The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  We moved among the sleeping men. I shook them awake, and Adhan lit them up. It took too long. The men would keep staring in wonder at their hands and arms.

  I yelled at them to get a move on. ‘Saddle the horses. But don’t mount up. We’ll walk them until nearer sunrise.’

  We set out carefully, our bodies illuminating the path only a pace ahead. The horses showed no alarm at the sight of their now spectral handlers. They walked with their noses to the ground as if they meant any moment to stop and graze. The witch had put a spell on them.

  As the night lightened, she let our halos of misty radiance fade. The forest filled with the wavering shadows of trees, backlit by fire and, minute by minute, a more intense black.

  I put my fingers to my cheek and felt a film of warm ash. It was coming down through the foliage, pattering like snow. I ordered everyone to mount up—and hurried to help the witch into her saddle. She seemed mesmerised. She was gazing back the way we’d come. The pupils of her eyes, and the contours of the claw necklace, were painted with orange. She said, ‘The fire is over the crest of the highest hill.’

  ‘It must climb down the far side of that range and cross the valley before reaching these foothills,’ I said.

  ‘As if a forest fire is an army and needs to keep its feet on the ground.’

  I made a stirrup of my hands and boosted her up onto her horse. Our party picked up its pace, though the path was too narrow and the light too confusing to risk giving the horses their heads.

  We were not alone in our flight. On either side of the trail herds of deer flowed away ahead of us, floating over fallen logs and vanishing from sight. The deer were followed by wolves and lynx, skulking foxes and trotting badgers. Then the forest floor came to life with crawling shadows, small creatures, rats and mice, stoats, weasels and voles. Daytime birds were awake, blundering through the branches and their swinging shadows.

  A roar could be heard in the west.

  The path ahead rose to climb through a stand of tumbled, vine-covered pillars of limestone. At its highest point the party reined in and looked back.

  I would never have dreamed that a fire could burn a green forest, even in late summer when the leaves were dull and edged with brown. If asked, I’d have made arguments about trying to light a hearth fire with unseasoned wood. I’d offer as evidence my observations about how timber would smoke and sulk and drool sap onto the flames, and go out as soon as your back was turned.

  This fire would be hard to turn your back on. The flames were hundreds of feet in height, pushed forward by a westerly and pulled upwards by the wind generated by their own heat. As I watched, I saw that wall of fire flex and snap like a whip, throwing out a great, ragged mass of flame, which sailed right across the valley to ignite the treetops of the forest on the foothills.

  There were fires already burning in many places ahead of the main front. The wind was full of smoke and sparks. It was storm-strong. It caught our cloaks, and made the horses flinch and fidget in circles. The witch was urging her own horse to the head of the column, shoving a way between my men. Her hair had come loose and was blown upwards, floating on the hot air. She had taken off the claw necklace and was busy knotting it into the locks at her nape. She glanced at me, then swung one leg back over her palfrey’s withers and jumped down—at the same time slapping the horse to send it galloping away. Then she was in the forest, her pale form now visible, now vanishing into the shadows. I lost sight of her. A moment later another horse broke from cover onto the path. A yearling, its coat rich brown. A colt, with something bright tangled in its long mane. It whirled and took off along the path, stretching out into a gallop, its flag of a tail leaving a trail of clear air in the smoke. The witch’s palfrey hadn’t fled. The docile animal had stayed just off the path under the trees. Geff urged his horse towards it and caught its bridle. ‘Where is she?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s left us,’ I told him, then I foundered and fell silent. The witch had turned herself into a horse. The transformation was astonishing and unexpected and alarming. I’d heard stories about witches transforming themselves into animals, but had always assumed that the rules of magic must obey the more obvious rules of nature. Adhan was a mother. If she changed herself into a horse, shouldn’t that animal be a mare? But the horse that fled ahead of us through the forest wasn’t a mare, or even a filly. It was a rangy, bay-coloured, black-tailed colt.

