Fallowblade (34 page)

Staggered by his inferences, Asr
ă
thiel struggled to speak but failed. She felt as if she had been winded.

‘Yet fear not, I will not deal hard with you. We shall hold a banquet in your honour,’ announced the goblin king.

Before the damsel could say anything further, a brushing sound, like the swishing of leaves, or ragged hems sweeping the floor, heralded the arrival of trow-folk in great numbers. From the shadowy radiance of inner halls they emerged; small, grey-clad figures gliding towards the incoming cavalcade, uttering soft hoots and cries of gladness.

Asr
ă
thiel recovered her composure and put on a brave face. ‘So this is where the trows were bound!’ she exclaimed.

First Lieutenant Zauberin’s sprightly trollhäst trotted up, its rider shrugging back his fur-lined demi-cloak. He said, ‘They clamour to be our servants.’

‘Of course,’ said Asr
ă
thiel. ‘How could they not? The trows would be attracted to your kindred.’

‘They are attracted by silver,’ said Zauberin. He glanced sideways at the weathermage, allowing one eyelid to droop—a trick that exaggerated his habitual air of dissolution. As he rode away, the hooves of his trollhäst clattered on the flagstones.

‘Go with the Grey Neighbours,’ bade the goblin king and, since her steed followed the trows, the damsel must go too.

After dismounting from the daemon horse that had brought her to Sølvetårn, Asr
ă
thiel found herself bustled away by a gaggle of trow-wives, wights who looked like little women, half her height, in grey headscarves and tattered frocks, bedizened with silver bangles. These dames took her to a suite of exquisite rooms hollowed out of stone, where she bathed in a solid silver tub beneath a cascade of hot, scented water pouring from a wall spout, arcing through the air like a swag of pearl necklaces. The overflow splashed into a pool hewn in the rocky floor, from whence it gradually drained away through some unseen conduit.

Invigorated by the water, Asr
ă
thiel woke fully from her somnolence and took stock of her situation. Here she was, alone amongst enemies; no ordinary enemies, but the sworn foes of humanity. What was it that the lieutenant Zauberin had said? ‘Your race is held to be accursed by all the Glashtinsluight, and we cannot endure your presence in the world. We count it our duty to dip our swords in human blood.’ These wights were utterly antipathetic to the human race. Being anathema to her people, they were anathema to her also. She hated them with outraged passion, for all their arbitrary bloodshed and decimation. Yet she would receive as much profit by demanding that they treat her according to her rank, or haranguing them, or summoning storms against them, or refusing to cooperate, as a wave receives when dashing itself against a cliff of adamant. They held all advantage. Come what may her fate was in their hands, and if she were to exist in relative comfort it was in her best interests, at least for now, to appear compliant.

Eerie music was chiming faintly through the apartments. Asr
ă
thiel looked about. The sounds appeared to be generated by airs wafting through shrewdly positioned interstices in the architecture. The ceilings, with their pointed-arch vaulting, were supported on slim pillars whose ornate plinths and capitals were carved with intricate, flowing designs, such as intertwining stems or roots, each stalk terminating in long, tapered leaves or fantastic tendrils. Silver shone everywhere, lustrous and pure as milk; untarnished silver, wrought in ways that enhanced its loveliness; cast, chased, filigree and repoussé, etched, engraved, carved, stamped and embossed. A separate chamber housed a splendid couch suspended on argent chains from the ceiling. By its fragrance, the mattress was stuffed with dry sprigs of lavender, poppies, hemlock and chamomile.

As Asr
ă
thiel took in her surroundings the trow-wives dressed her in an ankle-length shift—which they called a
sark
—of white cambric bordered with lace, and proceeded to coif her hair. While this was going on, the damsel plagued the wights with questions.

‘What will happen to the two other prisoners? What will happen to me?’

All the little goodies said by way of reply was, ‘We dinnae ken! Nae bothy kens!’

‘Am I permitted to send a letter to my family? Where are the women of goblinkind? Will you please refrain from pulling my hair?’ When she made this protest they shrieked and gibbered, instantly becoming much gentler with their handling. They peered at her earnestly from mournful eyes, over their long, drooping noses, giving the impression of being as dimwitted as they were quaint. Asr
ă
thiel, however, had learned never to underestimate eldritch wights.

