by Jude Fisher
When the next big wave carried her up into the briny air, the shore was, however, far closer than she had expected. Details sprang into focus. The tidewrack lining the beach was very dark, almost black. Bladderwrack, most likely. It was all pebbles, pebbles and driftwood, rounded and smoothed by the rolling ocean. In contrast, the reef and cliffs which backed the beach were slanted and sharp, a glinting dark grey with great rows of sharks’ fins. Slate, she thought miserably. Worst type of rock to get wrecked on; cut you to ribbons soon as look at you.
But even as despair set in, her head and fingers started to tingle. Something drew her, diagonally, to the left. Too tired to resist – or even question – the instinct, and too weak to maintain a steady breaststroke, Katla found herself paddling like a dog now. The tingling became an insistent buzz which travelled down her spine, radiated up into her skull. Exhausted, Katla gulped a mouthful of seawater, choked and sank, thrashing. A moment later she was somehow above herself, looking down on a sorry scrap of battered flesh at the mercy of the elements, its dark hair plastered flat to its scalp, its pale limbs flailing pathetically. She felt sorry for it; then nothing at all. The land was more interesting from this new perspective. Powerful and vibrant, humming with energies, it had endured for thousands upon thousands of years; would go on for thousands more, giving to and taking back from the sea in an eternal exchange of matter, each element nurturing the other. Millennia ago the cliffs had been a part of the great ocean, rocks from the northern wastes ground down to dust and held in suspension in the heart of the sea, to be laid down in minute layers, one upon another and another and another, compressed by the movements of vast plates of rock floating around the molten centre of Elda, crushed into solidity and shoved up into rucks and outcrops. Alternately sharpened and smoothed by the erosive powers of air and water, they were ever mutable, ever-changing, their forms part of the constant chaotic relationship between weather and world. And Katla, too, felt herself inherent in this never-ending stew of life, a tiny crystal of light and spirit held in trust between air, earth and water; a quickened atom of being who owed her existence to them all, and would at some not-too-distant point in time return her constituents to them. For now, though, they let her be; more, they offered her their essential natures, their configurations and their secrets till she was brimming with them and at last, weighed down by this new freight of knowledge, she fell back into her body again, now all cold and forlorn, stranded halfway between the land and a sinking ship.
But the knowledge was still with her. Fuelled by the generosity of Elda, Katla struck out once more with renewed strength and purpose. There was, she now knew, a small gap in the reef, a gap floored with sand and fringed with kelp. Two more big waves picked her up and drove her forward and she let them take her where they would. Then, with the buzzing suffusing her entire body she dived through the crashing rim of surf, down below the chaos into serene green depths, like a seal, like a seal. A few seconds later she had glided in between the dark fangs of rock on either side of the gap and was lying panting on the pebbled shore, waves lapping at her feet.
From the ship they saw a tiny figure skipping out a complex and compulsive victory dance, then waving madly at them.
‘She’s a marvel,’ Bera Rolfsen cried, breathing for what seemed the first time in an age.
‘Katla! Katla!’ the women shouted. ‘Well done, Katla!’
But Kitten Soronsen sat and glared. ‘I don’t know why you’re all celebrating. We’re here and she’s there. Who’s to say the draw of the tide won’t break our bodies on the rocks? Who’s to say the rope won’t break? Or that we won’t die of cold before we’re halfway there?’
At her words, several of the women quieted, suddenly sobered.
‘I’m not risking it,’ Kitten finished. ‘You lot can do as you please; but I’d rather trust to the Lady Feya and the Lord Sur than to any plan of Katla Aransen’s.’
‘Well,’ said Bera coldly, ‘you can stay here alone and go down with the ship. And be it on your own head; empty as it is.’ She pointedly turned her attention away from the blonde girl as if dismissing her from her thoughts, and shaded her eyes to watch Katla shinning up a rock to attach the rope around a rocky spike there. Even though it was now held up at either end, the middle of the rope dipped into the sea; but it was still the best lifeline available to them. ‘Come on,’ she said briskly to Kit Farsen, ‘you go first: you’re shivering. No point in getting any colder waiting around here.’
