Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (16 page)

“And,” Asrathiel continued, “I have noted that when you are given a gift, you are wont to return it. As I have mentioned before, my mother told me the tale of the Heronswood coat of fishmail, and the Jaravhor jewel. You re-fused them both.”

“Does my failure to behave as your dependent inconvenience you, weatherwitch?”

The damsel glared at the hairy-shanked incarnation. His dreary garments flapped in the breeze. She might claim him as an heirloom, but he was only a diminutive domestic wight after all, and a useless one at that. Too frequently he overlooked his inferior station. At this moment his patronizing tone grated on her self-containment.

Placing her silver comb on the bench beside her, she said coldly, “I believe that sometimes you forget whom you are addressing! I was born with powers that can only be guessed at by the likes of you. Invulnerability runs in my blood, inherited from my ancestors. My father made me heir to the power of the bri; furthermore, I am immortal.”

It did not matter, after all, declaring this to a wight. He, too, was deathless, so he would hardly think of her as a freak. Besides, he seemed to have been aware all along that she could not die or suffer hurt, and it had made not a jot of difference to him.

The urisk, still lolling against the pillar, said provokingly, “How impressive. What’s the weather forecast, witch?”

Driven by a sudden urge to prove herself superior, Asrathiel ignored his insolence and initiated her weather-faculties, sending them probing into the mercurial gradients of pressure, temperature and humidity that surrounded her. In the courtyard the ambient air was cold—about beer-cellar temperature. Her senses roved outwards, to the snowy peaks of the storths where the atmosphere’s currents blew much colder and stronger. Further and higher, she detected a trough moving across the High Darioneth region. A band of precipitation had already developed over the ranges, and with the temperatures so low, it would almost certainly soon be falling as snow on the heights. The moderate to fresh northwesterly winds would shift toward the west following the change, and then southerly later in the night. Bitter weather would develop, with snowfalls continuing. War’s Day would again be chilly, although snowfalls would become more isolated, clearing early on King’s Day as a weak high pressure ridge moved across the region. Another front was likely to arrive on Thunder’s Day, bringing more showers, tending to more snow at higher elevations.

“The night will continue to be cloudy,” she said aloud, “with rain developing after midnight. Snow will fall on the high crags, and the northwesterly winds on the heights will blow at gale forces until midnight, when they will ease slightly but remain strong and gusty. Down here inside the mountain ring the winds will ease to moderate.” She concluded with, “Tomorrow morning, rain will be followed by an overcast day with light to moderate northwesterly winds on the lowlands, gusting up to about fifty knots in the ranges.” Asrathiel cast a look of complacency at the urisk.

The corners of the wight’s mouth twitched upwards. Was there a tinge of irony in that smile?

“Those who make your acquaintance are fortunate,” he said. “They will always know whether to bring an umbrella.”

His mocking tone was insufferable. Asrathiel’s temper flared.

“If I had an umbrella I would knock you on the head with it, you considerable fool! You make light of that which you cannot understand. The potency of weathermastery is vast beyond your reckoning.”

The eyes of the urisk darkened, as if the creature suddenly stood beneath a different sky. He pushed himself away from the pillar and poised upright on his cloven hoofs. For the first time, Asrathiel became uncomfortably conscious
of the
otherness
of this wight, and experienced a jolt of fear. Urisks were seelie, but they were no less arcane than wicked wights. They were akin to water, wood and stone, rather than hearth and table. They belonged to the night.

“It is you who have but a slight notion of greater forces,” the wight said softly.

Asrathiel’s fear subsided, but she could not help feeling somewhat wary of the wight. It was as if she had picked up a familiar ornament, only to discover it had a secret catch which, when triggered, opened the item to display strange internal workings that had been there all along. The urisk’s intentions in paying visits to her were unclear and his comments were obscure—but then; it was useless to ponder on the ways of eldritch creatures. Their minds, their purpose—all were unfathomable to most human minds.

