The Ill-Made Mute Chapter 1/19

The stories described many different types of waterhorses haunting the lakes and rivers, the pools and oceans of Erith, but of all of them, the Each Uisge was the most ferocious and dangerous. It was one of the most notorious of all the unseelie creatures that frequented the watery places, although the Glastyn was almost as bad. Sometimes the Each Uisge appeared as a handsome young man, but usually it took the form of a bonny, dapper horse which virtually invited mortals to ride it. Once on its back, no rider could tear himself off, for its skin was imbued with a supernatural stickiness. If anyone was so foolish as to mount, he was carried with a breakneck rush into the nearest lake and torn to pieces. Only some of his innards would be discarded, to wash up later on the shore.

A light stasis bound the occupants of the kitchen. They waited. They had heard the tale of Corrievreckan before, but never tired of it. Besides, Brinkworth with his succinct style, had a way of refreshing it, so that it came to his audience like news each time.
"'Tis is very old story - I cannot say how old, maybe a thousand years - but true nonetheless," said the old man, scratching his knee where one of the hounds' fleas had bitten him, "Young Iainh and Caelinh Maghrain, twin sons of the Chieftain of the Western Isles of Finvarna at that time, were hunting with their comrades when they saw a magnificent horse grazing near Lake Corrievreckan."

"Where is that?" interrupted a grizzled stoker.

"In the Western Isles, cloth-ears, in Finvarna," hissed a buttery-maid, "Do you not listen?"

"I thought the Each Uisge dwelled in Eldaraigne."

"It roams anywhere it pleases," said Brand Brinkworth, "Who shall gainsay such a wicked lord of eldritch? Now if you don't mind, I'll be on with the tale."

The other servants shot black looks at the stoker from under lowered brows. The stoker nodded nonchalantly, and the Storyteller continued.
"They saw a magnificent horse grazing near Lake Corrievreckan," he repeated, and as his pleasant old voice lilted on, there unfolded in the minds of the listeners a place far-off in time and space, a landscape they would never see.

A white pearl shone like an eye in a hazy sky. The sun was past its zenith, sinking towards a wintry horizon. It cast a pale gleam over the waters of the lake. The entire surface was lightly striated with long ripples, shimmering in silken shades of grey. Through a frayed rent in the

THE BITTERBYNDE TRILOGY

Book One: The Ill-Made Mute

(c) Cecilia Dart-Thornton.