At the older woman’s bidding, Kit Farsen got to her feet a trifle unsteadily – she’d never been one to think much for herself – and allowed the Mistress of Rockfall to lead her to the steerboard gunwale. There, she quailed.
‘You have to jump in,’ Bera pointed out. ‘There’s no other way. Just grab the rope when you bob up again.’
Bera made it sound perfectly straightforward, but Kit baulked. The next thing she felt was a firm hand on her back, and then she was in the sea. ‘Feya save me!’ she wailed, before a wave crashed over her. A moment later she bobbed back up, disorientated and spluttering, her eyes out on stalks. Galvanised by her predicament, she kicked herself around in a circle, spotted the line hanging overhead and grabbed hold as if it was the only thing between salvation and chilly death; which, of course, it was. Then, without any further need for instruction, she hauled herself along it, hand over hand, through the churning waves, until she was through the surf, between the arms of the reef and safely on firm ground.
Amazed and filled with new hope, the women cheered; all but Kitten Soronsen, who had always hated to be proved wrong.
Then they followed, one by one by one: Thin Hildi, Fat Breta (who looked as if she surely must drown until she finally slumped ashore like a beached walrus), Forna Stensen, and the rest. Eventually there was only Bera, Kitten and the big Istrian left on deck.
Casto Agen made no move to save himself, so Bera took off her shoes and stepped to the gunwale. ‘Coming?’ she asked Kitten Soronsen.
But Kitten, eyes glinting with unshed tears, stuck her chin in the air and stared off into the wide grey sky.
With a shrug and a last glance at the statue-like raider, Bera Rolfsen stepped off into thin air.
She thought the cold would stop her heart: nothing had prepared her for the shock of it. She could not breathe, could not see for what seemed whole minutes. Then her head was up above the killing waves and she was sucking air into her lungs as if she could never get enough of it. Then she laid hold of the rope and dragged herself along it as fast as her frozen muscles would allow. Waves washed over her, pulling her down, but she never let go. ‘Thirty-eight, thirty-nine,’ went the mantra in her head. ‘Forty, forty-one . . .’ One for each bone-chilling haul. When she reached fifty-two, she found herself amongst the breakers and boiling surf; at fifty-five, her trailing feet stubbed against sand; at fifty-seven, her knees struck the ground, and then she stopped counting.
Immediately Katla was at her side, chafing her arms and legs. ‘Get up, Mother,’ she said urgently. ‘Get up and start walking or you’ll die of the cold.’
Bera sat upright. There in front of her spread out across the stony strand were the other survivors, all marching doggedly about like the remnants of some particularly doomed and tattered army, rubbing their thighs and stamping their feet for all they were worth.
She looked back to the Rose of Cera. From here the imminence of its demise was clear. It was nose-down, its stern sticking out of the water at a highly unnatural angle. There was no sign of Kitten Soronsen, nor of the big raider. Frowning, Bera shifted her gaze. About midway between ship and shore was a great splashing shape. The Istrian, it seemed, had decided to take his chances with the sea.
But as the titanic splashing which marked Casto Agen’s progress approached the shore it soon became apparent that the Istrian had not left Kitten to the fate she deserved: for there she was, clinging to his back, her face a perfect mask of fury. She couldn’t say she was happy to see Kitten Soronsen again, but Katl
a could not help but grin at the thought of the indelicate treatment she had endured in the course of this unwished-for rescue.
As soon as the raider cleared the surf, Kitten launched herself off his back and hared up the beach, meeting no one’s eye. Veering away from them all, she hurled herself down into the sand on the other side of the tideline and gave all her attention over to wringing out her hair and rags.
Katla turned to her mother, eyebrows raised; but it was Bera who spoke first. ‘Leave her be. There is already enough bad blood between you. Feya knows our situation won’t be helped by adding to it.’
