The Bitterbynde Trilogy (197 page)

The fog swirled and came together in a blot. The blot dissipated like smoke, and where it had been stood seven duergars, the leader holding a whip.

They pinned Ashalind with their baleful eyes and stepped forward.

‘Avaunt!' she cried.

Her mare threw up her head and made to run off, but Ashalind held her hard, pulling on the reins. ‘You cannot frighten me,' she snapped at the unseelie dwarves. ‘I stand in a protected place and from here I shall not budge. Be off!'

The duergar leader grinned, raised its arm high and cracked the whip. In panic, the mare reared on her hind legs, and by the time Ashalind had steadied her, the wights had disappeared.

The ears of the mare flicked and swivelled. New sounds grew amongst the clamour. They did not arise from within the land-bound fog but instead pierced it from without and above, cutting across all other noises as scythes sever murmuring rushes.

Three strident calls grated against the sky—three creaky doors, three unoiled hinges—like a guttural keening of strange children, hoarse prophets predicting the end of the world. A trio of huge black birds flapped out of the fog. Crazed with fear, Ashalind's mare jumped sideways, threw her rider off and dashed away. Dazed, Ashalind grabbed hold of the arkenfir's stem and heaved herself to her feet. Like a triad of tombstones the hoodie crows perched sombrely, with folded wings, atop a monolith. One by one their black beaks opened like pincers and snapped shut. The eyes of these manifestations seemed not to be eyes at all, but empty sockets into which one dared not look for fear of being drawn into the unspeakable regions of madness beyond. Ashalind felt utterly alone, abandoned and vulnerable. There came over her an urgent desire to flee.

‘Get you gone,' she sobbed violently. ‘Macha, Neman, Morrigu—do you think I do not know you? Do you think I do not perceive you are trying to drive me hence? You shall not have your will of me. Here I stay!'

For one long moment the Crows of War regarded the mortal with their profane vacuums of eyes. Then, as if in answer to a signal, they extended the great arcs of their wings and flapped their way slowly, deliberately, into the sky.

The sounds of conflict had ceased. The encounter was over and the dusts of aftermath were settling now, revealing the broken landscape and a ragged pool of water lying spilled at the foot of a pile of granite boulders. Ashalind glimpsed riders, both Faêran and mortal, cantering back towards the arkenfir where she stood. She fancied she heard them calling her name, but could not be certain. The sensory battering of noise, choking dust and turmoil she had experienced had been overwhelming. Exhausted by confrontations with the wights, she felt wrung out like a mop-head, wishing only to find some haven. For a fleeting instant it seemed to the beleaguered damsel that her lover had abandoned her. She felt that she could endure no more fear, having expended her strength and been left vulnerable.

Close by, the water in the pool stirred. Out of it climbed a one-eyed man with a huge, lolling head. His torso was growing out of a horse's body. Stinking white vapour poured from his mouth. Completely devoid of skin, his entire surface was red raw flesh, in which blood, black as tar, ran through yellow veins, and great white sinews, thick as horse tethers, twisted, stretched and contracted as the monster moved, stretching out his extraordinarily long, single arm.

At this first actual sight of Nuckelavee, Ashalind's courage failed her. The vision she had seen in Morragan's looking-pool, and all the well-known tales about this monster, burst upon her mind with the impetus of sheer horror. According to the practice of the Faêran, Angavar had defeated but not destroyed the creature. By far the most hideous of all unseelie wights, this abomination had slain the parents of Prince Edward. Uttering a half-smothered cry she fled, darting and dodging amongst the stones.

As she ran she could hear her name urgently being shouted, but louder still was the rampant clatter of eldritch hooves on disintegrating stone, and a rhythmic hissing as of a steam kettle boiling. Underfoot, the ground was treacherous, mazed with cracks. Out of them, like maggots from a disturbed corpse, scuttled the small, light-fearing denizens of the underworld whose dwellings had been disturbed by the quakes. Ashalind's blood roared in her ears like tormented bulls. Heat scalded the nape of her neck as though the blast of Nuckelavee's breath were already singeing her flesh. She dared not slow her progress by glancing back to find out how close he was, but in the recesses of her mind she took some courage from the sounds of grating and sliding that came to her as Nuckelavee's hard hooves slipped on the broken ground. Surely this labour must impede his progress! Still, her shoulders tensed against the blow that must soon fall from his flayed fist, crushing her against jagged edges of granite.