That there
was
some purpose, however, she was beginning to suspect.

Suddenly a loud and crashing boom reverberated through the courtyard; a cacophony like crushed brass.

Asrathiel jumped. The urisk winced.

Somewhere in the core of the house the dinner-gong had been struck.

The clamor and its echoes broke the uneasy tension. However, when the damsel looked again, the urisk was—naturally—nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared without taking his leave, as was his custom.

“Dinner!” someone called out.

In the tarnished light, the courtyard appeared to be completely devoid of wights. The creature was as absent as he was mysterious. Why he had attached himself to her family in the first place was a puzzle, and why he called on her was beyond understanding. According to received wisdom, urisks were customarily attached to certain
places,
rather than to families. Tribes and clans of mortalfolk might come and go, but urisks were wont to frequent age-old watery places such as wells, and shady pools, rarely con-sorting with humankind at all. Of course there were always exceptions to any rule, and this, evidently, was one such case. Asrathiel wondered why.

Slowly the damsel stood up and ran her fingers through her tousled hair. She picked up her silver comb and left the gloomy cloister, making her way indoors, where lamplight enfolded her like a saffron robe.

Riders of night mares, ugly and vicious,

Ruthless and wicked, fell and malicious

Lurk in the dark hours, sniffing and sneaking;

Pounce on the hapless, squealing and shrieking.

—“
GOBLINS,” A RHYME

Midsummer’s Day passed, celebrated with the usual festivities throughout the Four Kingdoms. Some two weeks afterwards, a wisp of swifts in chevron formation flew over the long-deserted lake-camp of the Marauders. The birds crossed the Border Hills and winged their way toward the Mountain Ring.

It was early in the month of Jule. A caravan of itinerant peddlers from Cathair Rua arrived in High Darioneth, bringing their wares and tidings of doings in Slievmordhu. Marauders had raided the hamlet of Carrickmore, they said, with great loss of goods, and some lives. Most of the villagers had fled when the attackers struck. Many of those who stayed to defend their homes had fallen to the cruel axes of the raiders. In Cathair Rua, the palace had announced that the defense levy on all households in the kingdom would be substantially increased, to pay for better fortifications and more
numerous troops to protect outlying towns and villages. Poverty was on the rise, for the rustics were hard put to meet the new taxes.

The peddlers were fearful. Their wagons bristled with weapons, and they had hired their own mercenaries to strengthen their escort. They were of the optimistic opinion, however, that traveling convoys did not appear to be attacked as frequently as villages these days.

At High Darioneth the plateau-dwellers and the denizens of Rowan Green inspected the wares of the peddlers, making a few purchases and listening, grim-faced, to the news.

On a Summer dusk, another flock of birds—swallows this time—passed over the lichened roof-tiles of the houses on Rowan Green. Their calls flooded through the open windows of the library in the house of Maelstronnar. Hearkening to their stridor, Asrathiel lifted her head and focused the hyacinth lenses of her eyes, as if her gaze could pierce the ceiling and the steeply pitched roof to the skies above, and the stars on the other side of the universe.

Avalloc, Storm Lord of High Darioneth and most eminent wreathermage in all of Tir, occupied the library also. He had returned that very morning from a visit to his friend, the scholar-philosopher Almus Agnellus, who was dwelling, incognito, in a lonely and humble abode near the borders of the Wight Hills. Together, Avalloc and his granddaughter had been discussing the progress of Asrathiel’s studies in weathermastery. Having exhausted that topic for the moment, Asrathiel turned to another.

“Grandfather, what lies beyond the borders of the Four Kingdoms?”

Asrathiel asked questions like these from time to time. Avalloc was aware that despite having traveled all over Tir throughout her life, his granddaughter was far from content, and wished to reconnoiter beyond the fences. He pondered. “We cannot be certain. To my knowledge, no adventurers have ever come to Tir from the lands beyond.”