Then, before Katla could protest that she had had no intention whatsoever of baiting Kitten further, Bera marched over to the big Istrian and said loudly and formally in the Old Tongue: ‘Thank you. It was good of you to grant my request.’ She bobbed her head at him in a particularly old-fashioned gesture, and then turned back to meet the questioning gaze of her daughter.
‘You asked him to bring Kitten Soronsen?’ Katla was aghast.
Bera shrugged. ‘I could hardly leave her to drown.’
‘It might have proved better for all of us if you had,’ Katla muttered indistinctly.
They spent a miserable night on the beach, which rendered up no shelter, food or water. Katla had been all for exploring their new surroundings but her mother had been adamant. ‘We stick together, those few of us who are left,’ she declared. ‘When the sun comes up, then we shall decide what to do.’
Katla couldn’t sleep. She could feel the cliffs pulling at her, just as she had felt Sur’s Castle calling her to climb when she first reached the Moonfell Plain. The rock in this southern continent tugged at her in ways she could not fully fathom, as if it were speaking to her in a foreign language in which she knew but a few words. But there was something urgent in its attraction, something elemental and strange. All night she seethed and fretted. And it was damned cold, too. Disliking most of her companions too much to put aside her pride and bed down with them for the warmth, she had made herself a hollow place in the sand, lined it with the drier of the bladderwrack and lain there, assailed by its rank and salty smell, watching the stars roll overhead, trying to ignore her various hurts and discomforts. If she looked north, back over the ocean, she could see the Navigator’s Star shining bright and constant, and she thought about her father and her twin and wondered where on Elda they might be now. Were they faring any better? She could not imagine they were any warmer, wherever they were; if indeed they were still alive. Which was but small consolation.
Ten
Smoke and Mirrors
The old man turned and surveyed his visitors with satisfaction. The two who were conscious were staring about them in open-mouthed awe, as was only right and proper. Even if he said so himself, the Great Hall was a glorious achievement. His stronghold was probably the most magnificent building in all of Elda. Or rather, in all of known Elda, he corrected himself, remembering the extravagance of the basilica he had commissioned in his former capital, with its gilded mosaics and marble-inlaid floor, its fabulous carvings and gleaming golden dome. It had taken over a century as men measured time to complete the task of the vast mosaic alone, so intricate and finely worked was it. A sudden pang went through the Master then. Just think, came an unbidden voice, you could have had all that and the Lady, too, if you’d been more careful. You wouldn’t have had to flee to this gods-forsaken corner of the world and make do with shadows and turnips . . .
‘Now then,’ he said, firmly pushing the annoying voice back into the darkness where it belonged, ‘let me take the boy and see what I can do for him.’ Then he lifted Fent Aranson from the shoulders of the giant as if he was no heavier than a reed, turned on his threadbare heel and vanished suddenly and silently into the deep shadows beyond the Great Hall, leaving the two men gawping after him.
It was some time before Aran Aranson came back to himself sufficiently to take in the full import of where they were. He stared about his surroundings in wonderment. No man of his generation – and perhaps no man in history – had ever stood where he now stood: in the very heart of famed Sanctuary.
The hall was dominated by arched windows filled with some mysterious transparent substance which appeared to let the light in and the cold air beyond them out. These made the room seem chillier still, for the light that issued from them was so bright it seemed almost as tangible as the icy interior it illuminated. What saved the chamber from unrelieved austerity was a collection of hides of the most massive snowbears that could ever have stalked these arctic wastes, which were scattered here and there across the hard-packed floor; and a vast tapestry hanging above the hearth at the far end. Everything else was of ice – the tables, the chairs, the settles, even the lamps – great globes on stands which emitted an eerily pale and unnecessary light. He watched Urse walk like a man in a dream across the floor to the hearth and stretch his hands before its leaping fire. In another context, it might have seemed a comfortingly mundane gesture: a man in a cold place trying to warm himself. Except that the flames were green and blue and violet: every colour alien to any natural fire.
‘Urse!’ he said loudly and cringed as his voice echoed noisily across the hall and fled away into the vaulted ceilings high above. Gazing up fearfully, he was alarmed to note that his call had disturbed a horde of tiny translucent creatures which had set to flitting and diving madly about in the deep blue shadows, their movements visible as a momentary flicker and shimmer amidst the gloom.
