Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (2 page)

Mildthrythe Miller: the mill-wife.

Nyneve Longiníme (Long Cloud): a weathermage and member of Council of Ellenhall.

Osweald Miller: the gentleman miller.

Tristian Solorien (Rising Sun): a weathermage and member of Council of Ellenhall.

T
HE
K
INGDOM OF
N
ARNGALIS
(Capital city: King’s Winterbourne.)

Giles: Asrathiel’s butler at The Laurels in Lime Grove.

Hallingbury: The Lord Chamberlain.

Lecelina: eldest daughter of King Warwick, the Princess Royal of Narngalis.

Linnet: Asrathiel’s maid at The Laurels.

Mrs. Draycott Parslow: Asrathiel’s landlady, the owner of The Laurels in Lime Grove.

Saranna: youngest daughter of King Warwick.

Sir Gilead Torrington: King Warwick’s lieutenant-general.

Sir Torold Tetbury: The Lord Privy Seal.

Walter Wyverstone: second son of King Warwick.

Warwick Wyverstone: king of Narngalis.

William Wyverstone: eldest son of King Warwick, and Crown Prince of Narngalis.

Winona: second daughter of King Warwick.

T
HE
K
INGDOM OF
S
LIEVMORDHU
(Capital city: Cathair Rua)

Adiuvo Constanto Clementer: a druid who renounced the Sanctorum.

Almus Agnellus, “Declan of the Wildwoods”: a druid who renounced the Sanctorum.

Conall ‘Two Swords’ Gearnach: Commander-in-Chief of the Knights of the Brand.

Cormac Ó Maoldúin: third son of Uabhar.

Fedlamid macDall: Queen Saibh’s most trusted servant.

Fergus Ó Maoldúin: fourth son of Uabhar.

Fionnbar Aonarán: an enemy of Arran Maelstronnar.

Fionnuala Aonarán: Fionnbar’s sister.

Gearóid: a younger brother of Uabhar.

Grak: a Marauder.

Kieran Ó Maoldúin: eldest son of Uabhar, and Crown Prince of Slievmordhu.

Krorb: a Marauder captain.

Lord Genan of Áth Midbine: a courtier.

Luchóg, a minstrel at Uabhar’s court.

Mairead: a child who served at the Red Lodge.

Maolmórdha Ó Maoldúin: a king of Slievmordhu, the father of Uabhar.

Páid: a brother of Uabhar, next in line after Gearóid.

Primoris Asper Virosus: The Druid Imperius.

Risteárd Mac Brádaigh: High Commander of the Slievmordhuan armed forces.

Ronin Ó Maoldúin: second son of Uabhar.

Ruurt: a Marauder captain.

Saibh: Queen of Slievmordhu, wife to Uabhar.

Scroop: a Marauder.

The Spawn Mother: a progenitrix of the Marauders.

Tertius Acerbus: a druid.

Uabhar Ó Maoldúin: King of Slievmordhu.

Urlámhaí Ó Maoldúin: Urlámhaí the Gracious, an ancient king.

Weatherwitch
is the third book in the Crowthistle Chronicles.

Book 1:
The Iron Tree,
told of Jarred, a young man who possessed an amulet that apparently made him invulnerable. He and his comrades visited a town built among the intricate waterways of the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu, where Jarred fell in love with a marsh-daughter named Lilith.

Slievmordhu is a kingdom situated in the southwest of Tir, a continent throughout which grows a disliked but beautiful common weed called “crowthistle.” Eldritch wights dwell in the marsh but seldom harm the marsh-folk, who understand them and their ways. An urisk, a seelie wight like a dwarfish man with the legs of a goat, often loitered near Lilith’s cottage.

Jarred and Lilith discovered that the long-gone Sorcerer of Strang had cursed Lilith’s bloodline; if she married, eventually she would fall prey to madness. When they learned, however, that marriage to Jarred—a descendant of the sorcerer, and therefore immune to most forms of harm, even without the amulet—might be a way of thwarting the curse, they were wed. Their joy was complete. They named their only daughter “Jewel,” in honor of the extraordinary white jewel of Strang that had come into Jarred’s possession.

The King of Slievmordhu was seeking to entrap the sorcerer’s descendant in order to make him open the sealed Dome of Strang and reveal its arcane treasures. Brother and sister Fionnbar and Fionnuala Aonarán helped Jarred to escape from the king’s men, on the proviso that Jarred would later leave his family and go with the Aonaráns to unlock the secrets of the Dome.

Shortly thereafter the madness caught up with Lilith despite all, and in
trying fruitlessly to save her life, Jarred lost his own. Their orphaned child Jewel—who had inherited virtual invulnerability from her father—escaped from the marsh, eluding the royal cavalry.

