnconnor, once at Huntingtowers, now at Gothallamor. On each occasion thou cam'st before me in rags. I see that this visit offers no improvement. Canst thou do no better? I might note thee with greater interest, wert thou to present thyself in more advantageous fashion. Thou must needs try harder, sweeting, if thou art to win my regard.'

‘I never sought you out of love.'

‘Didst thou not choose to leave the Realm in order to join me in exile? Thou dost protest of course, as is seemly in a chaste damsel, but thine actions proclaim louder than thy words. It would seem thou canst not keep thyself from me.'

Doubt began to nibble at Ashalind, and in its train, horror. Some grain of truth seemed embedded in his assertions, but how could that be? Again, she averred—though less confidently, ‘You are mistaken.'

Coldly, calculating, he returned, ‘Thou wilt learn thine own mind. Be sure it is soon, lest I grow weary of the novelty of thy countenance, and spurn thee when thou com'st pleading. Thou'rt only mortal, prone to decay. Many, less perishable, vie for my favours.'

‘Oblige them,' she dared to reply.

The walls, if walls they were, cracked. Veins of silver flame climbed them. Morragan caressed Ashalind's cheek, ran his hand into her hair and seized a handful. Her scalp caught fire. She resisted the pain, refusing to cry out.

‘I wield iron!' she cried, thrusting forth the belt buckle in her open palm. ‘Avaunt, or it will burn you!'

He laughed softly. Reaching over, he plucked the buckle from her nerveless hand. It lay in his own, coolly shining. He closed his fingers over the loops and tongue of metal, and when he opened them a pile of reddish dust trickled away.

Ashalind blanched again.

‘Is it come to this?' she gasped. ‘That a Faêran Prince would force a mortal? Where is your pride?'

‘Easily could I make thee serve me.' His laugh was low, a lion's growl. ‘And I mean to do so, yet not in the way thou dost infer. If 'twere pride that prevented me, foolish maid, be sorry, for this reason—that you postpone as sweet a deflowering as mortal maid has ever known. If 'twere scorn that hinders me, that I should disdain to squander my time on an incognisant, inconstant wench, then be awakened to thy status and hope to rise above it by pleasing me better.'

He released her.

‘Go hence,' the Crown Prince of the Faêran said harshly, his elegant form outlined in stars and cold flames. ‘Rinse and clothe thyself as befits a guest of mine, for guest thou shalt remain, until thou findest for me the Gate. As the water pours and the jewels set their brilliance to illumine thy ephemeral attractions, dwell on my words.'

Confusion tangled Ashalind in a web of indecision. The flames which had ripped seams from floor to ceiling burned silently, tongues of licking moonlight. She cared not whether they might sunder the weird fabric of the walls, causing them to shatter and cave in. For another revelation had flared like lightning across her consciousness, throwing the foundations of every principle into relief—a revelation as profound as it was shocking, and all the more sickening in its belatedness.

Her own longing had deluded her, much as a thirst that plagues body and mind may conjure mirages before the eyes. She who parches beneath the desert sun desires above all to behold an oasis. Soon, her frying brain will provide that sight, complete with shady trees. Clues to reality may be deliberately overlooked—until the stoup of cool water turns to a mouthful of sand. Then, illusion's veil is cruelly flung back.

On acknowledging the Raven Prince, Ashalind had lost Thorn and found him simultaneously. Exultance bore her spirits up, but froze in midflight. It was a betrayal. She lowered her lids, hoping that Morragan might not have divined her emotions from her reaction—a hope she knew to be fruitless. He had read her agony as plainly as he might scan a book laid out upon a lectern. His smile was derisive.

Before this meeting, the memory of the Prince's countenance had been unclear to Ashalind, lost with the image of the gate and other elusive memories. In the light of recollection, one thought tormented her. One more question demanded an answer.

The chamber possessed an interior of coloured marble and stone. Fan-vaulting arced to the ceiling, the spreading ribs of the fans blossoming into carved tracery, while the ceiling surface between the vaults was closely decorated with scalloped rosettes. Narrow lancet windows shed starlight onto a floor of blue and gold tiles. Foliate ornament adorned the oaken wall-panelling.

All the furniture was of oak: a sideboard inlaid with ebony, walnut, box and holly; a painted cabinet on a stand; a great oak table, lesser tables, carved chairs, stools, screens, chests and stands. A jug of wine stood on a mahogany side-cabinet with mother-of-pearl and mirrored panels. Like towering scallop shells, wings of sheer electrum rose behind the head of a silk-draped couch. Massive copper candlesticks upheld waxen columns headed with silver flames.

Water gushed from a fountainhead set into a wall, each jet a chain of diamonds flung through the air until it reached the lower basin. There, it transformed to a turbulence of thrashed crystal, constantly flowing away down some hidden drain, constantly being renewed from the rain-showers above. So pure was the liquid that the marble remained stainless, whiter than sunlight on hawthorn blossom. Each drop, alighting from flight, gave out a pleasant note, imbuing the chamber with melody.

This remarkable chamber was forested with clusters of pillars that proved to be, in fact, living oak trees. They spread wide their boughs, clothed in leaves of bronze and verdigris.

Under these trees, Ashalind and Caitri wandered.

‘The idea never occurred to me,' said Ashalind slowly, effortfully. ‘How strange. Perhaps it was a side-effect of the geas of the Geata Poeg na Déanainn—incomplete recall. When first I met Thorn, I did not see the resemblance. I had forgotten everything, including the appearance of Morragan, Fithiach of Carnconnor. Later, I recalled much that had befallen me before the hound's kiss stole my memory in the under-delvings of Huntingtowers. Yet, three aspects of my former life always remained as mist to me. The third, the location of the gate. The second, why I should have chosen, at the last instant, to leave the Fair Realm, to renounce everyone I loved and endure the Langothe in Erith. The first, the face of Morragan, Prince of Ravens. When I saw him again, truly saw him, with vision not overlaid by my desire,
that
mist cleared. Before it did, I confused him with another, and even now I can scarce tell the two of them apart. How can two lords be so different in disposition and appear almost identical? For one reason only, I surmise, somewhat tardily—and that is—' she choked on the words, ‘they are
brethren
.'

