by Jude Fisher
Farther away, a woman crossed a wagon to quiet her son, who had woken, weeping, from a nightmare; and farther yet, an old man cursed in fury as his view of that part of the world darkened and died.
In the gloom of the stables, Saro Vingo clutched his hands to the stone that hung around his neck, while all around him the horses whickered and stamped in alarm, but even the thick fabric of the gloves he had taken to wearing by day and night to keep the world at bay failed to staunch the flow of fiery light which struck out across the beams, the girders and the stalls, limning the occupants in a sunset haze. The moodstone shone through his fingers, so that even through the wool he could glimpse the blur of bone within and he caught his breath in panic, recalling that fateful day at the Allfair, the falling bodies, eyes rolled up to white. If he touched any living thing while the stone blazed, they too would surely perish. It seemed the horses understood this for themselves: they backed edgily away, bumping into one another until they were pressed against the stalls and had nowhere else to go. Then, as suddenly as it had visited, the weird light died, pitching the stables into an even deeper obscurity than there had been before.
Saro stowed the necklace with a beating heart. Then, moving along the stalls more by touch than by sight, he made his way to where Night’s Harbinger was tethered. The stallion backed away from him, its feet kicking up the ground-straw, its nostrils expelling air in great plosive bursts.
‘Sshh, there: be calm, boy.’
His reaching hand found the horse’s sweating neck and he ran his palm down the vibrant flesh, feeling the stallion’s pulse ticking quickly beneath his fingers; feeling, too, its nervousness at the unknown force which had disturbed it. He half-expected the beast to rear up at the touch but, ever contrary, Night’s Harbinger quieted. Even before the stallion moved, Saro could feel the massy weight of its head in the air above him; then the bay was nuzzling at him, searching for horse-nuts as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred.
Slipping the halter easily over the stallion’s head, Saro led him quietly out into the deserted stable-yard, looped the rope around a fence post there and went back in for the bridle and saddle. Finding the bay’s saddle amongst the hundred others there in the pitch dark would, for anyone else, have proved impossible without a guiding light; but for once the old nomad’s gift proved an advantage. He took off the gloves and ran his hands swiftly over the polished leather, letting the images thus released sweep over him like a warm and fragrant breeze. For fractions of seconds at a time he ‘saw’ a fat man with close black eyes, a tall lad in blue; a woman, straight-backed with her black hair a flag in the wind – an ancient saddle this, then; for no Istrian woman for a hundred years and more would have been permitted to straddle a horse in such an unseemly fashion. He sensed conflicts, and moved his hands swiftly away. One saddle offered him the image of a spear-struck man gripping desperately to the cantle, before sliding away beneath a ruck of combatants. He saw boys barely large enough to sit astride any creature, let alone a full-grown Tilsen horse, racing like demons across a wind-blown strand; he saw a column of men stretching as far as the eye could see, pennants fluttering from lances held aloft; and then, bizarrely, he was inside himself twice over so that his consciousness seemed to blur and shimmer; and a man came at him on a dappled grey beast. It was such a vivid memory that in this time, here and now, Saro found himself ducking away, just as he had tried to do at the Allfair. He took his hands off the leather before it could remind him of the gutting pain of the Eyran rider’s fist under his ribs; then put his gloves back on, picked the saddle up and carried it out into the night.