Numerous tall, star-filled windows pierced the walls, overlooking sharp valleys, and glittering precipices, and cupped mountain tarns.

‘It is night once again,’ the damsel said to herself in perplexity. ‘How long did it take to reach here from the Wuthering Moors? Only a few hours? Or was it a whole day, and now night has fallen once more? Yet I do not recall the sun being in the sky during our journey. Perhaps the goblins enveloped us in their mist and blocked it out.’ Her eldritch handmaidens could offer no solution to the mystery, though they were able to explain other matters.

‘What happens during the day, when the sun shines fiercely?’ she asked of them. ‘Do its golden rays not shine through the glass? Does it not scald your masters?’

‘An the briggit days, dem draps is closet,’ the trow-wives said, ‘aber sin oor maisters wisht dem draps kit open o’er the day, dem draw mist.’

Which Asr
ă
thiel took to mean that on sunny days the window curtains—of finest silver mesh, with black lining—were drawn across the panes, but if the goblins wanted the curtains open in daytime, they would conjure mists to dilute the sun’s radiance.

‘Are they weathermasters, then, your masters?’ she demanded inquisitively.

‘Nay, ainly dem can draw mist.’

Which she understood to indicate that the goblins possessed the power to summon water vapours such as clouds, mists, fog, brume and haze, to diffuse the light of the sun, but they did not wield the brí.

‘Does the touch of sunlight destroy them?’

‘Nay. Dem can dure’t, aber dem liken it not.’

‘They can tolerate it, but they do not love it?’

‘Aye, guidlady.’

Some of the wights fluttered nimbly around their charge, weaving tiny gems through her hair; moonstones of shimmering iridescence, amethysts and rock crystals. Others lurked in the shadows of these singular apartments, snooping, poking their long noses around corners, or nursing trow-babies wrapped in fringed shawls. They gave her nothing to eat, perhaps anticipating the promised banquet; but she felt no hunger and was content to drink water from the spout in the wall.

At length they brought a sumptuous gown of foam and cerulean moonlight to sheath the damsel in, but she had grown impatient with their skulking and fussing, and bade them go away and leave her in peace.

‘Mun make thysel’ fit for t’feast, guidlady,’ they twittered anxiously as she saw them off.

Ignoring their instructions she put aside the dress. She wondered how she could bring herself to dress up in finery and go to a party after the horrors she had witnessed so lately, the slaying of Conall Gearnach, good men falling beneath goblin swords while trying to save her. Again she puzzled, how was she to traffic with this enemy? And how would they traffic with her?

The cambric shift was flimsy, yet she did not feel at all cold in these airy chambers. As usual, her mother’s gift of invulnerability kept her warm. Alone with her thoughts she took time to ponder whether Zaravaz had been giving veiled threats when he told her to hoard her pleas, but at length she concluded it was more of his banter and dismissed the notion. He had said, ‘Fear not, I will not deal hard with you,’ but then again, goblin conceptions of gentle treatment might be quite at variance with human ideas. Yet, if they were going to do mischief to her, they would hardly be sending handmaidens to look after her, would they? Unless, of course, she were in some way being ‘primed for the kill’ like hand-fed livestock. Her opinions veered back and forth. If she were to be insulted, then surely it was unlikely the trows would be concerned about pulling her hair. It seemed certain they had been ordered to treat her well. Indeed she seemed to have some sort of dominion over them, for they acquiesced to her requests. Should that be so, maybe she could ask her captors, when she next saw them, if they would let her send a note to Avalloc informing him that she was well. It gave her much distress, knowing how he and the rest of her household must be suffering since she had been taken by the goblins.

Having thrown off her fears and feeling much refreshed after her ablutions, she was afflicted with a desire to discover more about this fascinating citadel; to explore it on her own, without being accompanied and directed by scores of shuffling trow-wives. If ever she found herself directly threatened, it would be useful to know something of the layout. The intentions of the goblin king were unclear. That he was perilous was a certainty; perhaps she would locate some hidden escape route to save her in extremity, should William’s worst fears be realised.