‘Impossible,' said Caitri. ‘The Raven Prince had arranged some glamour on himself, to make us believe him to be His Majesty.'

‘No glamour. You overlook, the Faêran cannot lie. I spoke his name and he responded,
“Even so.”
And it is so, I assure you, Caitri. I recognised him as Morragan. His countenance returned to me as I had seen it first in the halls of Carnconnor, under Hob's Hill.'

‘But are you saying that the King-Emperor is an impostor? That he is not James D'Armancourt of the dynasty?'

‘Many secrets I concealed from Thorn,' said Ashalind, speaking more to herself than to her friend, ‘and many he held from me. Yes, he is an impostor. And for that, I thank fortune, while cursing fate.
For my lover is immortal.
He lives, and I can never cease to love him, meanwhile hating the Faêran race whose blood is his. I am reviled, for becoming the game-piece of such a one, and worse than that, for being so foolish as to love him still, even when apprised of the truth. The King-Emperor of Erith, he who I know as Thorn, is in fact none other than the elder brother of Morragan—Angavar, High King of the Faêran.' Tears striped her beautiful face like glass ribbons.

‘Impossible,' argued Caitri again. ‘His Majesty's birth would have been witnessed, as are all Royal births. He was raised in the public eye, as are all Royal children.'

‘I cannot guess how or when the substitution was accomplished. I do know that there is very little which is beyond the grasp of the Faêran, should they so desire it.'

It surged over Ashalind with redoubled force, the comprehension that Thorn was alive; more than that—he could never die. Ecstasy and aching sorrow collided like two worlds crashing together in a void.

With that, both girls lay down on the winged couch and sobbed inconsolably, until there were no more tears left to weep.

As the hypnotic fume of sleep finally seeped through her brain, Ashalind whispered, ‘I hope with all vehemence that Via has escaped unharmed.' But Caitri's eyes were already closed, her lashes two crescents of dark cinnibar, and she was breathing gently.

Time was measureless in Darke, there being no days to mark the passing of it, no seasons to weigh the pendulum of the year. Ashalind and Caitri woke to find the chamber of the oaks unaltered, save that gleaming raiment now hung on the trees.

For Caitri there was an armazine kirtle the colour of a robin's egg, a houppelande of blue velvet stitched with white nightingales, a girdle of pearls, a cloak lined with rich taffeta and a headdress of silver lace sporting ibis feathers stuck all over with pearls. For Ashalind, a kirtle of patterned baudekyn with narrow sleeves long enough to cover, in part, the backs of her hands, and a tight-bodiced overgown of velvet the colour of the Summer seas, richly fretted with gold. The sleeves of the gown, cut in the bag pattern, were buttoned closely around the elbows. There was also a black velvet cloak powdered with golden lilies, lined with blue satin and fastened with a gem-crusted band upon two sapphire-studded morses. Her costume was completed with a jewelled torque, an elaborate girdle wrought like a chain of lilies, a crespine headdress of gold wire, and a long veil of silver gauze to flutter over her ink-dyed hair, down her back.

The two damsels examined the garments and accoutrements but did not don them.

‘I do not care for bathing or dressing in this place,' said Caitri. ‘I feel as if eyes are watching.'

Discreetly, they laved their hands and feet in the wall-fountain. The white enamelled bird on Ashalind's gold bracelet seemed to flutter helplessly.

‘How I kept my father's gift with me over all the long leagues, I do not know,' she sighed. ‘It is the one token left to me that I wear blithely. I'll not wear Faêran gifts,' she added, but as soon as she had spoken, a flock of crows flew out of the oaks and set upon her, pecking and scratching at her clothes. The travel-stained garb of Appleton Thorn began to fray and unravel. Squawking, the birds flew off.

‘Not only are eyes watching, but ears are listening,' fumed Caitri, struggling to help Ashalind into the gold-threaded kirtle before the rags fell from her back. ‘Alas you have no tilhal, and mine was torn from my throat by the wicked abductors of the Hunt. Did those birds harm you sorely just now?'

‘Oddly, I remain unscathed,' answered Ashalind. ‘But alas, that we are subject to such indignities.'

‘Shall you soon recall the location of this Gate, that we may go free?'

‘Even should I recall it,' said Ashalind, pushing her arms through the bag-sleeves of the gown, ‘the Faêran have issued no guarantee that they would free us. No promise has been given—only an impression. Equivocation is a specialty of that race. If anyone has been tutored on that subject, it is I.'

‘It is of no use to look for escape, I suppose.'

‘None at all. There is potent gramarye at work here and Morragan is the master of it.'

‘Poor Via. I wonder where she is,' mused Caitri. ‘Will Tiggy take good care of her?'

‘If he has learned to cease hiding in pools.'

‘Where will he take her?'

‘Maybe across the Landbridge, to where the Royal Legions are encamped …'

‘I still cannot credit that the King-Emperor is in truth the Faêran High King disguised,' muttered Caitri, fastening the sapphire buttons at Ashalind's elbows.

‘Aye, 'tis a bitter cup to quaff, Cait. I find it hard to swallow. I pictured Morragan's elder brother as a greybeard of middle years. I was forgetting that the Faêran show no sign of age unless they wish it. Both brethren have lived for centuries.'