The damsel persisted, “In all the tomes and scrolls in the libraries of High Darioneth, and many of the collections and stacks belonging to noblemen and royalty in the great cities, there is little to be told of those regions, save for their various names and sparse description of their hither marches. I should very much like to take a sky-balloon and go exploring.”

Her grandfather observed her thoughtfully.

“You understand, dear child, that is impossible,” he said. “Our fleet is larger these days, because the worldwide climatic pattern is altering. Our services are more in demand than ever. Bear in mind that the weather is wilder and more fickle than in earlier times.”

Asrathiel said, “You and I, grandfather, can extend our senses great distances into the atmosphere, predicting the weather far in advance. When we augur that the atmosphere will be relatively tranquil across the kingdoms for a few weeks, leaving at least one balloon idle, I could go exploring!”

“Even the most proficient weathermaster, “Avalloc countered, “must acknowledge that he or she is ultimately fallible, and that the atmosphere is as capricious as any tricksy wight. Emergencies sometimes arise, and we must be prepared. Balloons and crews cannot be spared for adventuring or exploring.”

“But do you not wish to know what lies past the borders?” A hint of pleading had entered Asrathiel’s tone.

“You and I both understand the nature of the weather systems that prevail over the closer areas of those outlying regions, at the furthest limits of our weather-senses. Is that not sufficient, hmm? Besides, all evidence indicates those lands are not inhabited by humankind, nor are they habitable at all by our race—” the Storm Lord checked himself, then amended, “by
mortal
men of our race, I should say. Too many perils and vicissitudes beset far-off places; if not heat and drought then icy cold, or unseelie wights in their hordes, or wildwoods impenetrable, or the hostility of landscapes wind-scoured and barren. To explore those strange countries would require a well-provisioned expedition, and I doubt not ‘twould take many a long day—months or years; perhaps decades. And no guarantee of a profitable outcome, or indeed of a safe return.”

“Knowledge is profit!”

“Exactly my point, dear child.” Avalloc wagged an earnest finger. “There’s no guarantee an exploratory expedition would discover any information of value. Writers of the lore books surmise that the acres of desert or snow or tangle surrounding the Four Kingdoms extend for league upon league, until they simply come to an end at some far-off shore.”

“Well, I consider the prospect of exploration to be exciting, “Asrathiel replied obstinately. “I daresay there are wonderful discoveries waiting to be made.”

“My dear child, what are you hoping to discover?”

“I should like to diagnose the purpose of the universe, and learn the manner of its birth, and what we are made of, and how to banish wickedness.”

Avalloc’s eyes twinkled. “That is very right-minded of you, to be sure. The druids would say you only have to pledge loyalty to the Sanctorum and be generous with donations, and you shall achieve all your goals.”

“And why should we doubt their word?”

Their laughter mingled, as so often. Conversation turned to the subject of the latest “prophecies” from the Sanctorum, which in turn led Asrathiel and Avalloc to discuss the violence being stirred up throughout the Four Kingdoms by the now-frequent schisms within the druidic brotherhood.

“I would that they might all exterminate each other in battle,” said Asrathiel tartly. “Then we might live free of their strictures and blind bigotry. May the Sanctorum and all its rotten branches wither!”

“And yet,” said Avalloc, shaking his white-maned head, “people have a profound need to trust in something beyond themselves. Hope, no matter how illusory, is preferable to despair.”

Asrathiel threw him a quick look. “How odd,” she said, “someone else made a similar statement to me, not long ago.”

Their conversation continued until at length, when the moon’s white-bone face was peeping through the multiple glass panels of the windows, Avalloc decided to retire to his bedchamber, leaving Asrathiel alone in the library. Curled up in an armchair she commenced perusing a book, with eager intensity, as if words were the air she must inhale in order to stay alive. So intent was she on her reading that she was oblivious of all things around. The wall-paneling squeaked, leaded panes rattled in the night breeze, broken patterns of moonlight slid across the floor.