  I signalled the party to ride on. We gave our horses their heads, and the wise animals stuck with one another and to the trail. Bits of burning foliage, twigs and even sizeable branches were dropping from the sky. Small fires started up beside and before us, and quickly grew. We were riding into the wind now, as if it had changed from west to east, or as if the fire were drawing a long breath and emptying the east of air.

  At a canter it took our party a third of the time to reach the river as it had going the opposite direction. The path became sandy, and dropped to the banks of the Monnow, where we found the witch up to her waist in the water, her fingertips immersed as well. She faced us, but gazed blind-eyed into the air above our heads.

  Burning brands rained from the sky, some falling harmless into the lush riverside grass, some dropping with fierce hisses into the water. We drew rein. Our horses plunged and wheeled. They were all in a lather. I jumped from the saddle and pulled my cloak off. I thrust it under the water and held it there until its wool was heavy and soaked. Then I forced my horse into the shallows and draped the wet cloak over its head. The animal quietened. I ordered my men to follow my example. ‘We can’t outrun the fire,’ I shouted.

  The witch lowered her face and turned to me. She said, ‘Get out of the water,’ and pointed to the far bank.

  The fire was ripping into the forest we’d passed through. Above the roar we heard crashes as oaks and elms fell and caught themselves on their spreading branches.

  I didn’t want to leave the water, but the witch was herself pacing back through the channel, towards the far bank. She was waist-deep, then shoulder-deep, then hip-deep again. She stopped in the shallows. She spread her arms. The flow of water upstream hastened. Downstream it slowed and eddied. The water climbed the witch’s calves. We drew our cloaked horses farther back.

  The downstream eddying resolved itself into a ridged rip as the inland river behaved like a tidal one, turning to flow in the opposite direction. Then the witch threw up her arms and the water leaped from the riverbed, rising in a solid, continuous flow, like a waterfall in reverse. For a moment there was a straight wall of water between us and the oncoming fire, then that wall curved in at either end. The witch turned her eyes to take in my men and the horses, her face calm, and calculating. She was making a measurement. She folded the wall of water around us all. Before it thickened and closed, I saw how the wall was pulling water from upstream and down, exposing the riverbed and waterweeds to the bottom of its deepest channel. Then the vortex sealed itself. The air in its lofty funnel filled with the scent of mud and algae.

  It was a vortex without wind, only the small, twisting breeze generated by its rotations. And it wasn’t just rotating. The surface of the wall was braided, as if a rope maker were twisting strands of water and dropping his newly made rope in a high hollow coil. It made water music, like a stream rushing over stones, but louder, and only audible because it was closer to us than that other source of sound, the howling of the fire.

  Flame vomited through the yet unconsumed trees on the water-meadow before the river. The late summer leaves caught fire, tore loose and flew upwards. The grass and meadow flowers shrivelled, then turned to ash before ever having been on fire. I watched this through one thick smooth turn in the funnel—at the witch’s eye level. In that glassiness, rushing past, were the silhouettes of fish and frogs, translucent silks of waterweed, and freckles of tiny stones.

  The fire rolled through the trees and along the bare ground. The witch’s window vanished and the outside air turned red, then pink with inspissated steam. The walls of the fun
nel darkened with mud as the witch drew more water than there was to be drawn. Beyond the funnel the fire was making a sound I had often heard at a forge when a smith thrusts red-hot ironwork into his barrel—but magnified tenfold. The air in the funnel became hot, and thin. I saw the witch turn her face upwards. Above us the muddy water reached like a candle flame, tapered at its top and pinched shut. The sense of airlessness relented.

  It was muggy in the enclosed cone. Our clothes and skin steamed. I tugged at the man beside me, drew him to the riverbed and had him lie down in the gluey silt. The others followed, coaxing the horses to lie too. I stretched out. Mud trickled around me. The witch continued to pull what water she could reach into the vortex, at least to replenish what was burning away. The crown of the cone was boiling. It was like watching water simmer from inside a pot. Then I couldn’t see it anymore. The cone filled with steam, and we were lost to one another, except by touch. The vapour was orange and sometimes bloomed brighter as fire pushed against the water walls. Condensation pattered down around us.

