Beowulf merely shakes his head.
“Good, I will wait here,” replies Wiglaf, eyeing the ravens in the three oaks. “Perhaps I can make some decent sport of our blustering friends up there,” and he reaches for his longbow.
King Beowulf has not forgotten the path down to the merewife’s lair, for too many nights has he retraced it in his fitful sleep. The path below the trees, the first pool there below the hill—still infested with white eels and its muddy bottom still strewn with bleached bones and skulls—then the treacherous underground river spilling into some ancient chasm that the she-demon took for her home long ages ago. Beowulf doesn’t fight the current, though the rocks batter and bruise his flesh. And in time he emerges once more from that lowest pool, from the icy water accumulated there in a void left when a buried monster rotted away—another dragon, perhaps—leaving only its bones to become the caverns walls, its massive spine to form a roof. Beowulf stands shivering and dripping a few feet away from the icy shore.
Unlike the tarn, this place has changed somehow since last he came here. It seems to have grown, the distances between the cavern’s walls, from its floor to the stalactite-draped ceiling, increasing by hundreds of feet. The sickly blue elfin light that lit the chamber thirty years ago has dimmed, and the pool is black as pitch. There does not seem to be nearly so much golden treasure as before, as though the slave Cain is not the only man who has found his way here and plundered the hoard. Beowulf takes Hrothgar’s drinking horn from beneath his mail and sodden robes, and it glows, casting a warm light across the rocks at his feet and pushing back some of the stifling darkness. The sound of dripping water is very loud, and Beowulf imagines if he stood here long, that dripping might come to sound as loud as the blows of Thor’s hammer.
Beowulf holds the horn high above his head, and shouts into the gloom, “Come forth! Show yourself!” But by some peculiar property of this accursed place, some aural trick, a long and eerie silence falls between the act of speaking and the sound of his own voice. When his delayed utterance does finally greet Beowulf’s ears, it seems to roll back as little more than an echo, diminished by the darkness and distance of the place.
Come forth! Show yourself!
Come forth! Show yourself!
Come forth! Show yourself!
He takes another step toward the edge of the pool, moving nearer the pebbly, muddy shore, but the moment seems to stretch itself into long minutes. So, thinks Beowulf, the sorcery shrouding this fetid grotto has been fashioned to twist sound and time, and that thought takes at least as long as a single footstep, fifteen minutes, ten, half an hour. His left boot sends up a crystal spray, each droplet rising so slowly from the pool, every one of them a perfect liquid gem reflecting and refracting the red-orange glow of the drinking horn or the soft blue phosphorescence of the cavern walls. Beowulf looks down, and there’s his face gazing back up at him from the pool. But it’s the face of his younger self, not the visage of the old man he’s become. Those eyes are still bright with the vigor of his lost youth, and the beard that face wears has not yet gone gray. Then the sluggish arc of the droplets brings them back down across the water, and they strike the pool like deafening thunderclaps. Each drop creates a perfect ring of ripples that languidly radiate across the surface, intersecting with other ripples, and for some period of time he cannot judge, he stands there transfixed, watching them. When the water is finally still again, the face looking up at him from the pool is only that of a battle-scarred old man.
And then he feels dizzy and sick to his stomach and feels something else, as well—an odd, unwinding sensation, as though time is suddenly catching up with itself again. His next footstep toward the shore takes no more or less time than any footstep should.
“I have not come to play games,” he mutters, climbing out onto the shore, the rocks shifting and crunching noisily beneath his feet. Breathless, he pauses at the edge of the pool, exhausted by the arduous journey down from the tarn and the three oaks. There’s a stitch in his side and the faint coppery taste of blood on his tongue, and Beowulf wonders if maybe he cracked a tooth as he was tossed and pummeled along the underground river connecting the two subterranean pools. He spits pink foam onto the ground at his feet.
“I no longer have the patience for such games,” Beowulf says. “So show yourself, and save the trickery for someone who hasn’t seen it all before.”