The empathy was stronger now every day. Even the most mundane household objects awoke and gave up their stories to him at the merest touch. He had no defence against it: all he could do was to order his life as simply as possible, and wear the gloves whenever he was able. He had bided his time with difficulty till this night, for he seemed forever in the company of the Lords of Forent and Cantara, who insisted always on including him in their plans, and that fact combined with the matter of sharing a sleeping-chamber with Tanto had made it impossible to slip away before now. Ever since he had been visited by the harrowing vision of the mayhem that might one day be unleashed by Tycho Issian channelling the power of the moodstone, he had barely been able to eat or sleep. Since the day on which they had arrived, when the tale, pale man with the cold hand and the dead soul had touched him in Jetra’s great hall and he had seen wild comprehension flare in the man’s almost-colourless eyes at the power of the artefact he wore, he had lived in constant fear that the creature would report that information back to his master. Once the Lord of Cantara discovered the nature of the moodstone, Saro sensed he would stop at nothing to acquire it. The urbane, elegant man he had met at the Allfair had become another order of being entirely in the intervening months: he seemed driven by some inner fervour, some wild, distorting passion which made his eyes burn and his every gesture abrupt and impatient. And Saro had heard him speak about the northerners in terms he could not reconcile with his own few experiences, and with a hatred that went far beyond any root in their two peoples’ ancient, conflicted history. And the role he had outlined for Saro to play in this drama – one of treachery, deceit and cold murder – was unimaginable.
The need to escape drove him with a terrible, slow urgency. It made him careful in every movement he made, set all his senses to full alert. He saddled the horse, tightened the girth, then tied the small sack of his provisions and necessities across the bay’s shoulder. Then he threw back his head and took a deep breath. Up above, the constellations were as bright as he had ever seen them, the sky as black and vast as all the world. The Northern Cross stood in the zenith, its seven subsidiary stars dancing irregular attendance on the most luminous star of all, the one the Eyrans called the Navigator’s Star, and here in the South they called Falla’s Eye. How typical, he thought then, for the first time, that the northerners should view their world as so benevolent that it would provide them with guidance and aid, rather than inflict upon them an ever-watchful, ever-judging presence.
I will make my way to Eyra.
Gone were all the manifold reasons with which he had previously caged himself: if the stone were to be kept from Tycho Issian’s hands and that terrible revelation of the future averted, to travel as far as he could out of the Lord of Cantara’s grasp seemed his only possible course of action. That the stars seemed to have offered him their own encouragement merely added to his determination, so that within moments a sudden notion carried all the force of epiphany, and became a decision as compelling as any made after months of prudent forethought and planning.
Nineteen
The Long Serpent
Katla, working in the forge late into the night on the sword she had promised herself she would make for Tor Leeson’s family – to honour the memory of his death, or to sell for whatever price they could get for it – stopped her beating and listened intently. There was, beyond the echo of the hammer on the anvil, a zinging in her head; and in addition to the vibrations her body had absorbed from the iron there was something else – in the air, maybe, or in the ground beneath her feet. She laid down her tools, placed the half-made sword carefully upon the table, and spread her hands on the stone floor in an attempt to locate and identify the sensation; but it was gone, only the faintest resonance of it left echoing in the quartz veins deep below the island. She frowned. Something felt slightly out of true, askew in the world.
Katla glanced back at the sword. It was a fair piece of work; good, but not fine. She had known it all along, ever since the first rough fashioning. Nothing she had attempted since returning to Rockfall after the shipwreck had satisfied her exacting standards, although others exclaimed in wonder over the artistry of the niello tracery with which she had been experimenting, the intricate designs of silver wire winding like serpents around hilt and tang and down into the fuller. But she knew it was mere decoration, fancy patterns to maze the eye and distr
act from the integrity of the blades. Her heart was no longer in it. The sea-monster had taken something of her with it down into the ocean abyss, along with her brother and her friends.
She wiped her hands on her tunic, doused the fire and left the forge. The long house was in darkness, but she was not tired enough to seek her bed. Instead, she wrapped herself in a thick cloak and chose the track that led to Whale Strand. By the light of a moon which hung large over the island she made her way down towards the cliffs, following the paler sand through the dark furze and brush, and thence took the wider path that issued out onto the beach, her breath steaming in the freezing air. There, she found the Master of Rockfall’s great ice-breaking vessel, complete but for its mast, rising from the strand like a ship out of legend. The sight of it made her shiver.
‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’
Katla almost fell over to hear another voice. She spun around, both hands at her mouth to stifle the cry which threatened to escape her. It was Aran Aranson, seated with his back to a pile of timber, so still he looked himself like a stock of wood.
‘By Sur, Da you gave me a shock!’
Her father smiled, but he did not take his eyes off the ship. The expression in them was vague and dream-filled: he seemed like a sleepwalker, Katla thought. ‘I’m going to call her the Long Serpent,’ he said softly.
She sat down beside him so that she could take in the vessel’s long hull and elegant curves from the same angle. ‘Hmm,’ she said appraisingly after a while. ‘She’s certainly as sinuous as any snake; but is that not an ill-starred name for such a ship?’
A crease appeared in Aran’s broad forehead. ‘Ill-starred?’
‘Is it wise to name your vessel after Sur’s greatest enemy?’
‘Sur has paid little attention to my prayers over the years,’ her father snorted. ‘So why not appease the monster that overturned his precious Raven and dumped him in the Northern Ocean? Might leave us alone when we sail into her treacherous waters. It would hardly do to lose another fine ship, would it, now?’ His voice was hard and flat. It was the nearest he had come to referring to the loss of the Snowland Wolf and his eldest son, in her hearing, at least.
She grimaced. ‘It’s a good name, Da: mythic and brave, as befits a vessel bound on such a great expedition.’ She waited a few seconds before adding, ‘When will you set out?’ He had, she knew, selected the larger number of his crew: twenty-four men from Rockfall itself and the outlying islands. They had been coming to the steading for weeks now, as tales of the fame and fortune to be won from a mysterious arctic land filled with ancient treasure spread far and wide across the Westman Isles: old and young, experienced seamen and green lads, all eager for adventure and daring deeds. Most of them had wives and children at home; many had land and animals to care for, while others had neither a woman nor a bean to their name and hoped to come quickly by sufficient means to furnish themselves with land and wives and a boat of their own: but the legend of Sanctuary was a tale they had heard at their mothers’ knees, and roving the wide sea was in their blood. Even the steadiest man found the idea hard to resist. There were still a few places to be settled, if her father was to take a full crew, and she had yet to broach the subject with him again as to whether she would be one of them.
Aran grinned, a flash of white in the gloom. ‘Soon.’
‘How soon?’
‘A week or two.’
‘But the seas will be ice-locked all the way from Whale Holm—’
‘Why do you think I had an ice-breaker made for her? I cannot wait till Firstsun to set sail: others will get there first. Some may have set out already, every day she lies unlaunched is a wasted day, to me.’
‘What do you mean?’
He turned to her then and his face was set and grim. ‘I cannot kick my heels here, Katla: Rockfall holds nothing for me now.’
‘Da!’
‘My son is lost to me; my wife is going mad with grief, and I can do nothing to set the world aright. Why lie around in front of a choking peat-fire feeding a body that is ageing before my very eyes, waiting for death to claim me a little more each day in hand-measure after hand-measure?’
‘So you will go out into the Northern Ocean in the depths of winter and offer yourself wholesale, like a calf to the slaughter? That will hardly make the world aright.’
‘If I stay here I, too, will go mad.’
Katla bit her lip to stop herself saying what she truly thought: that the Master of Rockfall might already have turned that corner. But while her head told her his plan was at best folly and at worst wilful idiocy, her heart began to beat faster and the palms of her hands itched as if with incipient sweat, though the night was chill. It was the sensation she often felt before attempting a climb she had been assessing for days. The memory of the voice she had heard, urging her to stay behind, she pushed firmly away, locked it into the small box at the back of her mind where she kept all the doubts and fears and other extraneous matters that tried to assail her as she was making the first move off the ground.