Wildly, as she ran, she scanned her surroundings for some hope of rescue. Between the towers and stacks glimmered a satin sky of the palest blue deepening to indigo in the east. Fine strands of cloud streaked it like chalk marks. Straight ahead loomed a tall grey rock in the shape of a giant hand. A slender obelisk leaned towards it, coloured as the lip of a rose petal. Both monoliths were capped by a lintel-stone shaped like a doorstep. Near at hand in a granite hollow welled a dark, spring-fed pool.

Seemingly just another rocky crevice among many, it stood motionless and unnoticeable in the deep shadows of afternoon, as it had stood for many lifetimes of kings: the Gate she had left behind. Yet not quite as it had always stood—a crack was pencilled down one side of it where it remained slightly ajar.

Here was a safe haven to lock out what pursued her.

Her fingernail slid swiftly into the almost invisible opening. At her touch, the massive portal swung gently aside as though it were feather-light. A shadowy haven lay within, but even as a flying pebble dislodged by eldritch hooves rebounded off the gatepost, the refugee hesitated, struck by that familiar sensation of having forgotten some matter of crucial importance.

In that elusive moment, beneath the unstable ground near the Gate, a thin barrier of silt responded to the Cearb's vibrations and gave way. A handful of gravel poured from a pocket. This undermining shifted the stones which had roofed that pocket. On the surface above, a boulder which had been balancing precariously atop a stack now tilted. Motivated by its own momentum, it crashed down. The shock of the bouncing impact split open new crevices. A rat jumped out from a fissure and ran over Ashalind's foot.

It was too much.

Fear and revulsion spurred her. With a scream of outrage she slipped inside the Gate, kicked aside three strands of hair and a broken knife, and slammed the portal shut.

Slumping against a wall, Ashalind rested to regain her breath. A radiance, ambiguous and strange, illuminated a distorted passageway sealed by a door at either end. The vaulted ceiling was cracked. In places it sagged down like a bag of water. As the walls approached the nearest portal they melded into rough-hewn granite. At the far end where they met the silver Realm Door with its golden hinges, they transmuted into living trees whose boughs interlaced overhead. This, the fateful Gate-passage between the Realm and Erith, had not altered.

On the floor lay the haft and snapped-off blade of the horn-handled knife Ashalind's father had given her at their parting. Nearby was the shrivelled leaf of an eringl tree. In the uncertain gloom, it was impossible to make out the three strands of hair which had faithfully served to keep open the gate during her travails in the world of humankind.

‘Gate, oh Gate,' whispered Ashalind, between two realms.

A sound of sweet, sad singing circulated in Ashalind's head. She grew calm, and with tranquillity came the recollection for which she had been striving, just before she had set foot inside the Gate-passage.

‘
Fear no harm from wights now, Betrothed, ‘Angavar had told her, ‘nor from any mortal creature. For when I am with thee, thou'rt safe from all harm. When I am not, I shall leave thee in the care of others who can protect thee, or the thou shalt bide in some secure place.'

Once, Sianadh had instructed, ‘Put fear aside, for only then will ye see your way clearly.' His words had proved apt. Terror had been her undoing, for it had driven out rational thought. Neither the duergars, nor the Crows of War, nor Nuckelavee could possess the power to scathe the chosen bride of the Faêran High King, if only she had trusted his word and stood her ground. As for the scuttling rodent (at the thought of which, she flinched), it was no more than a
lorraly
creature hurrying to shelter.

As soon as the girl in the Gate-passage reached these conclusions, she thought of something else. How long had she been lying there? Perhaps five minutes? Perhaps ten? Lunging for the Erith Door, she flung it wide.

Beyond, the land of granite towers and riven rocks lay naked to the night. It seemed empty, frozen, scoured of all living beings. White stars frosted a sky so black it seemed to suck out the essence of her being. Their light bleached the flanks of the monoliths, carving enigmatic shadows in secret crevices and deeply cloven interstices.

