Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (56 page)

Mac Brádaigh, who had been lolling back and savoring the scene, sat upright and blanched conspicuously. After a moment’s shock, Uabhar uttered a forced laugh. “Much good will it do,” he sneered. “Lord Luck is on my side, and Lord Destiny also, and well you know it.”

Without another word the Druid Imperius swept out of the room.

After the noise of his departure had dwindled, the king gave the table such a shove that it crashed over on its side. “I am closer to the Fates than the druids!” he roared, “and when I am High King I will destroy all the Sanctorums!”

But the Druid Imperius went straight to his strongrooms and collected his druids’ hexing equipment. These shamanic tools, supposedly imbued with magickal powers bestowed by the Fates, comprised an assortment of fetishes and charms, totems and talismans, statues and idols. Accompanied by his unquestioning assistant, Acerbus, Virosus took a chariot out across the moors and fens, to an ancient lakeside Oratorium. There he drew circles on the ground, and painted signs on the air, and called out to the Fates, and made such ceremonies as the druidic lore-books stipulated, and more. Having bound all the good fortune of Uabhar’s dynasty into four wooden statuettes—a star, a twibill, a cat and a wheel—he tied up the objects in a bag and cast them into the deep, black lake, which was haunted by unseelie fuathan, so that the objects could never be retrieved by mortal men.

“As these charms rot away, so will the House of Ó Maoldúin!” screamed the Druid Imperius. He kept his promise, however, and breathed no word of the weathermasters’ demise to anyone.

Many leagues from Silverton, the strange storm at Cathair Rua had petered out. Half dead with terror and the sweltering fever to which he had now truly become subject, Cat Soup finally managed to evade the forces of authority and smuggle himself aboard yet another wagon. It turned out that this one was indeed bound for King’s Winterbourne, and as it rattled out through the city gates, the beggar privately vowed that he would never return to the red metropolis in the south.

Not far from the walls of Slievmordhu’s capital, the vagrant’s conveyance jolted past a certain spot that appeared superficially to be no different from any other leaf-embowered avenue of the highway. If any of the wagoners had peered into the rain-filled roadside ditch, however, they would have beheld a pale lily floating on the water, amidst delicate green traceries of duckweed and bladderwort. It was no pond-flower, however, but a face; that of Ryence Darglistel’s slain prentice, Cador, who had been intercepted by Uabhar’s soldiers on his way to Orielthir. The lad’s lifeless form was suspended in the water, while loose petals of may-blossom and sweet-briar drifted down from the greenery that rustled above to alight upon his marbled cheek.

As for the other messenger, Queen Saibh’s man, Fedlamid macDall, his mount had stumbled while galloping through the rain, and he had been flung to the ground. As he searched, calling for his steed, he had stepped upon a Stray Sod and been doomed, for the nonce, to wander lost. Soon afterwards he had come to the attention of a passing company of trows, who had abducted him, for they were attracted to human beings with yellow hair and wanted him for their own. MacDall’s horse found its way back to Cathair Rua two days later, and when the queen saw it she wept, but would not say why.

No messenger had succeeded in arriving at Orielthir to warn King Thorgild of Uabhar’s crimes. No willing man was able to tell him the truth, and no man who might have done so was willing.

Uabhar dispatched his own courier to Thorgild Torkilsalven, claiming that the weathermasters were safe and hale. That being the case—he wrote—Thorgild had accomplished his mission of escorting them to Cathair Rua and might now return to Grïmnørsland with an untroubled mind, being refreshed from his sojourn at the site of the Summer Palace.

“My liege begs me to inform you that your majesty’s Shield Champions will soon follow,” the courier said. “They will not be far behind your entourage.”

The good monarch of the west kingdom harbored many suspicions, but he was convinced that even Uabhar would not stoop to scathing the beneficent lords of the elements. Furthermore, he trusted that the power of the mages and his own knights was sufficient to repel any who tried to do them ill. Numerous urgent duties of state beckoned him to return to his home. Casting many a backward glance, he and his retinue struck out for their native land.

As for Conall Gearnach, Uabhar sent a message to him also. Even though the Commander-in-Chief of the Knights of the Brand could not learn of the executions, he would be certain to hear stories of siege and imprisonment. The high-principled but quick-tempered knight would inevitably be furious
beyond reason when he learned how roughly the weathermasters had been treated, after he had promised them safety. His fury would be exacerbated by the news that Uabhar had burned down the famous Red Lodge, the home of his chivalry. Guessing that Gearnach would become unmanageable and troublesome should he return at that time to Cathair Rua, Uabhar decided to impose a cooling-off period. Gearnach’s orders were to leave Orielthir without delay, take a company of knights, and strike out for the remote Southeastern Moors. The king issued these instructions on the pretext that unseelie wights were reported to be gathering on the moors in great numbers. It was necessary, the king declared, for Gearnach to gauge whether this mustering of malign forces would pose any threat to Slievmordhu.

Suspecting foul play, Gearnach was sorely tested when he received this command. Like all the Knights of the Brand he regarded keeping one’s word of honor as the highest benchmark to which anyone could aspire, and he had sworn the oath of fealty to his sovereign, promising to protect and obey him. Yet he had uttered that vow before he began to understand the base nature of Uabhar.

