THE BITTERBYNDE TRILOGY

Book One: The Ill-Made Mute

(c) Cecilia Dart-Thornton.

ramparts, cleaving the morning air with long, ringing notes.  The aerial cavalier reached an upper storey of the fortress and entered in at a platform jutting from the outer wall.  His heart jumping like a scared rabbit, the youth sank to his bony knees. Then, recalling his task and how he would be beaten more vigorously than the carpet if he were discovered idling, he hastily returned to pounding mats, invoking dust and sneezing.

Now at last he could make sense of the term he had heard so often - "eotaur". The word referred to the mighty, horned Skyhorses, the pride of the Stormriders. And it was not the last marvel he was to discover.

Being shunned and ignored was not without its advantages.  It meant that the lad was able to go about the mazy ways of the Tower largely unnoticed. He began to ascertain that insignificance was, in many ways, advantageous to his education.
In one instance, he had managed to elude Grethet and find an unobtrusive pantry-nook to doze in, when he was roused by a sound like the cooing of two doves.  Within earshot a chamber-maid was seated on a cider-barrel, her young child nestling on her lap.  The two were conversing.

"... brought news from Namarre," said the mother softly, "I heard one of the upper-level chamber-maids say so."

"Where is Namarre?" asked the child, snuggling her downy head closer to her mother's shoulder.

"It is very far away."

"The eotaurs must be truly strong, to be able to gallop from very far away."

The mother shook her head. "Even the greatest among them has not the strength to come all the way from Namarre without resting.  Letters and other air-cargo must be relayed.  Isse Tower is a Relay Station."

"What is a Relay Station?"

"One of the staging posts where inland and outland runs meet.  At Relay Stations, incoming mounts and Relayers interchange with fresh couriers. Messages and payloads are transferred."

"Oh," said the child, sounding disappointed, "Are there many Stations?  But I thought Isse Tower was important."

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