Some unknown measure of time had passed.

She was alone.

A profound pang of loss and grief tore through the very core of Ashalind's spirit. She cursed the legacy of humankind, that fear should ever drive out reason and set the world awry. Her cry rang out over the desolation of cold stone and clear water and dark pine, but it could not summon what had passed forever.

It could not turn back Time.

12

THE BITTERBYNDE

Part II

‘
I'd teach you of her looks and of her ways,

Her lilting voice, the tincture of her hair,

Her lucent eyes as bright as Summer days.

I'd teach you this and more, but she's not there.'

O
LD
T
ALITH
S
ONG

In the soft sibilant eventide belonging to the land of stone and pine, a wind the colour of water crooned along gullies and canyons, whistled through chimneys and narrow fractures, piped in clefts and rifts and sang amongst soaring columns. Under its caress the tiny beards of mosses nodded. A small rain fell from belts of arkenfirs where each needle was beaded with a glister of water-drops condensed from the mists. It fell on the surface of cold, black waters that lapped new margins of fused glass and congealed stone. Ripples unrolled like ribbons of platinum.

A lake, where no lake had been before.

Not far from the lake's edge there reared a tall grey rock like a giant hand. A slender obelisk leaned towards it, coloured as the lip of a rose petal. Both monoliths were capped by a lintel-stone shaped like a doorstep. As softly as the sighing of the wind, someone stepped from the shadows of the rocks. Her hair streamed out, lustrous, a swathe of gilt threads. Her eyes were two green flowers brimming with dew.

‘What have I done?'

Stooping, she placed some glinting strands carefully in the shadows at her feet. She set her hand on a lofty slab and it shifted, though this time it was harder to move. Something in the door's framing had skewed. The portal stuck fast and she could not close it. Leaving it partway unclosed she walked along the shore, into the night. In crevices of stone, the wind's breath carried away her final words like a passing thought which brushes against the brain and is almost remembered.

‘I must find him.'

But she had not been quite alone.

One single fluke of fortune had at that very moment chosen to strike a man whom Fortune appeared to have cast aside. He was a vagabond, a cowled wanderer who lived each day, each year of his life on the borders of lunacy, tormented by fear. Hunted by minor eldritch wights that were held at bay only by his desperate trickery, he was also banished from the haunts of humankind. subject to a king's warrant that he be arrested on sight. Once he had lorded it at the Court of the King-Emperor, wielding power with an uncompromising hand. Now he stooped, creeping like a shabby and demented beggar through the remote places of Eldaraigne. It was he at last who stumbled accidentally upon good luck. Finally, at the exact time and place that would best realise his vengeful dreams, he was there.

This outcast was observing Ashalind from another shadow, spying from a distance, carefully noting her every move. He watched until she was out of sight. Furtively, he glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected pursuit. It seemed his expectations were well founded. Not far from where he stood, the stones—or the umbras of the stones—seemed to be alive. They were swarming towards him with a fluid movement, humping and lumping. Once they paused, lifting their heads as though to taste the air.

The watcher glided swiftly to the place from which Ashalind had departed.

The Gate stood open—wide enough that a gaunt man might enter easily, if he turned sideways.

Which he did.

As the tattered hem of his cloak disappeared, several of the bobbing, crouching rock-shadows flowed in after him.

For a while, the rest of the spriggans snuffed about where his trail had ended. Then they too vanished, dissolving into the landscape.

Ashalind stepped around the shore of the new lake that had formed during the unguessed span of time she had lain inside the Gate—formed, perhaps, within one of the subsidences caused by the quakes. How long had it taken for such a wide depression to fill with rainwater? And why were the rocky margins melted, as though from the heat of a volcano? She had no idea, nor did she care to ponder. One purpose only possessed and drove her—to find Angavar again.

In the lee of a scaffold-sized boulder stood a stained rag of a tent and the blackened remnants of a campfire, unexpected and somehow grotesque against the clean lines of the landscape. It appeared deserted. The abandoned campsite of some mortal hermit could offer no succour, no evidence of her lover's whereabouts, so she passed it by.