There is a rattling, clanging sound from the shadows to his right, and Beowulf turns to see half a dozen figures shambling toward him across the stony beach. They are little more than skeletons, held together by desiccated scraps of sinew and shriveled bits of skin, wrapped up in rusty armor and rags. Some of them have lost an arm or a leg, and Beowulf sees that the nearest is missing his lower jaw bone. The figures glare back at him from eyeless skulls, dazzling cerulean orbs of the cave’s faerie light shining out from otherwise-empty sockets. Beowulf reaches for his sword, but immediately the skeletal figures stop their staggering advance and stand very still, still as stone or mortar, all of them watching him.
“Hail Beowulf,” the nearest says, its voice like iron scraping dry bone. And Beowulf realizes that this wraith was once the Geat Hondshew, one of the boldest and bravest of all his thanes. “Great Beowulf, who killed the monster Grendel.”
To Hondshew’s left, another thane, this one unrecognizable as its face is far too decomposed to bear resemblance to any living man, raises a bony finger and jabs it in Beowulf’s direction.
“Hail Beowulf,” it croaks. “Great Beowulf, who slew Grendel’s demon mother.”
Behind it, another of the dead thanes makes an awful, choking sound that might be laughter. “Hail mighty Beowulf,” it says. “The wisest king, and the mightiest who ever ruled the Ring-Danes.”
Now Beowulf takes several steps backward, retreating to the edge of the wide black pool. His hand still rests firmly on the pommel of his sword, but he does not draw it from out its sheath.
“This is but some deceit!” shouts Beowulf. “Some poor jest to throw me off my guard, to weaken my resolve!”
“Hail Beowulf,” mumbles another of the fallen thanes, and Beowulf thinks this one might have once been Afvaldr who all the men called Afi. There is a dreadful commotion of rattling vertebrae and ribs, and Afi grinds his decaying teeth and points at Beowulf. “Good and faithful Beowulf,” he says, “who left us all for dead.”
“You fell in battle,” Beowulf replies. “I know my eyes have been deceived, for this day you ride the battlefields of Idavoll—”
“I was murdered by the monster’s mother while I slept,” snarls the apparition. “That is no glorious death. I will never have a seat in Valhalla.”
“This is not real,” says Beowulf. “I cannot be fooled by such shoddy witchcraft.”
Another of the shamblers has made its way to the front of the pack, and right away Beowulf recognizes him. The once-corpulent Olaf is now little more than a scarecrow.
“Hail the guh-great King Beowulf,” snarls Olaf. “Liar and muh-muh-monster. Lecher and fuh-fuh-fool.”
“You built your kingdom with our spilled blood,” says the thing that wants Beowulf to believe it was once Hondshew and scurrying black beetles and albino spiders dribble from its lipless mouth. “You built your glorious keep from our bones.”
And now all the dead men raise their arms and cry out in unison, “Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail!”
“I will not see this,” Beowulf hisses. “I will not hear this filthy coward’s lie. Show yourself!”
And like a handful of dust in a strong gale, the wraiths come apart in some unfelt gust, vanishing back into the half-light and murk from whence they came. At once there is a new disturbance in the merewife’s cavern, the din of great, leathery wings from somewhere directly overhead. And before Beowulf can draw his weapon, he is assailed by a violent blast of hot wind that almost knocks him off his feet. The air now reeks of brimstone and carrion rot. He hears footsteps and turns toward the ledge of ancient granite altar stone
where, thirty years before, Grendel’s corpse lay. The enormous sword, surely a giant’s blade, is still mounted on the wall above the stone. Near the altar is a tunnel, yet another tributary of this underground waterway, and from that tunnel comes the disquieting echo of a soft male voice.
“How strange,” says the voice. “When I listened at windows and from rooftops to the talk of the mighty King Beowulf, all the talk I heard was of a hero, valiant and wise, courageous and noble. But here, now I see…you’re nothing, a pathetic, empty nothing.”
Beowulf tries to push the images of the wraiths from his mind, steeling himself for this new horror, whatever it might be.
“I am Beowulf,” he says.
Now, the water in the tunnel has begun to burn, whirling sheets of flame racing across it and licking at the travertine and granite walls. And in that flickering light Beowulf can clearly see the speaker, the image of a slender, well-muscled young man, and he is not standing in the water but walking upon it, as though he might weigh no more than a feather. The man’s skin is golden, as golden as the drinking horn, and he is clothed only in a strapwork harness of curled leather. Except for his glistening, gilded skin, this young man might well be Beowulf, as he was in his twentieth or twenty-fifth year. There is a sinking, sour realization growing in Beowulf’s mind, and he shudders and forces himself not to look away.
