Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (44 page)

Cat Soup had sold the equipment he stole from The Laurels. Having once again violated the law in King’s Winterbourne, he decided to leave the city until any hue and cry had died down, and continue his random wandering about the countryside. With coins in his pocket and a sturdy coat on his back, he trudged off in the direction of Cathair Rua, where the weather was warmer, hoping to hitch a ride and pay for it with his far-fetched and increasingly incoherent stories.

The old man was hoping he might find shelter before nightfall. His usual luck seemed to have deserted him. He had not chanced upon a single wagoner or carter willing to take him aboard, and there were no hamlets for miles ahead. The inhabitants of the villages along the highway had treated him with greater disrespect than was their wont, shooing him from their stables and byres when they discovered him attempting to bed down in the hay overnight. The threat of Marauders hung heavily along his route, like a fog. All said, his current peregrination had been a gloomy one. As so often before, he wondered if he was growing too old for life on the road. Yet a settled life would pall—he had tried it once or twice. When you lived in one place people came to expect things of you. They expected you to work, and to wash, and to be
responsible
for things. Besides, it was always so dull, remaining in one location. Life on the road had its extreme discomforts, but it was always full of surprises. For example, on the preceding night, while taking a little-known shortcut to avoid a loop in the highway, he had witnessed masses of Slievmordhuan soldiers on the move, traveling northwards under cover of darkness. It was obvious they sought secrecy, so he hid himself in a thicket of hazel and watched them go by, sweating with terror lest they come upon him and execute him for spying. Without noticing the observer they passed in relative quietude, their war-harness and the hooves of their horses muffled.

The beggar had seen many peculiar things during his lifetime. He had also learned that it seldom paid to speak of them without a great deal of forethought.

The sun went down behind the hills, limning the cirrus wisps with rose-gold afterglow. Twilight was drawing in and the wind was rising. Emerging from a cutting, the road crossed a bridge over a fast-flowing rivulet and began to climb, bordered by flowering hedges of raspberry briars, interlaced
with wild parsley. To either hand, vast meadows lay open to the sky, broken by distant lines of trees. The landscape was darkening, caught in a tumbler of grey stained glass. The old man’s threadbare cloak whipped about his gaunt form as if trying desperately to break free. As he limped along, lost in his reverie, he became aware that he was listening to a sigh.

The sound, a long-drawn whisper, was gushing from the fields, the hedges, the very ground beneath the old man’s feet. It was not the moaning of the wind, although the wind might be its sister. The shadows of evening were rustling like pouring grains. Overwhelmed by stark fear the wanderer stood stock still, not knowing what to do.

A tidal flow of movement flickered at the edges of eyesight. He rotated his neck and stared. And then he saw.

A troupe of trows was passing by in the gloaming, hushed and ragged, trailing translucent grey scarves. No more than three and a half feet tall, with disproportionately large heads, hands and feet, they flitted across the road through some hitherto unnoticed gap in the breeze-tossed hedges and into the meadows, some muttering quietly in their own language. Flashes of silver twinkled amongst their dreary tatters. The old man caught a glimpse of long, drooping noses. Stringy locks dangled limply from beneath head-scarves or floppy pointed caps.

They were streaming towards Narngalis.

Though the beggar was in full view of the wights they neither turned their heads nor acknowledged him in any way, so intent were they upon their own business. When they had vanished from sight, merging into the grassy hills like water, Cat Soup took to his heels.

He was terribly frightened. All the trow-stories he had ever heard came flooding back to him; tales of people stolen by the Grey Neighbors, becoming trow-bound and enslaved, forever lost to the world of mortalkind. Never had he beheld trows in such great numbers, traversing the open lands. What else might be abroad? Duergars? Spriggans? The dreaded fuathan? Without pausing, he made a sign to ward off evil.

