THE BITTERBYNDE TRILOGY

Book One: The Ill-Made Mute

(c) Cecilia Dart-Thornton.

scene.  When it was filled he looked down, then from left to right, and at last he turned his head and craned upwards to discover what loomed above.

Built at the sea's edge the dominite fortress, black and glistening, towered more than forty storeys straight up above the canopy of the surrounding forest. A soaring pile crowned with turrets, battlements, chimneys and slender watchtowers, its walled demesnes were flanked on one side by a harbour and on the other by a sea of trees.

Balconies randomly toothed the sheer outer walls.  Footed by jutting platforms leading nowhere several arched gateways, set at varying altitudes, faced the four points of the compass.  High above ground-level, at the seventh storey, the circumference of the structure suddenly narrowed on the western side like a giant stair, creating a wide, flat shelf which ended in mid-air.  No parapet or balustrade enclosed this space - instead, a row of iron-capped bollards, evenly spaced, lined the edge. Below, the outer walls of the Tower dropped precipitously - the lad reckoned it was more than a hundred feet - to the ground.

It was here, on this brink, that he was standing.

As he woke to that fact, he woke also to the proximity of the mad-man beside him. But in the next instant Mad Mullet was no longer at his side, for with a clear cry of "I can fly!" he had joyously stepped from the platform and plummeted to his death.

As the lad later overheard, such "flights" were no uncommon occurrence.

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