Give me a child, Beowulf. Enter me now and give me a beautiful, beautiful son.
You have a fine son, my king.
“I am Beowulf,” the Lord of the Ring-Danes says again.
“You are shit,” replies the golden man. Those three words bite at Beowulf’s heart like the iron heads of an archer’s shaft.
“Who,” begins Beowulf, then stops and swallows, his mouth gone dry as dust. “What are you?”
The golden man, wreathed all in flame yet unburning, smiles a vicious smile. “I’m only something you left behind…Father.”
Beowulf feels a weakness in his knees, and his heart begins to race and skips a beat.
“Here,” he says, holding out the golden horn. “Take back your damned, precious bauble. The man who stole it has been punished. Have it, demon, and leave my land in peace.” And with those words, Beowulf hurls the drinking horn toward the golden man and the fiery tunnel entrance. It lands at his feet with an audible splash, but also does not sink into the water as it should. The golden man looks down at the horn and shakes his head.
“It is much too late for that,” he says, and raises one bare foot and gently presses it down upon the horn, crushing it flat against the water in an instant. Where the horn had been, there is only a bubbling puddle of molten metal. It floats on the steaming water for a second or two, then Beowulf watches in disbelief as it flows up over the foot and ankle that crushed it, melding seamlessly with the golden man’s skin.
“How will you hurt me, Father?” he asks, stepping through a curtain of flame to stand on the stone floor of the cave, between Beowulf and the altar ledge. “With your fingers, your teeth…your bare hands?”
Beowulf licks his parched lips, and he can feel the heat from the flames against his face.
“Where is your mother?” he asks. “Where is she hiding?” And then, shouting toward the cave’s ceiling. “Show yourself, bitch!”
The golden man laughs, a sound like rain and a handful of coins scattered across cobbles. “Nobody ever sees my mother,” he tells Beowulf. “Unless, of course, she wishes. Not even me.”
“This is madness,” mutters Beowulf.
“You have a wonderful land, my Father,” the golden man says and takes another step toward Beowulf. “A beautiful home. Oh, and women. Such beautiful, frail women. When I came and listened at windows, sometimes they spoke of your women. Your wise Queen Wealthow. Your pretty bed warmer, Ursula. I wonder—which of them do you think I should kill first?”
“Why? Tell me, please, why are you doing this?”
The golden man raises a shimmering eyebrow and pretends not to understand the question. “Why am I offering you a choice?” he asks Beowulf.
“No, you bastard,” snarls Beowulf. “Why would you harm either of them?”
The golden man nods his pretty head, and the smile returns to his face. “Oh, I see. Because you love them both so much, Father. And because I hate you.”
“Your mother, she asked me for a son. I only gave her what she asked for.”
Now the golden man is striding confidently toward Beowulf, trailing a mantle of flame in his wake. And with each step he takes, he seems to grow larger. At first Beowulf thinks it’s only some other enchantment or guile of the cavern, but then he remembers how he watched the mortally wounded Grendel grow smaller.
“And she gave you a kingdom and crown,” the golden man says. “And you have them still, your lands and your treasure…your glory and your women. But what have I, dear Father? Where do I fit in your grand scheme?”
“You are your mother’s son,” Beowulf replies. “She never asked—”
“Never asked? Haven’t you ever wondered? You, an old man without an heir to his throne, have you never lain awake in the stillness of the night and wondered about the son whom you used to barter for power and riches? That he might have dreams and aspirations, that he might wish to be something more than a phantom and a bad memory?”
“My heir? You are an abomination.”
The golden man, taller than Beowulf now by a head, is standing only ten or twenty feet away, and he smirks and glances at the ground.
“An abomination,” says the golden man. “Like poor Grendel, you mean? Grendel, the ill-made and misbegotten son of good King Hrothgar—”
“The son of Hrothgar?” asks Beowulf, disbelieving. “Can you speak nothing but lies?”