‘There is nothing for me here, either, Da. Take me with you. I can row, and free rigging and help the navigation. I am as strong as many a man, and you know I will utter no complaint in even the harshest of conditions. What good am I here, under Ma’s feet? She looks at me with reproach, no matter what I do. I cannot cook, or sew or spin or weave or behave in the way she wants me to. I want no husband, and I have lost as much as you; let me come with you.’
Aran Aranson gazed at his daughter and saw how in the fey light her face shone with fervour. She was so like him it hurt. His eyes began to prickle and he looked quickly aside. ‘I cannot. Your mother would never forgive me if she were to lose another of her children to the sea.’
‘And what about Fent?’
‘I have promised him a place.’
Katla was incensed. ‘But that’s not fair! Why can Fent be risked, and not me? Take me instead of him: you know I am of more use!’
‘I have my reasons.’ In his mind he saw Festrin One-Eye berating him, telling him to look well to his daughter. He would never admit it to any living soul, but the idea of the seither returning to Rockfall made his stomach turn over; made the hairs on the back of his neck rise like a wary dog’s. Besides, Katla had already disobeyed him once in the matter of seagoing expeditions: she would not play that game twice. And Fent was becoming a liability at home with nothing to absorb his increasingly destructive energies. There would be more than one girl bearing red-haired children come the following summer, and they would all have to be provided for. ‘My mind is made up in this, Katla, so do not try to wheedle around me, nor think to trick your way aboard. I am not so amenable as Tam Fox: I’d not have hesitated for a moment in putting you over the side.’
The mention of the mummer chief’s name filled Katla with a sudden overwhelming despair. If even a man so vital and strong as Tam Fox could be taken by the seas, what chance did any other stand? She found herself staring at the Long Serpent with fresh eyes. It was beautiful, but deadly, a slender twig of wood to be tossed at will by waves and storm. Did she really want to cling to its slim gunwales while the wind howled around her ears and pelted her with ice shards and freezing spume?
But in her heart she knew the answer to this question.
No matter what the consequences; yes, yes, yes.
For the next few days, Katla kept out of her father’s way. She could not afford for him to become aware of how his own obsession had gripped her. She had the conviction that if he were to look into her face he would see her thoughts burning there and lock her away in one of the outhouses till the Long Serpent had sailed out of the sound. Meanwhile, Aran and his wife had broken their long silence; first with a furious argument, then with tears and softer words, but no matter how brave a face Bera turned to the world, Katla could see the fear in her mother’s eyes that having lost her beloved Halli, she would soon lose the man she had borne him to, and most likely Fent as well.
Word of the immi
nence of the voyage spread across the island. The men who had been chosen as crew expressed some surprise at such an early sailing, into the teeth of the storms and the embrace of the ice; but despite the grumbles, there was a palpable excitement in the air. Like the Master of Rockfall, they were bored with a Westman winter spent engaged in small chores and sleep: adventure called, and they would follow Aran Aranson anywhere he would take them.
The hall was buzzing with chatter and activity. The new sail was woven by day and night, and without the integration of any design, since the Master was in such a hurry. On the morning of its completion, the women took it out into the front enclosure and painted its leeward side with mutton-fat, to catch and hold the wind. The oars were oiled and polished, the better to glide through the water, and the loops of rope which would hold them in place inside the ship were treated with whale oil to keep them waterproofed and supple. The last of the caulking was carried out the next day so that the entire island seemed to reek of pine tar and wet wool. The following morning, the massive mastfish was installed, and the great mast stepped inside it and locked into place so that Morten Danson could be satisfied of the fit. Losing a mast to storm winds and a faulty setting was the simplest way to lose the vessel and every member of its crew; and while the shipmaker had no love for the man who had caused him to be abducted, or for any of the men who would sail with him, he was damned if he would see his reputation compromised. The sail was made fast to the yard and hauled up to billow in the biting onshore breeze. Katla watched, her fingers itching, as the tumbler, Jad, swarmed easily to the top of the mast to check the beads and knotting around the rakki and affixed the shrouds with nimble fingers.