‘What are they?’ breathed the giant, a look of apparent puzzlement creasing his ruined face. It was hard to read the big man’s facial expressions when half of them were either missing or vastly distorted, but his brows were knit and he could not stop pulling at his single remaining ear, a tic the erstwhile Master of Rockfall had previously noticed Urse resort to in times of confusion and discomfiture.
Aran shrugged. ‘I thought they might be bats . . .’
The giant shook his head. ‘They’re like no bats I ever saw.’ He looked down at the fire again, then shook his head sadly. ‘This is a terrible place, Aran. We have come to a terrible place.’
His companion gave no answer to this, but crossed instead to one of the great windows and stared outside, as if in the hope of refuting Urse’s statement. In one direction, all he could see were vistas of endless ice; in the other a vast and sculpted parkland of snow with a mirror-flat lake gleaming in its centre. Nothing moved on that sheeny expanse, though here and there it seemed that the corpses of ducks and oddly shaped swans floated upon still waters. A pair of graciously proportioned balustrades flanked a sweep of stairs which ran from the stronghold out towards the lake and on these were also strewn a number of strange objects – what looked much like half a sheep appeared to have been draped along the bottom step, and a number of smaller and even less identifiable creatures lay scattered across the frosted lawn.
Frowning, he turned back to his companion.
‘It’s not what I imagined,’ Aran said quietly. Who knew what the old man might hear in this unnatural place?
Urse cracked what might have been a rueful smile. ‘You mean, where’s the gold?’
‘Ssshh.’ Aran moved softly to the doorway and peered out into the maze of corridors. But of the Master and Fent there was no sign. It had been hard to consign the boy to the mage’s care, but somehow when the old man had taken him he had found himself unable to object, unable even to move his feet to follow, and then it seemed he had simply forgotten to be concerned: that, or the old man had made some spell over him. For Aran Aranson had no doubt that Sanctuary was a place made by and filled with sorcery.
His hand crept down to the dagger which hung at his belt and he unhitched the blade and brought it up into view, ran a thumb along its edge. Keen, it was, and of good Eyran iron, forged by his own daughter in the Rockfall smithy. But could even the finest blade be keen enough to cut the throat of a sorcerer? His heart quelled at the very thought, now that he was here and the deed imminent. Shaking
, he sheathed the blade, and ran a hand across his face.
Despite the arctic setting, sweat was pouring down his cheeks and neck. Embarrassed, he rubbed it away. At his collar, his fingers ran across the thong of leather he wore around his neck, then moved down to the pouch which hung from it. There they fluttered like moths at a flame. Without a moment’s conscious thought, Aran reached in and touched the curl of parchment which nested inside. As if it were indeed a flame, it gave out a tremendous heat, comforting, reassuring; compelling. He pulled out the map and gazed at it. At once, clarity returned, a warm glow of confidence and certainty. He turned to the big man.
‘When the mage returns my son to me, then we will kill him.’
Urse One-Ear regarded his captain mildly. ‘It would be a shame to kill an old man.’
‘We came here for his gold; I will not leave this place without it.’
‘If you kill the old man, you may never leave. Besides, he does not look like a rich man to me, a man who has a lot of gold. Not with those ragged clothes and holed shoes.’
‘Pretence and deception. We will make him tell us where it is,’ Aran declared mulishly. ‘And then we will kill him.’
‘Tell me how will we leave this place – with or without the gold – when we have no ship to bear us? Shall we fly like eagles bearing carrion, or like bumblebees laden with pollen?’
But Aran Aranson was immune to the big man’s jibes. ‘When he returns I will make him tell me where the gold is. And then he will reveal to us where he keeps the ship on which he travelled here.’
‘A ship?’
The Master had reappeared in the doorway, his footsteps soundless on the ice. Behind him, Fent Aranson followed like a sleepwalker, eyes unfocused, his long face with its fringe of auburn beard showing no hint of expression. The old man smiled, cunning as a fox.