“You did not know? Did you truly think you were my mother’s first dalliance with a son of Odin? Your Queen Wealthow knew, even before you met her—”
“I did not know it, and I do not know it now, for there is naught in you but bitter guile and deception.”
“Say what you will, Father. My skin is thick, and you cannot make me hate you any more than I already do. Indeed, if you were to engrave my hatred on every star in the sky, upon every grain of sand on every beach from now until the end of time, you would still not possess the smallest inkling of just how much I hate you.”
“How could I have known?” asks Beowulf.
“What matter? I am, as you say, an abomination, a demon born of an abominable union and unfit to sit upon your throne or upon any throne of man.”
And now the golden man, the son of Beowulf, has grown to such a great height that he stands easily twice as tall as his father, almost as tall as the monster Grendel. And his gleaming body has begun another and far more terrible sort of transformation, that smooth metallic skin suddenly becoming rough and scaled. The flourishes and whorls of the curled leather strapwork he was wearing have vanished, leaving only their intricate patterns behind, spirals of buff and amber on his gilded hide. From his face and skull, an assortment of horns and other bony nodules and excrescences have begun to sprout. Where a moment before towered a man of unearthly, incomparable beauty, now there stands some equally unearthly but hideous creature, neither quite reptile nor man.
“How will you kill me, Father?” the thing asks, but its dulcet voice has become an ugly, guttural rumble as lips and cheeks fold back and shrink away, tissue retracting to reveal a mouthful of uneven yellowed fangs and a purplish forked tongue. Its thick saliva drips to the cavern floor and spatters across the stones where it instantly flashes to puddles of blue-white flame. “Crush my arm in a door and tear it off? Do you think that will be enough? Or will you cut off my head and take it back to your pretty women as a trophy?”
Beowulf draws his sword, and the creature sneers and laughs at him. Its hands have become talons, and its arms have grown so long they reach the ground.
“Last night, you visited unspeakable suffering upon my people,” Beowulf says, holding the blade out before him, horrifi
ed by the metamorphosis he is witnessing, but incapable of looking away. “You have murdered—women and children, old men in their sleep. You are as much a coward as was your foul half brother, Grendel. You rain death upon those you despise and never do you look them in the face.”
“I am looking you in the face, Father.” But its bristling, venomous mouth is no longer suited to human speech, and Beowulf can only just make out the slurred and garbled words.
“Then fight me and leave the others be, for they have never done you harm.”
“But you love them, Father. Or so you profess, so you would have them believe. And I do hate you, so what better way might I ever harm you than by harming them? How better to take my vengeance?” More fire leaks from its jaws and spreads across the cobbles; Beowulf takes a quick step backward to avoid the flames.
There is a loud splash from the pool behind him, but Beowulf does not look away from the grinning dragon thing to see what might have made the sound.
“Enough,” the creature snorts, and now it has grown enormous, its horned skull brushing against the stalactites, breaking off bits of the smaller dripstone formations. Its neck is long and ripples with serpentine muscles, and where its arms were but a moment before there are gigantic leathery wings. A spiked and spiny tail lashes from side to side, and with one blow it smashes the altar stone to rubble. The beast is gigantic, the size of a small whale at least, almost as large as the sea monsters Beowulf fought when he swam against Brecca so long ago. It shakes its massive head from side to side, and scalding air washes over Beowulf.
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE TALK!” it bellows. “NOW, FATHER, YOU WILL WATCH AS I BURN YOUR WORLD TO CINDERS!”
And as the dragon opens its jaws wide, belching blinding gouts of liquid fire, Beowulf turns and dives headlong into the deep black pool. The cold water closes around him, soothing his blistered skin, and he lets himself sink to the muddy bottom bathed in the red-orange light from above. He looks back up at the roiling inferno writhing across the surface, wondering how long before the entire pool is turned to steam. Then there is a gentle but insistent tug at his arm, and when Beowulf looks down again, the merewife is floating before him. Even more beautiful than his memories of her, and he thinks if only Wealthow could see her, surely then his wife would understand why he has done the things he has done. Her yellow hair drifts like a wreath about her face, and her blue eyes seem brighter than any dragon’s fire. Her lips do not move, but he plainly hears her voice inside his head.
Beowulf Page 22