Additionally, she felt reluctant to attend this goblin feast. If it were such a banquet as promised they would all be in attendance, the unseelie knights, while she, their plunder, would be alone and friendless in the crowd. More than that, she wished to put off meeting with a certain member of that eldritch chivalry, one so unsettling she refused even to think of his name. The mental turmoil that his presence engendered in her was so overwhelming that she did not how to deal with it, and she wished to postpone such an encounter until she could make better sense of its inevitable effects. To her chagrin, all ideology became suspended whenever she set eyes on him. Always haunting her thoughts, jostling against concern and longing for the loved ones she had left behind, was an image of that compelling face with the black-lashed, violet eyes. To convince herself she was not longing to behold him again as soon as possible, she decided to deliberately make herself inaccessible, and late for the goblin banquet.

Another, more wayward element also motivated her behaviour. It vexed her that the goblin king disturbed her so absolutely, by his mere existence. To vex him in return was a form of revenge; furthermore, although she was loathe to admit it, some inexplicable inner perversity made her wish to discover what might occur if she provoked him, even if it were to wrath.

After she was sure the trows had dispersed, she tiptoed from the room on her bare feet. Taking note of her bearings she left her apartments and headed off through the citadel, exploring halls and galleries illumined by torch and moon and mirror, and great floor-to-ceiling windows teeming with brilliant galaxies. Instinctively she extended her awareness beyond the walls, sensing the familiar weather patterns of high-altitude country: extremely low pressure and temperature, strong winds, mist gathering in the valleys. Outside, the air temperature had dropped below its dew point, and was becoming saturated. Cold air was flowing downhill, to settle in hollows and depressions. Lower summits were wreathed in thick white vapours. Above the Winter snowline, where the citadel was situated, the tallest peaks were interfering with wind and cloud patterns, forcing currents to ascend or descend as they streamed over their higher summits. Gales were screaming through the upper crags at high speeds. Asr
ă
thiel speculated that the alpine winds could gust at more than twice that rate, driven against such steep heights. Far off, lightning flashed on the summit of Storth Cynros.

But the slim knives of the fast, honed winds could not penetrate the fastness of the Silver Goblins. Not so much as a breath or a whisper found a chink.

The complex of caverns and halls was extensive; part natural rock formations, part eldritch design. Outflung branches and adjuncts conceivably went running throughout the northern ranges for miles, connected by such underground passages as the damsel now traversed, or such steep overground roads as she sighted from the windows; or dizzying bridges like those she stepped across, some with parapets, some without, obviously all unsafe for mortalkind.

Winding stairs with diamond balustrades she ascended, and the centre of each tread was indented by a gentle curve, worn by the passage of pedestrians over an immense time span. She passed thin, pouring water-curtains veiling archways, and narrow waterfalls hissing with white noise enough to flood one’s skull, and fenestrations jutting out over wild rocky gorges. Along chiming quadrangles and galleries with floors of polished morion she tiptoed on her bare feet, and amongst fluted colonnades whose stanchions culminated in extravagantly sculpted capitals and volutes. On still lakes floated tall-prowed silver boats or gondolas, carved with grotesqueries. Her explorations took her further, through crystal-ceilinged atria ornamented by masks with jewelled orbits. She sighed with wonder at pergolas and arbours entwined by silver metal serpents, whose eyes were perfect shards of white jade, royal azel and transparent topaz.

At length her wanderings led her to an elongated cavern, low-roofed and tubelike or cylindrical in shape, which looked to have been hollowed out by the natural action of water. Concave walls, floor and ceiling were lined with veins of silver and copper, and encrusted with gems. From her schoolroom studies the damsel knew that this was a pipe vein, a mineral-lined cavern left behind after the ebbing and draining of some ancient subterranean stream.

Near at hand, a cresset flamed in an ornate silver sconce. After taking possession of it she held it up and drew it near the wall to inspect the polished stones more closely. They flashed with the colours of rubies and sapphires, but were probably garnets and clusters of assorted spinels; there was the rose-red of balas ruby spinel, the purple-red of almandine spinel, the orange of rubicelle and the blue of sapphire spinel, as well as the green of chlorspinel. The lore of the underground had always interested the weathermage. It was pleasing to find these pretty gems lavishly embedded in their native matrix.