On the other side of the ridge the road dived into a valley. It was here, around a sudden bend, that the beggar’s luck changed. First of all a crescent moon came slicing out of the hilltop, peeking between long shreds of cloud and softly rinsing the hills with streaks of wan radiance. Secondly, he came upon a grove of wild apple-trees, surrounding an open glade where no doubt some long-since crumbled cottage had once stood. A rushy brook flowed near the spot, and beneath the blossoming apple-trees a convoy of
Slievmordhuan wagoners had set up camp. Their fires glittered welcomingly. Fountains of sparks sprayed up, tossed by gusts and eddies. Flurries of white petals danced away into darkness amongst the wagons and the tethered horses.

Two armed men loomed in front of Cat Soup, challenging him fiercely, whereupon he dropped his staff and fell to his knees mewling like a kitten. “Have pity! Have pity!” he supplicated. “I am but a poor old man!” They prodded him with their spears. “I am mortal! I am mortal!” yowled Cat Soup. “I beg of you, let me but sit near your fires, for I am half perished. I have walked a long way. I ask for nothing more than companionship, for this night is warped and wefted with fell things, and I am afraid.”

Reluctantly the men allowed him into their encampment. Retrieving his staff, the beggar crawled up to the nearest campfire, but someone said gruffly, “Move on!” and away he scuttled.

Then another man’s voice said, “You may sit yourself down near our fire,
a seándthair,”
and the vagrant found himself amongst the members of a large family, none of whom approached him closely. Children eyed him with wary curiosity. When he had warmed himself at the flames, a woman handed him a bowl of pottage, which he devoured greedily and with gusto. The man who had proffered the invitation said, “Can you sing or dance, old fellow? Can you be tellin’ tales? Or do you merely beg, and give naught in return?”

“I can tell a good tale,” said Cat Soup, who could not help glancing over his shoulder into the darkness beyond the firelight.

“I recognize that voice!” said a woman in red skirts and an embroidered jerkin, striding into the lamplight. “That’s Cat Soup! I’ve seen him on this road before. He does indeed tell a good tale! Go on, Master Soup—what wonders can you be regalin’ us with on this windy night?” Companionably she seated herself amidst the group, whose members greeted her with smiles.

The beggar recognized the woman’s face but could not put a name to her, which was hardly surprising, considering that his memory these days was playing him tricks. “Has anyone told you the one about the bockles at the Ransom Mine out Riddlecombe way?” he asked, before noisily licking the remains of the pottage out of his bowl.

His hosts were aware of the tale. “Some Grïmnørsland wagoners were tellin’ it to us.”

“Then, have you heard the one about the vixen and the oakmen?”

“Aye, that we have.”

“What about the tale of the stolen swanmaiden?”

“We’ve a-heard it.”

Cat Soup went through the list of his best stories, but the wagoners said they were familiar with them all. Finally, in exasperation, he delved into the cobwebby vaults of his nethermost stratagems, and came up with an idea. “This is no narrative,” he said, “but it is true fact and you will not have heard it before because few are party to it.”

“All right,” said the wagoners, as intrigued as any entertainer could wish them to be, “out with it!”

After licking his cracked lips clean of food, their guest sniffed his empty bowl, sighed, and handed it back to the cook. “In Narngalis,” he began, slipping into poetic mode, “strange artifacts of incredible workmanship can be found in remote places of the wilderness. Seldom discovered, they resemble pieces of amazing armor; greaves, cuirasses and the like. Narngalishmen call these artifacts by the odd name of
gypsy leather,
even though they are neither made of leather nor fashioned by gypsies. Of some curious black metal are they wrought, and covered with intricate silver intaglio, as if writhing with wicked serpents of hoarfrost.”

“Have they been manufactured by mortalkind?” the wagoners wanted to know.

“Nay! For sure they have been crafted by eldritch wights,” answered the beggar. “Some say that touching them brings ill-fortune. Others believe these pieces have influential properties, and can bring power to the possessor. Whether they are lucky or unlucky, for obvious reasons the pieces are kept hidden by whoever finds them, or else they are thrown away into inaccessible places.”