Book 2:
The Well of Tears,
told how Jewel was raised at High Darioneth, the home of the Weathermasters of Rowan Green. Ellenhall was the name of the great building in which the weathermasters held their councils. The weathermasters’ leader was the Storm Lord, Avalloc Maelstronnar-Stormbringer, whose eldest son was Arran. Over the mantelpiece at the Stormbringer house hung the famous sword, Fallowblade, long ago forged to defeat unseelie goblin hordes.

High Darioneth was teeming with brownies and other eldritch wights; Jewel met an urisk and realized that it was the same one that used to belong to her mother’s household at the Marsh. The urisk had followed her; yet it was most uncouth and unresponsive when she tried to draw it into conversation, and never appeared for long.

At the age of seventeen Jewel decided to journey to Strang and see if she could unlock the secrets of the sorcerer’s mysterious Dome. Without her knowledge, Arran followed her, as her protector. He caught up with her inside the Dome. Together, Arran and Jewel lit upon a book that told of certain Wells, each of which held a few drops of the Water of Eternal Life.

After a long journey they found the Well of Rain, but at the last moment Fionnbar Aonarán appeared, seized the Water of Life, and drank it. His accomplice Cathal Weaponmonger ascended the Tower and destroyed the dry Well, but fell to his death. Enraged by the loss of Weaponmonger, with whom she was in love, Fionnuala blamed Arran and tried unsuccessfully to shoot him with her crossbow.

Later, just as Arran found the Well of Dew, Fionnuala and her henchmen attacked him. They were about to slay him and make off with the Water of Life. In his extremity Arran had no option but to swallow the Draught himself. When he finally returned home he and Jewel, who had fallen in love, were wed.

Jewel and Arran had a baby daughter. They named her Ast
riel, and the impet Fridayweed informed them she had inherited immortality from her father. Arran and Fridayweed went to seek the last well, the Well of Tears.
After many difficulties they discovered it, but alas! ancient upheavals had destroyed it. The well was empty and dry.

Visualizing a future in which he lived eternally without Jewel at his side, Arran was gripped by rage. He swore vengeance on Fionnbar and Fionnbar’s half-sister Fionnuala. After embarking on a hunting trip he trapped Fionnbar in a cave in the far northeastern mountains of Slievmordhu, telling his prisoner that he must dwell there forever, immortal, suffering loneliness and exile.

Fionnuala Aonarán hated Arran. She knew she could no longer harm the weathermaster, so decided to do harm to the one he loved best. Having learned the secret of Jewel’s bane, she wounded her. Jewel, however, was the mother of an immortal child; therefore she did not die, but instead fell into a deep and lasting sleep that resembled death. The beauteous sleeper was placed on a silken couch on the glass cupola atop the Stormbringer house. Wild roses entwined their stems about the cupola, framing the eight panes with leaves and their five-petaled rosettes.

Declaring he would scour the unknown lands until he discovered a way to waken his bride, Arran abandoned his child, his home and his inheritance, including the golden sword Fallowblade, leaving them all with his father, Avalloc.

By then, Jewels young daughter Ast
riel had encountered the very same urisk that used to be attached to her grandmother’s cottage in the Marsh. Towards the end of
The Well of Tears
the girl and the wight sat companionably together in a high place, looking out at the distant lands.

The story closed with these words:

The child
. . .
had lately come from the glass chamber where her mother lay like a porcelain doll among the flowers, and thoughts of the loss of both her parents had cast her into a doleful, yearning mood. A broken line of birds passed swiftly and noiselessly overhead, the last swallows migrating south . . . Yet Ast
riel’s father had set out in the opposite direction, and as she gazed northwards, a terrible wistfulness seized her heart. She longed to take wing, to fly from her perch out across the vaporous lands to the northern mountains and beyond.

“Your sorrowfulness is irksome” commented the urisk.

She replied, “If you do not like it, you need not stay.”

“Be of good cheer.”

“I will not”

They reverted to silence and sat beneath the pink-streaked sky, watching the sun melt in a glorious pyre behind the mountains. Soon it would give way to the solemn majesty of the stars.

“If you choose melancholy” said the urisk, “then, the more fool you.”

She said, “It is easy for you to say those words, ignorant immortal creature. You cannot know what it is to forever lose someone you love.”

The wight, a being that was unable to lie, who had existed for many lives of men and accumulated more knowledge in those lifetimes than could ever be measured, said pityingly, “It is you, not I, who is ignorant. You fail to understand. Loss may be reversed. Even death is not the story’s end.”