Read Online The Bitterbynde Trilogy by Cecilia Dart-Thornton - Free Book Online
Authors: Cecilia Dart-Thornton
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brownish orange like burnt toast, fading to the palest lemon farther up the sky, blending to dilute, ethereal blue, which in turn shaded gradually to the deep, rich hue of the night sky overhead, still dark, still hung with stars.
Beyond Isse Harbor, along the worldâs edge, the auburn singe deepened.
Birds uttered uneasy, sporadic sounds from the trees and the duck-pond far below. Their quacks and trills increased in proportion to the strength of the iron glow in the east, whose warm facade was smudged by cloud floatlets as a smithâs ruddy countenance is smirched by soot and ash. Above, the profound blue drained from the sky and the stars dissolved.
Burnt orange transmuted to pastel gold. A surprising ribbon of rose pink unrolled. Against the horizon, lacy foliage was pricked by unbearable motes of gold. The sea turned from black to gray green. A line of fire ran along the worldâs rim, and the sun rose, to slide away from the ground, a silver coin through the wolf-gray clouds. Out of the south, half on fire, a sailing ship would come dipping and gliding through the air.
The world depended on the properties of sildron for many purposes.
Eotaursâ beautiful swanlike wings were used mainly for maneuvering, the species having been bred, over hundreds of years, from the original tiny bird-horses to a ridable size. However, their greater bulk now required sildron to become airborne. Sildron, like magnetized iron, possessed invisible properties so strange and powerful that it seemed almost eldritch.
Diverse cargoes were brought from the outlands by Waterships. Some were destined for the Tower, others must travel farther inland. At Isse Harbor, freightage that was too large or inexpensive or heavy for thoroughbred Skyhorses was offloaded to heavily guarded road-cart caravans or hauled up on ropes to the Windship Dock 112 feet above ground level, at the seventh story. There it was loaded onto the mighty sildron-raised vessels. Eotaurs and carrier pigeons were not the only sky-travelers to come and go at the Tower, although they were the swiftest. The grandest of all, the Windships had the capacity to carry passengers and large cargoes.
The wind bellied their sails as it did for any Watership, but swaying treetops were their waves, birds their fish, mountains their reefs, the diurnal pulse of light and dark their tide, and clouds their foam. Sildron gave them lift, sildron pushed against the ground to power their small, unstable propellers.
This silvery metal shod and girded the eotaurs, it lifted and propelled the vessels of the sky. All the wealth of the Windship lines and the status of the twelve Stormrider Houses, the glory, the power, the skills, passed from generation to generation in traditions going back many centuries, all depended upon that most costly and rare of metals, even though it exerted no force against water and could not cross the sea.
It was so precious that it was the property only of kings and nobles. Watching the Windships go by in the skies, the most lowly of servants at Isse Tower often wondered what it would be like to go voyaging in them, up there where the clouds drifted like pillowy featherbeds, their scalloped borders gilded by sunshine, where it seemed that a voyager might sail on without a care, without pain, and the past would not matter.
His entire history was forgotten, gone without a trace. What took its place, always, was an aching sense of loss. Sometimes, when not too weary to ponder at all, he wondered who it was that peered out from his eyes and listened with his ears. Sometimes he conjectured about who his parents had been and where they might be now, and whether they had abandoned him because he was mute and malformed. Brand Brinkworth had once told of a legendary prince who had longed for the perfect wife and whose wizard had fashioned a maiden for him out of a mass of beautiful flowers. Later, the servants had speculated on one anotherâs origins had they
Beyond Isse Harbor, along the worldâs edge, the auburn singe deepened.
Birds uttered uneasy, sporadic sounds from the trees and the duck-pond far below. Their quacks and trills increased in proportion to the strength of the iron glow in the east, whose warm facade was smudged by cloud floatlets as a smithâs ruddy countenance is smirched by soot and ash. Above, the profound blue drained from the sky and the stars dissolved.
Burnt orange transmuted to pastel gold. A surprising ribbon of rose pink unrolled. Against the horizon, lacy foliage was pricked by unbearable motes of gold. The sea turned from black to gray green. A line of fire ran along the worldâs rim, and the sun rose, to slide away from the ground, a silver coin through the wolf-gray clouds. Out of the south, half on fire, a sailing ship would come dipping and gliding through the air.
The world depended on the properties of sildron for many purposes.
Eotaursâ beautiful swanlike wings were used mainly for maneuvering, the species having been bred, over hundreds of years, from the original tiny bird-horses to a ridable size. However, their greater bulk now required sildron to become airborne. Sildron, like magnetized iron, possessed invisible properties so strange and powerful that it seemed almost eldritch.
Diverse cargoes were brought from the outlands by Waterships. Some were destined for the Tower, others must travel farther inland. At Isse Harbor, freightage that was too large or inexpensive or heavy for thoroughbred Skyhorses was offloaded to heavily guarded road-cart caravans or hauled up on ropes to the Windship Dock 112 feet above ground level, at the seventh story. There it was loaded onto the mighty sildron-raised vessels. Eotaurs and carrier pigeons were not the only sky-travelers to come and go at the Tower, although they were the swiftest. The grandest of all, the Windships had the capacity to carry passengers and large cargoes.
The wind bellied their sails as it did for any Watership, but swaying treetops were their waves, birds their fish, mountains their reefs, the diurnal pulse of light and dark their tide, and clouds their foam. Sildron gave them lift, sildron pushed against the ground to power their small, unstable propellers.
This silvery metal shod and girded the eotaurs, it lifted and propelled the vessels of the sky. All the wealth of the Windship lines and the status of the twelve Stormrider Houses, the glory, the power, the skills, passed from generation to generation in traditions going back many centuries, all depended upon that most costly and rare of metals, even though it exerted no force against water and could not cross the sea.
It was so precious that it was the property only of kings and nobles. Watching the Windships go by in the skies, the most lowly of servants at Isse Tower often wondered what it would be like to go voyaging in them, up there where the clouds drifted like pillowy featherbeds, their scalloped borders gilded by sunshine, where it seemed that a voyager might sail on without a care, without pain, and the past would not matter.
His entire history was forgotten, gone without a trace. What took its place, always, was an aching sense of loss. Sometimes, when not too weary to ponder at all, he wondered who it was that peered out from his eyes and listened with his ears. Sometimes he conjectured about who his parents had been and where they might be now, and whether they had abandoned him because he was mute and malformed. Brand Brinkworth had once told of a legendary prince who had longed for the perfect wife and whose wizard had fashioned a maiden for him out of a mass of beautiful flowers. Later, the servants had speculated on one anotherâs origins had they
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