Some among the audience looked disbelieving. “We have not heard of any wights that wear armor.”

“Neither have I, but then I can hardly know
everything.”

“What if a man collected enough pieces to clothe himself all over? What eldritch forces might protect him then, eh?”

“You might equally ask,
what eldritch forces might wither him to the bone?”

“Have you seen this gypsy leather?”

“Aye, that I have. That I have indeed. It looks new but it is old, very old, for it has been lying about for years and years. I refused to touch it, for my flesh crept as soon as I set eyes on it, and the man who showed it to me fell from his horse the very next day and broke his neck, so his wife hurled the vambrace down an old mineshaft.”

Clumped between the roots of the apple trees, the fragrant bells of lily-of-the-valley glimmered palely.

“What happened to the wife?”

The beggar pondered an instant, for he was never one to spoil a good story with accuracy. “Shortly thereafter she contracted a wasting disease, from which she perished.”

Blazing sticks crackled. A buzz of conversation droned from a nearby campfire.

“Well that’s a dismal tale and no mistake,” declared the man who had invited Cat Soup to his fireside.

“Yes,” said the beggar cunningly, “but a cautionary one. You’ll thank me for saving the lives of your families, if ever you stumble upon a piece of gypsy leather. Is there any more of that delicious stew?”

“What is concernin’ me,” said someone as Cat Soup was helped to an-other bowlful, “is where did the armorers go?”

“What is concernin’ me more,” said another, darkly, “is what if they ever
come backf”

A thoughtful silence supervened.

The wagoners allowed Cat Soup to spend the night at their camp, and in the morning he tagged along with the convoy, for he shared with them a common destination; the city of Cathair Rua. Seven days later they arrived safely in the metropolis, and he departed from their company.

It was almost noon. Leaning on his staff, the beggar moved haltingly—for his joints ached—over the cobblestones, through the crowded streets in the lower precincts of the red city. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him and far above his balding head, a meeting was taking place within the stone walls of the Sanctorum on the hilltop. The King of Slievmordhu had recently arrived home from his sojourn in Grïmnørsland. Barely pausing to take refreshment, Uabhar secluded himself in a private apartment, and summoned High Commander Risteárd Mac Brádaigh to his presence.

The soldier, a giant of a man, bowed on one knee.

“Are the preparations in hand?” demanded the king without preamble. “Are my battalions massed and organized?” He paced up and down, as was his habit when excited and impatient.

“They are indeed, my liege.” Mac Brádaigh rose to his feet. “Your troops are ready for the great battle. They await your command.”

“That is well. There is a little time yet to wait. As you are aware, one obstacle still remains in our path, but that shall shortly be removed, leaving us free to drive home our purpose.”

“The weathermasters!”

“Even so. I rely on you to ensure they are captured and imprisoned with as little fuss as possible. They are not held in such high esteem as once they were, but the tide of public opinion would turn against me if it were perceived that I mistreated them. When they are closeted out of sight behind thick stone walls, their treatment will be another matter entirely.”

“I take it my liege still intends to keep them alive?”

“In sooth. I comprehend your views on this matter, Mac Brádaigh, but I do not share them. ‘Twould be a doltish act to arbitrarily order them slain and risk sparking bothersome insurrections. Ensure they are taken alive. They must be seen to receive a fair trial before their executions.”

Mac Brádaigh swept his sovereign a bow so deep and gracious that the tip of his scabbard scraped along the floor. “Forever at your service, my liege,” he said.

Already, King Chohrab II waited as a guest at Uabhar’s palace. He and his battalions had marched to Cathair Rua, as arranged, purportedly to practice ‘war-games’ in readiness for the imminent offensive against unseelie wights and Marauders. Having dined with his royal visitor, Uabhar departed from his residence and went swiftly to the abode of the druids, by means of secret passageways and curtained carriages, for a private audience with the Tongue of the Fates.