Free The Bitterbynde Trilogy by Cecilia Dart-Thornton Page A

about in the dark, they even visit the houses of the mountain people, especially in stormy weather, and when the Gwithlion knock at the door, the folk within know they must be greeted hospitably for fear of the harm they might do.”
    â€œYea, but draw a knife against them and they are defeated,” observed the wrinkled cellarman loudly. “They do hate the power of cold iron.”
    â€œIn truth,” acknowledged the Toad. “But cold iron and other charms are no help against the greater ones.”
    At this grim and accurate observation, the kitchen fell silent for a time, until the spit-boy spoke up.
    â€œNow, Master Brinkworth, sir, I have a request for you.”
    â€œAsk away.”
    â€œPray tell us of the time the wizard Sargoth sliced the King-Emperor’s jester in two halves and put him back together again and he living still!”
    Well aware of the man’s skill with a whip, the foundling tried to avoid the Master at Swords. Burial among the servants’ catacombs allowed little chance of encountering him. However, if he thought never to see his adversary again, he was mistaken.
    Grethet said, “You can go down to help in the stables. You are very lucky. Do you understand? They are short of a stablehand down there. They need a boy to work. You do as you are told. You do not touch the horses unless you are told. The horses are precious. More precious than you. Mind your ways.”
    So her ward minded his ways and went, for the first time, down to the stables and the eotaur training yards.
    It seemed a long age since he had first come to live with the Seventh House of the Stormriders. He did not know how long, although his hair had grown a hand’s length until it touched his shoulders. When it fell across his eyes one day, he was astonished to see that its color was gold and hated it at once for being utterly different from the shades of brown around him. From that time onward he always wore the taltry pulled up to cover his head, whether indoors or out.
    At mealtimes the fruits and berries of Autumn had given way to the dried-bean pottages of Winter.
    The Tower had celebrated the Midwinter Imbrol Festival on Littlesun Day, first day of the New Year and of Dorchamis, the Darkmonth. The New Year 1090 had been ushered in with feasts and garlands of holly, bonfires in midnight meadows, and hulking great plum puddings blazing like miniature suns, little of which the lower menials tasted. The preserved fare of Winter had in turn been replaced by green worts and herbs as the seasons revolved. During all that time, the nameless one had been within walls, above the ground, able to glimpse very little through the attenuated windows of the servants’ levels. Now, at last, he was to venture into the demesnes.
    The dominite stables adjoining the northern flank of the Tower harbored almost a hundred winged horses. Grooms, trainers, and strappers lived with them, slept with them, watched and tended them at every hour. Capacious storerooms, harness rooms, loose-boxes, exercise tracks, hattocking tracks, and lunging yards bustled daily with their noise. There was a smithy where the farrier plied his trade and workshops for the lorimer and saddler. The pungency of stables was tinged with the odor of a mews. Passing an open door, the youth glimpsed the rumps and tails of a dozen aviquine creatures standing in their stalls. Their well-groomed coats and feathers shone in shades of bay, chestnut, roan, and gray.
    That fantastic plumage surely belonged to something beaked, tendril-tongued, and hollow-boned that had hatched out of an egg: an avian creature with a cold round eye, scaled claws, and quick, sharp movements. Instead it stroked the flanks of a round-haunched, hot-breathed mammal, feathered of fetlock and streamlined, certainly, to the utmost degree, but apparently as far removed from a bird as the moon from a loaf of bread.
    The sound of steady munching was punctuated occasionally by