  The witch came and lay down near me. I closed my eyes and thrust the top of my head into the warm silt and listened to the hot rainstorm and dry surf of the fire. Now and then I could hear snatches of Latin. Anselm was praying. I was unable to pray. I’d remembered that this river had a god. That all rivers did, and that I knew old people who’d remember the name of the god of the Monnow. But it was foolish to think of prayer to God or gods with this great earthly power lying beside me in the mud.

  We cowered in the riverbed for a very long time. The mud grew hot, and the steam scalding. I feared for my eyes. Already scoured by smoke, they now felt poached.

  The heat proved too much for one man, who suddenly struggled up, shouting. I rose to snatch at him, but was left with only a handful of slime. He wrapped his arms around his head and staggered, slithering, to the wall of water and pushed into it. The torqueing flow lifted and turned him. I kept my eyes open long enough to follow his figure as it rose feet-first up the cone. Before reaching the apex, his struggling body was expelled. The smoke thickened where he landed. He rose onto his knees, then clutched his throat and dropped face first onto the black ground. A moment later flames erupted from his hair and clothes.

  A short while after that, the roar receded. Adhan picked herself up and approached the wall with unsteady, tottering steps. She peered at the dusky red glow beyond the water. Gradually the glow began to separate into distinct patches of fire. None very near the base of the cone. The witch waited a while longer, then, with no sign, no change of expression, no evidence she was letting go a sustained and effortful task of defence—she blew the cone apart, throwing its water out in a wide circle. There was a din of hissing from the drifts of burning coals that surrounded us, and the smoke rushed in, blinding and choking us. My face dried instantly. I rubbed my forehead in the hot mud. Hot wind wafted over us, drawing clearer air up along the trench of the empty riverbed. We coughed and hacked. The horses were wheezing but utterly still under their horse-shaped shells of mud-stiffened wool.

  A trickle of cooler water washed over my hands. The river was filling again. I scooped out a hollow in the silt and cupped my hands to drink. The water was sour with ash, and corrosive on my tongue. My men and the witch were making the same discovery, gagging and spitting. I was almost pleased to see Adhan fail at the experiment, pleased to discover she didn’t know the water was spoilt. I’d supposed she was all knowledge, but perhaps she was more wit and instinct, because how could someone learn to compel a river, and shape it? Was it that she could call on the river god and air gods? But what special sympathy would those beings have for her? What was magic? If it was just knowledge, then surely Adhan would have known not to try to drink the water.

  The front of the fire had moved on. It had come to the end of the forest and was making its way over the heath, half starved now, flames greatly diminished in stature and scope.

  I watched the ragged line of orange crawl up the flank of a faraway hill. The air was less air than an even suspension of thin smoke. The great billows were above us, making the sun show as a shrunken purple ball near the horizon due east—it had risen an hour ago, though under the low black sky the day was as dark as night.

  Much of the forest was now only a mass of crisscrossing heaps of live coals. Some oaks still stood, shorn of all but their thickest limbs. Others leaned like fallen warriors on their branch arms, as if trying to get up again.

  The river was filling in its main channel, but was still as white as lye. I got up, gathered the leads of several horses and led them out of the water so they wouldn’t drink. I got as far as the mud of the shallows. There was nowhere to stand in all those seething, smoking miles. The riverbed stank of scorched waterweed.

  Geff came up beside me with the other horses. He tried to say something, his voice a croak, his face unreadable under the mud and soot. I shook my head and gestured at him to sit. We sat. We waited. The river filled, and we edged away from the corrosive water, which continued to run white, then turned to a porridge of ash.

  The witch had fallen asleep, her head on the flank of one of the hunkered down horses. She was as monstrously muddy as the rest of us. The only bright thing about her, or indeed that bit of the world, was the necklace. Its rose gold was spotless, unmarked by mud or water or even oily fingers—as if it were made so that every stain melted from it.