His first feelings of apprehension on this matter had been sparked years earlier, and had grown gradually ever since, but he drew strength from harking back to the speech he had given on the inaugural Day of Heroes, which he still recalled word for word: “Loyalty in character means absolute obedience that does not question the results of an officer’s command, nor its reasons, but rather obeys for the sake of obedience itself. . . .”

If followers were to renounce their masters because they no longer deemed them completely virtuous, there would be no purpose, no glory in oath-taking. Having resolved to do his duty by his country, Gearnach had sworn fealty to Uabhar on the understanding that the king was, by and large, a worthy liege lord. Should it turn out otherwise, the knight would not besmirch the name of Gearnach by tergiversating. If he regretted the oath he would not allow himself to acknowledge it. He was determined to stand by his promise under all circumstances, because a truly honorable man could do no less. In the end, despite his sovereign’s offenses, Gearnach remained unswerving in his loyalty to the crown of Slievmordhu.

So it happened that the knight departed from Orielthir with his chivalry, riding northeast into the region of the Great Lakes, and beyond. He went precipitately, nonetheless, so that he might return to Cathair Rua as soon as possible.

The fate of the weathermasters was hidden from public knowledge. In
Cathair Rua the ambassador from High Darioneth was arrested on a fabricated charge and imprisoned, his household dismantled. The story was put about that the weatherlords had escaped the fire in the Red Lodge, and made peace with Uabhar. Any mention of conflict was suppressed. To prove their cordial intentions they had accepted his hospitality and were abiding accordantly in private palace apartments until further notice.

Uabhar concocted semaphore messages and sent them to the Mountain Ring, under the names of Ymberbaillé and Darglistel, declaring that all was well, and informing the Storm Lord that the weathermasters were happy to sojourn at the palace for a week or two before returning to Rowan Green. There was a hasty note about the mage-summoned storms; “All will be made clear in due course” was the only explanation given, and “no need to worry” said the letter.

Avalloc, still in a state of frailty, had been alarmed by the severe and inexplicable upheavals in the weather systems. On receiving the tidings from Cathair Rua, he grew more troubled. It was out of character for his kindred and comrades to act thus, and he could not help suspecting some form of chicanery. His first thought was to allay his granddaughter’s anxiety about the atmospheric disturbances, which no doubt she had felt, so he sent her a calming message indicating that there was no cause for trepidation. Nevertheless he dispatched a band of riders south to Cathair Rua to uncover the facts, but they were waylaid upon the road by an unknown agency and never seen again.

The wagon carrying Cat Soup jolted northward amongst a procession of other horse-drawn vehicles. Before them the muddy road unrolled, here and there touching upon towns and villages linked along it like luck-amulets on a bracelet. Slowly the iron cartwheels turned. It would be many days before the convoy reached King’s Winterbourne.

In Silverton and its neighboring hamlets Asrathiel continued on her mission to throw light on the mystery of the eldritch slayings. Morning had dawned drear and overcast at Elpinstone in the Sillerway Valley, with not a puff of wind. So still was the air that plumes of smoke rose straight up from the cottage chimneys.

Asrathiel paced the floor of her lodgings. She could not sleep, despite having been awake all night, traipsing across the countryside. Anxieties about the atmospheric disturbances and the unsolved slayings plagued her,
and from time to time she was assailed by a desire to consult the absent urisk, who had become her font of eldritch lore. She missed his company—there was no denying it—with a disconcerting intensity; disconcerting because the feeling was unfamiliar, and because somehow it did not seem fitting or proper for any human being, let alone a weathermage, to form a strong attachment to an entity so utterly alien; a creature of gramarye, an incarnation of the very night. An urisk was a being with whom, by rights, she should have no association beyond the ordinary transactions—leaving a bowl of cream and a quarter loaf by the back door every evening by way of thanks for domestic services rendered. There was nothing ordinary about that particular urisk, however; nothing that fitted the mold.

The door’s bolts squealed as the damsel drew them back. She stepped over the threshold into the open. An oak tree grew by the door, its far-flung boughs throwing a leafy canopy across the yard. Tiny bells hung from those boughs, silent in the stillness, and like the leaves, they were beaded with droplets. Asrathiel stared into the distance. Along the valley great drifts of mists hung, like the sails of a vast fleet of ghostly galleons. The sun was veiled, yet, oddly, there was nothing dismal about the muted daylight and the floating vapors; rather the air was charged with a kind of excitement. The fogs might be concealing anything, Asrathiel thought whimsically, as she began to pace restlessly beneath the oak. Wondrous things might be hidden behind those veils; they emanated from some supernatural source, after all. What might they hide—glimpses into other worlds? Monsters? Faerie castles floating on cloud islands? The weather-mage contemplated the possibilities, but, inevitably, returned to her original concerns.

Apart from the proliferation of weird mists in the valleys north of the Harrowgate Fells, no tidings of trouble had come her way. During any spare moments she repeatedly perused the communications she had received from Avalloc, as if each new reading might reveal some overlooked word of reassurance. His assurances that to his knowledge her kindred were safe were intended to put her at ease, yet she remained anxious. She could not gauge what had caused the dramatic turbulence in the southern weather-patterns. Her grandfather had relayed to her the contents of the message he had received from Cathair Rua stating that all would be made clear in due course, and with that she had to be content. Knowing that Avalloc would send word if any dire event had occurred, she did not pursue the matter; nonetheless she could not help but be dogged by a sense of dread.