  Noon passed. The pall of smoke drifted away east, dragging a long veil of stained sky after it. The sun dried our clothes, and the mud hardened. We still could not stir from that spot, because the coal heaps of the consumed forest were furred white only on top; underneath, they were still alive. We were tormented by thirst. But when the sun was once again declining, true clouds came, and it began to rain. We turned our faces to it and opened our mouths. The big fat drops came thick and fast. The hot ashes spat and steamed.

  The witch continued to sleep, although her exposed ear filled with rain.

  Geff said to me, ‘It will be dark again soon. And the path is buried.’

  ‘She can make her live light,’ I said. But I didn’t try to wake her.

  The rain continued until we were quaking with cold. The horses had tossed off their covers and were lipping the river, which now flowed full and clear. I thought we should follow it upstream, where the clean water was coming from, until we had gone around the fire. Much of the river margin had been gently sloping pasture, smooth ground. It should be safe to ride, if we travelled slowly.

  Besides, I thought, why should we hurry to the camp of a king whose crown was now surely nothing but a lump of melted metal?

  The witch finally woke and was at once convulsed by shivering. She gave a small whine like a distressed animal, then began to cry. It was disconcerting. I wondered whether an offer of comfort would act in my favour? But how to comfort her? It couldn’t be just a gesture. I croaked, ‘You must be very tired after’—then I foundered, and finished—‘after such an effort.’

  The witch looked at me, her eyes smoke reddened and blurry. She gave a hitching sob that ended in laughter.

  ‘Adhan,’ I said, to bring her back to herself.

  She heard the reproach and straightened her face. She said she was freezing. Could someone creep out over the ashes and roll one of those smouldering logs this way?

  Two of the men got up and made their way across the smoking ground to the nearest movable log. They used their swords to lever it free of heaped ashes.

  I tried to explain my plan to leave that night along the river, guided by her live light, but she just shook her head.

  I said, ‘I expect you’d prefer to return to your marsh?’

  She said, ‘I will see this king.’

  ‘If he still lives,’ I said. ‘You have no ill intentions, I hope.’

  ‘I will talk with him. And then I’ll go to see the King of Mercia, and Duke Gwyrlais in Cornwall, and the King in Anglesey.’

  ‘Do you need to inspect the Saxon King too?’ I asked. I’d ga
thered that, for some reason, this disaster had prompted the witch to seek out and compare the royal personages of Britain. ‘And the High King in Tara? And whichever Northman now counts himself supreme?’

  She said, ‘I’ll start nearer home and see whether I need to cast a wider net.’

  ‘For what? Your marsh is in this kingdom.’

  The log arrived, bowled by swords and leaving a track of live coals. The witch scooted near the log, put up her hood, and drew her limbs in under her mud-crusted cloak.

  ‘I can’t bring you near my king if you wish him ill,’ I said, sounding helpless even to myself. She didn’t respond.

  First we found the bodies whose mouths still grinned at what had overwhelmed them. Many of them had their heads twisted right back over their shoulders as if the fire had been a bear or wolf and they’d meant by instinct to turn their bodies to stand and fight, as men will when pursued by a predator, though the fire had overtaken them with more than predatory swiftness. Some distance beyond the bodies we found charred armour, helmets, breastplates, greaves, discarded by the fleeing soldiers. Further on still we found horses, piled together, fouled on a dragged picket line. They had freed themselves from the pickets, but not from the rope, or one another.

  Our party came across one half-burnt horse, still on its feet. I cut its throat.

  In time we reached the hill the river ran around, turning east to north. The forest on the far bank was still green. On the bare hill the fortress’s fused ramparts gleamed black. There were tents on a shingle spit in the riverbed, and barges in the river’s channel, the biggest one flying the colours of the king. It seemed the king’s fire had travelled only eastward.

  At the camp I summoned women and suggested Adhan might like to wash and change her clothes before she saw his majesty.

  She said, ‘Giving you time to carry your private views to him?’

  ‘The king will need my report,’ I said. ‘And I’ll be sure to tell him that you saved our lives.’